Aspects of

SOCIOLOGY
by The Frankfurt Institute
for Social Research

With a Preface by

MAX HORKHEIMER
and

THEODOR W. ADORNO

Translated by JOHN VIERTEL

Beacon Press Boston

German text: Copyright © by Europaische Verlagsanstalt
G.M.B.H., Frankfurt am Main
English translation: Copyright © 1972 by Beacon Press
Aspects of Sociology was first published under the title
Soziologische Exkurse by Europaische Verlagsanstalt in 1956
Library of Congress catalog card number: 72-75533
International Standard Book Number: 0-8070-4168—8 (casebound)
0-8070-4169-6 (paperback)
First published as a Beacon Paperback in 1973
Beacon Press books are published under the auspices
of the Unitarian Universalist Association
Published simultaneously in Canada by Saunders of Toronto, Ltd.
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2
Contents

Preface by Max Horkheimer and

Theodor W. Adorno vii
I The Concept of Sociology 1
II Society 16
III The Individual 37
IV The Group 54
V Masses 72
VI Culture and Civilization 89
VII Sociology of Art and Music 101
VIII Sociology and Empirical Social Research 117
IX The Family 129
X Community Studies 148
XI Prejudice 169
XII Ideology 182
Index 206
Preface
This fourth volume of the "Frankfurt Contributions to
Sociology" began with the manuscripts of short lectures which
were recorded by the Hessian Broadcasting System in 1953 and
1954 and which were broadcast in French as part of the
programs of the Universite Radiophonique Internationale,
Radiodiffusion Frangaise. These have been extensively supple-
mented and broadened by the inclusion of a series of other
essays. However, the loose improvisatory character has been
preserved.
The volume is didactic, not in the sense of a coherently
presented instructional text, but of an imaginary discussion,
such as might be provoked by seminar reports on selected key
concepts of sociology. The whole book could be seen in terms
of a proseminar on sociological concepts, such as has taken
place regularly for many years at the Institute for Social
Research. In these seminars too the appearance of a closed
systematic character and of completeness has been inten-
tionally avoided. Specific concepts as well as specific areas
were selected, in order to develop an initial conception of
sociology. In so doing, presentation, commentary on the
material, and intellectual reflection were to be interpenetrating.
This hardly requires justification in a field which, according to
an insight of Max Weber, threatens to fall apart into formal
concept formation, on the one hand, and the accumulation of
material, devoid of any concept, on the other. Throughout the
authors have sought to establish that relationship between
the informative element and critical self-awareness
[Selbstbesinnung], which the science of sociology as such
demands, just as does the consciousness of those who occupy
themselves with it.

vii
 The book is organized in such a manner, that, to begin
with, a few sociological concepts—hardly the most important
ones, but rather those in which the student can perceive
something of the problematic character of the field as a
whole—have been selected and discussed, and then a few areas
of the materials and certain complexities of the contents are
dealt with. The bifurcation of the treatment corresponds to the
break within the configuration of contemporary sociology
itself, in which theoretical reflection and empirical data
collection frequently point in opposite directions and are by no
means to be reunited by such measures as so-called "inte-
gration." This break must neither be disguised, nor must it be
rendered absolute. It must continually be taken into account,
insofar as the illusion is not to be fostered, of a continuum
extending from the specific findings to the highest-level
statements about the system of society; while still, as far as
possible, the treatment of the specific phenomena must be
nourished by the conception of the interrelationship.
Thus a German "textbook" of sociology is not to be
expected here, nor a guideline, nor even an introduction, and
there is no wish to compete with the books published during
the last few years which do have such intentions. Nor is
anything like a theory of society, no matter how rudimentary,
being offered, nor a reliable survey of the most important
partial fields of contemporary sociological research; one should
no more look for a systematic treatment than for completeness
in the material, and that material which has been drawn on is
subject to the fortuitous character which marked the origin of
the lectures. What is being offered, are materials and obser-
vations related to particular concepts and areas; yet their
constellation may still communicate a certain conception of the
whole.
The authorship of this book belongs to the Institute for
Social Research as a whole. All its members have contributed
to the elaboration of the lectures. The essay on sociology and
empirical social research incorporates a number of formu-
lations contained in the article "Empirical Social Research"
[Empirische Sozialforschung] in the Handwoerterbuch der

vin
Sozialwissenschaft, which article is also the product of the
common authorship of the Institute; we wish to thank the
publishers of the "Handbuch" especially for their permission
to print this material. Parts of the lecture on the problem of
prejudice appeared in the frankfurter Hefte, vol. 7 (1952), no.
4. The essay on ideology is an expanded and greatly modified
version of a paper read at the Deutscher Soziologentag
[Meeting of German Sociologists] in Heidelberg in 1954,
which was published in numbers 3 and 4 of vol. 7 (1953-1954)
of the Koelner Zeitschrift fuer Soziologie.
Much of the material has been contributed by Heinz Maus
and Hermann Schweppenhaeuser. But above all Ernst Kux
compiled a rich and systematic collection of data and ref-
erences during months of intensive work. The final editing and
final form of the proof were the work of Johannes Hirzel.

Frankfurt am Main Max Horkheimer

Spring 1956 Theodor W. Adorno

IX
Aspects of Sociology
 I
The Concept of Sociology
The word "sociology"—science of society—is a malformation,
half Latin, half Greek. The arbitrariness and artificiality of the
term point to the recent character of the discipline. It cannot be
found as a separate discipline within the traditional edifice of
science. The term itself was originated by Auguste Comte, who
is generally regarded as the founder of sociology. His main
sociological work, Cours de philosophie positive, appeared in
1830-1842. 1 The word "positive" puts precisely that stress
which sociology, as a science in the specific sense, has borne
ever since. It is a child of positivism, which has made it its aim
to free knowledge from religious belief and metaphysical spec-
ulation. By keeping rigorously to the facts, it was hoped that
on the model of the natural sciences, mathematical on the one
hand, empirical on the other, objectivity could be attained.2
According to Comte, the doctrine of society had lagged far
behind this ideal. He sought to raise it to a scientific level. So-
ciology was to fulfill and to realize what philosophy had
striven for from its earliest origins.
Now it is in fact true that philosophy was originally
linked to the doctrine of society. Sociology is nothing new as
far as its subject matter is concerned. As basic a text of ancient
philosophy as Plato's Republic was intended to supply the doc-
trine of the right and just society, the society which appeared a
possible one to the mind of this Athenian concerned with the
restoration of Athens as a justly ordered polis, a city-state. The
design of the ideal state in Plato's work is combined with a cri-
 2 Aspects of Sociology
tique of the society of his time and of the various social
theories of his predecessors. To a large extent it is the reflection
of his own experience of this society. According to Plato's testi-
mony in his Seventh Epistle, actual observation of the crowd's
licentiousness and the unscrupulous struggle for power of those
who rule by force are incorporated in the Republic. The con-
demnation of Socrates led Plato to the conclusion that society,
which he does not as yet distinguish from the state, cannot be
reformed by changes in the constitution, which would only
replace the power of the strong by the power of the stronger,
but solely by a rational organization of the entire society.

At last I perceived that all states existing at present were

badly governed. For what relates to their laws is nearly in an in-
curable state, without some wonderful arrangement in conjunc-
tion to fortune. I was therefore compelled to say, in praise of
true philosophy, that through it we are enabled to perceive all
that is just as regards the state and individuals; and hence that
the human race will never cease from its ills, until the race of
those who philosophize correctly and truthfully shall come to
power or persons of power in states shall, by a certain divine
allotment, philosophize really.3

The construction of the state could only be founded on the

education of the citizens to virtue and not on the thirst for
power of individuals or of certain classes. But in order to edu-
cate human beings to virtue one had to know what the Good
was. The knowledge of the Good, which is the task of philoso-
phy, therefore becomes the basis for the just society.4 Thus
here Plato's doctrine of society is linked to the core of his meta-
physics, the doctrine of the Eternal Ideas, which alone are true,
and to the possibility of an adequate knowledge of them. It is
this which must determine true praxis. Plato's aim is the unity
of knowledge and action.5 The metaphysics turns into the con-
struction of society; the order of society mirrors the intelligible
world. Its articulation in terms of the helpers (artisans), war-
riors, and guardians corresponds to the essence of man, which
is divided into the capacities for desiring, for bravery and for
 The Concept of Sociology 3
wisdom or rationality, and the social hierarchy is equated with
the hierarchy of these eide. The ideal state in which philoso-
phers are to rule and to realize justice through their insights
has no more history than do the Eternal Ideas themselves. It is
posited as absolute, and existing states are to be measured by
this standard. The intention of this first rational design of soci-
ety aims at nothing less than "that humanity is to be delivered
from its misery."6
Plato's conception has influenced all subsequent social
philosophies, even the anti-Platonic ones. Like Plato, they
always took their departure from the given social conditions,
and the thought contained in them was intended to interact
with these conditions. The design of an ideal society is always
dependent on the existing society. Even where philosophy
alleges that it is constructing the relations of power and justice
according to abstract principles, the categories of existing soci-
ety enter into these, positively or negatively.7 But on the other
hand, neither does the development of society take place
without being influenced by socio-philosophical consider-
ations. The dialectical interconnections between thought and
social reality can be discerned in the fact that at the very
moment when the hierarchic and closed feudal society dis-
solves, the static categories of Being are also replaced, as
societal criteria, by evolutionary categories.8 It is no longer on-
tology which is made to serve as the basis for the construction
of the ideal society, but instead the philosophy of history.9 The
continual and progressive development of the physical
sciences, in which the ideal of exact and well-defined laws
becomes crystallized, runs parallel to the demand for the con-
struction of an equally exact model of society. The more a dy-
namic society tends toward the domination of nature, the less
it can tolerate the sense that its knowledge of itself—of society
—lags behind the knowledge of nature.10
Positive sociology, in Comte's sense, saw as its task the
recognition of natural laws, then still conceived as "un-
changing."11 Its goal is "precision" and not absolute truth or
the actualization of a just society. "At all times" it avoids "con-
scientiously every useless exploration of an inaccessible inner
 4 Aspects of Sociology
nature or the essential modalities in the generation of any phe-
nomena/' 12 And as its means it employs exclusively "pure ob-
servation, the experiment in the true sense, and finally, the
comparative method/' 13 It explicitly and quite dogmatically
presupposes "that the social movement necessarily is subject to
unchanging natural law, instead of being governed by this or
that power of volition."14 Society becomes purely an object of
observation, that is neither to be admired nor condemned.15 A
doctrine is to be established, which "has no other intellectual
ambition than to discover the true laws of nature/' 16 and which
"is sufficiently rationally thought out, that during the course of
its entire active development it can still remain completely true
to its own principles/'17 thus raising immanent freedom from
contradiction as its criterion. Theory and practice are sharply
separated, as "all intermixture or any links of theory and prac-
tice tend to endanger both equally, because it inhibits the full
scope of the former—theory—and lets the latter vacillate back
and forth without guidance. Indeed, one must admit, that
because of their greater complexity the social phenomena
require a greater intellectual distance, than is the case for any
other scientific object, between the speculative conceptions, no
matter how positive these might be, and their ultimate prac-
tical realization. The new social philosophy must thus carefully
protect itself from that tendency, only too general today, which
would induce it to intervene actively in actual political move-
ments; these must above all remain a permanent object of thor-
ough observation for it."18 By the postulate of Comtian sociol-
ogy "to always subordinate scientific views to the facts, for the
former are only intended to ascertain the real interconnections
of these,"19 science is committed to a fundamentally retrospec-
tive character.
Society must always have already developed before its
general rules can be formulated.20 Mere induction replaces the
consciousness of the dynamic totality of society. Positivistic so-
ciology insists that it can only become fruitful for human soci-
ety once the general theory of society has been constructed: the
notion of putting this off till the Greek calends is inherent in it
from its very beginnings. Only when the collection of the
 The Concept of Sociology 5
recorded data has been completed is a comprehensive and
binding theory to be formulated.21 But even where it speaks of
a totality, this is conceived in the sense of a "composition of
the world out of its elements."22 From the very beginning posi-
tivistic sociology dissects its subjects according to the sectors of
society to which they simultaneously belong, such as family,
profession, religion, party, habitat. It does not progress beyond
classificatory enumeration (taxonomy), the interdependence of
these areas is not comprehended. Of this deficiency, the loss of
the total concept of society, a virtue is made: the ability to
survey its partial domains.
With this the element of resignation is pronounced in the
beginnings of sociology as a special science. Comte belongs to
that phase of bourgeois development, in which the faith that
human society is becoming more perfect, and that its perfection
can be brought about by pedagogic intervention, has become
problematic. Even though Comte's sociology retains the idea of
progress and takes its departure from the philosophy of his-
tory, still in its innermost core it is ahistorical.23 The potential
for prediction is, to be sure, accorded to sociology "to a certain
degree,"24 but only when, by a coordination of all the observa-
tional data, it has succeeded in formulating the natural laws of
society.25 Every intervention in the induced development is,
however, denied it, unless it keeps within the framework of the
natural laws and limits itself to "variations compatible with the
existence of the phenomena."26 "There is no disturbing influ-
ence, whether of environmental or human origin . . . which
could have any claim to changing the true natural laws of the
development of mankind."27 If, however, such intervention
alien to the immanent laws of development continues, whether
by revolutions or by merely regulatory intervention in the
mechanism of the market, then society "necessarily" will be
destroyed.28 Thus "real science" must "in essence admit its
momentary impotence in the face of profound disorders or irre-
sistible tendencies." At best it can "contribute usefully to the
amelioration and especially to the shortening in time of crises
by means of a precise evaluation of their main character and a
rational prediction of their final outcome." For in sociology in
 6 Aspects of Sociology
Comte's sense "it is not a question of controlling the phenom-
ena but solely of modifying their spontaneous development, for
which obviously the prior knowledge of their real laws is requi-
site/™
This admission converges with the demand for the recog-
nition of that which exists:

The marss of our race, being evidently destined, according

to their unsurmountable fate, to always remain composed of
men living in a more or less precarious manner off the current
fruits of their daily labor, it is clear that in this respect the true
social problem consists in ameliorating the basic condition of
this immense majority, without removing their class status [la
declasser nullement] and disturbing the general economy,
which is indispensable. . . . By dissipating irrevocably all vain
pretensions and fully securing the ruling classes [classes
dirigentes] against all invasions of anarchy, the new philosophy
is the only one which can direct a popular politics, properly
termed, independently of this philosophy's dual spontaneous ef-
fects . .. either of diverting the purely political category from
all that belongs under the category of the intellectual or the
moral, or else of inspiring a wise and steadfast resignation with
respect to those evils which are ultimately incurable.30

As it is asserted that "the conception of an actual political

system radically different from the one that surrounds us must
exceed the fundamental limits of our feeble intelligence/' 31 so it
is envisioned, as in Hegel, that a rational order of society
cannot be constructed from mere reasoning derived from ab-
stract ideas, but solely by a praxis which seizes on the objec-
tively given tendencies and consciously seeks to develop
these.32 But in Comtian sociology this dialectical element is
-distorted in an apologetic manner. The critique of abstract
reform of the world discredits every attempt that would no
longer leave the institutions of society to the blind conflict of
forces, but would consciously and rationally take them in
hand. With the cult of the "positive," reason surrenders to irra-
tionality.
 The Concept of Sociology 7
Thus the fundamental difference between what since
Comte we have become accustomed to call "sociology" and the
philosophic doctrine of society of Plato—as well as that of
Aristotle or even Hegel—is no longer merely one of subject
matter, but a profound difference of conception and of method.
The great philosophy had as its ideal the development of a doc-
trine of society derived from the absolute principles of Being.
Sociology, however, ever since it bore that name, prided itself
on precisely the opposite: like the natural sciences it wanted to
emancipate itself from any sort of teleology and to be satisfied
solely with causal relations formulable as laws. In Comte the
requirement for "Positiveness" was still a moment in the con-
struction of a philosophy of study; and when confronted with
the first dawning of experiencing the self-destructive ten-
dencies of bourgeois society, the new method was to "free
[society] from its fatal tendency toward immanent dissolution
and actually to lead toward a new organization which will be
more progressive as well as more stable."33 But then, soon
enough, the scientific method became an end in itself. So
subsequently sociology lost more and more of that horizon of
possibilities to be realized, which still encircles it in Comte and
Spencer. From the very beginning of the new science the joy in
progress was muted: its thought on society took pride in not
transcending that which was. The impulse of philosophy, to
transform the Ought into the Is readily gave way to the sober
acceptance of the Is as the Ought. And so it has remained,
from the days of Comte down to the most famed teachers who
founded the schools of the new sociology, Max Weber, Emile
Durkheim, Vilfredo Pareto. Whenever the voice of this science
is raised in the greatest pathos, one can be sure that it is
proscribing something for itself, and precisely that essential for
the sake of which men reflect about society. Equivocation often
has very sound reasons: sociology has remained "positive" not
only because it desires to keep to the given and wants to extir-
pate the wish as the father of thought, but also because it takes
a positive stance toward that which exists. It has enjoined itself
to refrain from treating that which exists critically.
The theoretical element has not been altogether lost to so-
 8 Aspects of Sociology
ciology. But it has split off, be it in the form of more or less
uncommitted sketches of the totality, or be it—and that is the
inclination which predominates today—in the form of method-
ology, theory of science, or of formal discipline. Either the aim
is the industrious collection of materials or else to consider
syntheses which may one day become possible; but the gap be-
tween these two looms large, and the essential questions
remain unanswered. The American Robert Lynd, himself an
eminent and original empirical researcher, has written a scath-
ing critique of the prevailing state of affairs34 and has thus
given evidence of a growing awareness on the part of posi-
tivistic sociology of its own problems. He characterizes the two
types of the modem social scientist as either the scholar or the
technician. Both feel at home in the field of science, but aim in
different directions—"the scholar becoming remote from and
even disregarding the immediate relevancies, and the tech-
nician too often accepting the definition of his problem too
narrowly in terms of the emphases of the institutional environ-
ment of the moment/' 35 Lynd compares the activity of modern
sociology to Swift's great Academy at Lagado.36 He criticizes
academic practices in the social sciences which are pursued
solely for their own self-satisfaction—in order to hold more
lectures and write still more dissertations.37 Disregarding the
obligation to help people in the shaping of their most impor-
tant concerns, the accumulation of knowledge has degenerated
into an end in itself, a fetish. The decisive question—What
good is all this activity?—is never posed. Sociology forgets that
it is "an organized part of culture, which exists to help man in
continually understanding and rebuilding his culture/'38 In this
process sociology is robbed of its raison d'etre and becomes the
mere football of social interests and in the end is deprived of its
intellectual freedom, as for instance under the totalitarian
systems. Society overwhelms the scientist with allegedly con-
crete demands, refuses to grant him time and independence for
speculation, and restricts his view to surface phenomena. At
the same time this tendency has a political aspect, that of
regressive conformism:
 The Concept of Sociology 9
The social scientist finds himself caught, therefore, be-
tween the rival demands for straight, incisive, and if need
be, radically divergent thinking and the growingly insistent
demand that his thinking shall not be subversive. . . . He lives
in a world which, by and large, is not asking, "Is Smith trying
to get at the facts? Is he trying to be fair and constructive at the
same time that he is unwilling to pull his punch?" but which
asks, "Are you for us or against us?"39

This situation in sociology, which Lynd described in 1939

in terms of a few sturdy pragmatic concepts, has not changed
to this day. The term "Kealsozxologxe," so much in favor now
in the Germanic language domain, serves only to add to its
prestige. Such a sociology aims either at being a pure science of
societal forms—so-called "formal sociology"—or to limit itself
to well-defined fields of social reality, purely descriptively, to
ascertain the facts, without seeking any more extensive notions
about the total context. The appearance then arises, as if soci-
ety were the sum of "regions": social classes, social strata,
social planning, social groups, social organization, social dy-
namics, social control, and innumerable others. This sociology
could be called a "sociology without society," just as fifty years
ago one spoke of a "psychology without soul."
As a science within the scientific division of labor, sociol-
ogy would like to secure an amicable separation from the
various neighboring fields, economics, history, and psychology,
by seeking to stake out a domain of the "social" or
"societal." But at times, in the guise of Soziologismus, it also
attempts to reduce everything human to the social and thus to
impose its primacy on the others' disciplines. Such concern for
the independence of sociology and for the sharpest possible dif-
ferentiation of the sciences in their definition and methods
surely serves more readily for the ease of manipulation of the
conceptual system than for insights into its objects. The sectors
of abstractions aimed at here all contain an arbitrary element.
For social processes are always the products of history and in
the form of their immanent tensions contain historical ten-
 10 Aspects of Sociology
dencies. If one seeks to oppose a pure doctrine of the forms of
human relations to the dynamics of history, one only obtains
an empty mold of the social. From such entirely inessential
stipulations, as the modes of behavior of diverse groups in
diverse situations, one has to construct artificially what in
truth can only be extracted from concrete, historically deter-
mined social structures. For this, historical analysis and con-
struction are always required. Furthermore, the modes of social
behavior of human beings cannot be separated from psycholog-
ical mechanisms, as long as it is not merely objective condi-
tions and institutions which are being investigated. Whatever
social associations, of whatever kind, they may enter into,
human beings are individuals, and even where they throw off
their usual individual traits and behave after a fashion
allegedly characteristic of masses, they still act, insofar as their
action is psychologically determined, according to the psycho-
logical causations of their specific individuality. This involve-
ment has been demonstrated so strikingly by modern depth
psychology that, at the very least, the special justification of
sociology as the doctrine of subjective group behavior in con-
trast to individual psychology has been deprived of any real
basis. Finally, the activity of society—especially those ''forms
of sociation" vis a vis which the individual feels himself pow-
erless—depends in a crucial manner on the economic processes,
on production and exchange and the level of technology. This
aspect can be excluded from consideration only by a purely
scholastic definition of "pure" sociology. The idealistic poet
who traces all this activity back to hunger and love has a more
unbiased access to reality than the fanatic of scientific probity,
who insists on the independence of his scientific domain and
most forcefully protects himself against the simplest experi-
ence, which he must then later incorporate into his system by
the most elaborate and awkward devices.
There exists no more a pure sociology than a pure history,
psychology, or economics: even that substrate of psychology,
the individual, is a mere abstraction when removed from his
societal conditions. The scientific division of labor cannot be
ignored if intellectual chaos is not to arise; however, it is cer-
 The Concept of Sociology 11
tain that its division into disciplines cannot be equated with
the structure of the thing in itself. That all the disciplines
which concern themselves with man are linked and forced to
refer to each other need hardly be stressed specifically, now
that the concept of totality has come to be a cliche.
But above all, a sociology which is committed to the "pos-
itive" is in danger of losing all critical consciousness whatso-
ever. Then anything that diverges from the positive, that urges
upon sociology questioning the legitimation of the social in-
stead of merely ascertaining and classifying it, becomes open
to suspicion. Only recently a German sociologist demanded
that "Sociology should overcome the stage of negative reason-
ing about social problems with a critical perspective" and
instead turn to the study of "man within social associations";
with this he had in mind nothing other than the investigation
of subjective modes of behavior within the confines of the
more obligating social givens, these latter not being considered
a proper subject for sociological analysis. The commandment
to remain within the framework of the given reality thus
begins to change into its opposite: the essential givens—the
social relations themselves which to a large extent prescribe
the behavior of men—are, according to this conception,
withdrawn from the tasks of sociology. But only a critical spirit
can make science more than a mere duplication of reality by
means of thought, and to explain reality means, at all times, to
break the spell of this duplication. Such a critique, however,
does not imply subjectivism, but rather the confrontation of the
object with one's own concept. The given will only offer itself
up to the view which regards it from a perspective of true in-
terest—the perspective of a free society, a just state, and the
full development of the human being. Whoever does not
measure human things by what they themselves are supposed
to signify will not merely see superficially but falsely.

Notes

1. The term "sociology" can be found in Comte in his letter to Valat of

 12 Aspects of Sociology
December 25, 1824 (Lettres d'Auguste Comte a Monsieur Valat, Paris,
1870, p. 158). The term was made public in 1838 in the fourth volume of
Comte's chief work. Up to that point he had designated the science at
which he was aiming as "physique sociale." He justified the introduction
of the new term as follows: "I believe that at the present point I must
risk this new term, which is precisely the equivalent of the expression I
have already introduced, physique sociale, in order to be able to desig-
nate by a single word this complementary part of natural philosophy
which bears on the positive study of the totality of fundamental laws
proper to social phenomena." (Auguste Comte, Cours de philosophic po-
sitive. Vol. 4, La partie dogmatique de la philosophie sociale, Paris, 1908
—identical to the first edition, p. 132, fn. 1.)
TRANSLATOR'S NOTE: The references in the German are to the German
translation of Valentine Dorn, Jena, 1923. As there is presently no full
English translation of Comte's main work—a curious fact when one con-
siders how much of American sociology has been pursued in his spirit—
the references given here are to the French original, which has also been
consulted for the translation of the quoted passages.
2. Op. cit., p. 95.
3. Plato's Seventh Epistle, 326B, George Burges, trans. London, 1903.
4. Plato's Republic, 532A ff. The Dialogues of Plato. Oxford, 1924. Vol. Ill,
p. 49 f.
5. Plato's Republic, 473D, and Statesman, 293C and D, op. cit. Vol. Ill, p.
170, and Vol. IV, p. 496.
6. Plato's Seventh Epistle, op. cit.
7. See, for example, Robert von Pohlmann, Geschichte der sozialen Frage
und des Sozialismus in der antiken Welt [History of the social question
and of socialism in the ancient world], 2 volumes, 3rd ed. Munich, 1925;
Max Pohlenz, Staatsgedanken und Staatslehre der Criechen [Political
thought and doctrine of the Greeks]. Leipzig, 1923; Werner Jaeger, "Die
griechische Staatsethik im Zeitalter Platons" [Greek Political Ethics in
the Age of Plato], in Die Antike.1934, p. 1 ff. Eduard Zeller furnishes
numerous examples from ancient philosophy as evidence for his thesis,
inspired by Hegel, "that philosophy always merely mirrors the existing
historical conditions"; these also show whether and to what extent the
individual philosophers themselves were aware of the links to their
time (see Eduard Zeller: Die Philosophie der Criechen in ihrer
geschichtlichen Entwicklung [The philosophy of the Greeks in its histor-
ical development]. Vol. Ill, 1: Nacharistotelische Philosophie. Fourth ed.
Leipzig, 1909, p. 307 ff.). Since Comte's assertions, that all Utopias
"faithfully reflect in their reveries the existing social state" (Comte, op.
cit., p. 20), this relationship has been universally recognized. But it must
not only be conceived theoretically. The designs of the ideal states have
to be related to the attempts to realize them. See Max Horkheimer, An-
faenge der buergerlichen Geschichtsphilosophie [Beginnings of the bour-
 The Concept of Socioloay 13
geois philosophy of history]. Stuttgart, 1930, p. 77 ff.
8. See Thomas Hobbes, Elements of Philosophy. English works, Vol. I, Of
Body (De Corpore).
9. In the two sociologists who laid the foundations of social science as a dis-
cipline, Comte and Spencer, sociology is basically only an exemplification
of their philosophy of history. Comte still explicitly places the new dis-
cipline under history's domain: "Here, far from restricting the necessary
influence which human reason attributes to history at all times on the po-
litical combinations, the new social philosophy augments this influence
radically and to a high degree. Thus it is no longer merely counsel or
lessons which politics requests of history in order to perfect or rectify
those inspirations which have not emanated from history; it is the own
general direction of politics which it will from now on seek exclusively in
the totality of historical determinations." (Comte, op. cit, p. 247.) See
also Spencer's Principles of Sociology. New York, 1884.
10. Since Comte the need for sociology has generally been argued on the
basis that the knowledge of society has lagged far behind the knowledge
of nature, and that it must catch up to the latter (see Comte, op. cit., p.
153 ff.).
11. Op. cit., pp. 163, 206.
12. Op. cit, p. 214.
13. Op. cit., p. 216.
14. Op. cit., p. 194.
15. Op. cit, pp. 156, 214; on the political consequences of this indifference
see Horkheimer, "Der neueste Angriff auf die Metaphysik" [The newest
attack on metaphysics], in Zeitschrift fuer Sozialforschung, VI, 1937, p.
33, fn. 1: "Indifference toward the idea in theory is always the herald of
cynicism in praxis."
16. Comte, op. cit., p. 117.
17. Op. cit, p. 11.
18. Op. cit, p. 116, fn. 1.
19. Op. cit., p. 155.
20. Op. cit, p. 118. Modern logical positivism has not changed in this re-
spect. Otto Neurath, one of its chief exponents in sociology, openly
admits that "just the most significant changes are not to be grasped in
this way at the outset. The comparison of total complexes does not grant
us any possibility of predicting revolutions, if these are not the usual oc-
currences. One must await the appearance of the new phenomena, and
only then can one discover the new laws which govern them." (Otto
Neurath, Empirische Soziologie. Vienna, 1931, p. 106.)
21. Comte, op. cit., pp. 131,172; Neurath, op. cit., p. 16 f.
22. Horkheimer, "Materialismus und Metaphysik," in Zeitschrift fuer
Sozialforschung, II, 1933, p. 25.
23. Op. cit, p. 24.
24. Comte, op. cit., p. 241.
 14 Aspects of Sociology
25. Horkheimer, "Zum Problem der Voraussage in den Sozialwis-
senschafter" [On the problem of prediction in the social sciences], in
Zeitschrift fuer Sozialforschung, II, 1933, p. 407 ff., in which
Horkheimer opposes the conception that the social sciences can deter-
mine the future only by means of abstract lawlike formulas, set up condi-
tionally: every science, the social sciences just as much as the physical
sciences, aims at concrete predictions. Laws are not the goal of science
but merely instrumentalities. To what extent the future can be ade-
quately predicted for the domain of social development, does not, to be
sure, depend merely on the perspicacity of sociologists and on the
refinement of their methods, but above all, on the social conditions them-
selves: "The more social life loses the character of the blind processes of
nature and the society sets about constituting itself as a rational subject,
the more social processes too can be predicted with precision" (op. cit., p.
411).
26. Comte, op. cit., p. 264.
27. Op. cit., p. 207 ff.
28. Op. cit., p. 265.
29. Op. cit., p. 214.
30. Op. cit., p. 106 ff.
31. Op. cit., p. 20.
32. Op. cit., p. 29, fn. 1.
33. Op. cit., p. 5 ff. At times the founders of sociology resisted a
"neutralistic" conception of science. Thus John Stuart Mill writes in his
work on Comte: "The 'dispersive specialty7 of the present race of
scientific men, who unlike their predecessors, have a positive aversion to
enlarged views, and seldom either know or care for any of the interests of
mankind beyond the narrow limits of their pursuit, is dwelt on by
M. Comte as one of the great and growing evils of the time, and
the one which most retards moral and intellectual regeneration. To
contend against it is one of the main purposes towards which he
thinks the forces of society should be directed." (John Stuart Mill,
Auguste Comte and Positivism. Fifth ed., London, 1907, p. 95. See also
Horkheimer, "Materialismus und Moral," in Zeitschrift fuer Sozial-
forschung, II, 1933, p. 193 ff.
34. Robert S. Lynd, Knowledge for What?—The Place of Social Science in
American Culture. Princeton, 1939. By his investigations of an American
Middletown Lynd opened up a new field of research for sociology; see
below, p. 148 f.
35. Lynd, op. cit., p. 1.
36. In Gulliver's Travels, bk. 3, chs. 4-6, Swift describes the "academy of
projectors," which is divided into a practical and a speculative faculty.
The practitioners seek to develop new techniques—how to extract the
sun's rays from cucumbers, training pigs as draft animals, breeding of
naked sheep or softening marble for the fabrication of pillows; the
 The Concept of Sociology 15
theoreticians, on the other hand, by the concatenation of the most varied
concepts and with the aid of complicated apparati, are constructing a
complete corpus of the sciences and arts. See Lynd, op. cit., p. 128.
37. Op. cit., p. 128.
38. Op. cit., p. ix.
39. Op. cit., pp. 7,10.
 II
Society
What "society"—the proper domain of investigation for
sociology—means, seems, on the face of it, obvious enough:
mankind, as well as the groups of the most varied magnitude
and the most varied significance of which it is composed. But
one will readily see that the concept of society does not coin-
cide without qualification with this substrate. One may
approach more closely to what is properly conceived of as
social if one focuses on that which relates to the association
and the separation of the biological individual's "man"; to that
whereby they reproduce their life, dominate external and in-
ternal nature, and from which the forms of domination and the
conflicts in their own life also result. But even posing the ques-
tions in this manner, so that, incidentally, these questions
belong also to what in Anglo-Saxon countries is called "cul-
tural anthropology," does not quite suffice to embrace all the
connotations that accompany the word society—one of those
historical concepts, which according to Nietzsche have the pe-
culiarity that they cannot be defined: "all those concepts in
which a total process is comprehended semiotically, resist
definition; only that is definable which has no history."1 Under
society in the most pregnant sense is understood a sort of
linking structure between human beings in which everything
and everyone depend on everyone and everything; the whole is
only sustained by the unity of the functions fulfilled by all its
members, and each single one of these members is in principle
16
 Society 17
assigned such a function, while at the same time each individ-
ual is determined to a great degree by his membership in this
total structure. The concept of society becomes a functional
concept as soon as it designates the relationship between its el-
ements and the lawfulness of such relationships rather than
merely the elements themselves or when it is merely descrip-
tive. Sociology would thus be primarily the science of social
functions, their unity, their lawfulness. It deserves to be
emphasized that this concept of society only achieves its full
realization today, at the stage of the total socialization of
mankind, but the idea of a self-contained and comprehensive
functional connectedness, as the form of reproduction of a
whole with an internal division of labor, was alluded to as
early as the Greek philosophy of physis and becomes the basis
of the state in Plato.
The concept of society itself, however, was formulated
only in the course of the rise of the modern bourgeoisie as "so-
ciety" proper in contrast to the court. It is a "concept of the
Third Estate."2 The reason for this late arrival is by no means
that men were not conscious of the fact of sociation in the nar-
rower sense. On the contrary, the forms of this sociation were
recognized much earlier in the Occidental tradition than was
the individual; the latter, to be sure, was already confronted to
society by the Sophists, but the entire pathos of the individual
unfolded only in the Hellenistic tradition and in Christianity,
after the Greek city-states had lost their independence. These
forms of sociation—in the first instance, an organized and con-
trolled form of the state—which coincided with the beginnings
of theoretical social consciousness, had the character of some-
thing that existed for itself, something substantial and un-
problematic, something predominating in relation to their con-
tents, the life process of mankind; and they had this character
to such an extent that speculation about society practically
coincided with speculation about its objectified institutions.
The veil that hides the social is as old as political philosophy.
Thus Plato based the all embracing nature of the state on
the functional interconnections between human beings, who
must aid each other to meet the basic needs of life:
 18 Aspects of Sociology
A state, I said, arises, as I conceive, out of the needs of
mankind; no one is self-sufficient, but all of us have many
wants. .. . Then, as we have many wants and many persons are
needed to supply them, one takes a helper for one purpose and
another for another; and when these partners and helpers are
gathered together in one habitation the body of inhabitants is
termed a state.3

The simplest political community consists of four to five

human beings who furnish each other mutual aid for the satis-
faction of their needs, to provide food, lodging, and clothing:

We may suppose that one man is a husbandsman, another a

builder, someone else a weaver—shall we add to them a shoe-
maker, or perhaps some other purveyor of our bodily wants?
.. . The barest notion of the state must include four or five
men... . Will each bring the results of his labors into a
common stock?—The individual husbandsman, for example,
producing for four and laboring four times as long and as much
as he need in the provision of food with which he supplies
others as well as himself; or will he have nothing to do with
others and not be at the trouble of producing for them, but
provide for himself alone a fourth of the food in a fourth of the
time, and in the remaining three-fourths of his time be
employed in making a house or a coat or a pair of shoes, having
no partnership with others, but supplying himself all his own
wants?4

This derivation of the conception of sociation from the

division of labor as a means of satisfying material needs Plato
now links* to the doctrine of Ideas. The presupposition for the
functional interdependence is "that one man can only do one
thing well, and not many; and that if he attempt many, he will
altogether fail of gaining any reputation in anything."5 The
reason for the division of labor lies in the criterion laid down in
the doctrine of Ideas, that the individual must correspond to an
immanent idea, if his activity is not to be wrong and false: here
then the hypostasized limitation of individual capacities. The
 Society 19
requirements which grow with the growth of culture lead to an
extension of the state's sphere and then to the warlike
collisions of neighboring states. The formation of a warrior
caste becomes necessary. Finally the growing size of the state
requires a special social caste or class, who maintain order and
determine the goals: the Guardians. In this basic Platonic
schema the theory is already implicitly contained, that a quan-
titative increase in the population entails a qualitative change
in the structure of society.6
At the same time this thesis furnishes a critique of the
older social theories. First, the mythological conception of the
divine foundations of the polis by the gods and the derivation
of state law from divine law, as taught by Heraclitus,7 is to be
supplanted. Furthermore, Plato opposes the conception that
men who originally lived dispersed united for the sake of pro-
tection against nature.8 But above all, Plato attacks the doc-
trine of Natural Law of the Attic Enlightenment. He denies
that there ever was a society without state, and identifies the
concept of such a society with that of a "state of swine."9 For
Plato wishes to resolve and abolish that polemically developed
opposition between what is due to nature and what is merely
posited, by linking the organizational forms to a prioristic
Being, to the Idea. For him law and morality are the attributes
of human nature.10 He takes a stand against the revolutionary
tendency of the time, that of the Attic Enlightenment, to sepa-
rate state and society. As early as that, the concept of society
becomes a weapon in the social conflict. The Natural Law doc-
trine of the Socratic Left takes sides with the oppressed against
those who hold power. The Sophist Antiphon, for instance,
bases society on Natural Law, but the state on human enact-
ments, which arise out of a contract. The two are related to
each other as truth is to appearance (Schein). Everywhere the
human statutes subvert the natural, encroach on freedom, im-
pair the equality of men, and still do not protect them from in^
justice.11 The Sophist's "transvaluation of all values" aims at
the abolition of all stipulations of nomos, noble birth, social
status, traditional cultivation, wealth, and conventional reli-
gious faith in favor of the "natural life." The citizen of the
 20 Aspects of Sociology
polis, bound to the nomos, is confronted with the world citizen
who bears the attributes of freedom and equality.
The formation of the community, sociation, is what is
"primary," "natural," and given, and this is then curtailed
only afterward by division of labor and established institu-
tions, which favor irrational rule. This critical doctrine, which
presupposes the distinction between physis and nomos, culmi-
nates in the cosmopolitanism of the Sophists and the post-
Socratic school, in the explicit opposition to existing political
conditions. In the middle Stoa, especially in Panaitios of
Rhodes in the second century B.C., it is linked to the idea of a
universal state. The humanitas is to embody the identity of
mankind with the unified order of such a state.12 But with that
the Stoic rejection of the state is transformed into its opposite,
into rendering the state absolute. Initially, this reflects the
unification of the Greek petty states within the Macedonian
world empire; later it supports the program of the Roman im~
perium. And it determines the universalistic conception of soci-
ety far into the Middle Ages. 13 Even the Augustinian theocracy
is not able to conceive the Kingdom of God in any other way
than as a state. A reactive formation, which has the greatest
consequences, takes place: in the minds of men what is secon-
dary, the institutions under which they live, becomes the
primary, while that which is primary, the actual process of
their lives, is once more displaced to a great extent in their con-
sciousness by these institutions. That the material labor, to
which mankind owes its subsistence, was forced onto the backs
of slaves during the entire ancient period, may have played a
part in this. Even in Aristotle the slaves are still excluded from
the definition of man—and obviously therefore also excluded
from the state; and the Grfceklanguage designates them with a
neuter noun, anthrapodon, rhan-footed beasts. In any case the
universal humanism of Panaitios' and Poseidonios' doctrines
could serve as ideology for the Roman universal state, for its
integral imperialism, without difficulty, and this might help
explain why the tragically inclined Stoic doctrine was accepted
so readily by the positively inclined Romans. Such paradoxes
show to what extent society and domination are intertwined.
 Society 21
Still today the word "society" itself testifies ,to this, which
besides its comprehensive meaning also sets aside a particular
one: "high society," or merely "society," the definitive concept
of all those who belong to it and recognize each other in their
posture of social superiority—insofar as this has not already
been codified mechanically in a "social register," in which case
of course this concept of "society" tends to dissolve itself.
Not until the age of the fully developed bourgeoisie, when
the opposition between the institutions of Feudal absolutism
and that stratum which already controlled the material life
process of society became strikingly evident, did the concept of
society again become more fluid. Again its opposition to ex-
isting institutions became actual. The state was no longer
affirmed as the copy of the Civitas Dei, but was questioned as
to its origins and its relation to man. But the identity of state
and society had not at this point yet been radically dissolved;
the state is still compared to "body," either organic or
mechanical.14 However, by the time of the Renaissance more
incisive considerations appear. Thus Hieronymus Cardanus
distinguishes between small communities which can do
without laws, and larger ones which are impossible without
laws. The rise of the individual in the young bourgeois society
strengthens tendencies critical of the state. Natural Law
becomes representative of the claims of the individual vis a vis
the power and the absolute sovereignty of the state.15 The state
is not a rigid given of reality, not an entity existing in itself,
but is composed of separate parts, of the individuals, and the
whole is the product of the sum of these parts. But with that a
problem arises, why and how these separate parts come
together to form a social whole:

For as in a watch, or some such small engine, the matter,

figure, and motion of the wheels cannot well be known, except
it be taken insunder and viewed in parts; so to make a more
curious search into the rights of states and the duties of sub-
jects, it is necessary, I say, not to take them insunder, but yet
that they may be so considered as if they were dissolved; that is,
that we rightly understand what the quality of human nature is,
 22 Aspects of Sociology
in what matters it is, in what not, fit to make up civil govern-
ment, and how men must be agreed among themselves that in-
tend to grow up into well-grounded states.16

The explanation of "how men agreed among themselves"

in joining together aims at proving that they did not arrive at
this by divine revelation, but by their own reason. At issue is
the rational derivation of state and society. As early as Hobbes,
the "natural justice" which legitimizes the state and society is
only "a commandment of natural reason," as it is for the later
Enlightenment.17 Similarly Voltaire, for example, calls reason
"the sole cause for the continuing existence of human soci-
ety." 18 Hobbes explicitly denies the doctrine that man is origi-
nally a social being, a zoon politikon: "Man is made fit for so-
ciety not by nature, but by education."19 Initially men live
without institutions, in a state of equality, in which everyone
has the right to everything. The striving for advantage and
domination over the others leads to "that natural state of men,
before they entered into society, was a mere war, and not that
simply, but a war of all men against all men."20 The conflict
between "this natural proclivity of men to hurt each other,"21
with the demand of natural reason "that every man as much as
in him lies endeavor to protect his life and members,"22 ends in
the victory of reason, in a contract which guarantees the indi-
vidual his property in certain goods. With that a new argument
enters upon the scene, one upon which bourgeois society has
seized from that time on: that society is based on private prop-
erty, and that the state has to care for the preservation of this
property. For this purpose, as well as for the protection of the
original social contract, a second contract is now concluded,
the contract of Sovereignty, in which men submit to the insti-
tutions of the state. The fear of all for all is abolished
[sublated] by "the fear of a power sovereign over all." The liv-
ing communally together of human beings—thus society—is
possible only by virtue of a new fore, a new power. The power
of the stronger in the state of nature becomes the legal power
of the sovereign.
The later doctrine of society has hardly polemicized less
 Society 23
vehemently against the theocratic derivation of the state from
Divine Will than it has against the all too great candor of
Hobbes. Increasingly the derivation of every kind of social and
civilized cohabitation from the subjection of the individual
drew criticism. But instead of the abstract construction of a
possible society without institutions, thought was now directed
toward the quest for a society with just institutions, in which
law was based on freedom and not on force.
But, indeed, the concept of society can hardly be separated
from the polarity of the institutional and the natural. Only in-
sofar as the cohabitation of human beings has been mediated,
objectivized, "institutionalized/' has sociation actually been
accomplished. However, conversely, the institutions themselves
are merely the-epiphenomena of the living labor of human
beings. Sociology becomes a critique of society as soon as it
does not merely describe and weigh institutions and processes
of society, but confronts them with what underlies these, with
the life of those upon whom these institutions have been im-
posed, and those of whom the institutions themselves are to
such a great extent composed. However, as soon as thought
concerning the social loses sight of the tension between that
which is institutional and that which is living, as soon as, for
instance, it seeks to reduce society to the purely natural, it no
longer aids in the liberation from the compulsion of the institu-
tions, but only furthers a new mythology, the glorification of
illusory-primal qualities, to which is attributed what in fact
only arises by virtue of Sjocirty'G institutions. The extreme
model of rendering society "natural" in such a false and ideo-
logical fashion is the racist insanity of National Socialism. The
praxis which was linked to these racist theories has shown that
the Romantic critique of institutions, once it has broken out of
the dialectics of society, is transformed into the dissolution of
all protective and humane guarantees, into chaos and, ulti-
mately, into rendering the institutions naked absolutes, pure
dominating force.23
When the concept of society focuses on the relations of
human beings, within the framework of maintaining the life of
the totality, as activity rather than as existence, then it
 24 Aspects of Sociology
becomes an essentially dynamic concept. The fact alone that a
greater social product tends to remain at the end of each cycle
of social labor than existed at its beginning—this fact itself en-
tails a dynamic moment. It is this dynamic which Herbert
Spencer has in mind in his doctrine of the evolution of society,

. . . including all those processes and products which

imply the coordinated actions of many individuals—coordinated
actions which achieve results exceeding in extent and complexity
those achievable by individual actions.24

This increment and all that it brings with it in possibil-

ities, needs, and also conflicts points necessarily to changes of
the status quo, whether these be desired by the people them-
selves and those who rule them or not. This accumulation of
social wealth also partly bears the blame that the institutions
and forms of sociation, all that is organized, confront men as
something independent of them, no longer fully identical with
them, and consolidating itself against them. The principle of
sociation is at the same time the principle of the social conflict
between living labor and the "static" moments such as those of
the objectified institutions of property. It is not in vain that the
opposition between nomos and physis within the concept of
society is conceived at the dawning of industrial society in
terms of the opposition of labor and property. As early as
-Saint-Simon, these categories played an essential role. Hegel
worked out these new relations in the most pregnant manner,
under the influence of Classical Economics. For him the satis-
faction of the individual's needs is only possible by means of
"the universal dependence of all upon each other,... the satis-
faction of the totality of his needs is the work of a l l . . . . The ac-
tivity of labor and needs as the mover of this activity, also has
its static aspect in property." From the dialectical relationship
of labor and property results not only the "universal" society,
but also the existence of the individual as a human being, as a
person.25 However, in contrast to the economists, Hegel's con-
cept of labor refers not only to the socially produced change in
the environment and the distribution of the specific labor func-
 Society 25
tions among the members of society, but also refers to the his-
tory of man himselfi to his "Bildung," his cultural formation
and development.
To be sure, academic sociology acknowledges these in-
terrelationships, but in so doing proceeds according to the rules
of the game of a taxonomic, classificatory science that is itself
already institutionally anchored. Thus Comte initially divided
the laws of society into static and dynamic laws. He demanded
that "in sociology . . . with respect to every political subject
matter, the distinction be made throughout between the fun-
damental study of the conditions for existence of society and
the study of the laws of its constant motion." This distinction
leads to "dividing social physics into two main sciences, which
could be called, for example, social statics and social dynam-
ics." Comte sees two principles eternally at work in the world,
order and progress. He carries this schema over to society, and
to it a "scientific dualism" is to correspond:

For it is evident that the static study of the social organism

must coincide, fundamentally, with the positive theory of order,
which in effect can only consist essentially of a correct perma-
nent harmony between the diverse conditions of existence of
human societies; and in the same way one can see still more
clearly that the dynamic study of mankind's collective life nec-
essarily constitutes the positive theory of social progress, which,
thrusting aside all vain thoughts of an absolute and unlimited
perfectibility, must naturally reduce itself to the simple notion
of this fundamental development.26

The temptation is all too great to declare the institutional

moment as eternal for the sake of its "statics," and to dismiss
the dynamic moment of the social life process as changeable
and fortuitous. Comte does not try to hide that the relationship
between order and progress, its "intimate and indissoluble con-
nection, thus marks the basic difficulty and the chief in-
strument of every true political system."27 But his political ten-
dency as well as his quasi-physical science method gets in his
way here. Because the overall development of bourgeois society
 26 Aspects of Sociology
drives this society toward its anarchic dissolution, Comte is
inclined to accord to order a higher place than to progress. But
even in the dialectician Marx the separation between statics
and dynamics still resonates, and to this day sociology has not
been able to free itself from it. Marx confronts the invariant
natural laws of society with the specific laws of a specific stage
of development, "the higher or lower degree of development of
the social antagonisms" with the "natural laws of capitalistic
production."28 Here he had in mind that all which for him was
"prehistory," in the entire realm of unfreedom, certain peren-
nial categories are at work, which only change the manner of
their appearance in the modern rational form of class society;
free wage labor is also wage slavery; thus a kind of negative
ontology, and if you like, a deep intimation that the existential
factors of history are domination and unfreedom, and that in
spite of all progress in rationality and technology nothing has
changed decisively.
Still the division into the invariant and the variable, into
static and dynamic sociology, cannot be strictly maintained. It
is incompatible with the concept of society itself as the in-
dissoluble unity of the two moments. The historical laws of one
phase are not merely the manner in which universal laws ap-
pear, but the latter as well as the former are conceptual at-
tempts to master the societal tensions theoretically. In so doing
science operates on various levels of abstraction, but it must
not conceive reality itself as being constructed of such levels.
One of the most important desiderata of contemporary sociol-
ogy must be to rid itself of the cheap antithesis of social statics
and social dynamics, especially as it manifests itself today in a
scientism that confronts the formal sociological theory of con-
cepts on the one hand with an empiricism devoid of concepts
on the other. The science of society cannot obey the dualism of
a "here and now," rich in content, but amorphous, and a con-
stant but empty "for all time," if it is not to grope blindly for
its subject matter through the obstruction of its conceptual ap-
paratus. Instead, insight into the dynamic structure of society
requires the untiring effort to attain the unity of the general
and the particular. This unity will be lacking wherever sociol-
 Society 27
ogy occupies itself solely with the universal specifications of
society, defining society, for example, "as the most universal
concept which aims at the total complex of the relations of man
to his fellow man/' and from the very beginning excludes the
concrete:

. .. society is but an element in the concrete whole of

human social life, which is also affected by the factors of hered-
ity and environment as well as by the elements of culture—
scientific knowledge and techniques, religious, metaphysical and
ethical systems of ideas, and forms of artistic expression. Soci-
ety cannot exist apart from these things; they play a part in all
its concrete manifestations, but they are not society, which
comprises only the complex of social relationships as such.29

In formal German sociology especially such views pre-

dominate: "The objective skeleton of society can be reduced
without residue to measurable, quantitative concepts and
described by means of these."30

The "objective character" of social formations is not based

. . . on their "objectivations," i.e. on their collective creations:
cultural values, symbols, arrangements, norms, and similar phe-
nomena. . . . These "second order" social formations are only
among the symptoms which enable the observer to experience
the objective reality of "the society" and they represent to its
members the formation as such. But these objectivations are not
themselves the substance of society, but rather are contents of
social life. The subject matter of sociology is not the work of
art, not the doctrine of religious faith, but the totality of the
processes of sociation which take place in relation to these
productions, in their creation, transmission, acceptance, trans-
formation, etc.—the socialized artistic, religious, and other
forms of life.31

Confronted with this, one must insist that the concept of

society represents the unity of the general and the particular in
the total complex of relationships of human beings, as these
 28 Aspects of Sociology
relationships reproduce themselves. One could ask how a soci-
ology which has this as its aim would actually be distinguished
from economics; all the more so, as one of its main themes, the
institutions can to a large extent be derived economically. In
principle no objection can be made to this except to say that
the science of economics too, in its present form, deals with a
replica—already substantialized, thus usually with the mecha-
nism, to be accepted as it is—of the developed market society.
In historical reality, however, the contracting parties in the
market process of exchange by no means enter into such ratio-
nal relations with each other as are prescribed by the laws of
exchange, but obey the relationships of real power which are
decisive in these relations of exchange, the difference in the
power they have at their disposal socially; and this is not only
true of the late development of differentiated capitalism, but in
all epochs where one can talk of society at all, in the sense
outlined here. The process which supports life, which sociology
has as its essential subject matter, is indeed the economic
process, but the economic laws already stylize this process in
accordance with a conceptual system of strictly rational ac-
tions, which asserts itself all the more insistently as an explan-
atory schema, the less it is actualized in the real world. Sociol-
ogy is economics only as political economy, and that requires a
theory of society which derives the established forms of eco-
nomic activity, the economic institutions themselves, from the
societal dispositions.
The dynamics of society as a functional nexus of relations
between human beings is expressed in the fact that as far as
history can be surveyed the sociation of human beings tends to
increase; roughly speaking, there is thus continually ever more
"society" in the world. Spencer noticed this. He holds a variety
of conditions responsible for it: the increasing size of the social
aggregate; the interaction between society and its units; those
between a society and its neighboring societies; and the ac-
cumulation of "superorganic products," such as material
implements, language, knowledge, and works of art:

Recognizing the primary truth that social phenomena

 Society 29
depend in part on the natures of the individuals and in part on
the forces the individuals are subject to, we see that these two
fundamentally distinct sets of factors, with which social changes
commence, become progressively involved with other sets as
social changes advance. The pre-established environing influ-
ences, inorganic and organic, which are at first almost unalter-
able, become more and more altered by the actions of evolving
society. Simple growth of population as it goes on, brings into
play fresh causes of transformation that are increasingly impor-
tant. The influences which the society exerts on the natures of
its units, and those which the units exert on the nature of soci-
ety, incessantly cooperate in creating new elements. As societies
progress in size and structure, they work in one another, now
by their war-struggles and now by their industrial intercourse,
profound metamorphoses. And the ever-accumulating, ever-
complicating superorganic products, material and mental, con-
stitute a further set of factors, which become more and more in-
fluential causes of change. So that, involved as the factors are at
the beginning, each step in advance increases the involution, by
adding factors which themselves grow more complex while they
grow more powerful.32

Spencer formulates his insight into the growth of socia-

tion in his theory, which has become famous, of the increasing
integration and differentiation of society. These two aspects-
complement each other: 'The increase of a society in numbers
and consolidation has for its concomitant an increased hetero-
geneity both of its political and its industrial organization."33
He considers integration and differentiation to be the fun-
damental laws of sociation. His concept of integration is char-
acterized essentially by his emphasis on the quantitative aspect
of the process of sociation: "Integration is displayed both in
the formation of a larger mass, and in the progress of such
mass toward the coherence due to closeness of parts."34
The qualitative moment, designated as the "increase of
inner structure/' appears under the category of differentiation:
"for carrying on the combined life of a great mass, complex ar-
rangements are required."35 This thesis of an increasing in-
 30 Aspects of Sociology
tegration has been confirmed; the term itself has entered into
the jargon of fascism where one speaks of the "integral state"
—his theory thus undergoing a change of social function of
which the ultraliberal Spencer would not have dreamed.
The concept of differentiation, however, is more pro-
foundly problematic. While it correctly assesses the progressive
division of labor which accompanies increasing socialization, it
does not seem to take into account the counter-tendency, corre-
sponding to the division of labor, toward the eradication of dif-
ferences. The smaller the units into which the social process of
production is divided with the increasing division of labor, the
more similar to each other these partial processes of labor
become and the more they are divested of their specific qualita-
tive moment. The average work of the industrial worker, for in-
stance, is less differentiated in every respect than is the work of
the artisan. Spencer did not foresee that the progress of "in-
tegration" would make numerous complicated and differen-
tiated social categories of mediation, which are related to com-
petition and the mechanism of the market, superfluous; so that
a really integral society is "simpler" in many respects than it
was at the high point of liberalism, and the alleged complexity
of social relationships in the present phase function more as a
veil to hide that simplicity. To this may correspond also a sub-
jective and anthropological tendency toward the decrease of
differentiation, toward regression and primitivism. Spencer's
grandiose conception permits us to observe how little even a
theory as positivistic in its outlook as his is preserved from
hypostasizing the ephemeral, the differentiation during one
specific phase of society at the highpoint of the liberal bour-
geoisie, and to interpret this as an eternal law—as in general,
bourgeois society under the spell of its formally realized princi-
ples of freedom and equality frequently transforms its histori-
cal laws into absolutes. On the other hand the threatening loss
of differentiation in contemporary society is not something en-
tirely positive, the saving, as it were, of faux frais, but also
something negative, inseparable from the growth of barbarism
in the midst of culture, a part of that "leveling" of which the
critics of the society are so often accused.
 Society 31
However, in the present phase too the increase of socia-
tion displays a quantitative as well as a qualitative aspect. On
the one hand human beings, groups, and whole peoples are
drawn into the social complex of functional relationships in
growing numbers, are increasingly "socialized." During the
nineteenth century this tendency toward sociation increased to
such an extent that even countries which had remained far
behind advanced capitalism were part of this process precisely
because their not yet being wholly incorporated formed a
source for the accumulation of capital of the leading countries
and thereby provoked political and social conflicts. Today,
especially because of the advances in the technology of trans-
portation and the technologically feasible decentralization of
industry, sociation approaches the maximum; that which still
appears to be "outside" owes its extraterritoriality more to tol-
eration or to intentional planning, rather than that something
"exotic" actually still exists undisturbed. At the same time the
trivial truth must be called to mind that the accelerated
progress of sociation has not automatically led to the pacifica-
tion of the world and the overcoming of its antagonisms. In-
sofar as the principle of sociation is itself ambivalent, its ad-
vances till now, have, in all cases, merely reproduced the con-
tradictions on a higher level. If the famous formula of Wendell
Willkie—"One World"—is an apt one, then this "one world"
is specifically characterized by its split into two monstrous
warring "blocks." It is hardly an exaggeration to say that the
development toward the total society is irrevocably accom-
panied by the danger of the total destruction of mankind.
On the other hand, there is also ever more society insofar
as the network of social relations between human beings is
drawn ever closer. Ever less of what cannot be encompassed in
these, of what is independent of social control, is tolerated in
each individual; and it has become questionable to what degree
it is at all possible to still form such independent traits. Sociol-
ogy is to be distinguished from anthropology by means of the
emphatic concept of society insofar as the subject matter of an-
thropology, man himself, depends to a great degree on the
sociation under which the study is carried out; in other words,
 32 Aspects of Sociology
what traditional philosophy thought was the essence of man is
determined entirely by the essence of society and its dynamics.
By this we do not at all mean to imply that men were necessar-
ily freer in the earlier phases of society. The illusion which
measures society by the standards of liberalism, and marvels at
the tendency toward total sociation in the postliberal phase as
a novum of repression, can easily be dispelled. Speculations as
to whether the power of society and its controls are greater or
smaller in a market society that is carried consistently to its ex-
treme than in a society based on slavery to the state, such as
.those in the ancient empires of Mesopotamia or Egypt, are in
vain. However, one can very well defend the thesis that
precisely because in later periods—especially in the bourgeois
era—the idea of the individual became crystallized and gained
a real form, total sociation assumed aspects which it hardly
possessed in the preindividual ages of barbaric culture. It no
longer affects the allegedly solely biological individual "human
being" not only externally, but also internally seizes on indi-
viduals and makes of them monads in the societal totality, a
process in which the progressive rationalization, as the stan-
dardization of human beings, is in league with the increasing
regression. Men now have, in addition, to do to themselves
what formerly had merely been done to them. But because of
this the "inner sociation" of men does not proceed without
friction; rather it incubates conflicts, which threaten the
achieved level of civilization as well as pointing toward its
transcendence. In this alone, that today sociation no longer
happens to man directly as a creature of nature, but encounters
a condition in which he learned long ago to know himself as
more than merely a natural species, in this is contained the fact
that total sociation demands sacrifices which men are hardly
capable or willing to make. And hardly less important is the
insight of Freud, that the growing renunciation of instinctual
drives in no way corresponds to the compensation for the sake
of which the ego accepts this sacrifice, so that the suppressed
instincts seek to reassert themselves. Not only in the objective
but also in the subjective sphere does sociation produce the po-
tential for its own destruction.
 Society 33
A sociology which allows itself to be diverted, and which
sacrifices the central category, that of society itself, for the sake
of the idol of controllable data—thus the concept through
which all these so-called facts of the data are first mediated, if
not altogether constituted—would regress from its own con-
ception and would thus join ranks with that spiritual regres-
sion which must be counted among the most threatening
symptoms of total sociation.

Notes

1. Friedrich Nietzsche, Werke, Leipzig, 1910. Vol. 7, p. 373.

2. That is how the politician and political theorist Bluntschli defines the
concept "society" in the Deutsche Staais-W'oerterbuch [Political dic-
tionary] of 1859. His article still deserves our attention today: "The
whole concept of society, in the social and political sense, has its natural
foundations in the customs and views of the Third Estate. This concept is
not actually a popular concept, but a concept of the Third Estate, al-
though one has already become accustomed in the literature to iden-
tifying the state with bourgeois society [buergerliche GeseUschaft]. . . .
The princes maintain a court. . . . For peasants and the petty bourgeois
there are inns and pubs of all kinds, in which they can meet, but there is
no society. However, the Third Estate is social, both for itself and also in
relation to the lower nobility, who show a close affinity to the Third Es-
tate in this, and its society has become a source and at the same time an
expression of common judgments and tendencies. In it the general views
are formed and the opinion of society becomes public opinion, and thus
becomes a social and political force. Of course this influence is not the
same among all peoples. . . . But wherever urban culture bears its fruits
and blossoms, there too society appears as its indispensable organ. The.
countryside knows but little of this.—From court circles and court fes-
tivities, society is distinguished by the bourgeois principle of the equality
of the participants, the 'fellows.' No matter how different the external
rank and the inner value of its individual members may otherwise be, so-
ciety still energetically maintains a certain external equality of everyone
in all of its forms, which elevates the honor of the more inferior
members, without diminishing the prestige of the more worthy or
denying it, and securing full enjoyment and free intercourse for
everyone. . . .—In its first stage society is not organized. Individuals can
appear within it or withdraw from it, according to their need and their
mood. Society in this basic sense is not even capable of organization. . . .
Therefore it was not a very happy notion to derive the explanation of the
state from society. . . . Just the character of not belonging to the state
 34 Aspects of Sociology
[Unstaatlichkeit] is part of the essence of society. Nor can it be con-
tained within the borders of a particular ethnic community; it embraces
natives and foreigners, citizens and noncitizens, as well as men and
women. It sends its links out beyond the domain of a particular state and
unites the educated classes of the civilized world. Arising primarily out of
private life and moving within private forms, it is withdrawn, with good
reason, from all direction by the state and all state authority. Therefore it
is a certain sign of a civilization which either has not yet ripened or is
overripe, a sign of unhealthy social or sick political conditions when the
state police undertake to dominate social life or even to place it under
constant surveillance. . . . Only when society in some manner attacks the
legal order or threatens the public welfare, may the authority of the state
intervene, just as it may against private persons whose actions are crimi-
nal or constitute misdemeanors that violate the law" (J. C. Bluntschli,
Deutsche Staats-Woerterbuch. Stuttgart, 1859. Vol. 4, pp. 247 ff.).—
Simmel also points to the relationship of the concept "society" with
specific social formations, and also mentions that "society" has only at-
tained its significance due to the "lower strata" (Georg Simmel,
Soziologie, 2nd ed., Munich-Leipzig, 1922, p. 1, English "The Problem of
Sociology," translated by Kurt H. Wolff in Essays on Sociology, Philoso-
phy, and Aesthetics by Georg Simmel et al, Kurt H. Wolff, ed. New
York, 1959, p. 310).
3. Plato's Republic, 369B and C, Jowett translation, 3rd ed., p. 49.
4. Op. cit., 369C-370A, pp. 49-50.
5. Op. cit., 394E, p. 79.
6: See also Cratylus, 676B and C; and Aristotle's Politics, I, 2.
7. Heraclitus, Fragment 114, translated in G. S. Kirk, Heraclitus, The
Cosmic Fragments. Cambridge, 1954, p. 48.
8. See Plato's Protagoras, 322A-E.
9. Plato's Republic, 372D.
10. Op. cit., 338C.
11. Kathleen Freeman, Ancilla to the Pre-Socratk Philosophers. A complete
translation of the fragments in Diels, Fragmente der Vorsokratiker,
Cambridge, Mass., 1952, pp. 147 ff.
12. Eduard Zeller, Die Philosophie der Griechen, Vol. Ill, p. 307 ff.
13. The medieval image of ancient philosophy prior to Thomas Aquinas was
dominated to such an extent by the Stoa that Albertus Magnus still
included Aristotle in that school.
14. The conception of the societal totality as a body, which was first
formulated in the beginnings of the bourgeois world by the Italians
Petrus Pomponatius and Campanella in terms of the state as an orga-
nism, as man writ large, goes back to Aristotle (see Politics, 1281B). It
continues to recur, even in formal sociology, as, for instance, in Theodor
Geiger, as "objective skeleton."
15. See for this Baruch Spinoza, Tractatus Politicus, cap. 2, # 4 : "And so by
 Society 35
natural right I understand the very laws or rules of nature, in accordance
with which everything takes place, in other words, the power of nature
itself. And so the natural right of universal nature, and consequently of
every individual thing, extends as far as its power: and accordingly,
whatever any man does after the laws of his nature, he does by the
highest natural right, and has as much power over nature as he has
power." Translated by R. H. M. Elwes, The Chief Works of Spinoza.
London, 1900. Vol. I, p. 292.
16. Thomas Hobbes, Elements; English Works, vol. II; Philosophical
Rudiments concerning Government and Society, Preface, p. xiv.
17. Op. cit., pp. vi-vii. In the English Works Hobbes states that the
"absolute necessity of leagues and contracts" is a principle "proceeding
from the rational."
18. Voltaire, Le philosophe ignorant, ch. 36.
19. Hobbes, op. cit., p. 2, fn.
20. Hobbes, op. cit., p. 11.
21. Op. cit., p. 11.
22. Op. cit., p. 9.
23. The antithesis between society and community, which was first
formulated by Schleiermacher, was defined for German sociology
primarily by Ferdinand Toennies in his main work Cemeinschaft und
Cesellschaft (Leipzig, 1887). (Community and Association. Charles P.
Loomis, Trans. London, 1955.) He classified the social bonds within
which men act upon each other while still maintaining their will and
their body, either as "real and organic life" or as "ideational mechanical
formation," thus as community or society. Community was, for instance,
the domain of language, of morals and of faith, the "familiar, secret,
exclusive communal life," a "living organism." Society is manifested by
acquisition and rational science; it is only a "transient and apparent com-
munal life/' a "mechanical aggregate and artifact" (op. cit., bk. I, #1). In
a community "human beings are linked to each other in an organic
manner by their will" (op. cit., #6); in society they are "not essentially
linked but essentially separated" (op. cit., #19). The community is de-
termined economically by "the possession and enjoyment of common
goods" (op. cit., #11), society is determined by the market, by exchange
and money. This schema, which for Toennies had quite a different
meaning, but still was dangerously oversimplified, then reappeared
during the Third Reich, where the "Arian-Germanic folk-community"
was propagandistically confronted to the "Jewish-Western atomized so-
ciety."
24. Herbert Spencer, Principles of Sociology. New York, 1888. Vol. I, # 2 ,
p. 4.
25. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Jenenser Realphilosophie, I.
26. Comte, op. cit, p. 168.
27. Op. cit, p. 5.
 36 Aspects of Sociology
28. Karl Marx, Capital New York, 1906. Preface to the 1st ed., p. 13. See
also Marx, Grundrisse der politischen Oekonomie, and Friedrich Engels'
"Review of Man' Critique of Political Economy" printed in that work.
29. Talcott Parsons, "Society/' in Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, vol.
XLV, pp. 225,231.
30. Theodor Geiger, "Ueber Soziometrik und ihre Grenzen," in Koelner
Zeitschrift fuer Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie, 1,1948/49, p. 302.
31. Geiger, "Gesellschaft," in the Handwoerterbuch der Soziologie. Alfred
Vierkandt, ed. Stuttgart, 1931, p. 211.
32. Spencer, op. cit., # 1 3 , pp. 15-16.
33. Spencer, First Principles. New York, 1904, #187, p. 470.
34. Spencer, Principles of Sociology, #227, p. 487 ff.
35. Op. cit, #228, p. 489.
 Ill
The Individual
It has already been pointed out several times that sociology, as
the science of society, cannot be isolated from other disciplines,
such as psychology, history, or economics, if it is really to ar-
rive at any conclusions about the totality of social relations and
forces. It is hardly necessary to add that the purpose here was
not to dissolve sociology into a diffuse conglomerate of all pos-
sible sciences. That which is specific to sociology does not lie in
its subject matter, which is indeed distributed among these
other disciplines, but rather in the stress which sociology
places: namely, on the relationship of this entire subject matter
to the laws of sociation; that is, of social formation and in-
tegration (Vergesellschaftung). This is now to be shown more
fully in terms of a concept, which, for the naive and
presociological consciousness—if one may call it that—appears
to form the opposite pole to sociation in the above sense, and
the sociological implications of which, for just this reason, are
of decisive importance: the concept of the individual.
This concept is found relatively rarely as a main theme in
the field of sociology. While sociology devotes itself predomi-j
nantly to the study of "interpersonal relations," of groupsj
classes, and social institutions, the single human being, the
/'individual/' represents for it, to a great extent, an irreducible
given; it is left to biology, psychology, and philosophy to
divide among themselves the analysis of this concept. However,
the latter of these disciplines, philosophy, which should
have devoted itself to critical reflection on this notion, was
37
 38 Aspects of Sociology
for a long time inclined to raise it to the level of an absolute
as an extrasocial category. Since Descartes, the direction in
which this question was pursued was motivated by the con-
cept of autonomy: primacy was thus assigned to the "I am,
I think/ 7 Then and subsequently the concept was to remain in-
dependent of concrete actual subjects, whether as the sum of
the cogitare in Descartes, as "transcendental apperception"
and "moral autonomy" in Kant, as the "Absolute Ego" in
Fichte, or as Husserl's "pure consciousness." Under the spell of
this tradition, most nineteenth-century philosophers closed
themselves off to the experience both of the actual existence of
isolated individuals and of society as complementary to these.
The idealistic concept of subjectivity was considered to be ex-
alted above both.
However, as it first appears in history, the concept "indi-
vidual" already points to something factual, closed off, existing
by itself, singular, distinguished by particular properties which
are supposed to be assigned to it alone. Initially "individual,"
in the purely logical sense, applied without any reference to a
human being, is the Latin translation of the materialist
Democritus' term atomon. Boethius defines "individual" thus:

Something can be called individual in various ways: that is

called individual which cannot be divided at all, such as unity or
spirit; that which cannot be divided because of its hardness,
such as steel, is called individual; something is called individual,
the specific designation of which is not applicable to anything of
the same kind, such as Socrates.1

During the closing phase of High Scholasticism, when na-

tional states begin to assert themselves against medieval uni-
versalism, the predication which expresses the single and the
particular, becomes, for Duns Scotus, Haecceitas, the principle
of individuation by means of which he seeks to establish the
mediation between the universal essence of man, the essentia
communis, and the single person, the homo singularis. Thus
the nominalistic view of the individual received its initial defi-
nition, which then became, as it were, second nature for
 The Individual 39
the subsequent development. Leibniz defines the individual,
without the aid of ontological postulates, solely in terms of ex-
istence. The doctrine of the Monads contains the model for the
individualistic conception of the concrete human being in bour-
geois society [buergerliche Gesellschaft]: "that a particular
substance never acts upon another particular substance, nor is
it acted upon by it; namely if one takes into consideration, that
all which happens to each one is only the consequence of its
complete idea or concept, since this idea already includes all
the predicates and expresses the whole universe."2 "The
Monads have no windows through which something can come
in or go out";3 the changes which take place within them are
not externally caused, but can be traced back to an "inner prin-
ciple."4 Finally, every single Monad is differentiated from
every other Monad.5 Society consequently becomes the sum of
single individuals: "The essence of a being by aggregation con-
sists solely in the mode of being of its component elements; for
example, what constitutes the essence of an army is simply the
mode of being of the men who compose it."6
Under the influence of liberalism, of its doctrine of free
competition, we have become fully accustomed to thinking of
the Monad as an absolute, existing for and by itself. Therefore
the achievement of sociology and, prior to that, of speculative
social philosophy, in shaking this faith and in showing that the
individual is itself socially constituted, cannot be evaluated too
highly. Because sociology, as theory of society, developed
during the individualistic era, it is hardly surprising that the
mutual relations between the individual and society came to
represent practically its central theme, and that the depth and
fruitfulness of all sociological theory were measured by the ex-
tent to which it was capable of penetrating this relationship.7
But the dynamics of the inner composition of the individual
were taken up only at the end of the theory.
Human life is essentially, and not merely accidentally,
social life. But once this is recognized, the concept of the indi-
vidual as the ultimate social entity becomes questionable. If
fundamentally man exists in terms and because of the others
who stand in reciprocal relation with him, then he is not ul-
 40 Aspects of Sociology
timately determined by his primary indivisibility and singular-
ity, but by the necessity of partaking of and communing with
these others. This finds its expression in the concept of the
person, no matter how vitiated by personalistic ethics and psy-
chology this concept may be. One need only recall the original
meaning of the Latin word, which is directly opposed to these
personalistic conceptions. Persona was the Roman term for the
mask of the ancient theater. In Cicero it is sublimated to the
designation of the character-mask in which one appears to
others: the role which one—let us say, a philosopher—plays in
life; the one who carries out this role; and the special dignity
which, as it were, he displays as this actor. In the latter sense
the concept is then transferred to the freeborn citizen as a legal
person, in distinction to the slave. Thus during the ancient
period nothing of substantial individuality, of "personality," is
as yet contained in the word; it only begins to acquire this con-
notation in Boethius, during the sixth century A.D.8
The emphatic, specifically personalistic concept of the
person has its roots in Christian dogma, especially that of the
immortal individual soul. At the same time this dogma itself
constitutes a moment in the historical unfolding of the individ-
ual. And in the Reformation it finds its societal expression. But
in saying this, we do not thereby postulate that the theological
notion as such was the effective cause of the change, or that the
sociohistorical unfolding of the individual had its origin in
Christianity, as the Hegelian construction of world history
would have it. However, in any case, the social-theoretic dis-
cussion of the individual was conducted on the basis of this
theological doctrine.
The specification of the human being as a person implies
that he always finds himself in specific interpersonal roles
within the social relations in which he lives, before he is even
aware of this. Because of this, he is what he is in relation to
others: child of a mother, student of a teacher, member of a
tribe or of a profession; this relation then is not external to
him, but one within which and in terms of which he defines
himself as specifically this or that. If one sought to disregard
this functional character, and sought to look instead for the
 The Individual 41
singular, absolute meaning or significance of each human
being, one still would not arrive at the pure individual in his
ineffable singularity, but rather at a wholly abstract point of
reference. And even this itself could only be understood in the
context of society, in terms of the abstract principle of that so-
ciety's unity. Even the biographical individual is a social cate-
gory. He is determined solely within the interconnections of
his life with others; it is these which form his social character;
only in terms of the latter does his life take on meaning under
given social conditions; and only in this character can the
person—the persona, the social character-mask—possibly also
be an individual.
However, neither can the relation of the individual to so-
ciety be separated from his relation to nature. The constellation
constituted by these three moments is a dynamic one. But it is
not enough to be satisfied with the insight into this perennial
interaction; a science of society must explore the laws ac-
cording to which the interaction evolves and seek to derive the
changing shapes [Gestalten] which the individual, society, and
nature assume in their historical dynamics; indeed, this should
be its essential task. 'There is no formula which fixes once and
for all the relationship between the individuals, society, and
nature."9 The influence of natural, geophysical, and especially
of climatic conditions, for Comte the primary object of "posi-
tive sociology," has remained one of the favorite topics of this
science. From this has developed a sociological subdiscipline of
geography—ecology. The followers of Ratzel arrived at an ex-
treme position, which posited the physical preconditions of
human social life as absolute, and therefore distracted attention
from what is essentially social. The complementary insight
necessary for a more correct and complete view, that nature as
encountered by man is, in each instance, already preformed
socially, has, however, had much less appeal for scientific soci-
ology. Thus this view remained confined to dialectical philoso-
phy and its materialistic heirs.10
So-called classical sociology, from the very beginning, has
concerned itself with the activity of society as a whole, rather
than with the individual. In this respect it conforms perfectly
 l
42 Aspects of Sociology
to the philosophic tradition. The doctrine of Aristotelian poli-
tics, that the whole necessarily precedes the parts,11 is to be
found shortly after the formula of the zoon politikon, the es-
sentially social nature of man—and with good reason. Only in
living together with others is man a human being; it is "natu-
ral/' both in Plato's sense and Aristotle's, for man to exist in
the community, the polis, because only there can his essential
nature complete itself.12 As a being that is not integrated in so-
ciety, he can only be a beast or a god. 13 Thus the polis becomes
an a priori for the being man; it alone establishes the possibil-
ity for him to be human at all. This theme returns again in
Kant. Alluding to the Aristotelian formula, Kant calls man "a
being intended for society,"14 to which being he ascribes the
inclination "to socialize himself [vergesellschaften]," because
only in society can man develop his natural capacities. And it
is not communal living as such, rather only organized commu-
nal living, which constitutes the precondition for this: "Man
was not intended to live in a herd, like a domestic animal, but
to belong to a hive, like a bee." Kant asserts that for man it is a
"necessity to be a member of some civil society [buergerliche
Cesellschaft] ."15 Hegel, in spite of all his criticism of Kant in
other respects, is in complete agreement with the emphasis
placed on this moment. Indeed, one of the central motives for
Hegel's critique is the contention that in Kant's moral philoso-
phy the constitutive role of the social moment is neglected in
favor of the abstract subjectivity of the moral individual. "True
independence . . . consists solely in the unity and interpenetra-
tion of individuality and generality [Allgemeinheit], in that it
is just as much the general which gains for itself concrete exis-
tence through singularity, as it is the individual and particular
which finds the unshakable basis and true content for its real-
ity only in the general."16 Hegel's whole philosophy turns its
polemical edge against pure individuality, which the Romantic
movement had raised on its banner at that time, with its "law
of the heart," which this individuality was supposed to realize,
but which for Hegel meant the descent into the "insanity of
subjectivism."17 The existing for his own awareness [fuer-sich
Sein] of the single human being is treated by Hegel as a neces-
 The Individual 43
sary moment of the social process, but as a transient one and,
in principle, one to be superseded. In Schlegel individuality
becomes substrate. He longs for the human being who will de-
velop his self-consciousness solely from within himself, unin-
hibited by social limitations of any kind, an individuality that
does not incorporate into itself the other by means of imitation
or identification, and which is not subject to any law of the
generality. Nietzsche's conception in his later years is very
close to this, though not necessarily because of any direct link
in the historical transmission of ideas. In The Genealogy of
Morals he speaks of a "Sovereign individual, equal only to
himself, all moral custom left far behind. The autonomous,
more than moral individual," and of "the human being of his
own independent, long-range will, who is competent to make^
promises."18 Finally, in The Will to Power: "The individual is
something quite new and capable of creating new things, some-
thing absolute and all his actions quite his own. The individual
in the end has to seek the valuation for his actions in himself;
because he has to give an individual meaning even to tradi-
tional words and actions."19
Yet it was by no means due to a progressive impulse that
sociology initially maintained the primacy of society as against
the individual, but rather as a consequence of tendencies work-
ing toward restoration after the French Revolution. Auguste
Comte, for one, counterposed his sociology to the preceding
"metaphysical" phase of history, because in the latter the indi-
vidual had rebelled against the "positive"—the established
order. This had brought with it "a deep and ever widening
anarchy of the whole intellectual system, although this was, in
its nature, a wholly transitory phenomenon." It is positive so-
ciology "which will gradually free society from its fatal ten-
dency toward an immanent dissolution; and it must actually
lead toward a new organization which will be both more
progressive and more stable than one based on theological phi-
losophy."20 He demands, that which later became the slogan of
fascism, that the egotistical interests must be subordinated to
the social ones of the "common good."21 Thus the individual is
surreptitiously reduced to a mere exemplar of his kind, some-
 44 Aspects of Sociology
thing no longer of such great importance. Whenever sociol-
ogists inveigh against egotism, what they actually want is to
talk people out of their happiness. To be sure, in Comte this is
combined with a highly progressive insight, that the individual
himself is something socially produced, and that the concept of
the individual is of late historical origin.22
To make quite clear to ourselves that in Comte's concep-
tion of the individual as a social category we are not confronted
with a triviality, but with an extremely far-reaching insight, we
must bear in mind to what extent his thesis departs from the
view of healthy common sense, still widely accepted today,
that the individual is something naturally given. For one can
very well argue that every human being enters this world as an
individual, as a particular biological being, and that compared
to this elementary fact his social being is secondary and merely
derivative. To be sure, one must not forget the relevant biologi-
cal facts; they furnish by no means the least important consid-
eration, if a truly critical sociology is to be preserved from set-
ting up the community as an idol. But on the other hand, the
concept of biological individuation is so abstract and indeter-
minate, that it does not suffice by itself for adequately
expressing what individuals really are. One could even quite
properly disregard the fact that the very existence of the indi-
vidual biologically requires the intervention of the species and
thus of society.23 But what is called "individual" in the specific
sense is not the single biological entity at all. It only comes to
be by positing itself, to a certain extent, by raising what it is
for its own awareness, its singularity, to its essential definition.
In the language of philosophy as well as in ordinary language,
former times had the expression "self-consciousness." Only he
who differentiates himself from the interests and aspirations of
others, he who becomes substance for himself, who establishes
his self-preservation and development as a norm, is an individ-
ual. And thus the word "individual," as designation for the
single human being, hardly occurs before the eighteenth cen-
tury, and what it denotes is hardly much older than the early
Renaissance. It was quite correct to recognize as that which
was overwhelmingly new in the poetry of Petrarch, the fact
 The Individual 45
24
that here individuality had its first awakening.
Just this self-consciousness of the single human being,
however, which originally makes him into an individual, is a
social consciousness; and it deserves to be emphasized that it is
precisely the philosophical conception of self-consciousness
which leads beyond the "abstract" individual, existing solely
for himself, to the constitutive social moment. To be sure, self-
consciousness, according to the famous definition of Hegel, is
"the truth of the certainty of oneself"; but it achieves its "satis-
faction only in another self-consciousness."25 Only in the rela-
tionship of one self-consciousness to another does the individ-
ual, a new self-consciousness, come to be; and so too does the
general: the society as the unity of monads, where "the Ego is
'We' and the 'We' is the Ego."26 Nor is the conception that the
individual realizes himself [zu sick selbst kommt] only insofar
as he externalizes himself restricted in Hegel to consciousness
as contemplation, but is applied also to labor for the satisfac-
tion of his vital needs: "the labor of the individual for his own
wants is just as much a satisfaction of those of others, and a
satisfaction of his own, he attains only by the labor for the
others."27 This Hegelian theme is restated quite faithfully by
Marx: "Only by means of the relation to the human being
Paul, as his equal, does the human being Peter relate to himself
as a human being."28
The faith in the radical independence of the individual
from the whole is indeed mere illusion. The form of the indi-
vidual itself is one proper to a society which maintains its life
by means of the free market, where free and independent eco-
nomic subjects come together.29 The more the individual is
strengthened, the more the power of the society increases, due
to the relationship of exchange which forms the individual. The
two, individual and society, are complementary concepts.30 The
individual, in the most significant sense, is just the opposite of
a being of nature: it is a being that emancipates itself from
mere conditions of nature, an alienated being, one that from its
first day on is basically related to society and, just for that
reason, a being lonely within itself. If it is true that so-called
"mass psychology" can be explained in terms of the processes
 46 Aspects of Sociology
of individual psychology, then this assertion will have to be
supplemented by the contrary one, that all individuality owes
its content and configuration [Gestalt] to society, as a struc-
ture with its own lawfulness. The interaction and tension be-
tween the individual and society to a great measure govern the
entire dynamics of this whole. No matter how one-sidedly soci-
ology, due to its posture within the division of labor of the
sciences, may have overemphasized the primacy of society over
the individual,31 still thereby it offers a corrective for the
illusion, that it is due to his natural disposition, his psychol-
ogy, and out of himself alone that each single human being has
become what he is. This service must be kept in mind,
especially today, when society is exercising an overwhelming
pressure on the individual, and individual ways of reacting are
more inhibited than ever before, and yet, at the same time, the
sociological approach often tends to recede in favor of the psy-
chological one: the fewer the individuals, the more individu-
alism.
One might object that the sociological approach tends to
again reduce man to a mere species-being, to make of him
merely an impotent representative of society. This must be
taken fully into account. The pure concept of society is just as
abstract as the pure concept of the individual, and abstract too
is the allegedly eternal antithesis between the two.32 Where the
truth and falsity, justice and injustice, of these two moments
lie, where the substance and where the appearance—this
cannot be established once and for all in terms of generalizing
definitions, but only by means of the analysis of concrete social
relations and of the concrete forms the individual takes on
within these relations.
The most important consequence to be drawn from in-
sights into the interaction of the individual and society—and,
to be sure, just that which positivistic sociology avoids—is that
the human being is capable of realizing himself as an individ-
ual only within a just and humane society. This insight is al-
ready contained in the Platonic theme, that functional social
coherence is the precondition for the actualization of the Idea
implanted in every human being. Only the just society will
 The Individual 47
permit the human being to realize his Idea. The more concrete
this thought becomes, the more it becomes one that is critical
of society: as long ago as Plato, the theory of such justice
required the construction of a Utopian model. And in the
Utopia of Thomas More, at the beginning of the modern era, it
is stated much more plainly that the economic constitution of
the state must aim toward this:

That as far as public necessity allows, all citizens should be

given as much time as possible away from bodily service for the
freedom and cultivation of their mind. For there, they think, lies
happiness in life.33

In a similar manner Spinoza, whose overall tendency is

anything but Utopian, pursued considerations of the same sort
and demanded a rational organization of the state for the sake
of developing individual capacities:

All our desires, insofar as they be justified, can, for the

main, be traced back to these three: to understand things in
terms of their first causes, to tame the passions or to achieve the
state of virtue, and finally, to live securely and healthy in body.
. . . The most certain means for this, as reason and experience
teach, is to found a society with well-defined laws.34

Hegel summed up the social intention of Occidental meta-

physics in his dictum: "Not until he is the citizen of a good
state does the individual achieve his right."35 But with that a
threshold has been reached: that between scientific sociology,
which, for social reasons, seeks to avoid this conclusion, and
the social thought which crosses over into praxis working for
change.
However, in contrast to this Idea, which Hegel considered
to be already realized, the bourgeois individual is tyrannized
by oppositions, such as that between the bourgeois-particular
existence [buergerlich-partikularer] and politically general ex-
istence, as well as that between the private and the professional
spheres. These oppositions have intensified in the course of the
 48 Aspects of Sociology
politico-economic development. Thus with the enthronement
of the principle of competition, after the removal of guild bar-
riers, and the beginning of the technical revolution of industry,
bourgeois society has evolved a dynamic which forces the indi-
vidual economic subject to pursue his financial interests
ruthlessly and without consideration for the welfare of the gen-
erality. The Protestant Ethic, the bourgeois-capitalistic concept
of duty, furnished the moral compulsion for this. The an-
tifeudal ideal of autonomy, the intended aim of which origi-
nally was political self-determination, became transformed
within the context of the economic structure into that ideology
which was required for the maintenance of the social order and
for the growth of the "output." So for the totally internalized
individual, reality becomes appearance and appearance reality.
In asserting his existence, which in fact is isolated and depen-
dent on society, and indeed only conditionally tolerated, as
absolute, the individual makes himself into an absolute cliche:
the "individual" of Stirner. The Spiritual medium of individua-
tion, art, religion, science atrophies to become the private prop-
erty of a few individuals, whose subsistence today is only at
times assured by society. And society, which produced the de-
velopment of the individual, now is developing by alienating
and fragmenting this individual. At the same time, the individ-
ual, for his part, misconstrues the world, on which he is depen-
dent down to his innermost being, mistaking it for his own.

Notes

1. Boethius: In porphyrium commentarium ixber secundus. Migne PL 64,

97C-98A.
2. Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, "Discourse on Metaphysics," # 1 4 , in
Leibniz Discourse on Metaphysics and Correspondence with Arnauld.
George R. Montgomery, trans. Chicago, 1916.
3. Leibniz, Monadology #7. Robert Latta, trans. Oxford, 1892, p. 215 ff.
4. Op. cit., # 1 1 .
5. Op. cit., # 9 .
6. Leibniz, "Letter to Arnauld." Translated by Montgomery, op. cit., pp.
190-191.
 The Individual 49
7. Hegel anticipated the many tendencies of modern psychiatry which seek
to explain mental illness in terms of a lack of social contact, when he
stated that the isolated individuality will fall prey to insanity (see, for ex-
ample, Harry Stack Sullivan, Conceptions in Modern Psychiatry, Wash-
ington, 1947). He also saw that, through rendering the individual
absolute, the reactions against this ultimately will result in a struggle of
all against all in which no one will be able to develop his true individu-
ality: "For in that [the inverted order of the reign of the law of the
heart] has become the law of all hearts: thus all individuals directly con-
stitute this universal—in this the law becomes a reality which is solely
the reality of individuality existing for itself, the reality of the heart. The
consciousness which sets up the law of its heart will thus experience the
resistance of others, because it will be in contradiction with the equally
individual laws of the hearts of the others, and in resisting these others is
doing nothing else than setting up their law and asserting it. Therefore
the universal which then exists is solely universal resistance, and the
conflict is one of all with each other, in which each seeks to assert his
own individuality; yet at the same time, no one can achieve this because
the individuality of each will experience this same resistance_and thus
suffer a reciprocal-dissolution due to the others. What appears to be
public order thus is really universal hostility, in which each seizes for
himself all he can, each determines the justice to be done to the individu-
ality of others while seeking to secure his own, which then disappears in
the same way due to the others this then becomes the 'way of the
world/ the mere appearance of a permanent course, a merely alleged uni-
versality, the true content of which is instead the meaningless interplay
of individualities seeking to establish themselves and being dissolved."
See Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Phaenomenologie des Geistes, vol. 2
of the Saemtliche Werke, Hermann Glockner, ed. Stuttgart, 1927, p. 283
ff. and especially pp. 291 f. [For Baillie's translation of this passage see
G. W. F. Hegel, The Phenomenology of Mind, J. B. Baillie, trans.
London, New York, 1955, p. 399.]
8. Boethius, Liber de persona et duabus naturis, Gap. III.
9. Max Horkheimer, "Bemerkungen zur philosophischen Anthropologie,"
in Zeitschrift fuer Sozialforschung. Vol. IV, 1935, p. 3.
10. Marx has laid the greatest stress on the fact that human beings require
society for the satisfaction of their vital needs from nature. Thus he
writes in The German Ideology: 'The first premise of all human history
is, of course, the existence of living human individuals. Thus the first fact
' to be established is the physical organization of these individuals and
their consequent relations to the rest of nature. Of course, we cannot
here go either into the actual physical nature of man, or into the natural
conditions in which he finds himself—geological, oro-hydrographical,
climatic, and so on. The writing of history must always set out ftom
 50 Aspects of Sociology
these natural bases and their modification in the course of history
through the action of man." Karl Marx, The German Ideology, Parts I
and III. R. Pascal, ed. New York, 1947.
11. Aristotle: Politics, Bk. I, 2, ch. 1253A, in The Work of Aristotle. W. D.
Ross, ed. Oxford, 1961. Vol. X.
12. Op. cit, 1252B.
13. Op. cit, 1253A.
14. Immanuel Kant, Metaphysical Principles of Virtue, II, #47, Indianapolis,
1963; Kant, Cesarnmelte Schriften, vol. VI, Berlin, 1907, p. 471.
15. Kant, Anthropologie in Pragmatischer Hinsicht; Kant, Schriften, Berlin,
1907, vol. VII, p. 330, 2nd part, E.
16. Hegel, Vorlesungen ueber Aesthetik, Werke, Stuttgart, 1927 (1953), vol.
12, p. 247.
17. Thus according to Friedrich Schlegel: "Gradations of individuality are
what is primary and eternal in human beings. . . . To pursue the cultiva-
tion and development of this individuality would be a divine egoism
("Ideen" in Athenaeum, vol. 3, part 1. Berlin, 1800, p. 15). This happens
when one isolates oneself from all that is "common" {op. cit., p. 28 ff.)
and develops one's own core for oneself alone (op. cit., p. 12); . . . who-
ever gives himself his own law is relatively free. And this is the necessary
condition for drawing closer to absolute freedom. . . . A society which
corresponds to this concept of freedom will be anarchy—whether one
calls it the Kingdom of God or the golden age" (Neue philosophische
Schriften. Joseph Koerner, ed. Frankfurt, 1935, p. 199).
18. Friedrich Nietzsche, Genealogy of Morals. Francis Golfting, trans. New
York, 1956, p. 197.
19. Nietzsche, Will to Power. Anthony M. Ludovici, trans. New York, 1964,
vol. II, p. 215.
20. Auguste Comte, Cours de philosophie positive. Op. cit., p. 5.
21. "No matter what intellectual development one may ever assume for the
mass of men, it is still evident that the social order will necessarily
always remain incompatible with the permanent liberty for each individ-
ual. . . . Systematic tolerance can never exist and has never existed in re-
ality." Comte, op. cit, p. 31.
22. Comte speaks of "the essentially spontaneous sociability of the human
race, by virtue of an instinctive inclination toward communal life, in-
dependently of all personal calculation and often in conflict with the
most powerful individual interests . . ." (op. cit., p. 285). Conversely
Comte also ascertains an influence of the human beings on the society,
and specifies as one of his tasks "to show . . . the necessary influence of
the most important general characteristics of our nature which gives to
human society that fundamental character which is permanently proper
to it and which no development of any kind can ever change (op. cit, p.
286).
23. Modern psychology, anthropology, and biology have shown, in the
 The Individual 51
child's psycho-physical process of growth, that the "domestication" of
the human being is one of the indisputable preconditions of his existence.
"It must first of all be kept in mind, for social psychology, that the
domestication of basic biological functions of a purely "private" charac-
ter subjects the human being to regulation and formation from the first
day of his life on, and that these are not determined by the laws of his
own life and by no means by objective conditions, nor solely by the indi-
vidual distinctive characteristics, purposes, or moods of his parents, but
determined at the same time and decisively by the prescribed, objective
system of behavior and attitudes or the primary and the cultural struc-
ture" (Walter Beck, Crundzuege der Soziologie. Munich, 1953, p. 20).
Adolf Portmann especially has emphasized in his Biologische Fragmente
zur Lehre des Menschen (Basel, 1944) that man differs from the animals
essentially insofar also as his physical existence presupposes society.
24. The term "individualism" was introduced by the followers of Saint-
Simon to designate the economy of competition in contrast to "social-
ism." To individualism as such, as a coherent theory, belongs the liberal
thesis that the individual, pursuing his own interests, at the same time
automatically serves the common interest of the whole. Alexander
Ruestow has written the doctrinal history of this view and has brought
out its relationship to the Stoav(See Alexander Ruestow, Das Versagen
des Wirtschaftsliberalismus als religionsgeschichtliches Problem [The
failure of economic liberalism as a problem in the history of religion]. Is-
tanbul, 1945). He cites several characteristic formulations of this "indi-
vidualism": "While man imagines that he is only pursuing his own ad-
vantage, he is an instrument in the hand of a higher power and collabo-
rates, often unconsciously, in the great and artful structure and the state
and civil [buergerlich] society" (Johann Heinrich von Thuenen, quoted
by Ruestow, op. cit., p. 30), ".. . thus by means of the laws governing
the powers of enjoyment, He (the Creator) prescribes for men an eternal
and unchangeable path in the collaboration with his equals. By means of
these He brings it about that as soon as man has become clearly aware of
the laws governing the activity of this force, each individual, for the sake
of his own well-being, will employ his powers for the welfare of the
whole, in a manner that most effectively furthers the end of this common
welfare. This therefore is the force which holds human society together;
it is the bond which embraces all men and forces them, in mutual
exchange, to further the welfare of their fellowmen simultaneously with
their own" (Hermann Heinrich Gossen, quoted by Ruestow, op. cit, p.
35).
25. Hegel, Phenomenology of the Mind. Op. cit., p. 226.
26. Op. cit., p. 227. See also Hegel, Philosophy of Right. T. M. Knox, trans.
Oxford, 1952, pp. 122; 266; 267, #182 and addendum to #182 and
#184.
27. Hegel, Phenomenology, op. cit, p. 377.
 52 Aspects of Sociology
28. Marx, op. cit., p. 61, fn. 1.
29. See Simmel: "Competition, in a direct numerical ratio to those involved
in it, develops the specialization of the individual" (Georg Simmel,
Soziologie, 2nd ed. Munich/Leipzig, 1922, p. 528). Long before that
Hegel had related the education and training of the individual existing
for himself to competition. He distinguishes men who are truly free from
those who deem themselves free: between the personality as the fun-
damental determination of equality, which enters into existence by virtue
of property and individuality as the bearer of the living spirit (see Hegel,
Werke, vol. 11, Vorlesungen ueber die Philosophie der Geschichte, op.
cit., p. 262. English translation, Hegel's Philosophy of History, J. Sibtree,
trans. London, New York, 1900, pp. 278 ff.)
30. See Simmel, op. cit., pp. 525, 530: 'The personality's individual particu-
larity [Besonderssein] and the social influences, interests, and relation
by means of which it is linked to the circle around it, display in the
course of their mutual development a relationship which appears as a
typical form within the temporal and substantive divisions of social real-
ity; in general, this individuality of existence and action will grow to the
degree to which the individual extends himself into the surrounding
social sphere." . .. differentiation and individuation relax the bonds to
those who are closest, to replace them with new bonds, ideal and real, to
those who are more remote." Simmel believes in a kind of law—a "phe-
nomenological formula"—whereby the members of a society differen-
tiate themselves to a greater extent the larger the society becomes and
the less it is therefore distinguished from other societies. Inversely, the
members of a society are more homogeneous the smaller their society is
and the more different from others: "... that ceteris paribus in every
human being—an, as it were, unchanging ratio of the individual to the
social subsists, which only changes its form; the narrower the circle to
which we devote ourselves, the less freedom of individuality we possess;
but in compensation, this circle itself is something individual and because
it is smaller, delimits itself more sharply from the others. Corre-
spondingly, if the circle in which we are active and to which we devote
our interests becomes more extended, then there is more scope in it for
the development of our individuality; but as parts of this whole we will
have less distinctiveness, as a social group this more extensive circle is
less individual. Thus it is not only the relative smallness and narrowness
of the community, but also, above all, its individualistic coloration, to
which the leveling of its individuals corresponds. Or in a concise schema:
the elements of the differentiated circle are undifferentiated, those of an
undifferentiated circle are differentiated" (op. cit, p. 531 ff.).
31. The predominance of society as against the individual can be found in an
extreme formulation in Vierkandt: "We will call a formation structured
in a total manner [Ganzheitlich] when every event in one of its parts is
determined by the whole, or at least the whole participates in this deter-
 The Individual 53
m i n a t i o n . . . . In this the individual human being stands in interrela-
tionships which extend beyond him, which, in a certain manner, do not
permit him to be independent, which exist without his will and his
knowledge, and which, for their part, determine him or at least influence
him" (Alfred Vierkandt, Kleine Gesellschaftslehre. Stuttgart, 1949, p. 3
ff.). Vierkandt actually posits society as absolute: "Group morality has as
its sole aim the prospering of the group, not that of the individual," and
therefore demands "the solidarity of responsibility of the companions
within the group for the acts of the individual" (Vierkandt,
Gesellschaftslehre. Stuttgart, 1928, p. 422 ff.). For the critique of this
overestimation of society and underestimation of the individual see
Horkheimer, "Zum Rationalismusstreit in der gegenwaertigen Philo-
sophic," in Zeitschrift fuer Sozialforsehung, vol. Ill, 1934, p. 1 ff. and
especially p. 34 ff.
32. See Siegfried Landshut, Kritik der Soziologie. Munich, 1929, p. 16 ff. On
the abstractness of the category individual see Horkheimer in the general
introduction to Autoritaet und Familie. Paris, 1936, p. 30 ff.; and
Wilhelm Dilthey, Einleitung in die Geisteswissenschaften. Leipzig and
Berlin, 1922, vol. I, p. 91 ff. For several of the problems involved in the
antithesis of "individual and society" see Horkheimer, op. cit., p. 33 ff.
For the relation of the individual to society see also Simmel, op. cit., p.
535: "Now, however, man is never purely a being of the collective, just
as he is never purely an individual being; and therefore what is involved
here is again obviously only a question of more or less and only of
specific aspects and determinations of existence, in terms of which the
development of a preponderance of the one or the other is displayed. . . .
The individual is not capable of saving himself from the totality; only by
surrendering a portion of his absolute ego to a few others, by making
common cause with them, can he still preserve the feeling of individu-
ality, and do so without bitterness and eccentricity. For by extending his
personality and his interests to a number of other persons he can also, as
it were, set himself against the remaining totality to a greater degree."
33. Thomas More, Utopia. Bk. 2, ch. 4.
34. Baruch Spinoza, "Theological-political Tractatus," in Chief Works of
Spinoza. R. H. M. Elvves, trans. London, 1900, p. 45 ff..
35. Hegel, Philosophy of Right, op. cit., addition to # 1 5 3 , p. 261.
 IV
The Group
The tension between the individual and society, the pulling
apart of the general and the particular, necessarily imply that
the individual is not incorporated directly in the social totality,
but that intermediary levels are required. Since the end of the
nineteenth century, especially since Durkheim, sociology des-
ignates these intermediary levels with the concept which has
increasingly established itself, that of the group.1 To be sure, in
sociology this concept has just as little a well-defined meaning
as in ordinary language, which has taken the word over from
sociology. The word group is similar to that which the logic of
language calls "occasional terms"—so to speak an empty
expression, an "argument place," which is filled by a variety of
meanings according to the context. Without violating the
meaning of the word, one can understand by a group a commu-
nity of interest as well as a fortuitous aggregate of individuals;
a community that has unity in space and time as well as one
that is dispersed, one that is conscious of its own existence as
well as one that is united solely by objective features. Dif-
ficulties arise as soon as science tries to refer a word to unam-
biguous factual states, when this word does not in itself possess
such unambiguous meaning at all. Still there has been no lack
of attempts to make this concept of group, which one simply
cannot do without, more manageable, setting certain basic
defining criteria in order to extract something like an identical
core, which, to be sure, frequently turns out to be quite formal.
Thus Oppenheimer says:
54
 The Group 55
A group is . . . some circle of persons (larger or smaller,
more ephemeral or more enduring, more firmly organized or
more loosely thrown together), who, due to the same influences,
or due to a common state of consciousness act in a similar way
and simultaneously.2

Similarly, but somewhat narrower, in Geiger we find: "a

number of human beings form a group, when they are united
in such a manner that each individual feels a part of a common
'we/ "3
This "we" is understood by him solely as a collective con-
sciousness, solely as something subjective, and the objective
linking factors are not taken into consideration; however this
"we"-consciousness may be completely lacking in instances
where scientific language would be justified in employing the
group concept—for instance, in the case of the working class in
many countries.
The concept of group also remains quite vague where it is
defined in terms of the interrelationships between the
members. For instance, Maclver understands group to mean
"every association of social living beings who enter into social
relations with each other."4
But "relation" can mean anything and everything. The
formal concept of group contains somewhat more objectively
characterizing moments in the formulation in which it occurs
in American sociology, with its frequent behavioristic coloring.
Bogardus, for example, says:

A social group . . . may be thought of as a number of

persons who have some 'ommon interests, who are stimulating
to each other, who nave a common loyalty, and who participate
in common activities. It may range from a small family group of
parents and a child . . . to a national group of millions of indi-
viduals.5

This concept of the group, embracing sociological forma-

tions of the most varied kinds, contrasts with the attempts un-
dertaken, above all in Germany, to reserve the designation
 56 Aspects of Sociology
group for a specific class of social formations.
Here a reference to Leopold von Wiese may suffice.6 He
divides all social formations according to the distance at which
they stand from the individual living human beings. In so
doing, he distinguishes masses, groups, and "abstract collec-
tives or corporate bodies":

In the case of masses . .. the social processes at work here

are conceived in such a manner that the relations of the individ-
ual human beings amalgamated [zusammengcknaeult] into a
mass directly influence the action of the mass. Masses are very
close to the distinctiveness, i.e., above all the desires, of the
human beings. The second order formations, the groups . . . are
more removed from the interplay of individual relations by
virtue of the fact that they possess an organization, which
prescribes what the individuals have to do. The formations of
the highest order of sociation, the abstract collectives or cor-
porate bodies, are based on an ideology fostered by the human
beings, which structures them (the collectives) in a wholly im-
personal way, thus as remote as possible from the empirical in-
dividual human beings. They are conceived and felt to be the
bearers of permanent values, not bound to the life span of indi-
vidual human beings.7

Wiese describes the "ideal prototype of the group" as

having the features:

1. Relative duration and relative continuity; 2. an or-

ganized character, which depends on the distribution of func-
tions among its parts; 3. conceptions concerning the group
among its members; 4. formation of traditions and customs in
case of longer duration; 5. interrelationships with other forma-
tions; 6. directive criterion [Richtmass] (especially in the case
of the more objective, larger groups).8

He places great value on the distinction between the group

and the collective. He also seeks to define the transitional
forms as such and to localize them within a conceptual schema:
 The Group 57
From the tradition and the common conceptions about the
nature of the group aside from the (usually rational) consider-
ations serving the aims of the group, a moral group spirit de-
velops, giving a special content to the collective forces of the
group, which are then to be comprehended ethically. With that
the abstract collective is already being prepared within the
group.9

The advantage of this definition for establishing a more

well founded nomenclature is obvious; but at the same time it
is equally obvious that neither that which is designated nor the
meaning of language requires that a formation of this kind be
called a group, and not simply people who happen to find
themselves together for a brief period—in a railway compart-
ment or a discussion—and on such an occasion begin to as-
sume a degree of integration. "Ephemeral" groups, however,
can be more important for society and its study, especially for
the human atmosphere, for popular opinion, and the cultural
level than permanent groups of the sort of a philanthropic soci-
ety.10
In order to avoid the difficulties indicated one has
frequently resorted to designating concrete forms of association
of the most varied kind by adding the word group. Thus one
speaks not only of ephemeral and enduring or constant groups,
but also of open and exclusive groups, organized and unor-
ganized groups, voluntary and compulsory groups, psycholog-
ical and institutional groups.11
The small group has attained special significance: associa-
tions of people, which are so small "that each person is able to
communicate with all the others, not at second hand, through
other people, but face-to-face/'12
In Germany Gumplowicz, following Herbert Spencer, for
the first time made groups of this sort the center of his inves-
tigation. He designated them as "the primal element of all
social evolution" and the "elementary factor of the natural
process of history."13

The child is inculcated with his first opinions by his first

 58 Aspects of Sociology
environment. The manner of behaving of the men and women
who care for him form his first moral concepts and views. And
then those first lessons which are taught him! Praise and blame,
reward and punishment, hopes that encourage him, fear and
terror to which he is subjected! All these are the components of
which his first views and his spirit are formed. Before one can
even realize it, the little "world citizen" stands there, a copy of
the spiritual constitution of his "family," the word employed in
the broadest sense in which the Romans used it. The form of his
childish spirit corresponds exactly to the many-sided mold into
which he has been poured, bears everywhere the imprint that
has been stamped upon him from all sides. Thus equipped the
young individual confronts the "world" in the form of a pack of
playmates and comrades, most of whom represent formations
produced by homogeneous models. On the whole their views
are the same as his. They have been inculcated with the same
admiration for certain classes of things and persons, toward
other things and persons they are filled involuntarily with the
same hatred and revulsion by which one is motivated oneself;
indeed even down to the sense of taste for food and drink they
all have received the same training and direction—so many
clockworks, which run as they have been adjusted and wound
up . . . all this lives within him as the thought, which the crowd
imagines to be thought by the individual in his freedom; all
this lives in his spirit as the feeling, which the crowd imagines
the individual feels rightly or wrongly, as his virtue or his
14
guilt

Similarly Cooley emphasizes the importance of small

human groups, the family, play groups, or groups of neighbors;
he has given formations of this sort a term which has become
popular, primary groups, because they are primary in time as
well as in their significance for the individual, in the develop-
ment of the personality and the preservation of social concep-
tions and ideals, when compared to the secondary groups,
among which Cooley includes such groupings as the state,
party, class, etc.
 The Group 59
By primary groups I mean those characterized by intimate
face-to-face association and cooperation.... These are prac-
tically universal, belonging to all times and all stages of develop-
ment; and are accordingly a chief basis of what is universal in
human nature and human ideals. . . . Such association is clearly
the nursery of human nature in the world about us, and there is
no apparent reason to suppose that the case has anywhere or at
any time been essentially different.15

Contemporary sociology pays quite special attention to

small groups. In so doing empirical investigation of existing or
experimentally assembled small groups is directed toward in-
sight into the socio-psychological mechanisms of mediation in-
ternal to these groups, in terms of the effects of which the
psychic dependency and uniformity of the members of existing
small groups are explained. On the other hand the interrela-
tions of such groups with their social environment, which to a
large degree determines the specific content of the views, atti-
tudes, norms, etc., which the group mediates, is almost wholly
neglected.16
The interest in such studies is primarily of a practical na-
ture: since the famous industrial sociological studies in the
Hawthorne works17 it has been known that the configuration
of relationships within small informal groups18 is important for
the teamwork and therefore the productivity of labor. At the
same time, however, the methodological moment also enters
into this, that one can subject small groups to preset experi-
mental conditions, and thereby approximate the precision of
the experiment in the physical sciences in such group studies.19
Nor has there been a lack of attempts to confine sociology
to the study of groups as its most important or even sole
domain of investigation. Thus Durkheim, in spite of his incli-
nation to consider the collective of greater importance than the
individual, still, in his antipathy for historical universalism,
placed his entire emphasis on the concrete particular associa-
tions, the groups, the social "types." Every total concept of the
evolution of mankind was excluded and the groups elevated to
 60 Aspects of Sociology
the subject matter of sociology as such, with explicit polemics
against the residues of the speculative philosophy of history in
Comte's positivism. Thus according to Durkheim, Comte's law
of the three stages of development is "a wholly subjective view.
For in reality this evolution of mankind does not exist at all.
Present and given for observation are only particular communi-
ties which originate independently of each other, evolve and
perish."20 Durkheim believes that by means of the concept
of social type the unfruitful divergence between historical
nominalism and a realism with respect to concepts can be
removed, of which he feels philosophy to be guilty of in its
relationship to concrete society.
In American sociology such a concentration on the study
of social groups has also repeatedly been envisioned. Thus
Bogardus writes: "Hence sociology may be defined as the study
of social groups in their function of developing and maturing of
personalities through the operation of the social process."21
Such conceptions of sociology exclude the concept of soci-
ety as empty and without function; for them social totality rep-
resents at most the summation of the ascertainable groups. So-
ciology is conceived of as a map in relation to the countries
represented on it; its structure is to depend solely on the
groups subsumed, while the question of the dependency of
these groups on the structure of society and its laws does not
arise. The investigation of the relation between individuals and
society, in which groups of the most diverse kinds fulfill a
mediating function, is reduced to the study of the interdepen-
dence of individuals and groups.
In this a decisive role is played by the "reality" that is ac-
corded to the groups, whether one recognizes real existence
solely for the individual and therefore regards groups merely as
the summation of individuals or whether one views groups as
having a reality prior and superior to the individuals. The
image of the group as an entity that in its meaning and genesis
is prior to and independent of its members has had a hold
especially on the romantic and organistically inclined
sociologists such as Gumplowicz and Ratzenhofer among the
older generation, as well as among many of the younger schol-
 The Croup 61
ars: Othmar Spann, Alfred Vierkandt, and Karl Dunkmann.22
In its purest form the doctrine of the group as an indepen-
dent entity [Eigenwesen] appears perhaps in Vierkandt:

Groups are entities of communal life which subsist beyond

the coming and going of the individual human beings. That
which subsists is their form, their order, their structure, but
also their will to live, their aims, tasks, and achievements. They
confront the human beings with a definite independence; they
shape these human beings and incorporate them into their
order.23

Vierkandt speaks of an "independent life" [Eigenleben]

in the groups; he believes

that similarly to human beings, the groups display a unified

and goal-directed behavior, processing incoming stimuli and
responding to them, and in the same way responding to the
demands which arise, developing tendencies, etc. In short, they
lead a unified life internally determined in the sense of an indi-
viduality.24

A group is asserted to be:

That form of human sociability . . . in which the social na-

ture of man finds its purest expression (and which accordingly
also survives all historical vicissitudes). They are distinguished
from all other forms of enduring sociable union by two
properties: first, an independent life of the whole, that means a
life relatively independent of the changes of individuals with
respect to the personal life of their members (e.g., the indepen-
dent life of the state with respect to the individual citizens), and
secondly, an inner unity, that means a unity which either is or
can be experienced as such by the members 25

While Vierkandt does not ascribe any higher validity than

a heuristic one to this concept of the group, such as that of
Max Weber's ideal type, still within the framework of this
 62 Aspects of Sociology
methodological reservation there is the undeniable tendency to
hypostatize the group:

The group is . . . an ultimate entity; and the concept of the

group is correspondingly a concept that is not further resol-
vable, i.e., it is a social category, and the conception of social re-
ality by means of such a category is an ultimate fact, not further
derivable, thus an archphenomenon [Urphaenomen] which is
founded in a corresponding disposition of man.28

Organistically inclined sociologists reserve the term

"group" for those collectives to which they attribute indepen-
dence from their members, in the sense of their doctrine, that
the whole is more than the sum of its parts. The validity of this
principle with respect to the domain of society need hardly be
contested insofar as the total life process takes its course above
the heads of the individuals, but also of course through these
heads—in which case, to be sure, the significance of the total-
ity has changed decisively compared to its original meaning in
the psychology of perception—at the same time one can hardly
ignore that such a realistic view of concepts potentially denies
the interaction of the general and the particular within society,
and that it also can be exploited for justifying the heter-
onomous subjection of the individuals to the state and to coop-
erative formations in the name of alleged laws of the
sociological essence. Such intentions were not wholly alien
even to the positivist Durkheim; he not only saw the origin of
ethics in the superior power of the collective over the individ-
ual, but he himself turned this toward the ethically normative.
At the same time his theory of the group was by no means sim-
ply universalistic—the allegation of a "mechanical reinterpre-
tation of the concept of totality in Durkheim" is not unjust.27
If during the twenties the discussion about the real exis-
tence of the group took place almost exclusively under the
aspect of the opposition between the "individualistic" and the
"universalistic" manner of conceiving28 the essence of the rela-
tionship between individual and group, since then—especially
under the influence of the more fully developed Gestalt psy-
 The Group 63
chology—the conception has gained ascendancy, that this
relationship is a functionally reciprocal one. This view is
represented above all by the theory of group dynamics,29 which
is so influential in the United States today.
The adherents of this view not only stress the "interac-
tion" between group and individual, but beyond that, that the
group itself as well as the basic character of the individuals
belonging to it is continually modified by the interaction of
these two moments. The great influence of Kurt Lewin, whose
original point of departure was Gestalt theory, is based
especially on this "field theory." The following statement may
be considered to represent his main thesis:

The whole is not "more" than the sum of its parts, but it
has different properties. The statement should be: "the whole is
different from the sum of its parts/' .. . Conceiving of a group
as a dynamic whole should include a definition of group which
is based on interdependence of the members (or better, the sub-
parts of the group). Frequently, for instance, a group is defined
as composed of a number of persons who show certain
similarities of attitudes. I think one should realize that such a
definition is fundamentally different from a definition of a group
based on interdependence of its members. It is very possible
that a number of persons have a certain similarity—for instance
of sex, of race, of economic position, or attitudes—without
being a group in the sense of being interdependent parts of a
social whole.... A group, on the other hand, does not need to
consist of members who show great similarity. As a matter of
fact, it holds for social groups, as for wholes in any field, that a
whole of a very high degree of unity may contain very dissimi-
lar parts.... The kind of interdependence (what holds the
group together) is equally important as a characteristic of the
group as the degree of their interdependence and their group
structure.30

Although the dynamic approach is supposed to be valid

for groups no matter what their size, as long as they meet the
conditions of a mutual dependency between their parts and of
 64 Aspects of Sociology
their parts on the whole, still in most works of this kind atten-
tion is focused on small groups: in such groups the interaction
can be more readily surveyed empirically. This criterion of sim-
plicity also plays a determining role in the works of Homans,
in which the interest in sociological comparison predominates.
The actions of the individuals within the group, their sen-
timents for each other and their dynamic "interactions," ac-
cording to Homans, develop in terms of two "systems": arr^x-
ternal system by which the relation of the group and its
members to the social environment is constituted (for example
in the case of the work group by their integration and subordi-
nation in the process of production, their relation to the
machine, to the mode of compensation, to their superiors, etc.)
and an internal system which develops aside from these [ex-
ternal relations] from the communal life of the group members
(the so-called informal relations within the work group, such
as friendships). On the interrelation of these two "systems"
Homans' sociology of the human group is based.31 He seeks to
reduce the interdependences within it to the simplest possible
basic formulae. Thus, among others, he formulates two hy-
potheses:

If interactions between members of a group are frequent in

the external system, sentiments of liking will grow up between
them, and these sentiments will lead in turn to further interac-
tion, over and above the interaction of the external system.32
. . . a decrease in the frequency of interaction between
members of a group and outsiders, accompanied by an increase
in the strength of the negative sentiment toward outsiders, will
increase the frequency of interaction and the strength of positive
sentiments among members of the group and vice versa.33

Homans points out, however, that these two hypotheses

have to be qualified if they are to do justice to the difference in
the cultural and social conditions under which the groups live.
Thus for instance, more frequent "interactions" would not
increase the sympathies of the group members for each other,
when authority of command is involved. Enforced contact can
 The Group 65
on the contrary produce antagonisms. The formal hypotheses
set up are subjected to correction by social concretization. Still
in Homans too the danger is clearly revealed of overem-
phasizing what groups, which are in truth very diverse, have in
common formally, and of neglecting the decisive differences
between them—for instance differences with respect to power.
If one really wants to do justice to the mediative character
of the social formation which is contained in the term group,
then one cannot proceed from a concept of group which is un-
equivocally fixed for all time.
The emphasis on the so-called small groups is justified by
their specific social-psychological function; the immediate con-
tact of the human beings belonging to such groups makes pos-
sible at the same time their identification with others and with
the group itself which they actually experience by their own
perceptions. In small groups the individual can experience him-
self in his particularity and yet at the same time as directly
linked to other individuals. Living perceptions of human beings
and their relation to each other are not only originally acquired
—during childhood—in groups of this type, but are also
confirmed during the life of the adults and at the same time de-
veloped further. For every kind of humanity the intimate close-
ness to human beings, and thus the belonging to groups which
make possible direct human contact, is a self-evident precondi-
tion.
If in groups of this kind human beings tend to experience
themselves as individuals, then the anonymity of the total soci-
ety is essentially concretized for them in groups of an entirely
different kind: those which are rationally goal directed and are
of a multiple heteronomous character. While in the case of
adults these are often more important for the reproduction of
life than intimate groups, the element of alienation always
remains palpable. One may assume that in such social phe-
nomena as chauvinism this feeling of being alien within a large
group is at work: the individual seeks to compensate by means
of an overidentification, by virtue of which he imagines that he
is gaining participation in the power and magnificence of the
huge collective. Belonging to groups of the nature of employees
 66 Aspects of Sociology
of a factory, a political party, an association furthering eco-
nomic interests, and similar formations provides [vermiitelt]
experiences which essentially contradict those of the relatively
great security within the small family group in early childhood.
Their functional character obtrudes; even apparent immediacy
is experienced as mediated. In functionally rational groups
adaptation is frequently compelled, without the individual
receiving emotionally as much in return as he gives. The bonds
of pure interest remain prescribed for everything and color
every feeling. Whether informal groups are formed spontane-
ously or by direction, their derived and secondary character is
always perceptible: the artificial and at the same time exagger-
ated character of company picnics is prototypical for this.
The relation of the individual to society itself underlies
these social dynamics. It varies historically, and frequently
structures are to be found side by side in the same epoch which
in their significance are "anachronistic" with respect to each
other. Even the insight into the modification of the relation be-
tween individual and society by the mediation of certain types
of groups becomes sterile, if sociology stops merely at the con-
templation of the uniformity or diversity of such types of
groups. Not that it can be denied that throughout history cer-
tain structures of what sociologists call "interpersonal rela-
tions" have maintained themselves. However, these invariants,
on which formal sociology insists, always have less the charac-
ter of sublime ordination rooted in man or in existence as such,
but instead they testify to the pressures and the lack of freedom
under which all that is human has suffered down to this day.
Not unjustly did Georg Simmel—not only a philosopher but
one of the most important sociologists of the previous genera-
tion—once marvel at how little one senses the suffering of hu-
manity in philosophical speculation. In any case, the so-called
invariants assume entirely different significance and function,
according to the historical constellation in which they appear.
They are distorted as soon as one isolates them from their con-
text and posits them as absolute. For example, what functions
the family fulfills and how it fulfills them, depends essentially
on the historical constellation in which it is placed. It is not a
 The Croup 67
primeval, eternal category, but a product of society. Thus, as
has been frequently observed—and will be treated in more de-
tail below—M the capacity of the modern family to develop au-
tonomous individuals has receded in comparison to the bour-
geois family, and the character of the experience which it
conveys has changed decisively. In the same way the history
and also the structure of the formations change, into which the
individual integrates himself through assimilation and individ-
ual renunciation. One must depart from the fact that with the
increasing tendency of the total society toward "socialization,"
toward planned incorporation from above, toward integration
into inordinately large economic and political organizational
forms, the weight of all that can be subsumed under Cooley's
concept of the primary group, of the natural association,
decreases. As socially mediative functions such as those of a
relatively independent sphere of trade and commerce are al-
together deprived of significance in the era of late industri-
alism, so too are those of the historically given, undirected, and
not rationally administered groups. It is immediately evident
that in the age of supremely complex transportation, to a large
extent emancipated even from the railway network, a village
community, for example, is no longer such a self-sufficient,
selfcontained group as it was in the by no means remote times,
when it could be largely decisive for a man's fate in which
village he was born. Mobility in itself acts against the indepen-
dent nature of the primary group, and certainly to a still
greater degree the structure of an economy in which every indi-
vidual tends to seek his job where he will be best off materially,
and where the administrations of the economic organizations
will make the dispositions on which essentially will depend in
what social interrelationships and what groups of people he
will find himselL-The resettlement and deportation of whole
populations and segments of populations, which can be ob-
served in all parts of the world and under the most various po-
litical systems, are the crassest symbol for this universal
change in the function of the group as a mediating organ: the
individual is seized upon directly, as an atom, by the great en-
tity.
 68 Aspects of Sociology

The countertendencies which assert themselves, moreover,

cannot be simply explained in terms of the powers of resistance
possessed by the old type of group. They are, for their part, es-
sentially reactive, conditioned by the tendency toward dissolu-
tion of the traditional groups. Many of the newly differentiated
groups can be called synthetic; they are themselves planned
from above, as cushions between the anonymous collectives
and the individual. Such types as company or factory associa-
tions belong to this type. Furthermore technology and trans-
port produce a multiplicity of new informal groups, from the
small work teams formed by the production process or modern
warfare down to the tourist groups in buses which are prolifer-
ating all over Europe. Finally, as a spontaneous, unconscious
and frequently destructive protest against the pressures and the
coldness of the mass society, new forms of small groups are"
formed frtom below. They promise collective cover, close
cohesiveness and schemata of identification for the individual.
As paradigms of this type of group we may point to the "juve-
nile gangs," which occur not only in America. All these group
formations take on their special significance only within the
total process of the progressive leveling of qualitative dif-
ferences between groups within modern society. As mediating
organs between the totality and the individual the groups are
determined all the more completely by the structure of contem-
porary society, the more ideology insists on the independent
existence of the group. To be sure, the group continues to exer-
cise its mediating function, and it would be difficult to conceive
society without this function; but this mediating function itself
today depends transparently on the social whole, on which it
probably has always depended secretly.

Notes

1. The theoretical conception of the group as a transitional form between

the individual and the total society can be found for the first time in
Simmel: "As within the social development the narrower, 'socialized'
group gains its counterpart, internal as well as historical, alternating as
well as simultaneous, by extending itself to become a larger group, and
 The Group 69
specializes itself to become a specific element of society—so from the
viewpoint ultimately attained from this perspective, society as such ap-
pears as a special form of aggregation, beyond which, subordinating the
contents and forms of viewing and valuing, stands the idea of humanity
and the idea of the individual" (Georg Simmel, Soziologie, 2nd ed.
Munich/Leipzig, 1922, p. 573). Similarly, for von VViese the groups are
"the mediators between the human being and the collectives" (Leopold
von VViese, System der Allgemeinen Soziologie. Munich/Leipzig, 1933, p.
454).
2. Franz Oppenheimer, System der Soziologie, vol. I (Der soziale Prozess).
Jena, 1923, p. 462.
3 . Theodor Geiger, Soziologie. Copenhagen, 1939, p. 76.
4. Robert M. Maclver and Charles H. Page, Society. New York, 1949, p.
14.
5. Emery Stephen Bogardus, Sociology. New York, 1950, p. 4.
6. See especially von VViese, op. cil., p. 385.
7. Op. cit., p. 386; see also p. 313. Similarly Hofstaetter places the group
between the masses and the bureaucracy as the extreme representative of
the two characteristics of the group "density of internal contact" and
"specialization of roles" (Peter R. Hofstaetter, Einfuehrung in die
Sozialpsychologie. Stuttgart/Vienna, 1954, p. 373).
8. Von VViese, op. cit., p. 449.
9. Op. cit., p. 450.
10. Von Wiese explicitly excludes these shortlived formations from his con-
cept of group (see op. cit., pp. 398, 451 ff.). More recent investigations
have shown that the integration of groups can take place within a very
short time; see for instance Muzafer Sherif, "A Preliminary Experimental
Study of Intergroup Relations" in Social Psychology at the Crossroads.
John H. Rohrer and Muzafer Sherif, eds. New York, 1951. This was
confirmed, on the basis of entirely different presuppositions, by the
group studies of the Institut fuer Sozialforschung. See Frankfurter Bei-
traege zur Soziologie, vol. 2, GruppenexperimentlEin Studienbericht,
bearbeitet von Friedrich Pollock. Frankfurt am Main, 1955, ch. 6, p. 429
ff.
11. See for instance W. F. Ogburn and M. F. Nimkoff, Sociology. Boston,
New York, 1946, p. 250.
12. George C. Homans, The Human Group. New York, 1950, p. 1.
13. Ludwig Gumplowicz, Ausgezvaehlte Werke, vol. 4 {Soziologie und
Politik). G. Salomon, ed. Innsbruck, 1928, p. 218.
14. Gumplowicz, Werke, vol. 2 (Grundriss der Soziologie). Innsbruck, 1926,
p. 173 ff. [The translation in Gumplowicz, Outlines of Sociology, Irving
Horowitz, ed. New York, 1963, p. 243 ff. is somewhat freer. Trans.]
15. C. H. Cooley, Social Organization. New York, 1909, p. 23 ff. quoted in
Ogburn and Nimkoff, op. cit., p. 256 ff.
16. A comprehensive presentation (with a social psychological orientation)
 70 Aspects of Sociology
of "small group research" can be found in Dorvin Cartwright and Alvin
Zander, eds., Group Dynamics, Research and Theory. New York and
Evanston, 111., 1953; and in Fred L. Strodbeck, 'The Case for the Study
of Small Groups," in the American Sociological Review, vol. 19, 1954, p.
651 ff. The quarterly Human Relations, published since 1947 by the
Research Center for Group Dynamics, Ann Arbor, Michigan, and the
Tavistock Institute of Human Relations, London, is devoted almost
exclusively to the publication of such group investigations and to related
methodological studies. Among the theoretical and empirical studies with
a predominantly sociological orientation dealing with small groups one
may mention the works of F. M. Trasher, The Gang. Chicago 1927; W.
F. Whyte, Street Corner Society. Chicago, 1943; Homans, op. cit. For the
continually growing attention given small groups as the subject of social
psychological and sociological study since the turn of the century the fol-
lowing remark of Strodbeck is clear testimony: that the production of
works on small groups has grown from one title per decade at the turn of
the century to three titles per week at present (see Strodbeck, op. cit., p.
651).
17. F. J. Roethlisberger and William J. Dickson, Management and the
Worker. Cambridge, Mass., 1939.
18. A survey of the most important American investigations of the work
group, their results and methods, is presented by Harts Stirn, Die infor-
melle Arbeitsgruppe. Dortmund, 1952; see also Stirn, "Die 'kleine
Gruppe' in der deutschen Soziologie," in Koelner Zeitschrift fuer
Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie, vol. 7,1954/55, p. 532 ff.
19. "Investigators have chosen to study small groups because they were in-
terested in social systems, but liked to be able to manipulate them on a
small scale." G. C. Homans and Henry W. Riecken, "Psychological
Aspects of Social Structure" in Handbook of Social Psychology. Gardner
Lindzey, ed. Reading, Mass. 1954, vol. II, p. 787. See also L. Festinger,
"Laboratory Experiments," in Research Methods in the Behavioral
Sciences. L. Festinger and D. Katz, eds. New York, 1953, p. 136 ff.
20. Translated from Emile Durkheim, Les regies de la methode sociologique.
11th edition, Paris, 1950, p. 20.
21. Bogardus, op. cit., p. 3.
22. A modern attempt to confirm the organic concept of the group em-
pirically by means of experimental investigation and factor analysis of
the "properties of groups" is contained in the work of R. B. Cattell,
"New Concepts for Measuring Leadership in Terms of Group Syntality,"
in Cartwright and Zander, op. cit.
23. Alfred Vierkandt, Kleine Gesellschaftslehre, Stuttgart, 1949, p. 6.
24. Op. cit., p. 51.
25. Vierkandt, his article "Gruppe" in Handwoerterbuch der Soziologie,
Vierkandt, ed. Stuttgart, 1931, p. 239.
26. Op. cit., p. 241. For the critique of this conception see especially Floyd
 The Group 71
Henry Allport: "When social students . . . attempt to define these organi-
zations as independent realities, that is, in terms other than the purposes
of individuals, they speak in a babble of tongues This group, how-
ever, as something over and above the individuals, is an object of pure
metaphysical speculation." Allport, Institutional Behavior. Chapel Hill,
1933, pp. 13, 96. See also Siegfried Landshut, Kritik der Soziologie.
Munich, 1929, p. 1 iff.
27. George Em. Marica, Emile Durkheim, Soziologie und Soziologismus.
Jena, 1932, p. 10.
28. See Geiger's article "Cesellschaft" in Handwoerterbuch der Soziologie.
Op. at., p. 207 ff.
29. See Cartwright and Zander, op. cit.
30. Kurt Lewin, Field Theory in Social Science. New York, 1951, p. 146 ff.
See also Lewin, Resolving Social Conflicts. New York, 1948.
31. Homans, op. cit., p. 81 ff.
32. Op. cit, p. 112.
33. Op. cit., p. 113.
34. See below, ch. IX, "The Family."
 V
Masses
In the discussion of the "group" concept of formal sociology,
reference was made to the somewhat surprising view1 that vis a
vis the individual the mass was the most immediate, as it were,
primary association of society, whereas commonly the mass is
thought of as a specifically urban modern phenomenon and is
linked to atomization. In the latter sense recently the concept
of the mass has been resorted to as the key to understanding
the contemporary world. Especially, due to the extensively read
book by Ortega y Gasset, the expression "the revolt of the
masses" has established itself for the totalitarian movements.
Theses, such as those of Ortega y Gasset owe their popularity
to the hostility toward the masses. In so doing one behaves
somewhat like those in the fictional anecdote which Alexander
Mitscherlich cites: "Political mass meeting: the stadium filled
to the last seat, a veritable carpet of people and faces in the as-
cending tiers; the orator going full steam. He says: 'The mass
culture is to blame for everything.' Tumultuous applause."2
In the face of the paradoxical function of the concept of
the mass, sociology can hardly evade the obligation to respond
to it and to discuss it. At the same time the contradiction con-
tained must be accounted for: that on the one hand masses
display those qualities of being welded together, of unreflecting
communion, which are emphasized in von Wiese's definition,
but on the other are, quite simply expressed, composed pre-
cisely of people who know each other not at all or only superfi-
cially. The large number itself, which is usually associated with
72
 Masses 73
the concept of the mass, seems to prevent those who form the
mass from feeling as close to each other as one would expect
from von Wiese's definition. For the rest, rarely does anyone
want to be part of the mass; the mass is always the others.
Toward the solution of questions of this sort, psychology
has an essential contribution to make. That cannot be sur-
prising. For the specific domain psychology deals with is irra-
tional modes of behavior. And everywhere where one deals
with the specific behavior of masses one encounters an irratio-
nal moment, from the panic in the theater to those alleged up-
risings of the people in which the followers enthusiastically
defend interests which are often in crass conflict with their
own reason and self-preservation.
The irrational moments of this mass type of behavior have
been described for a considerable time now, especially in the
Psychology of the Masses of Gustave Le Bon.3 But even in his
famous work, which marks the beginning of modern "mass
psychology/' the observed irrationality shows itself to be suf-
fused by the irrationality of the observer, and later testimony is
not entirely free of this either, especially when it is a condem-
nation of the masses. Le Bon sets himself the task of inves-
tigating the "mass psyche" in the manner of Comte, "like a
naturalist."4 He offers a kind of descriptive phenomenology of
the masses—"The crowd." What is striking is, first, the trans-
formation of man in the mass:

Whoever be the individuals that compose it, however like

or unlike be their mode of life, their occupations, their charac-
ter, or their intelligence, the fact that they have been trans-
formed into a crowd puts them in possession of a sort of collec-
tive mind which makes them feel, think, and act in a manner
quite different from that in which each individual of them
would feel, think, and act were he in a state of isolation.5

The occurrence of this "psychic unity of the masses" is

conditioned neither by the number of people of which the mass
is composed, nor by their spatial proximity with each other,
but by changes which take place within the subjects them-
 74 Aspects of Sociology
selves. In the mass the capacity for understanding is obscured,
men give their original instinctual drives free reign: "In the life
of the isolated individual it would be dangerous for him to gra-
tify these instincts, while his absorption in an irresponsible
crowd, in which in consequence he is assured of impunity,
gives him entire liberty to follow them."6
The individual regresses to an earlier stage of evolution:
he grows similar to a primitive man or a child. The masses are
easy to influence, but less through rational arguments than by
the prestige of the leader, whom they imitate. Only simple feel-
ings operate in them, feelings which measured by the modern
reality principle are "exaggerated." Essential to them is not
freedom, but subjection; basically therefore they are not revo-
lutionary, but reactionary, even where they follow revolu-
tionary slogans:

However, to believe in the predominance among crowds of

revolutionary instincts would be to entirely misconstrue their
psychology. It is merely the tendency to violence that deceives
us on this point. Their rebellious and destructive outbursts are
always very transitory. Crowds are too much governed by un-
conscious considerations, and too much subject in consequence
to secular hereditary influences not to be extremely conserva-
tive. Abandoned to themselves, they soon weary of disorders
and instinctively turn to servitude.... It is difficult ro under-
stand history, and popular revolutions in particular, if one does
not take sufficiently into account the profoundly conservative
instincts of crowds. They may be desirous, it is true, of chang-
ing the names of their institutions and to obtain these changes
they accomplish at times even violent revolutions, but the es-
sence of these institutions is too much the expression of the he-
reditary needs of the race for them not invariably to abide by it.
Their incessant mobility only exerts its influence on quite su-
perficial matters. In fact, they possess conservative instincts as
indestructible as those of all primitive beings. Their fetishlike
respect for all traditions is absolute, their unconscious horror of
all novelty capable of changing the essential conditions of their
existence is very deeply rooted.7
 Masses 75
According to Le Bon, within a crowd man takes on as his
chief characteristics:

. . . the disappearance of the conscious personality, the

predominance of the unconscious personality, the turning by
means of suggestion and contagion of feeling and ideas in an
identical direction, the tendency to immediately transform the
suggested ideas into acts; these, we see, are the principal charac-
teristics of the individual forming part of a crowd. He is no
longer himself, but has become an automaton who has ceased to
be guided by his will.8

After the experiences of the last decades one will have to

admit that the assertions of Le Bon have been confirmed to an
astonishing degree, at least superficially, even under the condi-
tions of modern technological civilization, in which one would
have expected to be dealing with more enlightened masses.
However, his attempt to explain mass phenomena remains in-
adequate. He hypostatizes something like a mass psyche as
such, having as its core the race psyche conceived as biologi-
cally invariant, the "heredity" of a people. The apparently sci-
entifically sober description of the masses in Le Bon and his
followers is shot through with a historical metaphysics having
political overtones of the restoration critique of the French
Revolution. In this spirit Le Bon consistently identifies "the
mass" with the modern proletariat and the socialist move-
ment.9 Even when he conceives and recognizes such an
achievement as the creation of language as a "formation of the
mass psyche/' 10 and even when on occasion he points to the
"moralization of the individual by the crowd,"11 the main
stress of his evaluation is negative throughout: according to
him the mass is in principle hostile to culture. The mass psyche
becomes the evil antagonist of the culture creating race psyche,
which however at the same time forms the unconscious core of
the mass psyche, without Le Bon showing any concern for this
contradiction. The appearance of the masses is alleged to
belong to the terminal phase in the life of peoples and cultures
and to prepare their downfall.
 76 Aspects of Sociology
History tells us that from the moment when the moral
forces on which a civilization has rested have lost their strength,
its final dissolution is brought about by those unconscious and
brutal crowds known, justifiably enough, as barbarians. Civili-
zations as yet have only been created and directed by a small in-
tellectual aristocracy, never by crowds. Crowds are only power-
ful for destruction. Their rule is always tantamount to a barbar-
ian phase. A civilization involves fixed rules, discipline, a pass-
ing from the instinctive to the rational state, a forethought for
the future, an elevated degree of culture—all of them conditions
that crowds, left to themselves, have invariably shown them-
selves incapable of realizing. In consequence of the purely de-
structive nature of their power, crowds act like those microbes
which hasten the dissolution of enfeebled or dead bodies. When
the structure of a civilization is rotten, it is always the masses
that bring about its downfall. It is at such a juncture that their
chief mission is plainly visible, and that for a while the philoso-
phy of numbers seems the only philosophy of history.12

This tendency, to which Le Bon owes much of his influ-

ence, compromises that which is true in his observations. The
conception of the essentially primitive nature of the masses and
their innate hostility to reason is transformed into a mass psy-
chology hostile to reason.13 All objections and rational ar-
guments

in practice lose all force, as will be admitted if the invin-

cible strength be remembered of ideas transformed into
dogmas. The dogma of the sovereignty of crowds is as little
defensible from the philosophical point of view, as the religious
dogmas of the Middle Ages, but it enjoys at present the same
absolute power they formerly enjoyed.... It were as wise to
oppose cyclones with discussion as the beliefs of crowds.14

This is not far from the sociological relativism of Pareto.

Mass psychology itself becomes a principle of faith for the
mass psychologist, who knows, to be sure, that "crowds are
somewhat like the sphinx of the ancient fable: it is necessary to
 Masses 77
arrive at a solution of the problems offered by their psychol-
ogy, or to resign ourselves to being devoured by them";15 at
the same time, however, he warns that one must be content
with "living from hand to mouth without too much concern for
the future we cannot control"16 and to hope "at any rate not to
be too much governed by them [the crowds] ."17
According to this schema, the mass psychologists
frequently paint the devil on the wall, in order to deliver them-
selves willingly into his snares. They ratify a declaration of im-
potence on the part of the individual in the face of the masses.
Thereby they depart from that line of intellectual history which
extends from Plato's Statesman through Bacon to Nietzsche, in
which, though the masses, the multitude, the people are ac-
cused of being the enemy of truth, still the individual is
credited with the power and the capacity to escape from the
collective idols. No longer is the rational individual confronted
by the masses, but the latter, as a negative collective entity, is
contrasted to a collective endowed with all that is positive.
Such mass psychological Dr. Jekylls and Mr. Hydes are the
race psyche and the class psyche (Le Bon), the organized and
the unorganized masses (McDougall), group and mass
(Geiger), masses and public (Allport and Lippman). Precisely
the mass psychology which postulates a priori the evil nature
of the masses and at the same time calls for the domination
which will keep them under control, becomes itself a means of
seduction. Thus Hitler's declamation about the masses and
how to influence them read like a cheap copy of Le Bon.18 Mass
psychological commonplaces disguise the demagogic manipula-
tion of the masses, which they serve.
In the end it was modern depth psychology which finally
purged the findings of Le Bon's mass psychology of their politi-
cal equivocation. Shortly after the First World War, in 1921,
Freud published his highly productive Group Psychology and
the Analysis of the Ego [translator's note: in the original
German title the derivation from Le Bon is clearer: Massen-
psychologie und Ich-Analyse] .19 It is not nearly as well known
as it deserves to be. 20 Freud asks how the individual, who by
himself behaves completely differently in so many ways than
 78 Aspects of Sociology
he does under the compulsion of the mass situation, gets into
this situation psychologically. For this he holds responsible the
conditions which permit the individual in the mass "to throw
off the repressions of his unconscious instincts."21 He com-
pares these conditions with those of the neurosis.22 He does not
stop at the explanation by means of suggestion, as all psychol-
ogists before him have done, but seeks to explain these in turn
in terms of their "libidinous source." Whenever one becomes
subject to suggestion, an unconscious transference of erotic
dependency that is blind to its original nature, results. Its
model is the identification with the father, which is transferred
to real or imaginary leaders. Freud also shows such identifica-
tion in what he calls "highly organized, lasting and artificial
groups [masses]": the church and the army. In these "a cer-
tain external force is employed, to prevent them from disin-
tegrating and to check alterations in their structure."23 This
compulsion is produced by the "illusion [Vorspiegelung]f,24o(
a supreme chief, or an authoritative idea, which is frequently
negative, and before which all are equal. By means of this
"each individual is bound by libidinous ties on the one hand to
the leader (Christ, the commander-in-chief) and on the other
hand to the other members in the group."25 The identification
has the effect of a striving "to mold a person's own ego after
the fashion of the one that has been taken as a 'model/ "26 At
the same time the own ego-ideal which has not been achieved
is projected into these leaders. The motor of these
psychodynamic processes is "sexual strivings inhibited in their
aim,"27 which cannot be satisfied directly. They frequently take
the form of a wish to become a member of a multitude. Masses,
accordingly, are "many equals who can identify themselves
with one another, and a single person, superior to them all .. .
a number of individuals who have substituted one and the
same object for their ego-ideal and have consequently iden-
tified themselves with one another in their ego."28 The mass
and the leader belong together. In this Freud goes back to his
theory of the primal horde. But the ego is not extinguished by
this psychological identification; the mass does not have the
capacity to absorb it totally.
 Masses 79
Each individual is a component part of numerous groups
[masses], he is bound by ties of identification in many direc-
tions, and had built up his ego ideal upon the most various
models. Each individual therefore has a share in numerous
group minds—those of his race, of his class, of his nationality,
etc.—and he can also raise himself above them to the extent of
having a scrap of independence and individuality.29

According to Freud, the mechanism of identification plays

a decisive part in socialization, culture, and civilization, which
he disdains to distinguish. The "sublimation of the sexual
drives"30 begins with identification; it produces "social feel-
ings." In this respect the mass is viewed positively by Freud.
He ascribes the "turning away from egotism toward altru-
ism"31 to it; language and morals are its products; it alone
makes intellectual creations possible. Freud leaves open the
question "how much the individual thinker or writer owes to
the stimulation of the group [masses] among whom he lives,
or whether he does more than the perfect mental work in
which the others have had a simultaneous share."32 What gen-
erally has been considered the destructive element of the mass,
Freud explains precisely as due to the cessation of the forming
of masses, of identification: with the sudden end of identifica-
tion the aggressive impulses are again set free.33
As far as the positive aspects of the masses and the forma-
tion of masses are concerned, Freud follows a tradition which
extends from Aristotle to Marx.34 But he by no means replaces
the "mass psyche" by another glorified substrate, which exists
and is active independently.35 He develops the genesis of the
inclination toward identification with the mass, and with that
of the mass psychological properties in terms of the individual
and his relation to the family. The mass phenomena do not
arise due to enigmatic qualities of the mass as such, but due to
psychological processes which take place within every individ-
ual who is part of the mass. The mass is not a primary but a
secondary phenomenon. Human beings do not become masses
due to their mere quantity but solely because of social condi-
tions. The identification with the leader or with symbols and
 80 Aspects of Sociology
with the horde of their fellowmen, bound in equal dependency,
is just as much part of these conditions as is the authoritarian
behavior of the leader and other father figures.
The sociological consequences of Freudian theory, which
takes the term "mass suggestion" much more seriously than is
the case elsewhere, are extensive. They concern the interrela-
tionship of the masses and their masters. Freud shows in spe-
cific detail through what complicated mechanisms the so-called
masochism of the masses, their readiness to subject themselves
to the stronger, their joy in being followers, their hatred
against alien groups arises. It is not the masses who produce
the horrors to which the world is subjected today, but all that
and all those who use them, by first making them into masses.
Le Bon has formulated this relationship in his w a y "Mastery
over the masses means mastery over the committee, i.e., the
directors."36 Tshakhotine, one of the proponents of reflex psy-
chology, has not unjustly called the leaders who prpduce the
masses and misuse them, "ingeniueurs d'ame":

It is indeed true that a mass can be carried away to the

point of paroxism, of explosion; it is true that they are capable
of unheard-of cowardice as well as heroism. But what is charac-
teristic is that they only act when they are led, when protago-
nists are present, who can direct their reactions, engineers of the
soul. . . . The masses become docile instruments in the hands of
usurpers, of dictators. On the one hand the dictators more or
less intuitively use their knowledge of psychological laws, while
on the other they have at their disposal the terrible technical
means which the modern state puts into their hands; they
cannot be moved by any moral scruples, and thus they exercise
an influence on the totality of individuals who constitute a peo-
ple which can only be called psychic rape. It is natural that from
time to time they must resort to tumultuous demonstrations in
which they exploit and release the forces which are inherent in
the masses.37

Today one speaks frequently of techniques of mass domi-

nation, and not without reason. But one must beware of the
 Masses 81
conception that mass demagogues are merely outsiders, who
gain domination over their peaceable and law-abiding fel-
lowmen accidentally or through manipulation by technical
means, as it were, highwaymen who hold up the stagecoach of
progress.38 They are never the drummers marching to their
own inner drumbeat, as they pretend to be, nor are they mere
mountebanks or psychopaths, who break through the barriers
of orderly society; rather they are exponents of social powers,
of strong interests, which assert themselves against the masses
with the aid of the masses. Success or failure of the dema-
gogues does not depend merely on the techniques of mass dom-
ination, but whether they are capable of integrating the masses
into the aims of the stronger powers.39 They always cultivate a
soil which has already been prepared. That is why there is no
absolutely reliable method for seducing the masses; these vary
with the latter's readiness to be seduced. One often hears that
the modern mass media, film, radio, or television, will guaran-
tee to anyone who has them at his disposal a mastery over the
masses by means of technical manipulation. But it is not these
means as such which constitute the social danger. Their con-
formism only reproduces and extends a preexisting readiness to
adopt the ideology which the mass media offer to the con-
sciousness and the unconsciousness of their victims. More
recent sociological investigations, which draw on depth
psychology for their analysis of the mass media have
emphasized the constellation of readiness [set], stimulus, and
response:40 "Though the demagogue plays on the psycho-
logical predispositions with psychological weapons, the pre-
dispositions themselves, and the aims at which he is striving,
are socially created/'41
The mass is produced socially—in its nature it is not
unchangeable; not a community fundamentally close to the in-
dividual, but only welded together by the rational exploitation
of irrational psychological factors, it confers on people the
illusion of closeness and communion. But precisely as such an
illusion, it presupposes the atomization, alienation, and impo-
tence of the individuals. The objective weakness of all people
—the psychoanalyst Nunberg has coined the term "ego
 82 Aspects of Sociology
weakness" for this 42 —also predisposes each to a subjective
weakness, a capitulation in the mass following. The identifica-
tion, whether with the collective or the overpowering figure of
the leader, grants to the individual a psychological substitute
for all that of which reality has deprived him.
That is why it is a delusion to reproach the allegedly
deluded masses or to oppose the fiction of their corrupting
dominance by the cultivation of the so-called personality,
which gives the lie to its own proper concept. But the individ-
ual may very well seek to clarify for himself what it is that at-
tracts him to the mass, and by means of this consciousness
resist the riptides that suck him into such mass behavior. To
this progressive sociological and socio-psychological knowl-
edge can make a considerable contribution. It can penetrate
through the predominant ideological illusions concerning the
unavoidable character of such mass existence, and help people
throw off the spell, which only possesses its demonic power
over them as long as they themselves believe in it.

Notes

1. See ch. IV "The Group," above.

2. Alexander Mitscherlich: "Massenpsychologie ohne Ressentiment," in Die
neue Rundschau, vol. 64,1953, p . 56.
3. Custave Le Bon, The Crowd, a Study of the Popular Mind, English
translation of Psychologie des joules. London, 1910. [Translator's note:
The passages from Le Bon cited here are also the passages cited in
Freud's work on mass psychology from the German translation of Le Bon
entitled Psychologie der Massen. Wherever the English version has
"crowds" or "crowd" the German is "Massen" or "Masse." However, as
these passages are quoted in the English translation of Freud's work, the
English translators have substituted the term "group": " 'Group' is used
throughout translation as equivalent to the rather more comprehensive
German 'Masse.' The author (Freud) uses this latter word to render both
McDougall's 'group' and also Le Bon's 'joule,' which would more natu-
rally be translated 'crowd' in English. For the sake of uniformity, how-
ever, 'group' has been preferred in this case as well and has been sub-
stituted for 'crowd' even in the extracts from the English translation of
Le Bon" (Freud, Group Psychology, p. 1, fn). I have however preferred
to retain the original terminology of the English translation of Le Bon.
Furthermore, as will be seen below, I have thought it best from time to
 Masses 83
time to remind the reader of the original German term used by Freud by
putting "mass" or "masses" in brackets behind the term "group" in the
passages cited from the English translation of Freud. This seemed indi-
cated in the context of this chapter's theme and also because of the spe-
cific ideological connotations which the words "mass" or "masses"
carry.]
4. Op. cit., p. 28.
5. Op. cit, pp. 29-30.
6. Op. cit, p. 64.
7. Op. cit, p. 62 ff.
8. Op. cit, p. 35 ff.
9. Op. cit, p. 14 ff. and passim. The equivalence of the masses and the pro-
letariat was retained by those who came after Le Bon; and except for
bourgeois sociologists such as Theodor Geiger {Die Masse und ihre Ak-
tioniein Beitrag zur Soziologie der Revolutionen, Stuttgart, 1926) it was
also retained in the Marxist discussions.
10. Le Bon, op. cit., p. 9.
11. Op. cit, p. 65 ff.
12. Op. cit, p. 18 ff.
13. Kurt Baschwitz especially pointed to this potential emphatically (DM und
die Masse, 2nd ed. Leiden, 1951) and at the same time analyzed the cur-
rent delusions of the mass psychologists. His critique culminated in the
postulate: "Mass psychology leads to self-knowledge of the individual
and not to the transcendence of the self."
14. Le Bon, op. cit., p. 210.
15. Op. cit., p. 116.
16. Op. cit., p. 233 fn.; see also 236 ff.
17. Op. cit, p. 21.
18. Adolf Hitler in Mein Kampf (complete and unabridged English transla-
tion, New York, 1939) gives an extensive compendium of his views on
influencing the masses, which shows better than anything else how
pseudoscientific mass psychology readily united with totalitarian rule: by
its contempt for mankind. "The great mass of the people is not composed
of diplomats or even teachers of political law, nor of purely reasonable
individuals who are able to pass judgment, but of human beings who are
as undecided as they are inclined toward doubt and uncertainty. . . . The
people, in an overwhelming majority, are so feminine in their nature and
attitude that their activities and thoughts are motivated less by sober
consideration than by feeling and sentiment" (p. 236 ff.). 'To whom has
propaganda to appeal? To the scientific intelligentsia or the less educated
masses? It has to appeal forever and only to the masses!" (p. 230). "All
propaganda has to be popular and has to adapt its intellectual level to the
perception of the least intelligent of those toward whom it intends to
direct itself. Therefore its spiritual level has to be screwed the lower, the
greater the mass of the people one wants to attract. But if the problem in-
 84 Aspects of Sociology
volved . . . is to include an entire people in its field of action, the caution
in avoiding too high intellectual assumptions cannot be too great" (p.
232 ff.). "Propaganda's task is, for instance, not to evaluate the various
rights, but far more to stress exclusively the one right that is to be
represented by it. It has not to search into the truth as far as this is favor-
able to others, in order to present it then to the masses with doctrinary
honesty, but it has rather to serve its own truth uninterruptedly" (p.
236). How Hitler then applied these conceptions practically a whole
series of modern investigations of his propaganda methods has shown,
especially the work of Walter Hagemann, for example his Der Mythos
der Masse. Heidelberg, 1951.
19. Sigmund Freud, Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego. James
Strachey, trans. New York [title of German original: Massenpsychologie
und Ich-Analyse—see footnote 3 above]. Freud points to the fact that Le
Bon conceives of the unconscious as only an element of the race psyche.
In Freud, to this "archaic heritage" the "repressed unconscious" is
added, which is still lacking in Le Bon.
20. Characteristic, for instance, is the statement of Othmar Spann, who
speaks of "a dilettantic foray of erroneous Freudian doctrine into sociolo-
gy." (Spann's article "Soziologie" in the Handwoerterbuch der Staats-
wissenschaften. Jena, 1926, vol. 7, p. 653.)
21. Freud, op. cit., p. 9 ff.
22. See op. cit., p. 12, especially fn. 1; however Freud rejects holding the
neurosis responsible for mass phenomena. On the contrary he maintains
that "neurosis should make its victim asocial and remove him from the
group [mass] formations" (p. 124). Nor can one speak, in Freud's sense,
of "communal neuroses" as Arthur Koestler recently did in attempting to
explain totalitarianism ("Politische Neurosen," in Monat, vol. 6,
1953/54, p. 227 ff.). Freud himself says clearly: "In the individual
neuroses, we take as our starting point the contrast that distinguishes the
patient from his environment, which is assumed to be 'normal.' For a
group [Masse, fn. 3 above] all of whose members are affected by one
and the same disorder, no such background could exist" (Civilization and
Its Discontents. James Strachey, trans. New York, 1961, p. 91).
23. Freud, Group Psychology, op. cit., p. 41 ff.
24. Op. cit, p. 42.
25. Op. cit., p. 44 ff.
26. Op. cit., p. 63.
27. Op. cit., p. 71.
28. Op. cit., p. 80.
29. Op. cit., p. 101.
30. Op. cit, p. 120.
31. Op. cit, p. 61.
32. Op. cit., p. 19. Hegel has called the great "world-historical individuals"
those who "conduct the business [Geschaeftsfuehrer] of the world spirit":
 Masses 85
"For that Spirit which has taken this fresh step in history is the inner-
most soul of all individuals; but in a state of unconsciousness which the
great men in question aroused [to consciousness—zum Bewusstsein
bringen]. Their fellows, therefore, follow these soul-leaders; for they feel
the irresistible power of their own inner Spirit thus embodied [ihnen
entgegentrit—which confronts them]." Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel,
The Philosophy of History. J. Sibtree, trans. Rev. ed. London/New York,
1900.
33. Here Freud's analysis of panic is important, as it can be viewed as a
paradigm for mass phenomena: "A hint to the same effect, that the es-
sence of a group [mass] lies in the libidinal ties existing in it, is also to
be found in the phenomenon of panic, which is best studied in military
groups. A panic arises if a group of that kind becomes disintegrated. Its
characteristics are that none of the orders given by superiors are any
longer listened to, and that each individual is only solicitous on his own
account, and without any consideration for the rest. The mutual ties have
ceased to exist, and a gigantic and senseless dread (Angst) is set free. At
this point, again, the objection will naturally be made that it is rather the
other way round; and that the dread has grown so great as to be able to
disregard all ties and all feelings of consideration for others.. .. But nev-
ertheless this rational method of explanation is here quite inadequate.
The very question that needs explanation is why the dread has become so
gigantic. The greatness of the danger cannot be responsible, for the same
army which now falls a victim to panic may previously have faced
equally great or even greater danger with complete success; and it is of
the very essence of panic that it bears no relation to the danger that
threatens, and often breaks out upon the most trivial occasions. If an in-
dividual in panic dread begins to be solicitous only on his own account,
he bears witness in so doing to the fact that the emotional ties, which
have hitherto made the danger seem small to him, have ceased to exist.
Now that he is by himself in facing the danger, he may surely think it
greater. The fact is therefore that the panic dread presupposes a relaxa-
tion of the libidinal structure of the group and reacts to it in a justifiable
manner, and the contrary view—that the libidinal ties of the group are
destroyed owing to the dread in the face of danger—can be refuted. . . .
It is impossible to doubt that panic means the disintegration of a group;
it involves the cessation of all feelings of consideration which the
members of the group otherwise show one another . .. the loss of the
leader in some sense or other, the birth of misgivings about him, brings
on the outbreak of panic, though the danger remains the same; the mu-
tual ties between the members of the group disappear, as a rule, at the
same time as the tie with their leader. The group vanishes in the dust,
like a Bologna flask when its top is broken off" Freud, Group Psychol-
ogy, op. cit., p. 45 ff.).
34. Against the tradition of hostility toward the masses the fact has been
 86 Aspects of Sociology
raised again and again, that culture and even sociation altogether were
the work of the many. This is already expressed in the well-known ar-
gument of Aristotle against Plato: "For the many, of whom each individ-
ual is but an ordinary person, when they meet together may very likely
be better than the few good, if regarded not individually but collectively,
just as a feast to which many contribute is better than a dinner provided
by a single purse. For each individual among the many has a share of
virtue and prudence, and when they meet together, they become in a
manner one man, who has many feet, and hands, and senses; that is a
figure of their mind and disposition." Politica, bk. Ill, ii, 1281B. Ben-
jamin Jowett, trans. In The Works of Aristotle. W. D. Ross, ed. Oxford,
1961, vol. X [in the German translation given by Adorno et al, the ren-
dering of the last clause is different: "so ist es auch mit den Sitten und
der Emsichf" = "and so it is also for morals and insight."—Translator].
With this Machiavelli, for instance, is also in agreement: "I arrive then at
a conclusion contrary to the common opinion, which asserts that the
populaces, when in power, are variable, fickle, and ungrateful; and affirm
that in them these faults are in no wise different from those to be found
in certain princes.. .. While in the matter of prudence and stability I
claim that the populace is more prudent, more stable, and of sounder
judgment than the prince.... Public opinion is remarkably accurate in
its prognostications, so much so that it seems as if the populace by some
hidden power discerned the evil and the good that was to befall it" (The
Discourses of Niccold Machiavelli. Leslie J. Walker, trans. London, 1950,
bk. I, 58, 5-6, p. 343. Marx, especially in his main work, in the chapter
on "Cooperation" has presented the collaboration of many people as the
precondition for production and culture and describes the "productive
power of masses": " . . . the sum total of the mechanical forces exerted by
isolated workmen differs from the social force that is developed when
many hands take part simultaneously in one and the same undivided
operation, such as raising a heavy weight, turning a winch, or removing
an obstacle. In such cases the effect of the combined labor could either
not be produced at all by isolated individual labor, or could only be
produced by a great expenditure of time, or on a very dwarfed scale. Not
only have we here an increase in the productive power of the individual,
by means of cooperation, but the creation of a new power, namely, the
collective power of masses." (Karl Marx, Capital Revised and amplified
according to the fourth German edition by Ernest Untermann. New
York, p. 357 ff.)
35. Hypotheses such as these have by no means disappeared in social psy-
chology, in spite of Freud's critique of hypostatizations such as Trotter's
herd instinct or the "Mass psyche" of Le Bon, and in spite of Freud's em-
phasis "that the social instinct may not be a primitive one and insuscep-
tible to dissection, and that it may be possible to discover the beginnings
 Masses 87

of its development in a narrower circle, such as that of the family"

(Freud, Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego, op. cit., p. 3).
Carl Gustav Jung, especially, has traced back mass phenomena to some
extent directly to the influence of "autonomous psychic powers/' the so-
called archetypes. And the hypothesis of the hereditary basis for such
alleged primal phenomena of the psychic can also be found once again in
his work: the archetypes are the "traces [Niederschlag] of all human ex-
perience back to the most obscure beginnings" (Seelenprobleme der
Gegenwart. Zurich, 1931, p. 173) what we have here are "inherited
pathways" (Das lch und das Unbewusste, 3rd ed. Zurich, 1938, p. 30);
they are inherited together with the structure of the brain; indeed they
are the psychic aspect of this structure" {Seelenprobleme der Gegenwart,
p. 179). According to Jung "the traces of all the overwhelming experi-
ences of all our forebears, rich in affects and images," have raised certain
archetypes, "in unconscious recognition of their tremendous psychic
powers to the supreme formulating and regulating principles of the
religious and even of the political life" (op. cit, p. 172). At the beginning
of the Third Reich Jung explained National Socialism in term of the ac-
tivation of a Wotan archetype: "If we may forget for a moment that we
are at present in the year of our Lord 1936 and according to this date
believe that we can explain the world in rational terms, insofar as our ex-
planation consists of the economic, the political, and the psychological
factor .. . then Wotan would probably not be at all ill-suited as a causal
hypothesis. I even dare to make the heretical assertion that old Wotan
with his unfathomable and eternally inexhaustible character explains
more about nationalism than all the aforementioned rational factors
together" (Aufsaetze zur Zeitgeschichte. Zurich, 1946, p. 10 ff.). "Wotan
has his distinctive biology, separate from the being of the human individ-
uals, who only at times are seized by the irresistible influence of this un-
conscious cause" (op. cit., p. 15). Cestalt psychology too at time draws
close to the hypothesis of a superpersonal entity to some extent con-
ceived as autonomous, which, to be sure, does not determine collective
processes, but still offers an analogic image suitable for their description.
Thus David Katz writes: "From the viewpoint of Gestalt psychology it
seems to me to be justified to speak of mass phenomena and group be-
havior 'as if we were dealing with the manifestations of a psychic mass
or group entity of such and such a kind" (Handbuch der Psychologie.
David Katz, ed. Basel, 1951, p. 335).
36. Le Bon, op. cit., p. 209 fn. [the English translation here reads: 'The
reign of crowds is the reign of committees, that is, of the leaders of
crowds."—Translator].
37. Serge Tchakhotine: Le viol de la joule par la propagande politique. Paris,
1938, cited in German by Paul Reiswald: Vom Geist der MassenlHand-
buch der Massenpsychologie. Zurich, 1948, pp. 107,104.
 88 Aspects of Sociology
38. This conception has been represented in investigations of the technical
manipulation of the masses. It is expressed especially clearly in Basch-
witz, op. cit., p. 188 f..
39. Max Horkheimer: "Egoismus und Freiheitsbewegung/' in Zeitschrift
fuer Sozialforschung, vol. V, 1936, p. 161 ff.
40. See Leo Lowenthal and Norbert Guterman: Prophets of Deceit—A Study
of the Techniques of the American Agitator, vol. 5 of the Studies in
Prejudice. New York, 1949.
41. Lowenthal and Guterman, op. cit., p. xi. [The quotation is from the pref-
ace by Max Horkheimer—translator.]
42. See Hermann Nunberg: Allgemeine Neurosenlehre auf psych oana-
lytischer Grundlage. Bern/Berlin, 1932.
 VI
Culture and Civilization
The tendency that polemidzes against the masses, which here
has been confronted with certain specific results of depth psy-
chology, belongs to a more general sociological context. Al-
though mass phenomena certainly are nothing new, still the
concept of the masses has been related essentially to modern
technological civilization. Rudiments of a negative evaluation
of the civilizing factor can, to be sure, already be discerned in
the Stoic philosophy of culture, especially in Poseidonios. Ac-
cording to him, material improvement, heightening the stan-
dard of life by means of the imitation of nature, represents a
moral decline. The original "Golden Age" degenerates. After a
prior ideal state, free of laws and force, laws and social institu-
tions become necessary. As early as Cicero the spheres of ex-
ternal technique and pure theoria separate, with the latter
being internalized and neutralized as the "cultura animi."1
This separation of the material and the moral domains may be
considered an early form of the conceptual dualism of culture
and civilization. "Culture" has always kept this coloration of
"spiritual culture."2
To be sure, in the face of this, "civilization" does not ini-
tially designate exclusively material culture, but the total
sphere of mankind, as for instance in Dante's De monarchia he
speaks of "humana civitas."3 Even his early work // convivio
contains the passage: 'The roots of imperial majesty lie, corre-
sponding to the truth, in the requirement of human civility,
which is ordained toward a goal, namely a happy life."4
89
 90 Aspects of Sociology
Compared to its ancient Latin meaning, the concept
"civilis" has been extended here. The former referred to the po-
litical in general as opposed to the military; now civility is to
belong to the human being and to serve his happiness.
The expression "civilization" in the modern sense became
current first in England. There in the eighteenth century it was
widely used, and was contrasted to the feudal and courtly cul-
ture. Thus for instance Boswell writes about Samuel Johnson:

On Monday, March 23, I found him busy, preparing a

fourth edition of his folio Dictionary. . . . He would not admit
civilization, but only civility. With great deference to him, I
thought civilization, from to civilize better in the sense opposed
to barbarity, than civility; as it is better to have a distinct word
for each sense, than one word with two senses, which civility is,
in his way of using it.5

In French "civilisation" is used first by Turgot; within the

German language domain the term receives its fullest meaning
in the nineteenth century. Since then modern civilization has
been linked, first, to the extraordinary growth in population
since the industrial revolution at the beginning of the nine-
teenth century and the changes connected with this; then, to
the dissolution of the traditional order of society by rationality
[ratio].* A condition now is said to prevail which is at the
same time excessively organized and chaotically disjointed.
Great multitudes of human beings exist in an atomized
manner, devoid of inner coherence, superficial and soulless,
each only concerned for his own advantage and at the same
time obscurely conscious of the power of the crowd, all this in
the sense of Spengler's "type of the modern cave dweller."7
The negative construction of the civilizing tendency is
contrasted to culture, somewhat similarly to one's experience
as a child of the difference between a street of tenements
disfigured by advertising signs and an unspoiled medieval
town. Hastily contemporary evils are traced back, as it were,
aesthetically, to these more or less vaguely conceived phenom-
ena of civilization—with the greatest popular impact, more
 Culture and Civilization 91
than thirty years ago, in the work of Spengler, in which the
"late period of great cultures" hastening toward dissolution is
depicted as the period of unavoidable decline and fall, with the
extensive utilization of analogies between the phenomena of
the Late Roman Empire and those of the nineteenth and twen-
tieth centuries.
The hostility toward civilization today is almost always
combined with historical pessimism of this kind. In this public
consciousness has changed, to a not unappreciable extent.
Only sixty years ago, when attacks against civilization were al-
ready everyday occurrences, it was still mainly considered to
be an early rather than a terminal phase. Such a popular source
as Meyers' Konversationslexikon [German Dictionary] of
1897 says: "Civilization is a stage through which a barbaric
people must pass in order to arrive at culture and industry, art,
science, and morality." From this we can see how greatly
emphasized values depend on social concepts reflecting the
social situation in which the judgment is being rendered.
To civilization one usually opposes culture as human
cohabitation replete with meaning and form.8 This antithesis
goes back to a time which itself is still subsumed under the
conventional cliche of culture, to the Rococo, whose chateaus
were invoked by later Romantic longings in radiant contrast to
the world of tenements, autos, and electrical street lighting.
Since Jean-Jacques Rousseau set up nature as the critical crite-
rion not only against injustice, but also against the allegedly
growing artificiality of life under French absolutism, against
that senseless wholly externalized existence,9 the consciousness
of this opposition has become general. But what may be
surprising is that one also encounters this weariness with civi-
lization in Kant, who was anything but irrationalistic, and yet
was aware of his deep indebtedness to Rousseau. Thus in the
"Ideas for a Universal History with the Aim of World-
citizenship" he says:

We are highly cultivated by art and science, we are civilized

in all kinds of social graces and decency to the point where it
becomes exasperating, but much is still lacking before we can
 92 Aspects of Sociology
consider ourselves as truly conforming to morality
[moralisiert]. For the idea of morality is still part of culture;
however, the use which has been made of this idea, which only
amounts to what resembles morals in the love of honor and ex-
ternal decency, constitutes merely civilization.10

That sounds Rousseauean, but also quite harmlessly

classificatory. However, the apparently sober and pedantic
formulations of Kant contain, as they so frequently do, more
social truth than the later denunciations of civilization11 which
have become so popular. The most extreme of these may very
well be the Porta Nigra poem from Stefan George's Siebente
Ring, where a Roman catamite, resurrected in modern Trier,
sets himself up as judge over the Modern period. By means of
the linguistic form, that of coordination, Kant posits the con-
cepts culture and civilization neither in mere chronological suc-
cession nor in simple irreconcilability, but characterizes them
as elements of a progressive sociation, elements which though
they are contradictory, still belong together. He knows that
one cannot have the one without the other; that the inner un-
folding of man and his construction of the external world
depend upon each other, and that it would be illusory to seek
to establish an inner kingdom, that does not at the same time
authenticate itself in the shaping of reality.12 Nor was this the
case for those formations of the past which are subsumed
under the title of "culture"; it is only too seductive to consider
everything which is not directly related to the activity to
procure subsistence as culture—and today even the nineteenth
century, which for a long time was defamed as civilization is
regarded in this manner. However, all cultural epochs have
become such not solely as the expression of the pure inner
human essence, but by going through the real life process of
society: Christian, Roman, and Greek culture too had its
highly civilatory side. Only that consciousness which despairs
of creating a human world out of freedom and consciousness
and which therefore describes this world in terms of the anal-
ogy to vegetative growth and decay—as Spengler does—
will arrive at the point of sharply separating culture, as the ere-
 Culture and Civilization 93
ation of the spiritual, from the externality of civilization, of set-
ting up culture against the latter and rendering it absolute.
And often enough in so doing it opens the gate to the true
enemy, barbarism. Whoever glorifies culture at the expense of
civilization today is more concerned with setting up cultural
preserves than with humanity. The rooftops of the old cities
debased to museum displays or the Baroque houses restored for
the sake of the tourist trade fit only all too well into the "group
tour" business, and thus as a whole into that civilization which
they want to denounce.
When confronted with all this one feels a sense of libera-
tion when a contemporary thinker, who can be accused neither
of a facile optimism with respect to progress nor of super-
ficiality, opposes the separation of the two concepts. In one of
Freud's late works one finds the statement:

Human civilization [Kultur], by which I mean all those

respects in which human life has raised itself above its animal
status and differs from the life of beasts—and I scorn to distin-
guish between civilization and culture—presents, as we know,
two aspects to the observer. It includes on the one hand all the
knowledge and capacity that men have acquired in order to con-
trol the forces of nature and extract its wealth for the satisfaction
of human needs, and, on the other, all the regulations necessary
in order to adjust the relations of men to one another and
especially the distribution of the available wealth. The two
trends of civilization are not independent of each other: firstly,
because the mutual relations of men are profoundly influenced
by the amount of instinctual satisfaction which the existing
wealth makes possible; secondly, because an individual man can
himself come to function as wealth in relation to another one,
insofar as the other person makes use of his capacity for work,
or chooses him as a sexual object; and thirdly, moreover,
because every individual is virtually an enemy of civilization,
though civilization is supposed to be an object of universal
human interest.14

Now it cannot be denied that the two concepts which the

 94 Aspects of Sociology
Enlightenment from Kant to Freud has so emphatically linked
do in fact continually tend to draw further apart; though, to be
sure, it is not proper to invoke culture against civilization. The
gesture of invocation itself, the exalting of culture at the ex-
pense of mass society, the devoted consumption of cultural val-
ues as a confirmation of one's elevated internal spiritual equip-
ment, these are inseparable from the decadent character of the
civilization. The invocation of culture is powerless.15 But no
more can it be denied that the enterprise in the direction of civ-
ilization, the culture of pure, and often superfluous means, has
today made itself independent to an intolerable degree, and
that human beings now have hardly any power over it, but in-
stead have become functionaries of its apparatus or compulsive
consumers of all that it spits out.16 But one's conceptions
cannot remain content merely with that observation. Those
aspects of civilization under which we suffer today were al-
ready inherent in the highly praised cultures themselves. Who-
ever does not wish to deny all happiness, must also consider
carefully, whether the lot of the slaves who created the master-
pieces of the highly praised ancient Egyptian culture, or even
that of the medieval masses without whose miserable existence
the Gothic cathedrals could not have been built, was not really
much worse than the lot of the victims of the movies or of TV,
though that certainly is no reason to glorify the latter.
The chaotic and frightening aspect of the contemporary
technological civilization has its origin neither in the concept
of civilization nor in technology as such, but rather in the fact
that technology has assumed a specific structure and position
in modern society, which stands in a highly disrupted rela-
tionship to the needs of human beings. It is not the rational-
ization of the world which is to blame for the evil, but the irra-
tionality of this rationalization. The commodities which evoke
the revulsion toward the civilizing aspects are either means of
destruction or are thrown up by an overproduction which en-
snares human beings through the apparatus of advertising, an
apparatus just as useless as it is refined. With an automobile
one can escape from all sorts of abominations—Karl Kraus said
he used his car in order to be able to hear a nightingale once in
 Culture and Civilization 95
a while. But the monstrous chariots which periodically change
their color, simply because that is obligatory, have something
malevolent about them. The economic insanity, which is inter-
woven into the technology, is what threatens the spirit and
today even the material survival of mankind, and not tech-
nological progress itself. To be sure, in the meantime human
beings are bracketed to such a degree within the process of
commodity production and shaped by this process, that to
some extent it becomes difficult to separate technological
progress, not from civilization, to be sure, but from the increas-
ing stupefaction. Technology has not only taken bodily posses-
sion of the human being, but also spiritual possession; there is
also a technological veil, just as one occasionally speaks of the
"veil of money" in economic theory. The dream of civilized
men today is just as little that of a world which has been saved
as it is that of a Land of Cockaigne where roast partridges fly
into everyone's mouth; rather it is the dream of stepping up to
the next better model of automobile or the next better
"gadget." But against such an insanely inverted order of ends,
which no one can wholly escape, a return to culture which is
wholly chimerical is of no help; only the effort to drive civiliza-
tion further until it transcends itself offers a way out. Once civ-
ilization has spread and liberated itself to such an extent that
there is no more hunger on this earth, then that which culture
has promised in vain, down to this day, will be fulfilled by civi-
lization.

Notes
1. Cicero, Tuscalanae Disputationes, II, 13. For the Stoic philosophy of cul-
ture see op. cit, I, 62 ff., and Seneca, Ad Lucilium Epistolarum Moralium
quae Supersunt, Epist. 90.
2. See, for instance, Johann Gottfried von Herder, Ideen zur Philosophie
der Ceschichte der Menschheit, Bk. 15, III, 2-3: 'The course which we
have taken up to this point, in considering several peoples, has shown
how different, according to the time, place, and circumstances, was the
goal toward which they directed their endeavors. In the case of the
Chinese it was a refined political morality; in the case of the Indie people
a withdrawn purity, quiet industriousness, and patient forebearance; in
the case of the Phoenicians the spirit of navigation and commercial in-
 96 Aspects of Sociology
dustry. The culture of the Greeks, especially of the Athenians, aimed at a
maximum of sensuous beauty, in art as well as in morals, in the sciences,
and in their political institutions. In Sparta and Rome they strove for the
virtue of devotion to country and a heroic patriotism; but each in a very
different manner.. . . But in all of these we see one principle at work,
namely a human reason [Menschenvernunft] which strives to produce
from the many the one, from disorder order, from a multiplicity of forces
and purposes a whole endowed with harmony and an enduring beauty"
[A slightly different translation of this passage will be found in Johann
Gottfried von Herder, Reflections on the Philosophy of the History of
Mankind, abridged and with an introduction by Frank E. Manuel,
Chicago and London, 1968, p. 99. Professor Manuel uses the translation
made by T. O. Churchill, originally published in London in 1800.—
Translator].
3. Cited in J. Huizinga: "Geschaendete Welt," in Schriften zur Zeitkritik.
Zurich/Brussels, 1948, p. 161.
4. Translated from a quotation in Huizinga, op. cit., p. 161.
5. James Boswell, The Life of Samuel Johnson. George Birkbeck Hill, ed.
Oxford-New York, 1887, vol II, p. 155.
6. Especially in Ortega y Gasset, The Revolt of the Masses.
7. "The Culture-man whom the land has spiritually formed is seized and
possessed by his own creation, the City, and is made into its creature, its
executive organ, and finally its victim. This stony mass is the absolute
city. Its image, as it appears with all its grandiose beauty in the light-
world of the human eye, contains the whole noble death-symbolism of
the definitive thing-become. The spirit-pervaded stone of Gothic build-
ings, after a millennium of style-evolution, has become the soulless mate-
rial of this demonic stone-desert. These final cities are wholly intellect.
Their houses are no longer, as those of the Ionic and Baroque were,
derivatives of the old peasant's house, whence the Culture took its spring
into history. They are, generally speaking, no longer houses in which
Vesta and Janus, Lares and Penates, have any sort of footing, but mere
premises which have been fashioned, not by blood but by requirements,
not by feeling but by the spirit of commercial enterprise. So long as the
hearth has a pious meaning as the actual and genuine center of a family,
the old relation to the land is not wholly extinct. But when that too
follows the rest into oblivion, and the mass of tenants and bed-occupiers
in the sea of houses leads a vagrant existence from shelter to shelter to
shelter like the hunters and pastors of the 'pre-' time, then the intellec-
tual nomad is completely developed." (Oswald Spengler, The Decline of
the West. Charles Francis Atkinson, trans. New York, 1929, vol II, p. 99
ff.) "Consequently we find everywhere in these civilizations that the
provincial cities at an early stage, and the giant cities in turn at the end
of the evolution, stand empty, harboring in their stone masses a small
population of fellaheen who shelter in them as the men of the Stone Age
 Culture and Civilization 97
sheltered in caves and pile-dwellings" (op. cit, p. 107). Similarly, in the
Russian philosophy of culture of the nineteenth century, culture is iden-
tified with the countryside and civilization with the city, probably
influenced by German Romanticism, especially Adam Mueller. In Marx
too the Fall of Man is initiated by the transition from the land to the city.
The Oriental commune of Slavic agrarian institutions (that is, the
Haxthausian Mir) is the archetypal image of a "community" toward
which one must work for Marx, in which man lives as "the master of the
conditions of his reality." (See Karl Marx, Grundrisse der Kritik der
politischen Oekonomie, Berlin, 1953, p. 375.)
8. The invective antithesis of culture as ethically meaningful cohabitation,
and civilization as its hedonistic trivialization can be found in poetry
from the most ancient times on; see, for example, the Sixth Satire of
Juvenal, in which this antithesis appears as one of the past to the
present: "In days of old, the wives of Latium were kept chaste by their
humble fortunes. It was toil and brief slumbers that kept vice from
polluting their modest homes; hands chafed and hardened by Tuscan
fleeces, Hannibal nearing the city, and husbands standing to arms at the
Colline tower. We are now suffering the calamities of long peace. Luxury,
more deadly than any foe, has laid her hand upon us, and avenges a
conquered world. Since the day when Roman poverty perished, no deed
of crime or lust has been wanting to us; from that moment Sybaris and
Rhodes and Miletus have poured in upon our hills, with the begarlanded
and drunken and unabashed Tarentum. Filthy lucre first brought in
amongst us foreign ways; wealth ennervated and corrupted the ages with
foul indulgences" Quvenal, Satire VI, 287-300. G. G. Ramsey, trans.
Loeb Library, London-Cambridge, Mass., 1950, p. 107).
9. In Rousseau it is above all the falseness of the civilizing aspect that is at-
tacked, the surface gloss: "The mind has its needs as does the body. The
needs of the body are the foundations of society, those of the mind make
it pleasant. While government and laws provide for the safety and well-
being of assembled men, the sciences, letters, and arts, less despotic and
perhaps more powerful, spread garlands of flowers over the iron chains
with which men are burdened, stifle in them the sense of that original
liberty for which they seem to have been born, make them love their
slavery, and turn them into what is called civilized peoples. Need raised
thrones; science and the arts have strengthened them. Earthly powers,
love talents and protect those who cultivate them! Civilized People, cul-
tivate talents: happy slaves, you owe to them that delicate and refined
taste on which you pride yourselves; that softness of character and that
urbanity of customs which make relations among you so amiable and
easy; in a word, the semblance of all the virtues without the possession,
of any." Jean-Jacques Rousseau, "Discourse which Won the Prize of the
Academy of Dijon (First Discourse)," in First and Second Discourses.
Roger D. Masters, ed. New York, 1964, p. 36. "Before art had moulded
 98 Aspects of Sociology
our manners and taught our passions to speak an affected language, our
customs were rustic but natural.... Human nature, basically, was no
better, but men found their security in the ease of seeing through each
other, and that advantage, which we no longer appreciate, spared them
many vices. Today, when subtler researches and a more refined taste
have reduced the art of pleasing to set rules, a base and deceptive uni-
formity prevails in our customs Incessantly, politeness requires, pro-
priety demands; incessantly usage is followed, never one's own inclina-
tions. One no longer dares to appear as he is Therefore one will
never know well those with whom he deals, for to know one's friend
thoroughly, it would be necessary to wait for emergencies—that is, to
wait until it is too late, as it is for these very emergencies that it would
have been essential to know him" (op. cit., p. 37 ff.). Underlying these
famous invectives is the consciousness of the contradiction between the
humane forms and the inhuman content of late absolutism; these sen-
timents are by no means solely "reactionary" and anti-intellectual, but
express only that culture has not been realized yet in truth. But from
there it is not far to the crudest denunciation of consciousness itself: "If
nature destined us to be healthy, I almost dare affirm that the state of
reflection is a state contrary to nature and that the man who meditates is
a depraved animal." Rousseau, "Discourse on the Origin and Founda-
tions of Inequality among Men" (Second Discourse), op. cit., p.
110—'The taste for arts and sciences arises in a people from an inner
vice, which grows with that taste, and if it is true that all human progress
is corrupting, so that of the mind and of knowledge, which increase our
pride and multiply our confusion, soon increase our repulsiveness. How-
ever, there comes a moment when it is precisely those causes which have
brought it forth, that become necessary for preventing its further
increase." Rousseau, letter to Voltaire, 10 September 1755 (in Oeuvres
Completes, vol. XIV. Paris, 1834, p. 161). But in this statement Rousseau
has of course achieved a dialectical notion of history.
10. Immanuel Kant, Idea for a Universal History with Cosmopolitan Intent
is the translation of the title in The Philosophy of Kant, Carl J. Friedrich,
ed. New York, 1949 [Friedrich also translated Kant's essay for this
collection, but his translation, p. 116 ff., does not adequately render the
meaning of the original as quoted by Adorno et al. I have therefore given
my own translation here.—Translator].
11. Two statements which testify to the more recent hostility to civilization,
may suffice here. They are not only separated by many years in time, but
were made by authors of quite opposing attitudes: the first is from the
late writings of the folk-nationalistic Richard Wagner, the other by the
Socialist Ferdinand Toennies: "We have not, therefore, to turn to the
consideration of Climatic Nature, but of Man, the only creator of Art, in
order to discover what has made this modern European man art-impo-
tent. Then we shall perceive with full distinctness that this evil influence
 Culture and Civilization 99
is none other than our present Civilization, with its complete indifference
to Climate. It is not our climatic atmosphere that has reduced the proud
warriors of the North, who shattered once the Roman world, to servile,
crass, weak-nerved, dim-eyed, deformed, and slovenly cripples;—not it,
that has turned the blithesome, action-lusting, dauntless sons of heroes,
whom we cannot conceive aright, into our hypochondriacal, cowardly,
and cringing citizens;—not it, that has brought forth from the hale and
hearty Teutons our scrofulous linen-weavers, weaved themselves from
skin and bones; from the Siegfried of olden days a "Gottlieb"; from
spear-throwers our logic-choppers [Tuetendreher—parcel wrappers] our
counsellors and sermon-spinners. No, the glory of this splendid work
belongs to our Pandect-civilization, with all its fine results; among
which, besides our industry, our worthless, heart-and-soul-confounding
art fills out its seat of honor. For the whole must be set down to this civi-
lization, in its entire variance with our nature, and not to any Nature-
born necessity" (Richard Wagner, "Art and Climate," in Richard
Wagner's Prose Works. William Ashton Ellis, trans. London, 1895, vol.
I, p. 259). "We understand a way of communal life and a social state,
where the individuals remain set against each other and in the same
isolation and disguised hostility, so that they refrain from attacks upon
each other solely from fear or prudence and where thus the actually
peaceful and friendly relations and interactions must be considered to
rest on the basis of a state of war. This is, as it has been defined in its
concept, the state of social civilization in which peace and commerce are
preserved by means of convention, and the mutual fear which is
expressed in this convention, a condition which the state, developed by
legislation and politics, protects; which science and public opinion in
part seek to understand as necessary and eternal, in part glorify as
progress toward perfection. But on the contrary, the communal ways of
life and order are those, in which the character and nature of the people
[Volkstum] and their culture are preserved; and to which therefore stat-
ism [Staatstum] (under which concept the social condition may be sub-
sumed) is opposed with a hatred, which, to be sure is often hidden and
still more often hypocritical, and with a feeling of contempt. (Ferdinand
Toennies, Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft. Leipzig, 1887, p. 279 ff. En-
glish: Ferdinand Toennies, Community and Association. Charles P.
Loomis, trans. London, 1955, p. 262 ff.) For the division of the social
world into culture and civilization, in keeping with a schema of thought
that rigidly incorporated a duality of values, Ruestow has originated the
striking designation "Conceptions of superintegration due to the fear of
atomization" (Alexander Ruestow, Ortsbestimmungen der Gegenwart,
vol. II. Erlenbach-Zurich, 1952, p. 446). This schema is especially pro-
nounced in the philosophy and sociology of Max Scheler (see especially
Vom Ewigen im Menschen 4th ed. Bern, 1954, pp. 336, 421; Vom Um-
sturz der Werte, 4th ed. Bern, 1955, pp. 144,186, and passim).
 100 Aspects of Sociology
12. Schiller has stated this explicitly: " . . . the more facets his Receptivity de-
velops, the more labile it is, and the more surface it presents to the phe-
nomena, so much more world does man apprehend, and all the more po-
tentialities does he develop in himself. The more power and depth the
personality achieves, and the more freedom reason attains, so much more
world does man comprehend and all the more form does he create out-
side of himself. His education [Kultuc] therefore consists, firstly, in
procuring for the receptive faculty the most manifold contacts with the
world, and within the purview of feeling, intensifying passivity to the ut-
most; secondly, in securing for the determining faculty the highest
degree of independence from the receptive, and within the purviews of
reason, intensifying activity to the utmost. Where both these aptitudes
are conjoined, man will combine the greatest fullness of existence with
the highest autonomy and freedom, and instead of losing himself in the
world, will rather draw the latter into himself in all its infinitude of phe-
nomena, and subject it to the unity of his reason" (Friedrich Schiller, On
the Aesthetic Education of Man. Ed. and trans, by Elizabeth M. W.
Wilkinson and L. A. Willoughby. Oxford, 1967, p. 87). Fichte too was
aware of these relationships: "... to be sure, it is true that the more man
draws near to his highest aims, the easier it must become for him to sat-
isfy his sensual needs; that it will require continually less effort and care
to live his life in this world; that the fruitfulness of the earth will
increase, the climate become ever milder, an innumerable quantity of
new discoveries and inventions made to multiply the means of his subsis-
tence and make it easier." (Johann Gottlieb Fichte, "Die Bestimmung des
Gelehrten" [The calling of the scholar!, in Saemtliche Werke. J. H.
Fichte, ed. Berlin, 1845, vol. 5, p. 342). Similarly Comte: "... The
progress of mankind, whether political or moral or intellectual, is neces-
sarily inseparable from their material progress" (Auguste Comte, Cours
de philosophie positive—edition identical to the first edition, Paris, 1908,
vol. 4, p. 266).
13. See Spengler, op tit., vol. I.
14. Sigmund Freud, The Future of an Illusion. W. D. Robinson-Scott, trans.
New York, 1964 (paperback), p. 2.
15. See Max Horkheimer, ed. Studien ueber Autoritaet und Familie. Paris,
1936, p. 3 ff.
16. "In our knowledge and in the practical civilization the same picture
presents itself: humanity appears to entangle itself in ever more complex
contacts with nature and with itself and ever more deeply in a cosmos of
instrumentalities which it is increasingly less capable of controlling and
directing toward spiritual ends—which dominate ever more profoundly
mankind itself and its life. Increasingly the work becomes the master of
man. But for the whole of mankind as a species this tendency is the same
as that which we would call aging and dying in the individual organism"
(Scheler, Vom Ewigenim Menschen, op. cit., p. 239).
 VII
Sociology of Art and Music
Thought critical of the prevailing spirit and the knowledge of
the real social relationships, these are mutually interpene-
trating. What is called "Sociology of Culture"—a term which
does not exactly arouse confidence—is not exhausted by the
social relations that concern the effect of a work of art, but
must deal, above all, with the social significance of these
works, and also with the significance of those commodities
which to a great extent have replaced the autonomous works of
art today, and are therefore by no means of slight importance.
The task then would be to decipher art as the medium in which
the unconscious historiography of society is recorded.
For a long time the sociology of art was pursued in a
somewhat primitive manner and confined itself to analyzing,
say, the social origins of the individual artists, their political
and social views, or the material content of their works. This
crude procedure is still employed today, above all in the states
of the Soviet bloc, where it is used for the suppression of all
free artistic impulses. This misses what is essential in a work of
art, what makes it into such a work: the shaping of the work
[Gestaltung], the tension between its content and its form. It
is only recently that the form and mode of representation of
works of art have been incorporated to a greater degree; this
was impossible for a cultural history as yet remote from social
reality. The work of Arnold Hauser, Social History of Art and
Literature, which appeared in 1953, gives the most sincere evi-
dence of such an intention.1 With extraordinary energy and
101
 102 Aspects of Sociology
subtlety the moments of inner aesthetics and of the societal are
developed in terms of each other and of their interaction. It is
surely not an accident that while under the pressure of progres-
sive specialization hardly anyone else would now attempt
syntheses of the kind of Ranke's universal history. In his book
Hauser successfully undertakes a total depiction in the great
style precisely because he is capable of illuminating the wealth
of artistic details with a consistent and fully elaborated concep-
tion of the social process.
One usually attributes the lack of such "great syntheses"
in the domain of contemporary social science and in the
humanities to the increasing accumulation of material. The
scholar is responsible for a degree of detailed knowledge,
which denies him an overall view of the whole within his dis-
cipline and forces him into the form of the monograph. This
view is all too reminiscent of the dubious promise that one day,
when it has carried its research far enough, sociology will
achieve an insight into the social totality; and in view of this
resemblance it is difficult to have too much confidence in such
a promise. Rather it is much more the state of consciousness of
science and its proponents which is to blame, the decadence of
philosophical and ultimately of general theoretical views, the
fear of saying anything that does not lend itself to the most
varied interpretation, a fear that grows with the collective con-
trols—in short, the dominance of positivism as an inhibiting
ideology. When a scholar of real stature refuses to be intimi-
dated and inclines toward a total depiction, his chance of suc-
ceeding is as great as it ever was. Hauser proceeds without any
arbitrariness, without "imposition," without analogies. Above
all, he avoids the greatest danger of an approach such as his,
that of oversimplification, of interpreting his material "from
above," which instead of seriously working out the dialectics of
thought and empirical evidence, misuses thought as a rigid
norm, as a second order given. On the contrary, his method is
dialectical in the most precise sense: he develops the artistic
forms in all their differentiations and with all their mediations
out of the social conditions, the conditions of labor as well as
the relations of power of the various historical stages. To be
 Sociology of Art and Music 103
sure, production asserts its primacy, but distribution and recep-
tion are kept in view: art is explained in terms of the social
totality, and yet the specifics of place and of function of the in-
dividual phenomena are not neglected for its sake. The im-
manence of art is not denied by Hauser, instead it is derived
socially; but he is as far from being confined within this im-
manence as he is from being confined in, say, dogmatically
operating with art's social function or with the concept of
ethnic entities, the evil heritage of Romanticism which those
who approach works of art merely from the outside usually
cannot shake off. The dialectical theory of society is not by any
means the "position" from which the work is written; Hegel's
critique of all philosophy proceeding from "points of view" or
"positions" is fundamental to the procedure. Rather, the book
is nourished in each of its statements by its theoretical motifs,
in order to exhaust these in its specific analyses, instead of
taking them as its abstract presuppositions.
One conception is conveyed, for example, by a passage
about Proust and Joyce, both of whom appear under the con-
cept of "spatialization" [Verraeumlichung] and are conceived
in relation to film:

The fascination with "simultaneity"—the "at the same

time"—the discovery that on the one hand the same human
being can experience so much that is diverse, incoherent, and ir-
reconcilable in one and the same instant, and that on the other
hand, different people in different places often experience the
same thing, that on different points on this earth, wholly
isolated from each other the same thing happens simulta-
neously, this universalism which modern technology has
brought to the awareness of contemporary man, is perhaps the
real origin of the new conception of time, and of the entire dis-
continuity with which modern art depicts life. This rhapsodic
tone, which most sharply differentiates the new novel from the
older forms, is at the same time that characteristic most respon-
sible for their cinematic effect. The discontinuity of the fable,
plot, and the structuring of scenes, the immediacy of the
thoughts and moods, the relativity and inconsistency of the
 104 Aspects of Sociology
chronological framework, it is this which reminds us of the cuts,
the dissolves, and the flashbacks of film in Proust and Joyce,
Dos Passos and Virginia Woolf, and it is simply this magic of
the cinema, when in Proust two incidents which are separated
by perhaps thirty years are brought more closely together than
those which in reality are only separated by two hours. Thus in
Proust, the way the past and the present, dream and meditation
take each other by the hand across space and time, how the sen-
sibility continually switches onto new tracks, pereginates
through space and time, and how in this endless and boundless
stream the relations and limits of space and time vanish, all that
corresponds precisely to the spatio-temporal medium in which
film moves.2

Such passages are distinguished from the inappropriate

interpretations which science frequently attributes to advanced
artistic manifestations, not only due to their "niveau" [level of
taste] but also by virtue of the saturation of the most precise
aesthetic experience by a no less precise knowledge of the
driving tendency of the technological forces of production. The
failure of social science when confronted with advanced mod-
ern art is no accident. As modern art came into conflict,
whether intentionally or not, with the possibilities of a broad
social reception, it appeared of no consequence to any approach
seeking to register social facts. Moreover, for a conception
which idolizes sociability and social function, without ex-
amining the objective content of what was being treated or,
beyond that, seeking a critique of the actually given social
order, such art simply becomes the outrage of an antisocial at-
titude. As yet the growing contradiction between the society
and new art has itself hardly been understood in social terms.
Instead an unfruitful and undialectical disposition predomi-
nates, either to simply accept the two separate domains in their
separation, or, where there is a social orientation, to take a
position in favor of the collective against the new art. Walter
Benjamin recognized this schism in its necessary character,
because "the insight. . . gradually became compelling for those
who were conscientious among the intellectuals, that they had
 Sociology of Art and Music 105
to renounce the attempt to gain an audience, the satisfaction of
whose needs could no longer be reconciled with the artists'
better insights."3 If this is so, then it becomes decisive for the
sociology of art to understand precisely that relationship itself
as socially mediated, instead of automatically taking the side of
the socially stronger batallions. In any case it is a better test of
the power of social insight, how deeply it can penetrate into
the phenomena of its own time, instead of classifying that
which lies in the past with the deceptive assurance of those
who have come afterwards. The aesthetic attitudes themselves,
however, have always been the complement of the steadily in-
creasing sociation of man, which as yet does not fulfill its
human purposes.

If the empirical sciences serve the tasks of controlling na-

ture, then in his aesthetic comportment man, as it were, divests
himself of his social function and reacts as a single individual.
In spite of all the mediations between the domain of private life
and social production, the two do not coincide. The autonomy
of the beautiful is based on this lack of correspondence.4

But today this autonomy is already heightened to an ex-

treme degree. It is precisely by virtue of this that the allegedly
asocial aspect of modern art, which in the midst of the leveling
existence of contemporary society still produces the appearance
of shock and provokes the rage of the normal—a rage which
betrays something of the falseness of this normalcy—it is
because of this that the asocial aspect of this art gains a
changed value.

The works in which the subject cut off from his own devel-
opment still manages to find expression are those in which the
abyss between him and the barbaric environment appears most
insistently: poems such as those of Trakl, the Guernica of
Picasso, a composition of Schoenberg. The sorrow and the
horror which adhere to such works do not correspond to the ex-
perience of a subject who turns away from reality, for under-
standable reasons, or revolts against it; the consciousness to
 106 Aspects of Sociology
which these belong is cut off from society, thrust back on dis-
torted, outre figures. Insofar as these inhospitable works keep
their faith with the individual against the infamy of the existing
state, they are more profoundly related to Raphael's Madonnas
and Mozart's music than all that seeks to ape the harmony of
such works today, in a time when the gesture of happiness has
become the mask of madness and the sad faces of madness the
sole sign to which any hope is still attached.. .. The life which
is analogous to our own and in the depiction of which our own
existence can still become visible is, however, no longer the con-
scious and active existence of bourgeois individuals. Only ap-
parently are these still persons; they obey an apparatus, which
in each situation leaves only one single reaction open to them.
No possibility is left for the adequate expression of their in-
dependent life; cowering and disoriented this life leads an im-
poverished, as it were, prehistorical existence. In the works of
the new art it steps forth into the light of day. These tear away
the veils of comprehensible relationships, of peaceful and
warlike confrontations, of superficial affinities and antagonisms,
which are all obscure and chaotic, and which gain a pretended
coherence solely in the series novels of Galsworthy and Jules
Romains, in White Papers and biographies. The dialogues in the
psychological novels have an illusory resemblance to those in
reality. The latest works of art, however, relinquish the illusion
of an existing community, they are the memorials of a lonely
and desperate life, that can find no bridges to the others or even
to its own consciousness. To be sure the decomposition can also
be discovered outside of art in so-called entertainment and cul-
tural education {Bildung), a decay which has seized on the
human essence; but this is only due to external intervention,
due to the mediation of critical theory. In the consummation of
the work of art the individuals recognize their horror directly,
their maimed humanity foundering in the stream of conven-
tional activity.... Insofar as the latest works of art still repre-
sent communication they denounce the dominant forms of
intercourse as tools of destruction and the organic unity as the
illusory image produced by decay. Familiar things and feelings
have an alien sound and are disfigured by a sinister melody.5
 Sociology of Art and Music 107
Reflections of this kind show how little categories such as
the communicative and the noncommunicative, the socially
useful and the socially useless, and finally the formal aesthetic
categories themselves can be introduced as rigid invariants. If
in the time of Beethoven and Haydn the democratization of
music, its emancipation from feudal patronage and feudal deco-
rative forms, was eminently progressive, then, conversely, just
that art may best serve human emancipation which detaches it-
self from the controlled and leveling interrelations of a con-
sumption, the democratic nature of which now only serves as
ideology. A sociology of art which truly masters its subject
matter may not be able to remain content with many of the
specifications of the type developed by Hauser in keeping pace
with the historical differentiation of concepts such as those just
discussed. Thus the identification of formal geometrical art
with conservatism and of naturalistic impressionistic art with
progressive views may perhaps be problematic. It is reminis-
cent of the schema of Scheler's sociology of knowledge, which
calls all that is nominalistic in the broadest sense democratic
and everything that is conceptual realism aristocratic.6 In fact,
such categories are themselves placed within the dialectic. The
great rationalistic and idealistic systems as well as construc-
tively organiiing art at times represent the cause of mankind
better, by virtue of their relationship to the totality, than em-
piricism in any of its guises, which merely seeks to defend
mankind with respect to their bare existence and which, as it
often lets the general concept of the universal become impover-
ished, also impoverishes the possibility of its realization. It is
well known for what sinister purposes the demand for "Real-
ism" serves iri the East.
The stamp of validity on Hauser's procedure, however, is
the fact that wherever a thesis remains hanging above the in-
terpretive work as an abstract excess, he forces its correction
by an immersion into the material. Thus an especially beautiful
passage in the first volume emphasizes:

. . . how many meanings the specific formal styles can con-

tain and how readily they can become vehicles for the most
 108 Aspects of Sociology
diverse views of the world. Impressionism, as it is manifested
for instance in the Pompeian style, is, with its virtuosity in the
technique of suggestion, the most refined manner of artistic
expression that the Roman urban upper stratum had developed;
however, as it appears in the Christian catacombs, with its forms
free of weight and volume, it is at the same time the repre-
sentative style of the Christian, turned away from the world,
renouncing all that is earthly and material.7

Hauser's work foregoes the treatment of music. Attempts

to pose the question of a sociology of music began only fifty
years ago, relatively late. Let us mention the works of Karl
Buecher on "Work and Rhythm"8 and of Paul Bekker on
German musical life;9 later Bekker conceived the thesis of the
"community forming" function of many musical forms.10 This
thesis was then accepted by academic musicology; thus Arnold
Schering:

Of all the arts music has always developed the most

socially formative force. First, due to the fact that its perform-
ance as a rule required more than one person, and these persons'
views and aims tend in the same direction and thus it leads to
the formation of communal associations which make music; for
the rest, due to its strong sensuous qualities and the ease with
which it is combined with the word, it is capable of binding
together in unity entire masses on a higher level and does so
also due to the possibility of a higher spiritualization. Therefore
it has always been a favored instrument for dominating the
spirit of people.11

It may be noted, that no matter how profound the relation

to the collective which is inherent in music—its polyphony is
inseparable from a plurality of singers, even if only an imagi-
nary one, and thus all polyphonous music points toward a plu-
rality in its immanent meaning—still this relation can hardly
be interpreted as the original generation of communal groups.
That would represent an idealistic reinterpretation, which
derives societal processes from their spiritual superstructure.
 Sociology of Art and Music 109
What one attributes to music as a community founding force,
proper to it essentially, is in fact its disciplinary function,
which was demanded of it by Plato and then by St. Augustine,
and which it initially exercised in the domain of ecclesiastic au-
thority and for the strengthening of this authority. After the
idea of a hierarchic authority had been submerged by that of a
community formed by individuals with equal rights, this func-
tion then was transferred to that society itself; from now on so-
ciety "represents" itself musically in a dual sense: it represents
its own life process in the forms of great music with their in-
ternal movement, and confirms itself as the authority which
has replaced the old one, by means of the power and impres-
siveness of these forms. These signify to every individual that
he has to obey its authority, by symbolically being accepted,
"integrated" into the society through the music. In other
words, what appears to the isolated observation of its effect as
the power of music to form society is to a great degree only the
more or less ritualized repetition of the mechanisms of integra-
tion employed by an already established social order. If how-
ever there does in fact emanate from the great symphonic
music of the end of the eighteenth and the nineteenth centuries
something of that collective power, which Beethoven may have
had in mind when he defined the purpose of music as setting
fire to the soul of man, then this is probably based on the con-
tradiction that bourgeois society, held together by the principle
of exchange, is a totality of monads, and the principle of its
own sociation is inseparable from the principium individua-
tionis. The specific function of music, which secured its
primacy during the nineteenth century, and which alone made
possible a "religion of art" in the Wagnerian style, consisted in
the fact that in individualistic society, music more than any
other medium always appeared to again awaken the con-
sciousness, that in spite of all the oppositions of interests this
society was a univocal whole. But precisely this moment, in-
separable from the aesthetic appearance, is at the same time
one that is socially untrue. Great music, insofar as it expresses
community, does indeed hold onto the image of this idea, but it
transfigures the existing conditions, presenting them in the
 110 Aspects of Sociology
present moment of the musical performance as though the
community of human beings were already realized, while
confronted with the music it remains merely a community of
listeners, an audience, and thus without any consequence. The
criticism which Tolstoi made, precisely of great music and with
respect to this aspect—in his critique of the Kreuzer Sonata—
presents the reckoning for its presumption that it itself is a ma-
terial social reality, a presumption which great music proclaims
in every note, yet which it can never realize.
We must also recall the posthumous sociology of music
which Max Weber left behind, and which has now again
become generally accessible in the appendix to the new edition
of Economy and Society.12 It is of fundamental significance, in-
sofar as Weber conceived the history of music in conjunction
with an encompassing Occidental process of rationalization,
and furnished evidence that only on the basis of this rational-
ization, thus the continually growing domination over nature,
human control over the phonic materials, did the development
of great music become possible.13 Precisely the progressive sub-
jectivization and spiritualization is to a great degree to be un-
derstood as the progress of this rationalization. Not only was
the immanent aesthetic development of this artistic domain
brought into a coherence of meaning with the entire society by
Weber, but any scientific foundation for the irrationalist con-
ception of music was thus removed—and this incidentally
without any polemical intentions on Weber's part. This is a
conception which is still widespread today, and which ulti-
mately amounts to the notion that music fell, so to speak, from
the skies and therefore is above any rational or critical exami-
nation. Weber has shown that all the achievements attained by
music as the vehicle of expression, as the voice of inwardness,
themselves presuppose reason and refer back to human in-
terrelationships of life, which are determined by reason [ra-
tio]. Especially today when there is such a plenitude of at-
tempts to make of music a sort of nature reservation or park in
the midst of a highly rationalized society, such results have
contemporary relevance. They were further elaborated in the
Sociology of Music published in 1951 by Kurt Blaukopf.14
 Sociology of Art and Music 111
The studies in sociology of music which will now be
briefly discussed were produced by the circle of the Institute for
Social Research [Institut fuer Sozialforschung]. They relate as
much to the actual production, thus to composition, as to the
problems of musical performance and reproduction, organized
musical life, and the mechanisms of control to which music is
subjected, and finally to the reception of music.
As a model for the sociological treatment of compositions,
the oeuvre of Igor Stravinsky can be selected,15 whose name is
familiar as one of the chief representatives of the Modern, no
matter how irritating the peculiarly antiquarian posture of his
later works may be. In experiencing the inner structure of
Stravinsky's music certain characteristics impose themselves
which touch directly on the social tendencies of the age. While
he considered himself one of the innovators who exploded the
conventionalized musical language of the nineteenth century,
still from the very beginning his style displays something rigid
and repressive. The subjective impulse is suppressed in favor of
a suggestive power which is formed by the rhythms that run
through each work and by the abrupt, irregular shocks. Even in
his most famous, relatively early composition, the Sacre du
printemps, the content of the whole is defined by the sujet of
the ballet, which depicts the ritual of a human sacrifice and to a
certain extent accepts this and takes up its cause. Just as in the
ballet, the young girl gives herself with unresisting acquies-
cence as the offering and dances to her death, so Stravinsky's
music intentionally liquidates the moment of subjectivity. The
latter is not resolved positively within an encompassing whole,
but is declared taboo, is defamed and made ridiculous in its im-
potence. The traces of humanity become a ferment of the gro-
tesque. Stravinsky's music forms its layers to an ever-growing
degree out of the fragments of a decayed or ironically invoked
convention, out of archaic or infantile impulses, presented with
a gesture of "justament" in order to be exploited against all
that is differentiated or endowed with soul. In a mysterious
transition, comparable to the transition to a "Volks-
gemeinschaft"—a folk or ethnic community—which was
decreed by Hitler, the "negatives" of a music mirroring decay
 112 Aspects of Sociology
and dissolution are then abruptly posited as positive—a music,
to be sure, which in so doing does achieve true magnificence.
The later works of Stravinsky act as though they were collec-
tive and mutually binding. But the musical language which
brings about this binding force, does not flow from a substan-
tial collective, but becomes to a certain degree synthetic, arbi-
trarily manufactured: mimetically and gestically the music
seeks to impose upon the people the feeling that they are
nothing, that they have to comply, but does so, as it were, with
a wink of the eye. The question concerning the sense of the
order into which they are being integrated is not, may not be
raised. The relatedness of such music and its development to
the development of latter-day liberalism in the direction of to-
talitarianism is striking. Its spiritual-technical elements: the
dismissal of the humane, the rebellion which only furthers a
repression that is all the more rigorous, the blind and un-
verified character of the invoked order itself; the violent ar-
resting of all dynamics and the glorification of bonds purely for
their own sake—all that corresponds not only to the totali-
tarian ideology, but still more to the totalitarian reality. If
indeed totalitarian rule is not merely imposed on human beings
from outside, but at the same time is prepared within them,
then Stravinsky's music furnishes a cryptogram of the anthro-
pological changes which have brought this about. At the same
time we are confronted here by an entirely objective process,
that lies in the thing itself and is in reality social, rather than
psychologically mediated; as a private person Stravinsky has
stood fast against all totalitarian temptations, and left Europe
when fascism began to gain the upper hand; in Russia he was
proscribed. A responsible sociology of music seeks to define
music as a field of societal forces, in terms of the tensions of
those elements among which the particular character of the in-
dividual composer constitutes only one moment, and hardly
the most important one.
The less music raises autonomous pretensions, and the
more it is produced as a commodity for social consumption, the
more directly it is to be conceived in terms of sociological cat-
egories. Let us therefore now discuss a second example: jazz.16
 Sociology of Art and Music 113
Its social significance has a good deal in common with
Stravinsky, who at various times, from his Ragtimes to his
Ebony Concerto, accepted stimuli from jazz. Here the key to a
social understanding lies, as it does most frequently for music
and probably also for any kind of art, in the specific technique.
It is well known that jazz is characterized by its syncopated
rhythm, thus by a displacement which inserts apparent beats
within the regular measures, comparable to the intentionally
clumsy stumbling of the eccentric clown, familiar enough from
the American film comedies. A helpless, powerless subject is
presented, one that is ridiculous in his expressive impulses.
Now the formula of jazz is this, that precisely by virtue of his
weakness and helplessness this subject represented by irregular
rhythms adapts himself to the regularity of the total process,
and because he, so to speak, confesses his own impotence, he is
accepted into the collective and rewarded by it. Jazz projects
the schema of identification: in return for the individual
erasing himself and acknowledging his own nullity, he can
vicariously take part in the power and the glory of the collec-
tive to which he is bound by this spell. Unceasing repetition
drums this ritual of identification and adaptation into him,
until it becomes second nature to the listener. While to the
naive consciousness jazz, now long standardized, occasionally
seems anarchic, the expression of uninhibited erotic impulses,
it permits these impulses only in order to cut them off and to
reassert the system.
Such insights derived from technical structure gain in-
creasing validity, when at the same time one sees jazz in terms
of the function which it exercises in America today, where, in a
moderated form it has exercised a virtual monopoly of popular
music for forty years. While it seems to embody something of
the objective spirit of the epoch, it owes its monopolistic posi-
tion to the highly developed apparatus of control of the music
industry, especially to "plugging/' the systematic repetition at
the expense of all that seeks to express dissent. Jazz is—and it
is constantly being praised for this—"the expression of our
time" only insofar as, estranged from its unruly origins and
taken over by the huge organization of the culture industry, it
 114 Aspects of Sociology
has hardened and now is crammed into the people in the ser-
vice of the naked profit motive so that many millions hardly
have the opportunity to hear any other music as an alternative.
In America attempts have been made to discover some-
thing more concrete about the role of music in contemporary
mass society, employing for this purpose the instrumentalities
of empirical sociology. These efforts were inspired by the inter-
ests of market research. Initially the reactions of radio listeners
to musical programs were investigated, from the standpoint of
a distinction between preference and rejection, of "success or
failure." This has a practical aspect, that the more success a
radio program enjoyed, the easier it was to find a sponsor, a
firm which would finance it on a permanent basis, coupling it
to the firm's own publicity; the prestige of the program would
thus enhance the value of this publicity. With the techniques
developed in this research, more essential aspects of modes of
musical receptivity were then studied. Thus an investigation
carried out by Edward Suchman18 analyzed audience reactions
to programs carried by station WQXR in New York, which
devoted itself exclusively to broadcasting recordings of serious
—or as the lovely expression has it, "classical"—music. Two
groups of listeners were selected and investigated separately:
those who were already familiar with serious music from other
sources, the concert hail, the opera, or music made in the
home; and those who had been initiated into such music solely
by radio. Both groups were presented with a list of composers,
which had been selected on the basis of an evaluation by a
large group of so-called experts, and these composers were
then evaluated by the participants in the experiment. The as-
signment of rank which those whose familiarity with music
came from sources outside of radio accorded to the composers
corresponded to a much greater degree to the judgment of the
experts, than did the choice of those whose experience was
limited exclusively to radio. The hypothesis underlying the en-
tire investigation, that the aesthetic understanding of those
confined to the mass media is more superficial and conven-
tional than that of those who were still able to experience liv-
ing music, was thus confirmed, in spite of the crudeness which
 Sociology of Art and Music 115
the method itself inevitably entailed. Similarly Hadley Cantril
and Gordon Allport have shown19 that the judgment of the
typical radio listener is so extensively determined by prestige,
that recordings are evaluated according to how well known the
name of the conductor is, even when these names are inter-
changed, thus when the performance of a provincial orchestra
leader is announced to be that of Toscanini and vice versa.
In principle even the theses of cultural critique can be
translated into the language in which empirical social research
poses its questions, though with great difficulties; and al-
though the methods applied necessarily belong to the same
domain as those aspects of the subject matter which the cri-
tique wants to ascertain. What will become of the sociology of
music does not, of course, depend solely on the refinement of
its methods, but especially whether it is based on meaningfully
posed questions, and whether it is guided by a really revealing
theory of music and of its significance within the societal
totality.

Notes

1. Arnold Hauser, The Social History of Art, London and New York, 1953.
2. Op. cit., vol. 2, p. 500 ff.
3. Walter Benjamin, "Standort des franzoesichen Schriftstellers," in
Zeitschrift fuer Sozialforschung, vol. Ill, 1934, p. 76.
4. Max Horkheimer, "Kunst und Massenkultur," in Die Umschau, Interna-
tionale Revue, vol. Ill, 1948, p. 455.
5. Op. cit.. p. 459 ff.
6. See Max Scheler, Die Wissensformen und die Cesellschaft. Leipzig,
1926, p. 193,211 ff.,307.
7. Hauser, op. cit., vol. 1, p. 117.
8. Karl Buecher, Abeit und Rhythmus. Leipzig, 1896.
9. Paul Bekker, Das Deutsche Musikleben. Berlin, 1916.
10. Le Bon already designated music explicitly as the "art of the masses"
(See Gustave Le Bon, The Crowd, a Study of the Popular Mind. London,
1910).
11. Arnold Schering, "Musik," in Handwoerterbuch der Soziologie. Alfred
Vierkandt,ed. Stuttgart, 1931, p. 394.
12. Max Weber, "Die rationalen und soziologischen Grundlagen der
Musik," in Wirtschaft und Gesellscliaft (Grundriss der Sozialoekonomik,
 116 Aspects of Sociology
Sec. 111,3rd ed. Tuebingen, 1947, p. 818 ff.).
13. Weber's aim is to show the "relations between musical ratio and musical
life." See op. cit., p. 861.
14. Kurt Blaukopf, Musiksoziologie / Line Einfuehrung in die Grundbegriffe
mit besonderer Beruecksichtigung der Tonsysteme. Koelin-Berlin, n.d.
15. See Theodor W. Adomo, "Stravinsky und die Restauration," in Philo-
sophic der Neuen Musik. Tuebingen, 1949, p. 89 ff.
16. See Adomo, "Zeitlose Mode I Zum Jazz," in Prismen. Frankfurt am
Main, 1955, p. 144 ff.
17. See Duncan MacDougald, Jr., 'The Popular Music Industry," in Radio
Research 1941. Paul F. Lazarsfield and Frank N. Stanton, eds. New York,
1941, p. 92.
18. See Edward A. Suchman, "Imitation to Music" in Radio Research 1941,
op. cit., p. 140 ff.
19. Hadley Cantril and Gordon W. Allport, Psychology of Radio. New York,
1935.
 VIII
Sociology and Empirical
Social Research
Empirical social research appears to fit into the totalfieldof so-
ciology as one of its parts, distinctive, say, from the theory of
society, formal sociology, institutional sociology, thus in gen-
eral distinguished from the sociological analysis of objective
formation, institutions, and forces of society. This distinction,
however, is somewhat arbitrary and external. To be sure, em-
pirical social research concerns itself frequently with subjective
opinions, motivations, attitudes, and modes of behavior, but it
can just as well devote itself to objective states of affairs. Its
concept does not so much designate a sector as a method,
which tends to spread over the whole domain of sociology and
which "stands under the sign of a demand, guided by the natu-
ral sciences, for exactitude and objectivity. Criteria such as the
verifiability and falsifiability of statements, quantifiability,
repeatability—thus a far-reaching independence from the sub-
jective moments of the research—play an essential role in
this/'1 That this method is establishing itself as a discipline in
its own right and becoming independent of the special fields to
which it is being applied, this is a requirement posed by the or-
ganization of the science enterprise rather than by sociology it-
self or its subject matter. The demand for social scientists with
the methodological competence and technical experience,
which is embraced by the title of "empirical social research,"
117
 118 Aspects of Sociology
grows steadily. This growing autonomy of a specific methodol-
ogical apparatus as against the subject matter itself, however,
produces numerous problems. Without question, in the aca-
demic enterprise of the Anglo-Saxon countries today, espe-
cially in North America, empirical social research has the ten-
dency to claim primacy. Whatever does not conform to its cri-
teria is alleged to be unscientific and at best merely suggestions
pointing to future empirical fulfillment. Conversely the older
branches of sociology, such as the theoretical interpretation of
social formations or of the manifestations of the objective
spirit, feel increasingly confined in their intellectual freedom by
empirical sociology. The limitation to controllable facts of ex-
perience, the virtual exclusion of speculative thought, appears
to threaten not only the comprehension of the meaning of the
societal, but the meaning of sociology itself. Therefore empiri-
cal social research is not merely a partial field among others,
but there is an undeniable tension between it and the other
sectors, which at the same time it serves.
The reason that this conflict is so serious is because sociol-
ogy as the theory of sociation is today still related to philoso-
phy, from which it sprang, and this is by no means an
anachronism. It cannot simply be marked off as just one more
branch on the chart of the sciences. There is hardly one subject
matter that can be excluded from it at the outset—including
so-called Nature—without such a statement representing
"sociologism," that is, the automatic dependency of the valid-
ity of knowledge on its social origin. The contemporary prolif-
eration of "hyphenated sociologies" such as industrial sociology,
agrarian sociology, economic sociology, sociology of the fami-
ly, and numerous others do not so much represent the applica-
tion of sociological methods to specific fields—as the
sociologist concerned usually imagines—but rather that in the
multiplicity of such partial disciplines the universality of the
social interrelationships finds expression, which preform all
subject matter, and most certainly the consciousness of this
subject matter. But this universality cannot be traced back to
general formal principles nor can it be gained by the summa-
tion of the indefatigable description of all the possible partial
 Sociology and Empirical Social Research 119
fields that can be encompassed in the sociological approaches.
It is this which is most probably responsible for the inner ten-
sion between sociology and empirical social research. Even the
older sociology in the style of Max Weber, in which both an in-
tensive theoretical interest and interest in the most extensive
subject matter were combined, was not capable of encom-
passing the totality. It was evidence of the distress of its intel-
lectual state, when it sought to transcend blind facticity with
such concepts as the ideal type, yet was not able to do so
because of its own inherently positivistic presuppositions; and
thus the ideal types again dissolved into mere facts.2 That
which sociology views as its task, and still always puts off till
tomorrow, can only be accomplished by a theory of society,
which would at the same time imply a critique of sociology and
its scientific enterprise. Such a theory would have to be capable
of dealing with the contemporary situation in both halves of
the world. The triumph of the positivistically oriented special
sciences over speculation did not merely represent the capitula-
tion of a weakened and intimidated spirit, but was itself the
product of real tendencies within the development, and a mere
resolve will not be capable of counteracting this. Just those
who feel a responsibility toward theory, will have to confront
its doubtful aspects as relentlessly as they confront the
inadequacies of mere empiricism, instead of, in all likelihood,
only worsening the negative state by a carefree ven-
turesomeness of speculation. Therefore critical reflection about
empirical social research is necessary, and also an incisive fa-
miliarity with its results. A most urgent task for our time
would be reflection on the part of empirical social research
about itself, in terms of an examination of its own procedures
and characteristic models. Here a few general and suggestive
considerations must suffice.
The entire empirical social research is pointed polemically
not only against socio-philosophical speculation, but also
against the central categories of the older sociology, which was
itself already empirically oriented to a great extent—categories
such as that of "understanding." The intention is to keep to the
given and to restrict oneself to specific sectors of research,
 120 Aspects of Sociology
which are capable of being surveyed. To seek the significance
of social phenomena is often considered a vain pursuit; the
quest for a total societal structure which will provide such a
significance for the specific structures is generally postponed to
await later syntheses. In spite of isolated exceptions3 the
sociological theme of social critique is banned from the en-
terprise of empirical social research. In this respect it repre-
sents the radical consequences of the demand for a "value free"
sociology, which was raised by Max Weber and his circle fifty
years ago.
Certainly, among the representatives of empirical social
research no one who has any insight thinks that his work is
possible without theory, that the instrumentalities of research
represent a tabula rasa, purged of all "prejudice," to be filled
with the facts which are collected and classified. The problem
of selection of the subject matter to be worked on, a problem
which has been discussed for decades, renders this primitive
form of empiricism impossible. Still, theory is regarded more as
a necessary evil to be tolerated, as "hypothesis construction/'
rather than as something that should exist in its own right. The
considerations of the role of theory pursued by empirical social
research usually have the character of apologetic and reluctant
concessions.
But on the other side one must indicate to begin with that
the gap between the theory of society and empirical social
research by no means has as its cause the relative youth of the
latter. And this gap can hardly be filled by the further ac-
cumulation of findings, which can already be hardly surveyed,
nor developed in such a manner that in time theory will be
completely realized by these findings and thus be rendered
superfluous. Compared to the central problems of social struc-
ture on which the life of man depends, empirical social research
encompasses only a narrow sector. The limitation to selected,
sharply isolated subject matter—thus precisely that approxi-
mation of empirical social research to the natural sciences,
which, in accord with the requirement for exactitude, seeks to
create conditions similar to those in the laboratory—prevents
the treatment of the social totality, not only temporarily, but in
 Sociology and Empirical Social Research 121
principle. It also entails that the assertions of empirical social
research frequently have an inconclusive or peripheral charac-
ter, or merely represent information for administrative pur-
poses; and because of this, from the very outset they are not
suitable for incorporation in relevantly posed theoretical
problems. Unmistakable is the danger of mere data manipula-
tion as busy work, such as is ascertained by Robert S. Lynd in
his book Knowledge for What?4 Due to the endeavor to keep to
certain data that is resistent to all probing and to discredit all
questions concerning essence as "metaphysics/7 empirical
social research threatens to be confined to the inessential for
sake of a correctness that is secure against all doubt. Fre-
quently enough the available method prescribes the subject
matter, instead of the method being adapted to the subject
matter.
The essential laws of society are not what the richest pos-
sible empirical findings have in common. In many cases the
empirical findings deal with mere epiphenomena—one need
only think of "opinion research." By subsuming similar re-
sults under abstract categories, that which is essential is
frequently presented in a distorted fashion, if it is not obscured
entirely. Instead of the conditions under which human beings
live or the objective functions which these assume in the social
process, we are presented, in many instances, with their subjec-
tive reflection. Without the critical consideration that the
modes of behavior and the contents of consciousness of indi-
viduals are infinitely mediated, produced socially, empirical
social research often falls victim to its own results.
In order to form a well-considered judgment of empirical
social research, one must, on the other hand, free oneself
from a series of prejudices. The prejudice concerning the unreli-
ability of statistics has been outdated for a long time, although
the fact still must not be forgotten that really productive in-
sights generally are supplied by the immersion in a single case
and that in general statistics represent a verification of such in-
sights rather than producing them. The techniques of "sam-
pling," of constructing a reliable statistical cross section, are
today so highly developed that their faithfulness to scientifically
 122 Aspects of Sociology
developed criteria offers an assurance of their reliability.
To be sure, even the most rigorous methods can lead to false or
meaningless results, if they are applied to problems for which
they are not adequate or which they deal with in a distorting
manner. But there is no science which is not subject to such
dangers. There is no universal heuristics, only the most insis-
tent and uncompromising self-criticism. Thus the social
researcher must bear in mind that the essential social tendencies,
say, the political developments, frequently do not correspond to
the statistical cross section of the total population, but to the
most powerful interests and to those who "make" public
opinion. He must conduct his surveys according to the concrete
differences, rather than always orienting himself by statistical
means. Such problems clearly show the necessity for a theory
of society, even for the empirical reliability of the findings.
What constitutes a valid sample cannot be learned from sta-
tistical theory as such, but only from reflections about the actual
distribution of power within the society.
For sociology the question of the relation between quanti-
tative and qualitative analysis is an immediate and timely
one. Because the insights which mediate between statistical
methods and their adequate applicability to specific contents
are to a great degree qualitative ones. It is precisely in America,
where the use of quantitative methods was raised to their
present level, that the necessity of qualitative work is recog-
nized today, not merely as a complement but as a constitutive
element of empirical social research.5
As little as we wish to deny the danger of superficiality
contained in a method which is as yet profoundly dependent
on the principle "Science is measurement," still it is important
to warn of a certain posture of snobbery. Insofar as contem-
porary life has been standardized to a great extent by the con-
centration of economic power pressed to the extreme and the
individual is far more powerless than he admits to himself,
methods which are standardized and in a certain sense dein-
dividualized, are not only the expression of the situation but
also the suitable means for describing and gaining insight into
this situation. That social phenomena are mediated by the
 Sociology and Empirical Social Research 123
spirit, by the consciousness of human beings, should not
mislead us into always deriving these phenomena themselves
from a spiritual principle, regardless of the circumstances. In a
world that to a large extent is dominated by economic laws
over which human beings have little power, it would be an
illusion to seek to understand social phenomena in principle as
having "meaning." That which is mere fact, is appropriately
registered by "fact-finding methods." And those who inveigh
apologetically against the transfer of the methods of natural
science to the domain of the spirit, overlook that the subject
matter of social science has to a large degree become "natural,"
expressions of a society that have congealed to become second
nature, and therefore are anything but determined by the
spirit. That human purposive rationality contributes a moment
to these, does not render them either rational or human in
themselves. Whoever treats them as though they were, only
contributes to glorifying that which is actually only being im-
posed on human beings. The usual objection, that empirical
social research is too mechanical, too crude, and too unspiri-
tual, shifts the responsibility from that which science is inves-
tigating to science itself. The much-castigated inhumanity of
empirical methods still is more humane than the humanizing of
the inhuman. In Germany the tendency to disguise phenomena
which belong to a crudely material praxis by the use of preten-
tious categories, nowadays frequently with an existential-
ontological coloration, still maintains itself tenaciously. To
counteract this is not the least among the tasks of enlighten-
ment which empirical social research must carry out. In the
tradition of the Western countries the knowledge of society
has been inseparable from the purpose of reducing such
overinflated conceptions to a human scale. But till recently
such a purpose was suspect in the land in which the cultivated
were reluctant to speak of enlightenment without adding the
adjective "shallow." Confronted with such a tradition, we must
remind again of the danger of what a social thinker, who him-
self had his roots in the great philosophical tradition, once
called the "trivialization through profundity [Verflachung
durch Tiefe]." It is precisely the preponderance of the tradition
 124 Aspects of Sociology
of the "spiritual sciences" [Geisteswissenschaften=the arts]
in German sociology which urgently requires the corrective
supplied by the empirical methods. The authentic significance
of these methods lies in the critical impulse. Empirical social
research cannot permit this impulse to atrophy, it cannot allow
itself to be fooled in its recognition of the social interrela-
tionships. Instead of contriving a conciliatory and stylized
image of social reality with the aid of ideological concepts, and
making its peace "understandingly" and forgivingly with con-
ditions as they are, science must raise to conscious awareness
the harshness of that which exists. That would be a legitimate
aspect of what one likes so much to call "Realsoziologie"
nowadays.
Sociology is not a "science of the spirit." The questions
with which it must deal are not primarily or essentially those
of consciousness or even unconsciousness of the human beings
of whom society is composed. It relates above all to the
confrontation between man and nature and to the objective
forms of sociation, which cannot in any way be traced back to
mind or spirit in the sense of the inward state of man. Em-
pirical social research must bring out the objectivity of what
is actually the case socially—an objectivity often largely
inaccessible to the individual and even to collective con-
sciousness—and must do so rigorously and without any ideal-
ization. If a social researcher encounters the assertion, made
with an appeal to some alleged authority, of a "spiritual"
[geisteswissenschaftliche] sociology, that, say, the so-called
"peasant man" [baeuerliche Mensch], due to his essentially
conservative spirit or his invariant attitudes, resists innova-
tions of a technical or social character, then the researcher
cannot simply accept such an assertion. He must demand evi-
dence of its truth. He will perhaps send interviewers who have
some familiarity with peasants out into the countryside and
will instruct them to continue probing with their questions
when the peasants declare that they are remaining on their
farms out of love for their homestead and to keep faith with the
customs of their ancestors. He will seek to confront this
proclaimed conservatism with the economic facts, and pursue
 Sociology and Empirical Social Research 125
such questions as whether technical innovations on agricul-
tural units below certain size are not uneconomical, and thus
cause such high investment costs that technological rational-
ization would not be rational. He will investigate further,
whether for the farmer being interviewed retaining the farms is
justified in spite of the fact that according to the principles
perhaps of industrial accounting it shows little profit, because
utilizing the cheap labor of his own family permits him to real-
ize a higher real income than he could gain in the city. Of
course this would not offer an explanation for everything, and
the significance of irrational moments as a socially cohesive
force is not contradicted by this. But such moments too must
be socially derived and cannot simply be accepted as the ul-
timate wisdom. The powerlessness and listlessness of the indi-
viduals must provoke the attempt to discover what it is that
condemns them to this powerlessness and listlessness, instead
of merely registering such manifestations, or even of mistaking
the epitome of these manifestations for the world-spirit. But to
do that, independent and resolute theoretical thinking is neces-
sary, and not merely the forming of hypotheses. Obviously not
all empirical sociological investigations fulfill a critical func-
tion. But even market analyses with a strictly delimited range
of interest should contain something of an enlightening,
nonideological spirit if they are to achieve that which they
promise.
The distinctive situation of "social research" in the nar-
rower sense is related to the fact that it is not really rooted in
the old universitas litterarum. It is more closely related to
American pragmatism than any other science. That its tech-
niques were initially tailored to a great extent to commercial
and administrative purposes is not something external to this
discipline. It produces the knowledge of domination, not the
knowledge of cultivation, to employ an expression of Max
Scheler. In the physical sciences such a structure of knowledge
is, with a few exceptions, considered self-evident. In the
humanities it seems estranging and not to be reconciled with
the concepts of dignity and inwardness. Yet at the same time,
the separation of theoretical insight from praxis, which is
 126 Aspects of Sociology
glorified in the name of these concepts, is itself the product of a
long-term historical process, affecting the domain of society
too. When Aristotle based his Politics and his critique of the
Platonic ideal state on a comparative study of a number of con-
stitutions of Greek city-states6 this was also basically "social
research/' the prototype of the application of research pro-
cedures to what is called today political science. It would be
worth while to reflect about why people close themselves off so
passionately against being reminded of this. Perhaps they are
ashamed of the fact that the practical efforts of this sort, to
gain knowledge of society, which have been carried on since
Antiquity, have proven so incomparably less useful than the
scientific efforts directed toward the domination of nature ex-
ternal to man. The assumption of the superiority of pure con-
templation is not entirely free from the denigration of grapes
which hang out of reach. In spite of all the empirical material,
till today men have not been able to order their own affairs
with the same rationality with which they manufacture the
commodities of production, consumption, and destruction. It
would be naive to expect the same triumphs from empirical
social science as from the empirically controlled natural
sciences. The practical applicability of a science to society
depends in an essential way on the state of society itself. There
is no general social issue which some scientific method of ther-
apy could treat universally, as is done without question in
medicine upon the discovery of a new drug—if one can talk at
all meaningfully of something like that. Where what is at issue
is not merely the alleviation of specific conditions, but struc-
tural change, then the interests diverge. That is the real reason
why the methods of empirical social science are so readily
made to serve manipulative purposes. When men have no
power, they resign and limit themselves all the more gladly to
working out the solutions of prescribed tasks—such as the sale
of a commodity or the influencing of a group of people in the
most effective and economical manner, especially as in the
present phase information about such matters is in high
demand in the marketplace. Behind the limitation to precisely
definable and surveyable sectors, limitations which are so eas-
 Sociology and Empirical Social Research 127
ily ascribed to a strictly scientific sense of responsibility, there
always stands, at the same time, the helplessness with respect
to essentials.
The danger of the technologizing of sociology, of splitting
off the methods from the interest in the essential subject
matter, does not primarily derive from a mistaken development
within the science itself, but precisely from the nature of that
subject matter and the position which is assigned to sociology
in contemporary society. Therefore the concept of "administra-
tive social research," in the broadest sense, has been contrasted
with that of "critical research/'7 The two concepts do not,
however, stand in such a direct opposition. The reproduction of
life under contemporary conditions does not appear to be pos-
sible at all, unless the central organs of administration are fed
those precise informations about the most varied social condi-
tions, which can only be gained by applying the techniques of
empirical social research. At the same time it is obligatory for
social theory proper untiringly to compare its conception to the
actual conditions, today just as much as in the days of Aris-
totle. It is precisely a theory of society for which change does
not merely represent a phrase piously invoked on Sundays
only, which must work to incorporate within itself the entire
force of resistant facticity, if it does not wish to remain an im-
potent dream—an impotence which can only be of advantage
to the power of the status quo. The affinity of empirical social
research to praxis, the negative moment of which one should
certainly not evaluate lightly, includes also the potential for
excluding self-deception and for intervening in reality with
precision, and effectively. The ultimate legitimation of the
procedures will lie in a unity of theory and praxis, which does
not lose itself in free-floating speculation, nor sink down into
an inhibited enterprise sticking "chiefly to business." The cult
of technical specialization cannot be overcome by abstract and
irrelevant humanistic demands added by way of comple-
mentary addenda. The path of true humanism leads through
the midst of the specialized and technical problems, insofar as
one succeeds in gaining insight into their significance within
the societal whole and in drawing conclusions from this.
 128 Aspects of Sociology
Notes

1. Institut fuer Sozialforschung: "Sozialforschung, empirische/' article in

Handwoerterbuch fuer Sozialwissenschaften. E. von Beckerath et al., eds.
Stuttgart-Tuebingen, 1945, p. 419 ff. The article surveys the history and
the methods of empirical social research and includes a survey of the lit-
erature.
2. See Max Weber, The Methodology of the Social Sciences, Glencoe, 1949.
3. See for instance Paul F. Lazarsfeld, "Remarks on Administrative and
Critical Communications Research," in Studies in Philosophy and Social
Science, vol. IX. New York, 1941, p. 2 ff.
4. Robert S. Lynd, Knowledge for What? I The Place of Social Science in
American Culture. Princeton, 1939.
5. See for instance Allen H. Barton and Paul Lazarsfeld, "Some Functions
of Qualitative Analysis in Social Research," in Frankfurter Beitraege zur
Soziologie, vol. I of Soziologica. Frankfurt am Main, 1955, p. 321 ff.
6. Aristotle, Politics, II, ch. 7,1266A; ch. 10, 1271 A, 1272A, B.
7. See Lazarsfeld, op. cit., p. 8 ff.
 IX
The Family
If sociology were to exempt itself from contributing to the solu-
tion of the current practical questions, it would have to atrophy
as a science. Even that sociological school in Germany which
has demanded scientific objectivity most emphatically, the
school of Max Weber, does not deny that practical questions
have to enter into scientific thought, that praxis must be
allowed to play a part in posing the problems of sociology.
They sought only to distinguish sharply between the posing of
these problems and scientific method, and demanded that
science present its answers to the problems set in this way, in-
dependently of the underlying "values" and interests. Ac-
cording to this conception, the information which sociology
supplied could in principle meet practical purposes of the most
varied and even contradictory sort. The American sociologist
Lundberg, a representative of Positivism, has pushed this con-
ception to the extreme. According to him, the results of a rigor-
ous sociological science must be of such a nature that a Fascist
could utilize them just as readily as a Communist or a liberal.1
Obviously this conception of scientific objectivity conflicts
with the idea of truth itself. However, it is not the intention to
discuss here the difficulties of a conception, which on the one
hand measures itself by praxis in order to be able to formulate
meaningful questions, and which on the other hand vows to
exclude any and every thought of praxis from its own
procedures—that peculiar contradiction of pragmatism and
quasi-scientific impartiality, which is altogether characteristic
129
 130 Aspects of Sociology
for the state of contemporary consciousness. Instead of under-
taking a critique of so-called value-free science, the philo-
sophical foundations of which have been forgotten, but the mo-
tives of which display their influence everywhere in the es-
tablishment of the social sciences, we shall seek to show in
terms of a complex of concrete questions how sociological in-
sight into partial phenomena leads to a conception of the whole
which cannot remain indifferent with respect to praxis.
At first sight the family appears in history as a rela-
tionship of natural origin, which then differentiates itself to
become modern monogamy and which by virtue of this dif-
ferentiation founds a special domain, the domain of private life.
For naive consciousness this private life appears as an island in
the midst of the social dynamics, a residue of the state of na-
ture, as it has been idealized. In reality the family not only
depends on the historically concrete societal reality, but is
socially mediated down into its innermost structure.2
Therefore it is subject to a social dynamics of a dual char-
acter. On the one hand there is the increasing sociation—the
"rationalization," "integration" of all human relations in the
latter-day, fully developed market society—toward repressing
as far as possible that element of the familial order which, from
the viewpoint of society, is irrational and of natural origin. On
the other hand the imbalance of the relationship between the
total social power and the individual grows to such a degree
that the individual frequently seeks to crawl back under the
protection of the smallest associative groups such as the family,
the continued existence of which appears to be irreconcilable
with the major development. The tendencies which threaten
the family seem at the same time to strengthen it, at least tem-
porarily. At the same time, however, the family is also attacked
from within. Advancing socialization means an increasingly
airtight constraint and control of the instinctual drives. These
renunciations cannot however be achieved without friction.
The repressed drives can, for their part, turn destructively
against the family. Thus today the family finds itself attacked
equally by the progress toward civilization and by the irratio-
nal countermovements which this evokes.
 The Family 131
In its very concept the family cannot strip off its natural
element, the biological interrelationship of its members. But
from the viewpoint of society this element appears as heter-
onomous, to a certain degree an irritant, because it cannot be
wholly resolved within the relationship of exchange, although
today even sex is assimilated into the relationship of exchange,
into the rational "give and take." Meanwhile, the natural ele-
ment can assert itself less than ever before independently of the
socially institutional element. Thus at times in the latter-day
bourgeois society the family suffers a fate that is not really so
different from that of the corpse, which in the midst of civiliza-
tion recalls to mind the conditions of nature, and which is ei-
ther hygienically cremated or even cosmetically prepared, as
described in Evelyn Waugh's The Loved One.3 In Huxley's
negative Untopia, Brave New World,4 in which such modern
tendencies are carried through to their ultimate conclusion, a
taboo has been imposed on the family: it is considered indecent
to pronounce the word "mother." To be sure, Huxley sees tne
civilizing progress in too linear a manner and at times underes-
timates the irrational regressions which this process induces—
perhaps because Huxley himself tends either to preserve or to
create anew islands of irrationality, which serve the operation
of the system by rendering it more bearable for human beings.
It is difficult to gain insight into the socially mediated, highly
variable character of family structure; and in addition these
facts are readily repressed or denied. The tendency to hyposta-
tize certain family forms or an allegedly all-embracing concept
of the family as natural assets itself with great tenacity. The
roots of such views extend back at least as far as the Enlighten-
ment. At that time the discovery of "savages" by explorers ini-
tiated an intensive preoccupation with primitive family forms,
which were presented by social theory as the archetypes of the
patriarchal, monogamous marriage predominant in Europe.
Rousseau saw the origin of human society in the monogamous
patriarchal family, and identified it, as the purest human
union, with paradise.5 Not until the nineteenth century did
Burdach6 and Bachofen break with such conceptions. Bachofen,
a product of the historical school of Sevigny, which was hostile
 132 Aspects of Sociology
to the theory of natural law, originated the conception, which
was elaborated later by Morgan and Engels, that promiscuity
was characteristic of the original state and that from this ma-
triarchy developed, which was later displaced by patriarchy.7
This conception drew marriage and the family into the histori-
cal dynamics, in contrast to their hypostatization as "nature."
The law of the three stages in the development of the family
was of course in turn criticized by modern anthropology.
Whole groups of family sociologists insulate themselves
from this controversy. From the domain of social philosophy in
the style of Lorenz von Stein a conception of the original natu-
ralness of the family was carried over especially by Riehl,8 into
German sociology, which was then developing a conception
which is still influential among many nationalistic [volkisch,
i.e., primarily National Socialist] and restorative sociologists.
The family is alleged to be a natural and eternal formation,
prior to all organized society. For the sake of its existential and
physiologically biological priority, a validity that is beyond
time and normative is assigned to the family. This natural fam-
ily was probably also the model for the category of "commu-
nity" in Toennies, which was contrasted with "society."9
On the other side, Gumplowicz10 especially asserted the
"sociological" conception of the family, in which the structure
of the family and its changes are directly derived from the
structure of society and its changes and no independent essence
is acknowledged for the family. These two trends have essen-
tially determined German family sociology to this day. Where
the attempt is made to unite the "natural" and the
"sociological" conception of the family a pluralistic conception
frequently results, where the family is conceived as natural and
yet historical, biological and yet social, physiological and still
spiritually moral.11
Modern French sociologists, the successors of Durkheim,
especially Marcel Mauss and Claude Levi-Strauss,12 in con-
trast to the older conception, have not derived the incest taboo,
which is undoubtedly fundamental to the family, from so-
called naturally given conditions, but have viewed it as a "total
social phenomenon" which arises essentially from the
 The Family 133
requirements of a society of exchange, in keeping with the rigid
structure of property. If their findings, which are supported by
a great quantity of data, prove correct, then it would in fact be
empirically confirmed that the family, in the form known to us,
is itself socially mediated and no pure category of nature.
In American family sociology the "Sociological" ten-
dencies are displayed in the form, that no single category per-
taining to the family, such as the natural moment, the legitima-
tion of sex, the social task of producing children for the
reproduction of society, or, furthermore, the bonds of blood
relationship and inheritance, are emphasized in isolation, but
that the family is subordinated to the primacy of the social life
process. It is alleged to represent an "interaction" of definite
social "roles" with definite social tasks, which, to be sure, can
assume diverse contents in the diverse forms of society. Thus
Burgess and Locke define the family as

a group of persons united by the ties of marriage, blood, or

adoption; constituting a single household; interacting and com-
municating with each other in their respective roles of husband
and wife, mother and father, son and daughter, brother and
sister.13

Another modern American sociologist defines the family

in a similar manner: ".. . as a more or less durable community
of husband and wife, whether with or without children, or as a
man or woman alone with children."14
A decisive contribution to the insight into the interactions
between the family and society has been made by psycho-
analysis. With some justification it has been designated as a
"psychology of family" pure and simple,15 where, to be sure, it
is more the constitutive function of the family for the develop-
ment of individuals and groups which must be borne in mind,
rather than a psychology of so-called family life. What is of
concern here is not primarily Freud's speculation about archaic
society16 but the insight into the family as a societally deter-
mined locus in which personality structure is formed, and
which in turn is socially relevant. This insight and the anthro-
 134 Aspects of Sociology
pological investigations which have been stimulated by it have
contributed essentially to pushing questions such as those con-
cerning the evolutionary interrelationships of the forms of the
family, which had dominated the thinking of family sociology
for so long, into the background. In the place of the universal
evolution of the family, modern cultural anthropology assumes
diverse forms of the family established by locale and society,
which have crystallized independently of each other and which
can even coexist simultaneously within the same society.17
The most recent family sociology stands under the sign of
the crisis of the family, or at the very least, of the process of
change to which it is subjected in the course of evolution of so-
ciety as a whole. Sociologists with very contrasting concep-
tions of the nature of this crisis are in agreement in that a crisis
situation is at hand; of course the question remains open
whether this represents a specific development or a manifesta-
tin of an all-embracing crisis within a partial domain.
The much-discussed crisis of the modern family did not
fall from the sky. To understand it, one must become aware of
the antagonisms with which the family has been shot through
since the beginnings of bourgeois society. In the midst of a
total condition defined by exchange and therefore by the ra-
tionality of single individuals working for themselves, the fam-
ily remains an essentially feudal institution, based on the prin-
ciple of "blood," of natural relatedness. Therefore it has held
fast to an irrational moment in the midst of an industrial soci-
ety which aims at rationality, the exclusive domination of the
principle that all relations must be calculable, and which will
tolerate no other controls than those of supply and demand. As
against that the bourgeois family was always, in a certain
sense, an anachronism. But just because of that it functioned as
an organ of social assimilation: as a consequence only the irra-
tional authority embodied in the family was capable of in-
ducing human beings to undertake those efforts which were
required of them, were they, as wage workers separated from
the disposition over the means of production, to reproduce
their labor power and therewith their life.18 Only the family
could produce that identification with authority, sublimated as
 The Family 135
the work ethics, the function of which in earlier itimes, under
feudalism had been exercised by the direct domination over the
vassal.
Precisly that sphere of intimacy, which seems to be the
decisive aspect of the family, is in its essence social and not to
be separated from the principle of wage labor that asserted its
supremacy during the unfolding of the bourgeois society. To
antiquity this intimacy was wholly alien; according to Plato's
Phaido, Socrates, who generally speaks just in favor of in-
wardness, sends his closest relatives away just before his death,
in order to be able to converse undisturbed with his friends.
Only in modern times did the family transpose the demands of
society to the interior of those entrusted to the family, made
them into the family's own affair, and thereby "internalize"
the human beings. In order that they may not despair in the
harsh world of wage labor and its discipline, but do their part,
it is not sufficient merely to obey the pater familias, one must
desire to obey him: 'Tear and love!" Luther commands in one
breath. Relentlessness toward oneself and toward others must
become second nature to the individual.19
Though the subordination under the categorical impera-
tive of duty was first formulated by Kant, bourgeois society
had aimed toward this, from the very beginning. This subordi-
nation followed from the employment of reason. Whoever con-
templates the world soberly enough and without distraction
must recognize that he must comply, must subordinate himself;
whoever wants to achieve something for himself, according to
the bourgeois ideal, whoever does not wish to perish, must
learn to comply with others.
Nowhere was this demonstrated to the individual more
plainly than in the family. No matter what the son might think
of the father, if he did not wish to unleash harsh interdictions
and conflicts, he had to strive untiringly to win the father's
approbation. For the son the father always tended to be in the
right; in him power and success were concretized. The sole
possibility for the son, to maintain at least within his psychic
household the harmony between that which he desired and
what was proscribed, a harmony continually threatened in the
 136 Aspects of Sociology
society of competition, was to endow the father, as the stronger
and more empowered, with all the qualities which were consid-
ered positive and in that way to transfigure the reality into an
ideal. As the child learned to forge his own moral organ, to
steel his conscience with his father's strength, and finally
learned to respect what his understanding ascertained as ex-
isting, and even to love it, he also learned the bourgeois rela-
tionship to authority, and not solely within the realm of the
family. The family became an agency for society: it trained its
members for the assimilation to society; it shaped the human
beings in such a manner that they became capable of the tasks
which the social system demanded of them.29 The family ratio-
nalized the irrationality of the power, the compulsion of which
reason could not do without.
Thus in the irrationality of the family was mirrored that
of a society in which apparently everything takes place ra-
tionally yet in which the unreason of blind conditions rules,
removed from the freedom of reason. Precisely because of this
the family has fashioned an ideology of its own irrationality, in
behaving, as far as this was possible, in a feudal manner. The
bourgeois pater familias always has had something of the bour-
geois gentilhomme; the bourgeois "good family" always imi-
tates the aristocracy and seeks to have its coat of arms and its
family tree.21 In the strict sense the "bourgeois family" does
not exist at all: within it the allegedly rational principle of in-
dividualism contradicts itself, and necessarily so, because at the
core of the principle of total rationality irrational moments are
preserved. That there is something that is not right in the soci-
ety of free and just exchange, showed itself first—and not
accidentally—in the worker's family, whose children were
pressed into the process of production as wage slaves during
the period after the Industrial Revolution. Bourgeois society
could only perpetuate itself by strengthening the compulsion of
the principle of exchange by direct forms of dependency, and
the family functioned as its agency in this sense too: that the
authoritarian father carried out this task all the more thor-
oughly, the more he himself was under economic pressure.
These antagonisms, which penetrate the family to its very
 The Family 137
foundations, will be found reflected in every one of its more
important aspects. In the child's respect for paternal authority
and, subsequently, for all other authority, rational and irratio-
nal elements are indissolubly interwoven. Even today this
renders critical insight more difficult, insofar as it seeks not to
fall under the sway of the dominant ideology or the emptiness
of Utopianism. Without question, however, that same social
dynamics which made possible the bourgeois family within
which the individuals found support against this dynamics,
this same dynamics, continually and to a growing degree, also
threatens the family. Like all the forms of mediation between
the biological individual being and the societal totality, the
substance of the family too is cashed in by the society.
Of social origin, the crisis of the family can neither be de-
nied, nor disposed of as a mere symptom of decline and
decadence. Where the family offers protection and warmth to
its members, its authority was able to justify itself. And in-
heritable property especially formed a powerful motivation for
the obedience on the part of the heirs. Today, in a world in
which technical skill and adroitness begin to decide the fate of
human beings and beyond that, where in most countries bour-
geois property has been undermined for a continually growing
number of families, if not destroyed entirely, the concept of the
heir is losing its meaning. Nor is it very different as far as the
authority over the daughters is concerned, who can earn their
bread as skilled or unskilled workers or employees outside the
home and therefore no longer feel themselves bound by the ar-
chaic domestic conditions on which their traditional rela-
tionship to the family is based. In the crisis of the family the
latter is now presented with the reckoning, not only for the
brutal oppression which the weaker women and, still more, the
children frequently had to suffer at the hands of the head of
the family during the initial phases of the new age, but also for
the economic injustice in the exploitation of domestic labor
within a society which in all other respects obeyed the laws of
the market. Included in this indictment are all the instinctual
sacrifices which family discipline imposed upon those who
belonged to it, without this discipline always being justified in
 138 Aspects of Sociology
the consciousness of the members of the family; without most
of them really believing any longer in the prospect that they
would be compensated for these sacrifices by secure and heri-
table property, as were those favored by living at the highpoint
of the liberal age. Family authority, especially the authority of
the sexual taboos, has been weakened, because the family no
longer offers a reliable guarantee of economic life support and
no longer adequately protects the individual against the ever
more overpowering pressures of the outside world. The balance
between that which the family demands and that which it
offers has become too precarious. Therefore every appeal to the
positive powers of the family has a hollow ring.
Precisely because of the antagonism within the constitu-
tive principle of the bourgeois family, its disintegration by no
means has solely the positive aspect of liberation from het-
eronomous authority, but has also a negative aspect,
which attains drastic prominence today. Even if the repres-
sive traits of the bourgeois family may be growing milder,
this does not necessarily mean that freer, less authoritarian
forms are taking their place. Like every proper ideology, the
family too was more than a mere lie. If due to the cult of
the family, and especially the cult of the "chaste housewife and*
mother/' those who in reality were oppressed and forced to
make sacrifices were provided with the halo of voluntary
selflessness and goodness, then this was not merely lip-service
for the subjugated, but endowed them with an idea of dignity,
which ultimately, as human dignity, worked toward emancipa-
tion; in it the idea of the equality of human beings, of real
humanism, became concretized. The incredible sensation which
Ibsen's Doll's House created seventy years ago, cannot be
explained solely by the shock which the image of a woman
evoked, who leaves her husband and her children, in order no
longer to be merely an object of patriarchal disposition. Behind
this lay also that component of bourgeois consciousness which
presses toward the realization of freedom, and which felt the
shamefulness of being confronted with the undisguised
manifestation of the prevailing lack of freedom. Bourgeois con-
sciousness saw presented in Ibsen's dramas what it had already
 The Family 139
felt tacitly for a long time, as the result of a concept of the fam-
ily that contained the presuppositions for its own critique.
The crisis of the family is a crisis of humanity as such.
While the possibility of a full realization of human rights, an
emancipation of woman resulting from the emancipation of so-
ciety becomes foreseeable, no less foreseeable is also a regres-
sion into barbarism due to atomization and dissociation.
This the family appears to resist forcefully. But still its
continued existence probably signifies a good deal less than is
hoped for, a consciousness seeking for "bonds/' The family can
only be preserved as a neutralized "cultural institution," and
such a preservation threatens its very life. There is a direct cor-
respondence between the conservation of the family's status
quo and its dissolution: its irrationality becomes itself a
calculated affair of propaganda and the culture industry. Noth-
ing can restore the naive faith in its absolute authenticity.
The American motherhood cult, called "momism" by Philip
Wylie,22 signifies much less the breaking through of the archaic
familial forces, but rather, as is well known over there, a ques-
tionable formation in response to the experience of the decay of
relations within the family, to which a miserable memorial is
set on "Mother's Day." Conventional exaggeration and emo-
tional coldness are aspects in correspondence with each other.
The defamation of unregulated love as a vice, the moralistic
prescriptions, in conformity to which the synthetic day dreams
of the culture industry are tailored, the pathetic publicity for
"the healthy nucleus of society" undertaken for practical
reasons in the midst of a practical world, all this ultimately
only emphasizes the inverse of the rationality that has seized
on the institution of marriage: its coldness. Marriage shrinks
more and more into a relationship of exchange serving purely
practical ends. The man pays a subsidy in return for the
woman's sexual compliance to his will, the collective of women
exploits its natural monopoly in order to gain a certain degree
of security. Characteristically, precisely where the romantic
cult of the family is being conducted most noisily, marriage is
wholly undermined by the institution of divorce. The individu-
als become interchangeable here too as they do in business life,
 140 Aspects of Sociology
where one leaves a position as soon as a better one offers itself.
Children are no longer raised, as they were in many cases
during the height of the bourgeoisie in the nineteenth century,
so that in them the parent's own life might complete itself.23
They no longer experience the warmth of that second womb,
which, at least at times and among certain social strata, the
family resembled. That the children's unconscious reacts to
such moments, and that the refrigerated atmosphere of the
family also sheds coldness on their own emotional life, can
hardly be doubted.24 The widespread phenomenon of juvenile
delinquency testifies to the contemporary status of the family.
The family fulfills its function as an institution of cultiva-
tion and education to an ever-decreasing degree. If one con-
tinually hears in Germany today, concerning the children of
the upper stratas, that they have "received nothing" from their
homes, and when the teacher at institutions of higher learning
observes how little of substantial, actually experienced cultiva-
tion can be presupposed among his students, the cause for this
lies in the fact that cultivation has lost its practical utility. Even
if the family were to make great efforts in the sphere of cultiva-
tion, these would necessarily fail, because together with the
loss of the security of heritable family property the protective,
sheltering moment has also been lost. The general tendency
works toward the rejection by the child of such cultivation as
unhealthy introversion; he prefers to accommodate himself to
the demands of so-called real life, long before these demands
actually affect him. After the abolition of child labor, child-
hood—in the fullest sense it had in the nineteenth cen-
tury—became that domain, temporarily attainable for all, to
which nostalgia calls one back. Just as it arose then historically
for everyone, today it has been liquidated for everyone. Again
the faces of the children appear old and devoid of dreams just
as they did in the portraits of earlier periods. The specific
moment of denial which at present motivates the individuals
and prevents their individuation is no longer the familial in-
junction, but the coldness that invades the family all the more,
the more perforated it becomes.
Contemporary society is not capable of adequately substi-
 The Family 141
tuting for the economic and educational role of the father. In
the educational and executive function which he once exer-
cised, even in his strictness, a need was manifested, no matter
in how fragmented a manner, that exists no less today, and
which the society that threatens the family can by no means fill
more adequately. Under the pressure of the father children
were supposed to learn not to conceive failures in terms of their
societal causation, but to stop at the individual aspect and to
render this absolute in terms of guilt, inadequacy, and personal
inferiority. If this pressure was not too harsh, and above all, if
it was softened by maternal tenderness, then this resulted in
human beings who were also capable of seeing faults in them-
selves; human beings who learned through the father's ex-
ample an attitude of independence, a joy in free dispositions
and inner discipline; who could represent authority as well as
freedom and could practice these. Where the family was ade-
quate to its tasks, they gained a conscience, a capacity to love,
and consistency. This was productive and progressive.25 In
contrast to this, the historical decay of the family contributes
still further to the danger of totalitarian domination, produced
by those same economic tendencies which are destroying the
family.
Today in the early phases of his development the child
still undergoes the same experiences of hate and love with re-
spect to his father, which constituted the Oedipus complex in
the bourgeois age. More rapidly than before, however, the
child discovers that the father by no means embodies the
power, justice, and goodness, and above all, by no means
provides the protection, which the child had initially expected.
The actual weakness of the father within society, which in-
dicates the shrinkage of competition and free enterprise, ex-
tends into the innermost cells of the psychic household: the
child can no longer identify with the father, no longer can ac-
complish that internalization of the familial demands, which
with all their repressive moments still contributed decisively to
the formation of an autonomous individual. Therefore there is
today actually no longer the conflict between the powerful fam-
ily and the no less powerful ego; instead the two, equally weak,
 142 Aspects of Sociology
are split apart. The family is now regarded much less as a des-
potic power, than perceived as a residue, a superfluous adjunct,
to be sure, as in earlier periods the father was the "old man"
about whom one smiled. Now the traditional institution is
feared just as little as it is loved; no longer does one struggle
against it; instead it is forgotten or merely tolerated by those
who have neither the motives nor the strength for resistance.
In the course of this development the individuals finally
become in actuality that which the strictly liberal economic
theory at the beginning of the era had conceived: social atoms.
In late industrial society every individual is alone—the title,
which has become famous, The Lonely Crowd,26 testifies to
this. From his relationship to his father the child now carries
away only the abstract idea of arbitrary, unconditional power
and strength and then searches for a stronger, more powerful
father than the real one, who is truly adequate to this image, a
super-father, as it were, like the one produced by the totali-
tarian ideologies. The father is supplanted by collective powers
such as the class in school, the team in sports, the club, and
finally the state. The young people show an inclination to
submit to any authority, no matter what its content, as long as
this offers them protection, narcissistic satisfaction, material
gain, and also the possibility to release upon others the sadism
behind which their unconscious perplexity and desperation are
hidden.
The crisis reached Germany earlier perhaps than any
other place, at the latest during the first great inflation [1922-
1923]. Therefore it is false to place the blame for National So-
cialism on the patriarchal German family structure—as is
done in a widely read American book.27 Aside from the inade-
quacy, in principle, of such a narrowly psychological attempt
at explanation, in addition the objection must also be stated
that Hitler no longer could attach himself to an intact tradition
of familial authority. It was just in Germany that taboos such
as those concerning virginity or the requirement of legalized
cohabitation and monogamy were probably much more
thoroughly weakened after 1918 than they were in the Catholic
Latin countries or in the Anglo-Saxon countries suffused with
 The Family 143
puritanism and Irish Jansenism. Within the categories of a
social psychology of the family, it is much more valid to regard
the Third Reich as an exaggerated substitute for the no longer
existing authority of the family, than representing the continu-
ation of such an authority. If the theory of Freud's Group Psy-
chology and the Analysis of the Ego is applicable, that the fa-
ther image can be transferred to secondary groups and their
leaders,28 then the Hitler regime offers the model for such a
transference; and the power of authority as well as the need for
it were evoked precisely by their absence in the Germany of the
Weimar Republic. Hitler and the modern dictatorship are in
fact the product of a fatherless society.29 To what extent the
transference of paternal authority to the collective transforms
the inner constitution of that authority, that of course remains
unresolved.30 It would be nonsensical in any case to equate the
crisis of the family with the dissolution of authority as such.
The authority becomes more abstract; but thereby it becomes
increasingly inhuman and relentless. The gigantically mag-
nified, collectivized Ego-ideal is the satanic counterpart of a lib-
erated ego.
Since the publication of the collective study Authority and
the Family (1936) by the Institute of Social Research numerous
sociological investigations of the family have been carried out
in Germany.31 In order to assess their specific value correctly,
it is necessary to be clear about the fact that while the
symptoms of the dissolution of the family showed themselves
earlier in Central Europe than in other countries, the late capi-
talistic tendency toward leveling did not assert itself in such a
palpable form as it did either in the older capitalist countries or
in those which are more characteristic of the contemporary
stage of development. At the same time the German
catastrophes of the last forty years have, in any case, inter-
rupted the tendencies of the total society and either indirectly
or reactively formed certain countertendencies without, how-
ever, therefore preventing that in the long run Germany should
be part of the main trend. The extraordinarily complex state of
the problem, in which elements not contemporary with each
other are superimposed, corresponds to the perspective of
 144 Aspects of Sociology
German sociology of the family. In contrast to American soci-
ology it holds fast to romantic restorative elements, while
placing these in a peculiar relationship to the empirical
research. An inclination toward simply registering what is the
case predominates, a large number of partial observations, ar-
riving at judgments which legitimize that which is present sim-
ply because it is present; the apologetic tradition of German
Idealism—that of the Right Hegelians—quickly has reached an
agreement in Germany with the positivistic science establish-
ment in opposition to any critical view of society. Of course
this cannot be generalized excessively; by no means is there a
lack of opposition.32 Nor are the specific findings of that
research to be considered devoid of value; only the demand
must be made not to absolutize these findings, but instead to
incorporate the specific truth within a more penetrating analy-
sis of the total society.
The present situation of the family cannot be considered
to have been adequately investigated empirically, and specula-
tion about the future of the family is subject to almost prohibi-
tive difficulties. If however the family is in fact inextricably in-
volved in the social process, then its fate will depend on the
latter and not on its autonomous existence as a self-sufficient
social form. In general, the concept on an immanent develop-
mental tendency of the family must not be overstressed. Just
as, say, the economic developments are capable of taking other
directions than those of their own inner laws as soon as the un-
conscious interplay of economic forces is guided in a planned
manner, whether for good or for ill, it is also conceivable that
the sociologically ascertained trend of the family, which is to a
degree immanent, can be changed by intervention, as, for in-
stance, in France, whether this intervention be restorative or
toward an accelerated dissolution in favor of a state control no
longer willing to tolerate any intermediary authority inter-
posed between itself and the social atoms. This much seems
certain: that the elements which work in a humane fashion as
conditions for autonomy, freedom, and experience cannot sim-
ply be preserved by an eradication of the family's obsolete
traits. That a family with "equality of rank" can be realized
 The Family 145
within a society in which humanity itself has not yet come of
age and in which human rights have not been yet recognized in
a much more decisive fashion, is surely an illusion. One cannot
preserve the protective function of the family and at the same
time remove its disciplinary aspect as long as it has to protect
its members from a world in which a mediated or direct pres-
sure is inherent and which must necessarily transmit this pres-
sure to all its institutions. The family suffers from the same ills
as does all that is particular and that strives for liberation:
there can be no emancipation of the family without the eman-
cipation of the whole. But in a free world a family in freedom is
readily conceivable, the societal sublimation of the mere rela-
tions of nature in terms of what is called in Wilhelm Meister
the "confirmed thought of duration" [bestaetigte Gedanke der
Dauer]; a form of close and joyous cohabitation of individuals,
protected from barbarity and yet without doing violence to that
nature which is both preserved and resolved [aufgehoben] in
it.

Notes

1. George S. Lundberg, Can Science Save Us? New York-London-Toronto,

1950, p. 47 ff.
2. "As one of the most important educative forces, the family takes care of
the reproduction of human characters, as these are required by social life,
and to a great part endows these characters with the indispensable capac-
ity for authoritarian behavior of a specific kind on which the bourgeois
[buerger\iche — d\so\ civil] order depends to a high degree" {Studien
ueber Autoritaet und Familie. Max Horkheimer, ed. Paris, 1936, p. 49
ff.). See also Margaret Mead, Male and Female I A Study of the Sexes in
a Changing World. London, 1950, p. 183 ff.
3. Evelyn Waugh, The Loved One.
4. Aldous Huxley, Brave New World.
5. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, La nouvelle Heloise, bks. 4 and 5.
6. Burdach sees "Pantogamie" as the precondition for the formation of
social union (Karl Burdach, Die Psychologie als Erfahrungswissenschaft.
Leipzig, 1826, vol. I). The opposition of conceptions about the original
state of human society and the family can be traced back to Antiquity.
Lucretius represented the view of an original promiscuity {De rerum na-
tura, verse 1031 ff.). In contrast, Juvenal in Satire VI, verses 1-10, saw
 146 Aspects of Sociology
monogamous marriage as the original state and regarded other forms as a
subsequent decline.
7. Johann Hakob Bachofen, Das Mutterrecht, Stuttgart, 1861 [Selections
from the work of Bachofen have recently been published in English in
Bachofen—Myth, Religion and Mother Right, Selected Writings. Ralph
Manheim, trans. Princeton, 1967].
8. Wilhelm H. Riehl, Die Familie. Stuttgart, 1854.
9. Ferdinand Toennies, Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft. Leipzig, 1887.
10. Ludwig Gumplowicz, Grundriss der Soziologie. Vienna, 1885.
11. Herbert Marcuse, "Autoritaet und Familie in der deutsche Soziologie bis
1933," in Studien ueber Autoritaet und Familie, op. cit., p. 737.
12. Emile Durkheim, "La prohibition de I'inceste et ses origines" in L'annee
sociologique, vol. I, Paris, 1896-1897; Claude L£vi-Strauss, Les struc-
tures elementaires de la Parente. Paris, 1949; George Davy, "La familie
et la parente selon Durkheim," in Sociologues d'hier et d'aujourd'hui.
Paris, 1950; Marcel Mauss, Sociologie et anthropologic Paris, 1950.
13. Ernest W. Burgess and Harvey J. Locke, The Family. New York, 1945, p.
8.
14. Meyer F. Nimkoff, Marriage and the Family. Boston, 1947, p. 6.
15. Gardner Murphy, "Social Motivation" in Handbook of Social Psychol-
ogy. Gardner Lindzey, ed. Cambridge, Mass., 1954, vol. II, p. 616.
16. Sigmund Freud, Totem and Taboo. James Strachey, trans. London, 1950.
17. Ralph Linton, "The Natural History of the Family" in The Family: Its
Function and Destiny. Ruth N. Anshen, ed. New York, 1949, p. 20.
18. See Studien ueber Autoritaet und Familie, op. cit., p. 58 ff.
19. See Theodor Ado mo et al, The Authoritarian Personality. New York,
1950, p. 337, 384 ff.
20. On the dual character of authority see Horkheimer's exposition in
Studien ueber Autoritaet und Familie, op. cit., p. 24 ff. "If provisionally
we regard as authoritarian that external and inner mode of behavior in
which human beings subject themselves to an alien authority . . • then
the contradictory character of this category becomes apparent at once.
Authoritarian behavior can be motivated neither by the real nor the
conscious interest of individuals and groups... . Still even in those times
in history when the relationships of dependency were in accord with the
state of human capacities and means, and till today, it has been linked
with a number of deprivations for those who are dependent; and in
periods of stagnation and regression, the affirmation of the existing rela-
tionships of dependency by those being ruled, necessary for the mainte-
nance of the social forms of the time, signified making permanent not
only their material but also their spiritual impotence, and thus shackled
the human development as such. Therefore authority as affirmed depen-
dence can signify progressive conditions, corresponding to the interests
of those concerned and favoring the development of human capacities, as
well as the epitome of artificially maintained social relations and concep-
 The Family 147
tions, which long ago became false and which are contrary to the true in-
terests of the common weal. The blind and slavish submission, which
springs from a lassitude of the soul and the incapacity to make decisions
for oneself, and which, objectively, contributes to the continued existence
of confining and unworthy conditions, is based on authority, just as is
the conscious discipline of work of a progressively blossoming society."
21. See Studien ueber Autoritaet und Familie, op. cit., p. 59.
22. Philip Wylie, A Generation of Vipers. New York, 1942.
23. George C. Homans, The Human Group. New York, 1950, p. 277 ff.
24. In this connection Homans points out that as a consequence of the
decline in paternal authority, sons react with greater irritability to it than
they do in periods of strong paternal authority {op. cit., p. 278).
25. See Horkheimer, "Authoritarianism and the Family Today" in The Fam-
ily. Its Function and Destiny, op. cit., p. 359 ff.
26. David Riesman, The Lonely Crowd/A Study of the Changing American
Character. New Haven, 1950.
27. B. Schaffner, FatherlandjA Study of Authoritarianism in the German
Family. New York, 1948.
28. Sigmund Freud, Massenpsychologie und Ich-Analyse (group psychology,
etc.).
29. Paul Federn, "Lust-Unlust Prinzip und Realitaetsprinzip," in Interna-
tionale Zeitschrift fuer Aerztliche Psychoanalyse. S. Freud, ed. Leipzig
and Vienna, 1914, vol. II, p. 492 ff.
30. See George Orwell, 1954.
31. Rene Koenig, "Materialien zur Soziologie der Familie," in Beitraege zur
Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie. Koenig, ed., vol. I, Bern, 1946. See
also Koenig, "Abhaengigkeit und Selbststaendigkeit in der Familie," in
Abhaengigkeit und Selbststaendigkeit im sozialen Leben. Leopold von
Wiese, ed. Cologne, 1951; Koenig, "Soziologie der Familie," in
SoziologielLehr- und Handbuch zur modernen Gesellschaftskunde.
Helmut Schelsky and Arnold Gehlen, eds. Duesseldorf, 1955. See also
Helmut Schelsky, Wandlungen der deutschen Familie in der Gegenwart.
Dortmund, 1953; Schelsky, "Die gegenwaertige Problemlage der
Familiensoziologie," in Soziologische Forschung unserer Zeit. Karl G.
Specht, ed. Cologne, 1951; Gerhard Wurzbacher, Leitbilder gegenwaer-
tigen deutschen Familienlebens. Dortmund, 1951.
32. Gerhard Baumert, Deutsche Familien nach dem Kriege, Gemeindestudie
des Instituts fuer Sozialwissenschaftliche Forschung, Darmstadt, 1954.
 X
Community Studies
Sociology, concerned with a subject matter which appears to be
directly known and familiar to every human being, and the
scientific preoccupation with which therefore seems strange to
many, frequently justifies its existence by the so-called impene-
trable complexity of modern society. The extraordinary growth
of population in all countries since the Industrial Revolution,
the highly ramified and compartmentalized economic pro-
cesses, the specialization of most human functions render it im-
possible for anyone to find his way at all, unless he can receive
guidance from the schemata of science. Modern society is
blamed with being too "complicated"—unjustly, as a similar
accusation is also unjustified with respect to the human beings
themselves. It is questionable whether any such complexity in
an actual sense is really present, or whether this is merely a
surface phenomenon, a part of the veil that hides in what
manner and with what sacrifices the whole enterprise is main-
tained. In any case, there is grounds for the suspicion, that the
case is not so much that the matter itself is complicated, but
that the separation of functions in a society based on the
division of labor has also taken hold of the knowing subjects,
and has confined these to such an extent to specific, mainly
technical, practical tasks, that an insight into the whole is
hardly available to them any longer; a state of affairs which is
then mirrored in a scientific doctrine which praises the renun-
ciation of such insight into the whole as a scientific skepticism
and which recommends the limitation to partial sectors as the

148
 Community Studies 149
only thing that remains within the realm of the possible. This
much can certainly be said, that modern society as a totality is
no more inaccessible to immediate experience, no more unsur-
veyable and incomprehensible in its inner motivations, than a
purely agrarian society may have been, or that of an urban
guild economy. The philosophical concept of social alienation
has given expression to this state of affairs and has found its
derivation in the structure of a market society based on
division of labor. The consequence which arose from this was
to expect theory to furnish the social insights, initially philo-
sophic theory, and later after the disintegration of the great
systems, a specifically sociological theory. In scholars such as
Max Weber, Durkheim, and Pareto one can still sense some-
thing like an impulse to set up laws by means of which the
alienated, impenetrable social events, in which appearance and
essence are interwoven, can be penetrated intellectually. The
development of scientific sociology during the last thirty years
has however frequently leaned toward doubt concerning any
and every interpretive theory formation, and has placed in the
foreground that concentration on the ascertaining of "facts,"
which is proclaimed throughout in the works of the most
recent great theoreticians of sociology, who have all been of a
empiricistic, positivistic turn of mind.
Together with this skepticism, meanwhile, the uneasiness
about the complexity of the subject matter also increased. The
immeasurable quantity of collected facts calcified into "opaque
items," impenetrable materials devoid of meaning. Desperately
a way out has been sought: a method in which the con-
trollability and reliability of modern science would be united
with the possibility of representing the coherence of the whole.
In other words, prototypes, models of contemporary society,
concrete objects of investigation were sought, in which, like in
a parabolic mirror the otherwise diffuse totality could be
brought into focus.
In the modern mass society, in which industrialization has
been accompanied by urbanization, a model of typical societal
structures and tendencies presents itself in the city. Toward it
sociology turned at quite an early date. Among the first large-
 150 Aspects of Sociology
scale empirical investigations of a large city and its inhabitants
must be counted those of London by Charles Booth (from
1886), the Pittsburgh Survey begun in 1909, and also the
Springfield Survey on a "middletown" (from 1914). Un-
derlying this was not so much the aim of objective research as
of social criticism: The desire to show how the majority of
human beings live.1 A specific branch of sociology, that of
human ecology, began to investigate the relationship of human
beings to their environment, with a view to their relations to
the social institutions and the forms of socialization, often fol-
lowing the models of botany and zoology.2 An entire
sociological school was formed around Robert E. Park and his
investigations of the metropolis Chicago.3
However, as the metropolis itself displays all the traits of
complexity, unsurveyability, and alienation, which render ori-
entation difficult, the difficulties which empirical statements
about the total society encountered were only repeated in these
investigations of the metropolis. Therefore researchers resorted
to investigating models of middle-sized towns in which it
was hoped the tendencies of urbanization and their social
consequences could be studied and which at the same time
could still to some extent be surveyed in their entirety.4 This
was founded on the tacit hope that one could extrapolate from
such Middletowns, could draw conclusions valid for the whole,
as long as the specific details were properly and fully treated
and so carefully selected that a prototypal character could be
assigned to them.5 The endeavor, to investigate a sector of soci-
ety exhaustively, as representative of the whole, led at an early
point to the development of a specific discipline, sociography.
Inaugurated by the Dutch sociologist Rudolf Steinmetz, it
aimed at investigating the peoples and their regional sub-
divisions "in their concrete unity/' 6 This aim, however, was
obscured subsequently by methodological discussions in which
the relationship of empirical sociology—with which soci-
ography desired to identify itself—with theoretical sociology
was at issue.7 Only recently has there been a return to the orig-
inal intention of sociography, to investigate "the problem of
 Community Studies 151.
space, time, and the intertwining of objective conditions, of be-
havior and opinion within a given situation."8
Here the aim is not so much the attainment of general-
izations as of "more intimate insights into the actual interrela-
tionships/' by limiting oneself "to both spaces and groups
which can be surveyed."9
The Middletown studies were conceived by the Americans
Robert and Helen Lynd.10 With all its descriptive objectivity,
their work arose out of that self-criticism of American society
which characterized the twenties. In the literature of that
period the discovery of provincial America plays a decisive
role, especially with respect to the uniformity of provincial life,
which immediately strikes the observer in the external similar-
ity of the smaller towns and is based on economic and tech-
nological conditions which do not exist in the same manner in
Europe, no matter how undeniable the tendency in that direc-
tion may be.
Under the aspect of the changes, not only in the social in-
stitutions and relations, but also of the cultural and political
climate—which had been excluded from the investigations of
human ecology—the Lynds and their staff studied an Ameri-
can "middletown" in Indiana, which at the conclusion of the
entire project in 1935 had reached a population of 50,000. In
two successive investigations the structural changes of this
town were recorded, in the periods from 1885 to 1925 and
from 1925 to 1935, this being a time of intensive industrial
development accompanied by booms and depressions. The
Lynds were not primarily interested in statistically verifiable
data. They wanted to extract the interaction of social and eco-
nomic conditions with the subjective norms and conceptions of
the population. The nature of this interaction to a large degree
determined the character of the community under investigation
and its development.

But in a culture that values, as Middletown does,

"progress" and having "the best in the world/' particularly
when this culture is involved in an era of rapid and irregular
 152 Aspects of Sociology
change, the investigator believes that the realization of these
very values depends at many points upon the cultivation of an
attitude of hospitality, rather than of resistance, to change. In
view of the rapidity of some cultural changes in Middletown in
recent decades, its resistance to change, its failure to embrace
change as an opportunity to lessen its frictions, may constitute a
liability to its own values.11

It was due to the repetition of the investigation that the

Lynds succeeded in depicting the interaction in the relationship
between superstructure and base structure. They could show,
above all in the period of economic crisis, that the town is not
a social monad, but dependent on the processes of the total
society.
The extraordinary influence of the two books of the Lynds
is due to the fact that their search for the prototypical served
not only scientific aims but those of social criticism. They had
selected one of those towns of the American Middle West
which are frighteningly similar, and in their analysis had
allowed that conformity, standardization, and desolation of ex-
istence to become clearly visible, which is to be found wherever
men live together and earn their livelihood solely under the
reign of economic law and the pressures of conformity to es-
tablished society, devoid of any historical tradition. Experi-
ences such as were recorded, for example, in Germany at the
turn of the century in Sombart's astonishing essay "Why Is
There No Socialism in the United States?"12 were made anew
by the Lynds and empirically pursued. Their writings repre-
sented the core of the American literature of social criticism in
the twenties; they wanted to show what happens to human
beings under the conditions of a colorless life, of a universal
"drabness." At the same time they wanted to remain free of all
that which, so often not unjustly, earns for social reportage in
novelistic form the reproach of hasty generalization, and
wanted to bring to the observations of such writers the firm
support of irrefutable findings.
Many investigations have sought to continue the work of
the Lynds. Common to most of these is the aim to bridge the
 Community Studies 153
gap between living experience and precise objectivity, espec-
cially of a statistical kind; they all combine modern investiga-
tory procedures with the observations of persons who lived on
the spot and who in many cases have actively participated in
the life of the middletowns under consideration—of "partici-
pant observers."13 But socially critical aims were rapidly
pushed aside by the demands for scientific objectivity. The
primary emphasis shifted toward precise evidence. To be sure
only a few of these investigations regressed to the earlier view-
point of human ecology by eliminating conceptions of value,
opinions, and convictions entirely from the domain of research.
Rather, the newer investigations combine the methods of soci-
ology with those of psychology and anthropology; thus for in-
stance John Dollard, with his psychoanalytic orientation, who
demonstrated the structure of a community in terms of the
social ordering of sexual relations.14
W. Lloyd Warner was one of the first who transferred the
anthropological investigative procedures developed in the
study of primitive peoples to the study of an American middle-
town with 18,000 inhabitants in New England. His results are
presented in the volumes of the Yankee City Series.15 Warner,
who had become known because of his investigations of stone-
age peoples in Australia,16 wants "to obtain a better under-
standing of how men in all groups, regardless of place or time,
solve the problems which confront them/' 17 He lays special
value on the conception that the community, defined as "a
number of people sharing certain interests, sentiments, behav-
ior, and objects in common by virtue of belonging to a social
group/' 18 occurs, as far as its structure is concerned, in all
forms of society, and not only the modern one:

Nevertheless, the several varieties of modern and primitive

groups, although varying widely among themselves, are essen-
tially the same in kind. All are located in a given territory which
they partly transform for the purpose of maintaining the physi-
cal and social life of the group, and all the individual members
of these groups have social relations directly or indirectly with
each other.19
 154 Aspects of Sociology
The first volume of the series describes the cultural life of
"Yankee City/' especially with a view to the horizontal
stratification of the inhabitants into "superior and inferior
classes/' 20 The second is devoted comprehensively to the social
institutions of the town and seeks to show how the inhabitants
live "in well-ordered existence according to a status system
maintained by these several social institutions/' 21 The third
volume deals with a series of special ethnic groups in this
town, such as the Irish, French, Jews, and Poles, and how they
relinquish their traditional customs to adapt themselves to the
mores of the American middletown.
Within this same complex of themes, social change and
social stratification, there is a series of further investigations of
American rniddletowns. Aside from regional peculiarities,
specific problems such as the tensions between white and black
in the Southern States and their significance for the community
are treated.22 In other countries community studies have also
been pursued, as in France the study on Auxerres,23 and the
Darmstadt study in Germany, or the studies conducted by
Oeser and Hammond in Australia.24
Aside from this there is a second sector of community
studies: rural studies. Dealt with here above all is the transfor-
mation of the village by modern social development, by new
methods of agriculture, or, within the framework of the total
societal development, by the development of the system and
means of transportation and of new means of communi-
cation.25 While the investigation of the metropolis was mo-
tivated by the will to oppose social evils, underlying many in-
vestigations of the village is a romantic glorification of rural
life in terms of the categories of community and society.
Gradually, however, under the impact of the results which
were attained an understanding of the relationship of the city
to the countryside and a grasp of the specific problems of
agrarian sociology in their relationship to the total societal dy-
namics were acquired.26
In this connection the achievements of Leopold von Wiese
in developing a "Sociology of [Rural] Settlements" [Siedlungs-
 Community Studies 155
soziologie] should be mentioned. He initiated extensive field
studies of various forms of settlements within the framework of
his formal theory of relations.27
European community studies such as that on Darmstadt
differ necessarily from the American ones, in spite of the iden-
tity in concept. First of all, they do not treat and construct such
closed social entities as "Middletown." The Darmstadt inves-
tigation had to be divided up into nine monographs.28 For this
external conditions are in part responsible, such as the more
modest financial means of German sociology as well as a cer-
tain lack in adequately trained personnel. But at the same time
an aspect they have in common has become clear: a modern
city does not constitute a closed entity at all, but stands in a
functional interrelationship to the entire country and finally
with the society as a whole; but it is precisely here that condi-
tions in America are hardly different from those in Europe,
especially with respect to the highly developed means of trans-
portation and communication. Modern communities cannot be
treated as economic and social autarchies, but require taking
into consideration societal functions which point beyond the
peripheries of the cities selected for study.
Specifically European, on the other hand, is the question
to what extent a "typical" middletown exists at all. Thus even
today the character of Darmstadt is to a large degree deter-
mined by moments which originated in its tradition as the
Archducal Hessian residence, although the monarchy was
abolished in 1918 and although later Hitler's Reich united the
formerly independent Electorate of Hessen administratively
with the Prussian province of Hessen-Nassau. In spite of that
the character of the town as Residence still makes itself felt in
the considerable role played by the officialdom, the old court
society, by the highly developed sense for caste differences, but
also by a very lively tradition in the arts—all this in sharp con-
trast to, say, the middletowns in the industrial area, although
Darmstadt is by no means lacking in industry. Thus if in
Darmstadt one finds a very marked caste-consciousness in the
attitudes of the population toward the problems of housing and
 156 Aspects of Sociology
reconstruction of the city, 80 percent of which was destroyed
by bombs in 1945, then it would be an error to draw from this
conclusions concerning "the'7 German middletown or even
Germany as a whole. The leveling of historical differences by a
rationally egalitarian form of socialization has not progressed
nearly as far in Europe as in America, where there is no feudal
heritage to nourish the resistance against leveling tendencies.
In other words, the search of sociology for "models/7 in itself,
presupposes a society which in its tendency begins to approach
the ideal type, so to speak, of an object of natural science. To
be sure, Europe undeniably is subject to tendencies in the same
direction, and the Darmstadt studies have furnished rich mate-
rials showing this. It would not be the least among the tasks of
a critical "Realsoziologie" to dissolve the ideological elements
which in Europe adhere stubbornly to categories like that of
the individual; these are hypostatized by consciousness just at
the moment when they have become completely hollow in any
real social sense. The cliche of the "young" America which is
catching up with the older European culture hardly stands up
under analysis. Instead the results of numerous empirical in-
vestigations show the high probability of a progressive process
of Americanization in Europe, which points to the most
profound structural changes within society, and which by no
means can be explained purely in terms of the American oc-
cupation and the increased influence of America in the postwar
period. And the insistence on allegedly inalienable European
qualities is assimilated into this process of Americanization;
these become a sort of natural monopoly which yields a special
profit within the network of the total relations of exchange.
The Darmstadt studies conducted by the Darmstadt Insti-
tute for Social Science Research, and in their later stages with
substantive consultation with the Frankfurt Institute of Social
Research, and the Institute for Agricultural Management Study
of the Justus-Liebig-Hochschule in Giessen go back originally
to an initiative of the Bureau for Labor Affairs under the Amer-
ican Military Government, and were conducted under the ad-
ministration of the Frankfurt Academy of Labor. After gather-
 Community Studies 157
ing the material had proceeded according to the principle that
everything that could be ascertained as fact about Darmstadt
was to be collected, without any prior prejudgment as to its rel-
evance, the reorganization of the study found itself faced with
the task—a situation which is not unusual for empirical social
research—of only subsequently discovering the decisive theo-
retical points of interest and of focusing the description around
these.
Unmistakable, even in the architecture, is the "rural"
character of the town, situated at the edge of the Odenwald; it
stands economically in the most intimate functional interrela-
tionship with its hinterland. Therefore four villages relatively
near the town were selected in order to analyze their complex
relations to Darmstadt, and from this analysis certain con-
clusions concerning the problem of urbanization in Germany
were drawn and also about a series of problems in agrarian so-
ciology.
With respect to the town of Darmstadt itself, the relation
between the population and the institutions with which they
had to deal crystallized from the core of the material. To this
corresponded the method embracing objectively oriented insti-
tutional analyses—of the authorities, the schools, housing con-
ditions—while at the same time the study sought to ascertain
subjective opinions and attitudes of the population by means
of questionnaires and interviews. Labor problems were
elaborated around the model of the employees' judgments
about trade unions and shop committees, as the institutions
most closely affecting them; the section dealing with the soci-
ology of administration investigated the relationship between
the administration and the population, while the most exten-
sive complex of the whole was encompassed by the problems of
youth and the family, again from the dual viewpoint of the ob-
jective and, in many cases, "physical" data concerning the
heavily damaged town and the effect of these conditions on the
human beings. As the specific concept dominating the whole
study a combination of institutional sociology and social psy-
chology emerged.
 158 Aspects of Sociology
To begin with, the investigations in the sectors of town
and countryside revealed that under contemporary conditions
agrarian economics in the narrow sense do not suffice for the
understanding even of rural economic phenomena but require
the complementation by sociological insights, especially con-
cerning the agricultural type of the small farm economy, the
environment of which is no longer purely agrarian, but to a
large degree is determined by trade and industry. A special
monograph29 shows how the town of Darmstadt is exercising
an increasingly great influence economically, socially, and cul-
turally on the surrounding hinterland, an influence to which
the reactive influence of the countryside on the town by no
means corresponds. The farm communities are slowly but
steadily becoming residential communities of farmers, workers,
and farmer-workers. On the one hand the purely farming
[baeuerlich=peasant] element is being pushed back; on the
other, this element itself is drawn into the total social develop-
ment and the social tensions which result from this. In the
light of this study attempts at "re-ruralization" appear to be
extremely problematical. The daily contact with urban influ-
ences changes the socio-psychologicai structure together with
the objective structure; traditional bonds give way to objective
economic considerations, and the leveling tendencies of the
total life-style also spread to the countryside. Intermediate
types such as those of the occasional laborer working in both
economies and the farmer who takes on subsidiary jobs begin
to play a considerable role. The subsidiary work itself is sub-
jected to a reactive development, due to the tendency of ur-
banization.30 While ideologically the ownership of agricultural
land still is held to be sacred, economically it is irresistibly
being transformed into capital. In spite of that the conceptions
of independence and self-sufficiency still have a very stubborn
hold on the major part of the village population, and this leads
to considerable conflicts. Nowhere does the objective trend
toward progress and rationalization collide more brusquely
with the fear of dispossession than it does in the consciousness
of the rural population. The stubborn resistance to change of
 Community Studies 159
this consciousness is not, however, to be confused romantically
with any allegedly ahistorical peasant mode of production31
which no longer exists, insofar as it has ever existed at all. It is
especially in the agrarian sector that empirical sociology can
offer verification of the assertion that the transformation of the
cultural superstructure proceeds more slowly than that of the
conditions of material production.32 Conservative elements of a
precapitalist^ domestic economy exist almost unrelated side by
side with those of the modern world, defined by sport, radio,
and movies—if it is permissible to generalize the Darmstadt
studies—without specifically bourgeois liberal forms of con-
sciousness or a bourgeois cultivation having prevailed within
these. In this "noncontemporaneous" character of rural con-
sciousness is mirrored the permanent crisis situation of the
German farmer [Bauerntum] which can only be overcome
temporarily. The "cultural lag" of the countryside is one of
those dangerous vacuums which can easily be invaded by total-
itarian propaganda. If conclusions for the total society are to be
drawn from empirical agrarian sociology, then it offers an in-
sight into the need for a change in consciousness in the coun-
tryside. Obviously it is doubtful whether this change can be ef-
fected on a cultural level by education alone, and whether it
does not presuppose a change in the material conditions. In
any case the Darmstadt study has made a contribution toward
shaking those conceptions of rural man—of the peasant—
which have survived the National Socialist ideology of "Blood
and Soil" in Germany.
The description of the Darmstadt administration33 was
linked to the general viewpoint of the sociology of administra-
tion derived from Max Weber and elaborated in terms of cat-
egories such as formalism, the identification of officeholders
with the institution, perfectionism, and exclusiveness of the
officialdom, posing the question in such a manner that this
could then be applied to the analysis of the judgment which the
population made concerning the authorities and the experi-
ences encountered with these. An attempt at interpreting the
results of the opinion research ^elates the modes of reaction to
 160 Aspects of Sociology
psychological prototypes such as authoritarian and nonau-
thoritarian personalities. Here, thanks to the materials selected,
the possibility of combining sciences whose position in the
universitas litterarum is quite distinct in a meaningful way
presents itself—a task which sociology cannot possibly avoid,
if it does not wish to be confined within an empty social
formalism.
The most comprehensive complex of the Darmstadt proj-
ects are the investigations of youth. From the study of the
schools, "School and Youth in a Bombed-out Town," 34 much
can be learned especially about the adaptation of youth.
Children of workers in the secondary schools show less resis-
tance than others; they obviously compensate for their social
deprivation by specially eager identification with all that is es-
tablished. Refugee children and those who have lost their fa-
ther behave in a similar manner. Although the contemporary
school no longer dispenses the terror which it still evoked at
the turn of the century, according to German literary accounts
in novels, authoritarian moments still stubbornly survive, not
only among teachers and parents, but also among the pupils
themselves, especially as a consciousness of privilege. On the
other hand, the historical transformation of the consciousness
of youth in the direction of a frequently exaggerated sense for
the practical, an overvaluation of "doing justice to reality," is
remarkable. Surprising is how few direct statements about the
catastrophic bombings are to be found—a result confirmed by
the London investigations of Anna Freud.35 This catastrophe,
as well as the horrors of the Hitler period in general, appear to
be subject to a collective process of repression. The study on
the school and youth is supplemented by a monograph on a
graduating class;36 the conception of this study is derived from
"sociometric" procedures.37 But these procedures are not ap-
plied mathematically, rather solely for qualitative analysis. All
the female graduates were instructed to write essays, charac-
terizing each of their fellow girl students. Here the articulation
into two cliques became clearly evident, on the one side the
traditional bourgeois one of "upper-class daughter" [hoehere
 Community Studies 161
Tochter], on the other a minority who sought to imitate some-
thing like the idea formed in Germany during the early post-
war years of the smart American college girl. The latter group
felt itself to be in opposition, but appeared for its part to be
directed toward a system of norms for "teen-agers" which is
gradually beginning to differentiate itself in Germany as well.
The study poses the far-reaching problem of "conforming
through nonconformity/' of the channelized opposition.
An investigation about "the Youth of the Postwar Period"
furnishes results relevant for general sociology, in spite of its
thematic limitation to the conditions of life and the modes of
reaction of the Darmstadt sample.38 In spite of the war, the
catastrophe of the bombings, the devaluation of currency and
currency reform, the social differentiation corresponds to that
existing before the war or at least is very similar to it. The
thesis, so often heard, that German society had been leveled
economically, sociologically, and psychologically is rendered
questionable by this investigation, though the controversy
within empirical sociology about this issue has hardly been
decided by these results. Ideological differentiations reestablish
themselves more rapidly than the material differences of
former times, or perhaps: hierarchic status consciousness sur-
vives its own material basis, although for a long time now the
economic differences in Germany have again become very
marked. The psychology of postwar youth departs in an essen-
tial manner from the image constructed by traditional youth
psychology. Similar to what is revealed in the school studies, a
mode of behavior directed in an extreme manner toward prac-
tical and immediate concerns, crassly serving self-preservation
on the part of ten-year-olds and even fourteen-year-olds
becomes visible: a certain vulgar materialism or "concretism,"
which can be traced back to infantile fixations under the pres-
sure of the prevailing conditions. In spite of their adherence to
the "concrete," praised nowadays on all sides, postwar youth
shows itself to be insecure and seeking some foothold, even if
this should be found in new authoritarian forces. The anthro-
pological conditions for a truly democratic spirit are still
 162 Aspects of Sociology
lacking. The monograph on youth is supplemented by another
on "German Families after the War/'39 It implies that the insti-
tution of the traditional-style family, threatened in its entirety,
has by no means been strengthened in an enduring fashion by
the solidarity of adversity. Instead the prognosis is that of a
loosening of the family in a positive or a negative direction,
rather than that of the present disintegration, the negative
counterpart of all integration, finding its limit in the stability
of the family.
There can be no doubt that sociology has gained consider-
ably by investigations of communities as surveyable and em-
pirically representable models. The combination of a wealth of
material with an integrative method, which brings together
disciplines usually pointing in different directions, furnishes
insights which otherwise are to a large extent denied to social
research. Nor should one by any means set down the oc-
casional blindness and aimlessness of the accumulated material
as a purely negative aspect. When Max Weber urges that one
should no more allow one's taste for facts to be spoiled than
one's taste for theory,40 he has hit upon a moment that should
by no means be equated with the ridiculous preoccupation with
pure data that is a caricature of scholarly industriousness.
Probably a great quantity of material which is not at the outset
categorially transparent is required, in order, to gain insights
which have not already been conventionally preformed and
reified, in an intellectual world much too greatly occupied by
intentions, especially in Germany, where sociological construc-
tions out of pure concepts, "from above," have been most
thoroughly compromised by the shameful uses of a way of
thought that decrees and imprints its concepts like stamps
upon all that lives. Certainly community studies permit the
sociologist to read off from the model much that has large
scale validity, yet which still could hardly have been grasped
empirically from the society as a whole. With that, however,
the doubts of critical epistemology are by no means ruled out.
In selecting and isolating a middletown, even when this is done
with consideration of its "hinterland," an operation is per-
 Community Studies 163
formed which cuts through the totality of the essential social
interconnections and thereby changes the thing itself. How far
the sector isolated in this way is typical remains, at the very
least, questionable: any decision with respect to that would
presuppose a knowledge of precisely that whole which the lim-
itation to a specific sector is supposed to substitute for. Aside
from the question of whether there are typical middletowns,
and of what they are actually typical, there also remains the
question of principle, whether the forms of sociation which can
be observed in a middletown are really the decisive ones for
today, and whether it is not perhaps those forms of the indus-
trial metropolis which are more important, and which can
hardly be investigated by the methods of the community study.
But above all, it is the conclusions with respect to the general
behavior of human beings drawn from community studies
which create considerable difficulties. Thus the monograph on
the Darmstadt authorities has shown divergences between the
attitudes of the inhabitants and their actual experience with
these authorities. But if this is indeed the case, that the
opinions about the authorities do not depend so much on the
concrete conditions in that specific town and the experiences of
people there with respect to the authorities, but rather on
ideologies, on the intellectual climate, on social determinants
which have little to do with the community being studied and
which can only be derived from conditions of a much more ex-
tensive scope, then it is not really tenable to hope, that here
indeed the part can be representative of the whole. In short, the
community studies finally encounter the basic fact that the
divergence between the theory of society and empirical social
research is not an accidental one. It cannot be explained simply
in terms of the lack of an adequate conceptual system or of the
volume of available facts. Its root is one of principle: the rela-
tion between the appearance and the essence of the total soci-
ety. The community studies do not comply wholly with the cri-
teria of empirical social research, which, formed in accord with
the natural sciences, proclaims postulates such as that of re-
peatability, controllability, and the ability to isolate the specific
 164 Aspects of Sociology
factors; nor does the essential emerge from them, if it is not al-
ready known in some form beforehand. However, as one of the
most intensive efforts to close that gap, community studies
have their great justification, and in many respects their results
themselves can be of help in correcting their own inadequacies.

Notes

1. See Institut fuer Sozialforschung, "Sozialforschung, empirische," article

in Handwoerterbuch der Sozialwissenschaft. E. von Beckerath et al. eds.
Stuttgart/Tuebingen/Goettingen, 1954, section "Geschichte," p. 420 ff.
2. R. D. McKenzie, one of the initiators of human ecology, distinguishes it
from similar disciplines as follows: "A simple study of a community as a
unit of population one calls demography; a study of population groups
and the conditions of habitation is called geography; an investigation
which deals with the relations between population groups as a living en-
tity one calls ecology. The main interest is always directed toward the
relations between human beings" (R. D. McKenzie, "The Field and
Problems of Demography, Human Geography and Human Ecology," in
The Fields and Methods of Sociology. L. I. Bernard, ed. New York, 1934,
p. 52). McKenzie describes the domain of problems of human ecology in
greater detail in his article "Ecology, Human," in the Encyclopaedia of
the Social Sciences, vol. V, p. 314: "Ecology deals with the spatial
aspects of the symbiotic relationships between human beings and institu-
tions. It seeks to investigate the principles and factors contained in the
changing conceptions about the spatial distribution of the populations
and the institutions, which result from the cohabitation of men in a con-
tinually changing culture." Due to the primacy of the "symbiotic rela-
tionships" the cultural relations of the human beings under investigation
are excluded from the outset. The "symbiotic society," in which "the
processes of fluctuation and equalization of forces, their distribution and
transfer" take place, is clearly distinguished from "cultural society"
(Robert Ezra Park, "Human Ecology," in the American Journal of Sociol-
ogy, vol. 42. Chicago, July 1936, p. 1 ff.). See also Emma C. Llewellyn
and Audrey Hawthorn, "Human Ecology," in Twentieth-Century Sociol-
ogy. George Gurvitch and Wilbert E. Moore, eds. New York, 1945, p.
466 ff. Pauline V. Young, Scientific Social Surveys and Research. New
York, 1949, p. 429 ff. and 491 ff.; P. H. Chombart de Lauwe, Paris, 2
vols., Paris, 1952.
3. Robert Ezra Park, Ernest W. Burgess, and R. D. McKenzie, The City.
Chicago, 1925. The interest guiding the research of the Chicago School is
shown in the list of titles of the monographs which originated there: Nels
Anderson, The Hobo, 1923; F. M. Trasher, The Gang, 1927; Ernest Rus-
 Community Studies 165
sell Mowrer, Family Disorganization and Family Discord, 1927; Louis
Wirth, The Ghetto, 1928; Ernest Theodor Hiller, The Strike!A Study in
Collective Action, 1928; Harvey W. Zorbach, The Gold Coast and the
Slum, 1928; Albert Blumenthal, Small-Town Stuff, 1932. Further litera-
ture of the research on the metropolis: Georg Simmel, "Die Grossstadt
und das Geisteslehen," in Die Grossstadt. Theodor Petermann, ed.
Leipzig, 1903 ["The Metropolis and Mental Life," Edward A. Shils,
trans. "Syllabus and Selected Readings, Second-Year Course in the
Study of Contemporary Society (Social Science II) 5th ed. (and later
eds.) [Chicago, 1936] . Adolf Weber, Die Grossstadt und ihre sozialen
Probleme. Leipzig, 1918; Werner Sombart, "Die staedtische Siedlung,"
article in Handwoerterbuch der Soziologie. Alfred Vierkandt, ed. Stutt-
gart, 1931; Lewis Mumford, The Culture of the Cities. New York, 1938;
Stuart A. Queen and Lewis F. Thomas, The CitylA Study of Urbanism in
the United States. New York-London, 1939; Noel P. Gist and Leroy A.
Halbert, Urban Society. New York, 1933; Elisabeth Pfeil, Grossstadt-
forschunglFragestellungen, Verfahrensiveisen und Ergebnisse einer Wis
senschaft, Bremen, 1950; Louis Wirth, "Urbanism as a Way of Life" in
Soziologische Forschung unserer Zeit. Karl Gustav Specht, ed. Cologne,
1951, p. 320 ff.; Svend Riemer, The Modern City. New York, 1952;
Willy Hellpach, Mensch und Volk der Grossstadt, 2nd ed. Stuttgart,
1952.
4. The difficulties in extending the investigations on the position of workers
in several Chicago factories to more interesting social domains induced
W. Lloyd Warner to select Middletown as his object of study: "Commu-
nities of a simpler type with smaller populations, fewer social institutions
and a less complex technical and cultural apparatus furnish the
sociologist with a field for experimentation in which he can test his
theories and methods. Through the investigation of these simple forms of
society it becomes possible for him to gain better experience for the anal-
ysis of more complex societies." W. Lloyd Warner and Paul S. Lunt, The
Social Life of a Modern Community. New Haven, 1941, p. 3
5. Warner considered the results of his investigation of the "Yankee City"
to be representative for America. In it he found "the characteristic and
important traits of American social structure" (Warner, The Structure of
American Life. Edinburgh, 1952, p. xiii). Beyond that, he believed to
have found in it the fundamental traits of human social behavior as such.
Behind this assumption lies the fact that the community is defined as the
spatially limited domain in which man can exercise all his social func-
tions. It is conceived as a social autarchy. Thus in Mclver: "Wherever
the members of any group, whether it be a larger or a smaller one, live
together in such a manner that they do not have this or that specific in-
terest in common, but also the elementary conditions of life, we call such
a group a community. Its specific distinguishing mark consists in that a
single member can spend his whole life entirely within it. One cannot
 166 Aspects of Sociology
live exclusively in an economic organization or a church, but one can in a
tribe or a city. The basic criterion of a community is to be seen in that all
social relations of a person can be found in it" (Robert M. Mclver and
Charles H. Page, Society. New York, 1950, p. 8; see also Mclver, Corw-
munitylA Sociological Study. New York, 1930). See furthermore Marie
Lazarsfeld-Jahoda and Hans Zeisel, Marienthai The Sociology of an Un-
employed Community. Chicago, 1971; John Dollard, Caste and Class in
a Southern Town. New Haven, 1937; Economisch-technologische Insti-
tuuten, Sociaal-economisch rapport Leeuwarden, Leeuwarden, 1948; the
same, Rapport betreffende de industriele onhoikkeling en mogelijkheden
in de gemeente Zwolle, Zwolle, 1950; Leon Festinger, Stanley Schachter,
and Kurt Back, Social Pressures in Informal Groups. New York, 1950;
Economisch-technologische Instituuten, De gemeente Elburg en haar
bestaansbronnon, Arnhem, 1952; C. von Dietze, M. Rolfes, and G.
Weipper, Lebensverhaeltnisse in kleinbaeuerlichen DoerfernjErgebnisse
einer Untersuchung in der Bundesrepublik 2952.Hamburg and Berlin,
1953.
6. Rudolf Steinmetz, "Die Soziographik in der Reihe der Geisteswis-
senschaften," in Archiv fuer Rechts-und Wirtschaftsphilosophie, vol. VI,
1913.
7. See, for example, Rudolf Heberle {"Soziographie," article in Handwoer-
terbuch der Soziologie, op. cit., p. 564), who understands under
sociography "inductive" research "devoted to knowledge in terms of
measurement and quantity" as such.
8. Ludwig Neundoerfer, "Das soziographische Erhebensverfahren," in Em-
pirische Sozialforschung, a series of scientific papers of the Insitut zur
Foerderung oeffentlicher Angelegenheiten, vol. 13, Frankfurt am Main,
1952, p. 157.
9. Op.c/f.,p.l58.
10. Robert S. Lynd and Helen M. Lynd, Middletown/A Study in Contem-
porary American Culture. New York, 1929; also by the same authors,
Middletown in TransitionfA Study in Cultural Conflicts. New York,
1937.
11. Lynd, Middletown in Transition, op. cit., p. xvi ff.
12. Werner Sombart, Warum gibt es in den Vereinigten Staaten keinen
Sozialismus FTuebingen, 1906.
13. See August B. Hollingshead, "Community Research: Development and
Present Condition," in American Sociological Review, vol. 13, April
1948, p. 136 ff.; Kurt Utermann, "Aufgaben und Methoden der
gemeindlichen Sozialforschung," in Beitraege zur Sozilogie der indus-
triellen Gesellschaft. Walther G. Hoffmann, ed. Dortmund, 1952.
14. Dollard, op. cit.
15. "Yankee City Series"—of the six volumes planned the following have
appeared: Warner and Lunt, The Social Life of a Modern Community,
op. cit. (vol. I); Warner and Lunt, The Status System of a Modern Com-
 Community Studies 167
munity. New Haven, 1942 (vol. II); W. Lloyd Warner and Leo Srole, The
Social System of American Ethnic Groups. New Haven, 1945 (vol. Ill);
W. Lloyd Warner and J. O. Low, The Social System of the Modern Fac-
tory. New Haven, 1947 (vol. IV). A short summary in Warner, American
Life: Dream and Reality. Chicago, 1953.
16. Warner, A Black Civilization/A Social Study of an Australian Tribe. New
York, 1937.
17. Warner and Lunt, op. cit., p. 3.
18. Op. cit., p. 16.
19. Op. cit., p. 16 ff.
20. Op. c/f.,p.xix.
21. Op. cit.
22. Allison Davis, Burleigh B. Gardner, and Mary R. Gardner, Deep South!A
Social Anthropological Study of Caste and Class. Chicago, 1941; James
West, Plainville USA. New York, 1945.
23. Charles Bettelheim and S. Frere, Une ville francaise moyenne: Auxerres
en 1950. Paris, 1950.
24. O. A. Oeser and S. B. Hammond, Social Structure and Personality in a
City. New York, 1954; O. A. Oeser and F. E. Emery, Social Structure
and Personality in a Rural Community. New York, 1954.
25. Already at an early date the investigation of rural communities received
an impetus from Romanticism. We need mention only the Agronomische
Brief'e (1812) of Adam Mueller and the description of the forms of Rus-
sian settlements by Frhr. von Haxthausen. But proper monographs with
claims to a strictly scientific character were not produced until around
the turn of the century: James M. Williams, An American Town. New
York, 1906; Newell L. Sims, A Hoosier Village. New York, 1912;
Warren H. Wilson, Quaker Hill. New York, 1907; see for this Carl C.
Taylor, "Techniques of Community Study," in Science of Man in the
World Crisis. Ralph Linton, ed. New York, 1945, p. 416 ff. Further liter-
ature on the sociology of rural society: Laverne Burchfield, Our Rural
Communities/A Guidebook to Published Materials on Rural Problems.
Chicago, 1947; John H. Kolb and Edmund de S. Brunner, A Study of
Rural Society. Boston, 1946; David E. Lindstrom, American Rural Life.
New York, 1948; Paul H. Landis, Rural Life in Process. New York, 1948;
Charles P. Loomis, Studies of Rural Organization in the United States,
Latin America and Germany. Lansing, 1945; Lowry Nelson, Rural Soci-
ology. New York, 1948; N. L. Sims, Elements of Rural Sociology. New
York, 1947; Charles P. Loomis, Rural Social Systems. New York, 1950;
Lucien Bernot and Rene Blancard, Nouville, un village francais. Paris,
1953.
26. Villes et campagneslCivilisahon urbaine et civilisation rurale en France.
Georges Friedmann, ed. Paris; Hans-Juerg Beck, Der Kulturzusam-
menstoss von Stadt und Land in einer Vorortgemeinde. Zurich, 1952;
Gerhard Wurzbacher, Das Dorf im Spannungsfeld industrieller Ent-
 168 Aspects of Sociology
wicklung. Stuttgart, 1954; Dorfuntersuchungen, 162. Sonderheft der
"Berichte ueber Landwirtschaft." Hamburg and Berlin, 1955; also the
Darmstadt Community Studies—see fn. 28 below.
27. Das Dorf als soziales Cebilde. Leopold von Wiese, ed. Munich and
Leipzig, 1928. For the methods and the further literature on von Wiese's
"settlement sociology" see Harriet Hoffmann, "Die Beziehungslehre als
sozialwissenschaftliche Forschufigsmethode," in Soziologische For-
schungen unserer Zeit, op. cit., p. 25 ff.
28. Gemeindestudie des Instituts fuer sozialwissenschaftliche Forschung,
Darmstadt, 1952-1954. Monographs: 1. Herbert Koetter, Struktur und
Funktion von Landgemeinden im Einflussbereich einer deutschen Mittel-
stadt; 2. Karl-Guenther Grueneisen, Landbevoelkerung im Kraftfeld der
Stadt; 3. Gerhard Teiwes, Der Nebenerwerbslandwirt und seine Familie
im Schmittpunkt laendicher und stacdtischer Lebensform; 4. Gerhard
Baumert, Jugend der NachkriegszeitlLebensverhaeltnisee und Reaktions-
weisen; 5. Baumert (with collaboration of Edith Huenniger), Deutsche
Familien nach dem Kriege; 6. Irma Kuhr, Schule und Jugend in einer
ausgebombten Stadt; 7. Gieselheid Koepnick, Maedchen einer
OberprimafEine Gruppenstudie; 8. Klaus A. Lindemann, Behoerde und
BuergerlDas Verhaeltnis zwischen Verwaltung und Bevoelkerung in einer
deutschen Mittelstadt"; 9. Anneliese Mausolff, Gewerkschaft und Be-
triebsrat im Urteil der Arbeitsnehmer.
29. See Koetter, op. cit.
30. See Teiwes, op. cit.
31. See W. H. Riehl, Die Naturgeschichte des Volkes als Grundlage einer
deutschen Social-Politik, 6th ed. Stuttgart, 1866.
32. See Grueneisen, op. cit., p. 88.
33. See Lindemann, op. cit.
34. See Kuhr, op. cit.
35. Anna Freud and D. T. Burlingham, War and the Children. London, 1952.
36. See Koepnick, op. cit.
37. See J. L. Moreno, Die Grundlagen der Soziometrik, Cologne and
Opladen, 1954; G. Lindzey and E. F. Borgotta, "Sociometric
Measurement," in Handbook of Social Psychology. Cambridge, Mass.,
1954, vol. I.
38. See Baumert, Jugend der Nachkriegzeit, op. cit.
39. See Baumert, Deutsche Familien nach dem Kriege, op. cit.
40. Max Weber, "Objectivity" in Social Science and Social Policy," in The
Methodology of Social Sciences, Glencoe, 1949.
 XI
Prejudice
If it is true that the future of empirical social research depends
upon the tasks it undertakes to serve, on its resistance to
demands which are hostile to the spirit and manipulative, on
its relatedness to a critical social consciousness, then one can
require some answer as to how such a meaningful application
of empirical methods would look. This answer might base itself
on investigations which were carried out in America by the In-
stitute for Social Research in collaboration with other research
institutes such as the Berkeley Public Opinion Study Group.1
The aim was to gain a reliable and at the same time meaningful
picture of the human forces and counterforces which are
mobilized wherever totalitarian movements and their prop-
aganda assume a sizable scope. In its empirical approach, it
focused on a problem of the very greatest seriousness: race
hatred, especially anti-Semitism. What had to be overcome was
the revulsion against research seeking to gain insight as so-
called objective and impartial observer-researchers into the
horror which had cost many millions of innocent victims their
lives. If one was ready to undertake such an investigation in
spite of that, he had to be borne up by the hope that it might be
precisely such differentiated social-scientific knowledge which
offered a possibility of effectively counteracting the repetition
of this disaster, wherever such a threat might arise. Anyone
who wishes to be of help in contemporary society must
frequently employ methods which are remote from the immedi-
ately humane, which involve large numbers, statistical laws,-
169
 170 Aspects of Sociology
questionnaires, and tests—all of which is itself evidence of
dehumanization. This paradox cannot be circumvented; it has
to be explicitly stated and dealt with.
The results of that investigation were to a certain degree
independent of specific economic, political, and also, it was as-
sumed, geographic conditions. They related to the socio-
psychological preconditions of the modern totalitarian delusion
and beyond that to the preconditions of ethnic and national
prejudice in general. Central was the interconnection between
political ideologies and the psychological character structure of
those who hold such views. This connection, till then known
only in a somewhat vague and hypothetical manner, was now
extensively documented and concretized. Decisive factors were
brought to light concerning the psychological forces which
make men susceptible to the propaganda of National Socialism
and other totalitarian ideologies. From now on one had a basis
for speaking of the "authoritarian" character and its opposite:
the free human being not blindly bound to authority.2
Of course it is understood that the appearance of totali-
tarian systems cannot be explained solely psychologically.
Behind the mass movements so hostile to the masses stand not
only powerful political and economic interests; and the ad-
herents of these movements—it is not for nothing that these
call themselves "followers," "Gefolgschaft" [National Socialist
term for staff of a business firm]—are by no means the ones
who actually have such interests.
Still, in modern mass society those who benefit from these
movements need the masses. Thanks to the studies carried out,
insights are now available about the unconscious psychic con-
ditions under which the masses can be won over to a politics
which conflicts with their own rational interests. These psy-
chological conditions are themselves products of modern devel-
opments, such as the disintegration of medium property, the
growing impossibility of an economically independent exis-
tence, the change in the structure of the family, the false goals
of the economy.3 The great social laws of movement do not
operate solely above the heads of the individuals, but always at
the same time take place also within these individuals and
 Prejudice 171
4
through them. The investigation of prejudice was directed
toward the part which psychology plays in the interaction of
forces between society and the individual. What was involved
methodologically was a further elaboration of what is called in
a broad sense "opinion and attitude research/' by means of the
concepts and procedures of depth psychology.
For this purpose the "stimuli" were specified and inves-
tigated, with which agitators, especially the clearly totalitarian
ones, operate in order to ensnare human beings. In so doing, it
was assumed that these stimuli correspond quite precisely to
the inclinations and modes of behavior of those types which,
due to their psychology, are especially accessible for the role of
followers. Parallel to this a large number of persons were ex-
amined to see whether there was a relationship between their
general political views and their attitudes toward ethnic, social,
and religious minorities on the one hand, and on the other,
their private character traits, and to consider how this rela-
tionship, once it was ascertained, could be understood.
As far as the agitators are concerned, a large number of
detailed investigations (especially of radio speeches and pam-
phlets) were undertaken, which investigations then led to
a systematic treatment of the techniques of the so-called
"rabblerousers," the small group of American anti-Semitic
apostles of hate, often openly sympathizing with Hitler in the
period between 1933 and 1941. The results are in the book
Prophets of Deceit by Leo Lowenthal and Norbert Guterman.
The similarity of the material displayed in it with Hitler's
propaganda is extraordinary. However, this is to be attributed
only in part to a direct influence of the propaganda techniques
practiced in the Third Reich. In the selection of the psycholog-
ical means of attraction obviously, here as there, the agitators
speculate on the same emotions in their audience: that is the
reason why the rhetorical tricks correspond so completely. The
uniformity of the material is so great, that all that was to be
analyzed could actually be developed in terms of a single
speech, and only the demands of scientific reliability and the
precaution against generalizations too quickly arrived at made
it necessary to draw on hundreds of leaflets, pamphlets, and
 172 Aspects of Sociology
recorded speeches. Rigid thinking in terms of cliches and un-
ceasing repetition are everywhere the means of propaganda in
the Hitlerian style. They sharpen the modes of reaction, endow
the platitudes with a kind of self-evidence, and disengage the
resistance of critical consciousness. Thus from all these
speeches and tracts of hate a remarkable small number of stan-
dardized tricks, which are continually employed, can be dis-
tilled.
There is for instance the cliche of the orator himself. He
presents himself as the great "little man/' who is just like all
the others and yet a genius, powerless and yet transfigured by
the reflected glow of power, average and yet a demi-god; in the
same manner as Hitler calling himself the "soldier of the First
World War" or the "Drummer." Part of this cliche is the asser-
tion that the agitator always stands completely alone, pro-
scribed, threatened, and supported by nothing but his own
strength, though actually he always wants to belong to a pow-
erful clique and seeks to recommend himself to it as a reliable
bailiff. In this same manner Hitler spoke of the seven lonely
comrades who came together in Munich to save Germany,
trusting only in themselves.
One trick, recommended by Hitler himself, is to divide the
world into sheep and goats, into the good people, to which one
belongs oneself, and the evil ones, the enemy invented
specifically for demagogic purposes. The former are to be
saved, the latter damned, without any gradations, limitations,
reservations, just as Hitler advises in a famous passage in Mein
Kampf, that in order to assert oneself against an opponent or
competitor, one must depict him in the blackest colors.5 In
Prophets of Deceit the psychological significance of such tricks
is revealed. One can identify oneself with the great "little man"
and still look up to him: he satisfies the requirement for close-
ness and warmth, and after affirming what one is already, he
also satisfies the need for an ideal figure to which one will
gladly subject oneself. Pointing to the isolation and loneliness
of the leader does not only contribute toward endowing him
with heroic qualities—the traditional hero is always lonely—
 Prejudice 173
but this also stills the generally widespread suspicion of
propaganda and publicity, which causes people, quite rightly,
to suspect the orator of being merely an agent of interests who
remain in the background. The division of the world into sheep
and goats finally aims, to begin with, at the listener's vanity.
The good people are described in such a way that one is like
them oneself, and can, without question, count oneself as one
of their number; the schema makes it unnecessary to first prove
oneself as one of the good people. And that there are supposed
to be those who are simply evil furnishes the semblance of a
justification for letting loose one's own sadistic impulses on
whoever has been designated as the victim.
The main thing for the orator is always to provide for his
audience surrogate satisfactions in the oratory itself: the meet-
ing itself takes the place, as it were, of the goals of voluntary
action such as might be discussed at a democratic meeting. The
masses are lured away from reality and are habituated to prefer
the Roman circuses, which, to be sure, soon take on more dis-
turbing forms than those merely of a political rally.
The investigations into the role and nature of totalitarian
character structures within the population itself were presented
in the volume The Authoritarian Personality. In order to attain
an optimum of certainty and objectivity, the same central ques-
tions were treated in the study from the very beginning in
terms of a series of methods that were independent of each
other, and which actually did lead to converging results. The
depth-psychological investigations, largely oriented in a
Freudian direction, were confirmed to a high degree by the in-
vestigations of the agitators: the correspondence of the two
studies—which otherwise were quite different in their ap-
proach—is shown by the fact that a series of fundamental cat-
egories, such as those of stereotypic thinking, disguised
sadism, the veneration of power, the blind recognition ac-
corded to anything that appeared forceful, could be applied just
as well in the one as in the other—or rather the material and
subject matter themselves required the application of these cat-
egories in both cases and virtually imposed them on the inves-
 174 Aspects of Sociology
tigations: an indication that the correspondence, initially only
hypothetically assumed, between the false leaders and their fol-
lowing was actually present.
The material for the research on totalitarian character
structure was drawn directly from the population.6 Over 2,000
questionnaires were distributed. The assertions, toward which
a positive or negative response was to be made, were divided
into three categories, corresponding to the fundamental con-
cept of the study: attitudes of the participants toward ethnic
and religious minorities; views on general political and eco-
nomic questions; private opinions and attitudes of the subjects.
Several statements in the latter category were, for example:

What youth needs most is strict discipline, rugged determi-

nation and the will to work and fight for family and country.—
People can be divided into two distinct classes: the weak and
the strong.—No sane, normal, decent person could even think
of hurting a close friend or relative.

From the sum of the positive and negative reactions to

these statements, conclusions with respect to the total charac-
ter structure of the particular subject were drawn.7 In so doing
certain structural types were hypothetically presupposed on the
basis of prior theoretical considerations, in which psycho-
analytic concepts played a decisive role. The question to be
clarified by experimental means was first, to what extent the
indirectly and provisionally established character structure of
a subject was in consonance with his statements about mi-
norities, on the one hand, and about politics in general on the
other. Surprisingly enough, the correspondence was greater in
the former case than in the latter. In other words, the attitudes
toward quite private questions proved to be a better test for
how far a person was inclined toward ethnic, racial, or
religious prejudice than for his reaction to general political
questions. Certain fundamentals of character rooted in the
private domain seem to be much more decisive for whether a
person will respond to hate propaganda, than for a political
image of the world that is reactionary in the usual sense.8 The
 Prejudice 175
statistical correspondence of the responses to private questions
with those about minorities gradually made it possible not to
mention the latter at all, or hardly, in the questionnaires;
prejudices could be deduced indirectly with great reliability.
One of the main tasks consisted in verifying whether the
hypothetically presupposed structural types actually were to be
found in reality. For this purpose approximately one-tenth
of the experimental subjects were questioned personally,
specifically those especially free from prejudice and those
with especially "totalitarian" characters. The interviews, which
often extended over several sessions, were designed in such a
manner that they could shed light on areas of special interest,
especially on childhood history and relationship to the family,
without these points being emphasized in too obvious a fash-
ion. At the same time these interviews were designed in such a
way that they could also be analyzed statistically and the
"qualitative" results of the questionnaires directly utilized for
verifying the the "quantitative" results.
Furthermore a series of pictures were presented to the ex-
perimental subjects, the contents of which permitted diverse
interpretation; the interpretations chosen by the individuals
then offered an insight into the world of their conceptions,
desires, and fantasies ("thematic apperception test").
Finally the investigation, which initially had embraced
primarily students, members of the middle class, and tech-
nicians was extended to deviant groups, such as prison inmates
or patients in a psychiatric clinic. The reactions furnished by
these groups and the "clinical" data were initially evaluated
separately and only then related to the results of the main in-
vestigation: a procedure, which had proven itself a long time
ago in psychology, studying "deviants" in order to learn some-
thing relevant to the understanding of the "normal," was
transferred to socio-psychological contexts.
Here the totalitarian character type, as a whole, was
revealed to be relatively rigid, of an unchanging structure, no
matter how diverse the political ideologies were. In contrast,
the nontotalitarian type was much more differentiated. Essen-
tial for the rigidity of the totalitarian character9 is its bond to
 176 Aspects of Sociology
authority—the blind, sullen, secretly resentful recognition of
all that is, all that holds power. Accepted traditional values re-
ceive emphasis, as well as externally correct behavior, success,
industry, competence, physical cleanliness, health, and uncrit-
ical conformist attitudes. Throughout such people think and
feel hierarchically. They submit to the idealized moral author-
ity of the group to which they consider themselves to belong—
the "in-group," according to the term of W. G. Sumner10—
and are always ready to condemn those who do not belong to
it, or who they believe do not, under all sorts of pretexts. The
popular German saying concerning "Radfahrernatur"—the
"nature of the cyclist''—is quite descriptive of this sort of atti-
tude [i.e. the cyclist's posture, back bent toward those above,
kicking down at those below]. The feeling of life of these people
is alienated: in order to have the feeling that they are something,
they require the identification with the prevailing order and
with this they identify all the more readily, the more strictly
and forcefully it asserts itself.11 Underlying this is a profound
weakness of their own ego 12 which no longer feels itself
capable of dealing with the demands of self-determination in
the face of overpowering social forces and institutions. Such
types will not permit themselves any reflection which could
threaten their false security and feel contempt for the essential
subjective forces, for spiritual impulses and imagination. In
their eyes the world is actually constructed in accordance with
a black and white cliche, and for all evil an alleged "nature" or
even occult forces are held responsible, just so long as one can
hold onto something all powerful and escape one's own re-
sponsibility. Unconsciously such persons carry within them the
desire for destruction, in spite of all their optimistic and
affirmative talk—even the destruction of their own person.
They incline toward cynicism and contempt for human beings.
However, as the totalitarian character cannot admit to itself
this wish for destruction, it projects the wish onto others,
above all, the enemy which it has chosen, invented, or which
has been invented for it by others, an enemy that is always
imagined as inferior, just as he is dangerous. Fables of
conspiracies and other evil things are spread about, which
 Prejudice 177
allegedly are taking place in the world; at the same time, the
"decadence" of the designated victims is always an argument
employed by totalitarian hangmen of all shadings to justify the
extermination of these victims.
Specific psychological investigations of individuals have
added essential information to this analysis. Frequently the to-
talitarian characters are broken in their childhood, either by a
strict father or by a general lack of love, and then repeat, for
their part, that which once had been done to them, in order to
be able to survive psychically.13 From this comes their lack of
relationship to others, the flatness of their emotions even
toward those who are allegedly closest to them. No matter how
normally they appear to behave—and actually are, in the sense
of carrying out practical functions—still at the same time they
prove to be profoundly damaged, prisoners of their own
weakened ego, incapable of anything that exceeds their own
limited interests or those of their group. The capacity for actu-
ally making living experiences they have lost to a great degree.
In order to change them in a significant manner, it would not
therefore be sufficient to educate them, to seek to inculcate
other convictions, but first, through a long-term process, the
capacity to establish a living relationship with human beings
and things would have to be formed or restored in them.
In the course of the investigation it was possible to de-
velop research tools, above all a "scale" which permitted the
valid distinction between persons who were bound by author-
ity and those who were inwardly free, without thereby setting
up a superficial, mechanical division. It was pointed out that
one of the most profound difficulties of modern sociology is
presented by the break between statistical findings of general
validity and the specific methods which yield access to the es-
sence of the individual and the dynamics of his behavior. The
study on authoritarian character sought to make a contribution
to overcoming these difficulties. The statistical questions were
directed throughout toward that interplay of forces which takes
place within the deeper layers of man; the treatment of the in-
dividual cases was subjected to strong controls, designed to
shield these as far as possible from the accidental character of
 178 Aspects of Sociology
the individual subject as well as of the researcher carrying on
the investigation.
The distinction between prejudiced and unprejudiced
characters—the central theme of the investigation—involved
the danger that the researcher would himself fall prey to the
vice of schematizing, and thus share in the guilt of the univer-
sal evil of dividing mankind simplistically into the saved and
the damned. The study sought to meet this danger by means of
self-critical vigilance. One could not evade the insight that to a
great extent forms of consciousness were active in political and
economic thought, in the "objective spirit/' which correspond
to the dispositions of the prejudiced characters. Here it was
above all formal properties which were involved. Thus the
stereotypes of judgment are by no means confined to the
prejudiced characters, rather these assert themselves often
enough also in those who are considered to be free of prejudice
—among these also a "rigid" type clearly emerged. And just as
widespread is a certain lack of concern for social issues, which
manifests itself in the ignorance of the simplest political and
economic facts. Closely related to this is the inclination to
"personalize" such facts; that means, wherever it is necessary
to inform oneself about impersonal conditions and to think
these through, these are instead equated with some famous in-
dividual or "leader." These and many other traits which both
the basic types have in common were explained in the study as
due to the "cultural climate." Such a climate does not by any
means prevail today in one country only, but rather can be as-
sumed throughout the world and expresses social changes
which are taking place independently of national frontiers.
What is involved in the common traits, which have been
specifically mentioned here, is what has been called, in another
context, 'Ticket thinking."14 The process of mechanization and
bureaucratization demands of those who are subjected to it a
new kind of adaptation: in order to meet the demands which
life makes on them in all its domains, they have to mechanize
and standardize themselves to a certain extent. The more tenu-
ous the dependency of their fate on their own independent
judgment becomes, the more they are obliged to enter into om-
 Prejudice 179
nipotent organizations and institutions, and they will do all the
better, the more they surrender their own judgment and their
own experience and begin to see the world from the viewpoint
of the organizations which decide their advancement. The as-
sertion of individually formed judgment now is only considered
a disturbing factor: it is not only that by applying readymade
cliches and valuations that people render their own lives more
comfortable and ingratiate themselves with their superiors as
reliable—but they also find their way much more quickly and
are freed from the endless effort of having to see through the
complexities of modern society. In the totalitarian states, of
whatever political complexion, this norm character of con-
sciousness has increased to the point of the absurd, but it must
also be taken into account to a large degree in the other states.
Before having reached a decision in favor of one of a number of
readymade ideologies, such a way of thinking approaches that
of the prejudiced characters. Accordingly, truly free human
beings can only be those who from the outset resist the
processes and influences which predispose to prej-
udice. But such a resistance requires so much strength that it is
actually the absence of prejudice which requires an explana-
tion, rather than its presence. For the "cultural climate" is
produced by overwhelming objective conditions, which to a
large extent are independent of the volition of the individual.
Little can be done by giving prescriptions. But whoever
will seek a clear awareness of the intended effects of the agi-
tators may no longer naively fall prey to them, and whoever is
conscious of the underlying causes of prejudice will no longer
be willing to play the fool, who in order to free himself from
the pressures that bear down upon him, turns against those
who are weaker than he is. Objective educational pamphlets,
the collaboration of broadcasting and film, the utilization of
scientific results in the schools can work to counteract the
danger of totalitarian mass delusion in a practical manner. The
effective struggle against totalitarian movements is certainly
not possible without knowledge of their causes, above all when
this struggle is to be directed against the roots of totali-
tarianism, its social preconditions. A comprehension of the
 180 Aspects of Sociology
decisive structures, that is at the same time reliable and
significant, and that is what science is called upon to provide,
can certainly not achieve by itself all that needs to be done; but
it would represent an irreplaceable contribution toward a solu-
tion.

Notes

1. The reports on this investigation and its results were published in the
five-volume collective work Studies in Prejudice. Max Horkheimer and
Samuel H. Flowerman, eds. New York, 1949-1950. The presentation
here draws primarily on the volumes by Leo Lowenthal and Norbert Gu-
terman, Prophets of Deceit / A Study of the Techniques of the American
Agitator. New York, 1949; and Theodor W. Adorno, Else Frenkel-
Brunswik, Daniel J. Levinson, R. Nevitt Sanford, The Authoritarian Per-
sonality. New York, 1950.
2. "It seems clear that an adequate approach to the problem before us must
take into account both fixity and flexibility; it must regard the two not as
mutually exclusive categories but as the extremes of a single continuum
along which human characteristics may be placed; and it must provide a
basis for understanding the conditions which favor the one extreme or
the other" (Adorno et al„ op. cit., p. 7).
3. See op. cit., p. 6.
4. See op. cit., as well as Erich Fromm, Fear of Freedom.
5. See ch. 5, "Masses," above.
6. The investigation was conducted under the Research Project on Social
Discrimination, a joint project of the Institute for Social Research and the
Berkeley Public Opinion Study Group.
7. "The research . . . was guided by the following major hypothesis: that
the political, economic, and social convictions of an individual often form
a broad and coherent pattern, as if bound together by a 'mentality' or
'spirit/ and that this pattern is an expression of deep-lying trends in his
personality" (Adorno era/., op. cit., p. 1).
8. See op. cit., p. 204.
9. See Studien ueber Autoritaet und Familie. Max Horkheimer, ed. Paris,
1936, p. 110 ff. (Theoretische Entwuerfe ueber Autoritaet und Familie
Sozialpsychologischer Teil von Erich Fromm) and Fromm, Fear of
Freedom.
10. William Graham Sumner, Folkways. Boston, 1940, p. 12 ff.
11. See Sigmund Freud, Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego.
James Strachey, trans. London.
12. See Hermann Nunberg, "Ichstaerke und Ichschwaeche," in Interna-
tionale Zeitschriftfuer Psychoanalyse, vol.XXIV, 1939.
 Prejudice 181
13. See Adorno et al., op. cit., p. 337 ff. Also Fromm, Fear of Freedom, as
well as Studien ueber Autoritaet und Familie, op. cit., 77 ff.
14. Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno, Dialectics of Enlightenment.
New York, 1971.
 XII
Ideology
The concept of Ideology has gained universal acceptance in the
language of science. "Only rarely today/' Eduard Spranger
wrote recently, "does one speak of political ideas and ideals,
but very frequently of political ideologies."1 Our knowledge in-
corporates intellectual formations into the social dynamics, by
relating them to the underlying interconnections of motivation.
The undeniable appearance of their independent existence
[An-sich-Sein] as well as their presumptions to truth are made
subject to critical insight. The independence of spiritual prod-
ucts and indeed even the conditions by which they gain this in-
dependence are conceived jointly with the real historical move-
ment under the name of "ideology." Within it these products
are produced and within it they exercise their function.
Allegedly they serve particular interests, voluntarily or invol-
untarily. The separation itself and the constitution of its dis-
tinct sphere, the sphere of spirit, its transcendence, is at the
same time defined as a social result of the division of labor. In
its very form this transcendence is held to justify a fragmented
society. To have a share in the eternal world of ideas is
reserved for those who are privileged by exemption from physi-
cal labor. Themes of this kind, which resonate wherever there
is talk of ideology, have set its concept and the sociology that
deals with it in opposition to traditional philosophy. The latter
still maintains, if not quite in the same words, that in contrast
to the changing flux of appearances, it deals with permanent
and unchanging essence. The statement of a German philoso-
182
 Ideology 183
pher, who still exercises great authority, is well known: in the
pre-Fascist era he compared sociology to a cat-burglar climbing
the facade [of the philosophic edifice]. Such conceptions which
have seeped into popular consciousness for a long time and
have contributed essentially to the mistrust of sociology,
require reflection, all the more so, because in them that which
long since has become irreconcilable and at times crassly con-
tradictory is intermixed. In rendering intellectual contents dy-
namic by means of the critique of ideology we have been led to
forget that the doctrine of ideology itself belongs to the move-
ment of history, and that even if the substance of the concept
of ideology has not changed, its function has, and is subject to
these dynamics.2 What is called ideology, and what actually is
ideology, can only be established if one does justice to the
movement of the concept, which at the same time is the move-
ment of the thing.
If one disregards those oppositional countercurrents in
Greek philosophy which have fallen into disrepute due to the
triumph of the Platonic-Aristotelian tradition and which are
being reconstructed with great difficulty only today, then, at
least since the beginnings of modern bourgeois society at the
turn of the sixteenth and the seventeenth centuries, the general
conditions for false contents of consciousness began to be
noted. Francis Bacon's antidogmatic manifesto for a liberation
of reason proclaims the struggle against the "Idols," the collec-
tive prejudices which still oppressed mankind at the end of that
age, just as they did in its beginnings. His formulations at
times have the ring of an anticipation of the modern posi-
tivistic critique of language, of semantics. He characterizes one
type of the idols, from which the human mind must free itself,
as the Idols of the Market [idola fori], freely translated, the
idols of mass society: "For it is by discourse that men as-
sociate; and words are imposed according to the apprehension
of the vulgar. And therefore the ill and unfit choice of words
wonderfully obstructs the understanding. . . . Words plainly
force and override the understanding and throw all into confu
sion." 3 Two aspects of this statement of the earliest modern
Enlightenment deserve emphasis. First, the delusion is at-
 184 Aspects of Sociology
tributed to "men" thus, as it were, to invariant natural beings,
and not to the conditions which make them what they are or to
which they are subject, "the crowd." The doctrine of innate
blindness, a part of secular theology, today still belongs to the
arsenal of the vulgar doctrine of ideology: in attributing false
consciousness to a fundamental property of human beings or to
their sociation as such, not only are its concrete conditions ig-
nored, but at the same time delusion is justified, as it were, as a
law of nature, and the domination over the deluded is also jus-
tified by this, as indeed was done by Bacon's pupil Hobbes af-
terwards. Furthermore the delusion was attributed to "name-
giving," to logical impurities, and thus to the subjects and their
fallibility, rather than to the objective historical constellations,
just as Theodor Geiger recently again explained ideologies
purely as a matter of "mentality" and denounced their alleged
relationship to the social structure as "pure mysticism."4
Bacon's concept of ideology—if it is permissible to attribute
this to him—is just as subjectivistic as the concept current
today. While his doctrine of the idols sought to further the
emancipation of bourgeois consciousness from the tutelage of
the Church and, in this, is part of the progressive character of
Baconian philosophy as a whole, the limitations of this bour-
geois consciousness are already discernible in him: the intellec-
tual perpetualization of conditions probably conceived ac-
cording to the model of the states of Antiquity, which are to be
emulated, and the abstract subjectivism, which has no intima-
tion of the moment of falseness contained in the isolated cate-
gory of the subject.
The politically progressive impulse of the critique of false
consciousness which Bacon sketched out emerges much more
definitely in the Enlightenment of the eighteenth century. Thus
the left-wing encyclopedists Helvetius and Holbach proclaim
that prejudices of the sort which Bacon attributed to man
universally have their definite social function. They serve the
maintenance of unjust conditions and stand in opposition to
the realization of happiness and the establishment of a rational
society. "The prejudices of the great," it is said in Helvetius,
"are the laws of the little people."5 " . . . Experience has shown
 Ideology 185
us that almost all questions of morals and politics are decided
by force and not by reason. If opinion rules the world, then, in
the long run, it is the powerful who rule opinion."6 That the
modern enterprise of opinion research has forgotten this axiom
and, till most recently, still believed that currently held subjec-
tive opinions represent the ultimate datum, beyond which one
need not look. This fact offers an insight into the change of
function which, with the changes of society, the main themes
of the Enlightenment have undergone. What was once con-
ceived critically, now serves only to determine what is "the
case," and the findings themselves then become only tangential
to this. To be sure, the Encyclopedist too did not as yet attain a
comprehensive insight into the objective origin of ideologies
and the objectivity of their social function. For the most part
prejudices and false consciousness are traced back to the
machinations of the mighty. In Holbach it is said: "Authority
generally considers it in its interest to maintain received
opinions: the prejudices and errors which it considers neces-
sary for the secure maintenance of its power are perpetuated by
this power, which never reasons/' 7 At approximately the same
time, however, Helvetius, perhaps the thinker among the En-
cyclopedists endowed with the greatest intellectual power, had
already recognized the objective necessity that what was at-
tributed by others to the ill will of camarillas: "Our ideas are
the necessary consequence of the society in which we live."8
This motive of necessity then was central to the work of
the French school which called itself that of the ideologues, the
researchers of ideas. The word "ideology" was originated by
one of their chief exponents, Destutt de Tracy.9 His approach
takes its departure from empirical philosophy, which dissects
the human mind in order to lay bare the mechanism of knowl-
edge and bases questions of truth and evidence on this. But his
aim is neither epistemological nor formal. He does not wish to
discover in the mind merely the conditions of the validity of
judgments, but instead to observe the contents of con-
sciousness themselves, the mental phenomena, to dissect and
describe them in the manner of natural objects, of a mineral or
a plant. Ideology, he says at one point in a provocative
 186 Aspects of Sociology
formulation, is a part of zoology.10 Drawing on the concretely
materialistic sensualism of Condillac, he would like to trace
back all ideas to their origin in the senses. It is no longer
sufficient for him simply to refute false consciousness and to
denounce the uses to which it is put, but the laws governing all
sorts of consciousness, whether false or correct, are to be es-
tablished; from there, to be sure, it is only one step to the con-
ception of the social necessity of all contents of consciousness
as such. The ideologues share with the older tradition, as well
as with the most recent positivism, a mathematical natural
science orientation. And like them Destutt de Tracy also places
the origins and the development of linguistic expression in the
foregound; he too seeks to combine the verification in terms of
primary data with a mathematized grammar and language, in
which every idea is univocally assigned to a sign: this, as is
well known, Leibniz and the earlier rationalism already had in
mind.11 All this is to serve a practical political aim. Destutt de
Tracy still hoped to prevent false abstract principles from es-
tablishing themselves by confronting them with the sensual
data, because they hindered not only the communication be-
tween human beings but also the proper construction of the
state and of society. He hoped to be able to establish the same
degree of certainty and evidence for his science of ideas as
mathematics and physics have. The strict methodology of
science was to make an end once and for all of the arbitrary
and optional character of opinions, which had been censured
by the great philosophical tradition since Plato; false con-
sciousness, that which later is called ideology, is to dissolve
when confronted by scientific method. At the same time, how-
ever, primacy is thereby conferred on mind and science. The
school of the ideologues, nourished not only by materialist but
also by idealist sources, in spite of all its empiricism, faithfully
holds to the belief that consciousness determines being. As the
supreme science, Destutt de Tracy conceived of a science of
man which would furnish the foundation for all of political and
social life.12 Comte's conception of the scientifically and ul-
timately also the actually and socially dominant role of sociology
 Ideology 187
is thus already virtually contained in the thought of the
ideologues.
Their doctrine too initially had progressive aims. Reason
was to rule, the world was to be organized for the benefit of
man. In the liberal manner, a harmonious self-adjustment of
the social forces was assumed/ insofar as each one acts ac-
cording to his own, well-understood interests, which are
wholly comprehensible to each. And the concept of ideology
also had this effect initially on the actual political struggles.
Although his dictatorship was itself linked in so many respects
to the bourgeois emancipation, Napoleon, in a passage which
Pareto cites, already raised the accusation of subversion against
the ideologues, even if he did so in a more subtle manner, an
accusation which ever since has attached itself like a shadow to
the social analysis of consciousness. In this reproach he em-
phasized the irrational moments—in a language with Rous-
seauean colorations—to which a continual appeal was made
subsequently, against the so-called intellectualism of the cri-
tique of ideology; yet in its later phase in Pareto the doctrine of
ideology itself was in turn fused with an extreme irrationalism.
Napoleon's denunciation charges:

It is to the doctrine of the ideologues—to this diffuse

metaphysics, which in a contrived manner seeks to find the
primary causes and on this foundation would erect the legisla-
tion of the peoples, instead of adapting the laws to a knowledge
of the human heart of the lessons of history—to which one
must attribute all the misfortunes which have befallen our beau-
tiful France. Their errors had to—and indeed this was the case
—bring about the regime of the men of terror. Indeed, who was
it who proclaimed the principle of insurrection as a duty? Who
misled the people by elevating them to a sovereignty which they
were incapable of exercising? Who has destroyed the sanctity of
the laws and all respect for them, by no longer deriving them
from the sacred principles of justice, the essence of things, and
the civil order of rights, but exclusively from the arbitrary voli-
tion of the people's representatives, composed of men without
 188 Aspects of Sociology
knowledge of the civil, criminal, administrative, political, and
military law? If one is called upon to renew a state, then one
must follow principles which are in constant opposition to each
other [des principes constamment opposes]. History displays
the image of the human heart; it is in history that one must seek
to gain knowledge of the advantages and the evils of the various
kinds of legislation.13

No matter how little lucidity these sentences may possess

and how greatly the natural-right doctrine of the French Revo-
lution is intermingled with a later physiology of consciousness,
this much is clear, that Napoleon sensed in any sort of analysis
of consciousness a threat to positiveness, which to him ap-
peared more safely secured within the heart. The later usage
too, which employs the expression "unworldly ideologues"
against allegedly abstract Utopians in the name of "Real-
politik," is discernible in Napoleon's pronouncement. But
he failed to realize that the ideologues7 analysis of con-
sciousness was by no means so irreconcilable with the interests
of the rulers. Already then a technical manipulative moment
was associated with it. The positivistic doctrine of society
never divested itself of this, and its findings were always utiliz-
able for opposite aims. For the ideologues too the knowledge of
the origin and formation of ideas was a domain for experts, and
what these experts do is to provide the legislator and the
statesman with the ability to establish and preserve the order
desired by him, which, to be sure, at this point is still equated
with a rational order. But the conception that by a correct
knowledge of the chemistry of ideas one can control men, still
predominates; and in the face of this, the question of the truth
and objective evidence of the ideas becomes secondary, in
keeping with the skeptical turn of mind by which the school of
the ideologues was inspired; and so does the question of the
objective historical tendencies on which society depends, in its
blind "natural lawlike" progress, as well as in its potential for
a conscious rational ordering.
These moments became definitive for the classical doctrine
of ideology. We will forego an attempt to treat this doctrine
 Ideology 189
fully. In its general outline it is well known. On the other
hand, the formulations on which it bases itself, especially the
question of the relationship of the inner consistency and in-
dependence of the spirit to its role in society, would require a
most detailed interpretation. And this would have to take up
the central questions of dialectical philosophy. The simplistic
truth that the ideologies in turn react back on the social reality
is not sufficient. The contradiction between the objective truth
of the spiritual and its manner of existence merely for others
[Fuer-anderes-Sein] represents a contradiction with which
traditional thought is not capable of dealing adequately; and it
would have to be specified as a contradiction within the thing
itself and not due merely to inadequacies of method. However,
as we wish to deal here especially with the change in the struc-
ture and function of ideology and of the concept of ideology,
we shall take up another aspect instead: that of the rela-
tionship of ideology to the bourgeois character. The conceptual
motifs from the prehistory of the concept of ideology all belong
to a world in which there was as yet no developed industrial
society, and where the doubt had hardly yet been entertained,
whether, with the establishment of formal equality for all citi-
zens, freedom would also in fact be achieved. Insofar as the
question of the material life process of society had not yet
arisen, the preoccupation with ideology occupied a special rank
in most Enlightenment doctrines: it was believed that it was
sufficient to bring order into consciousness, for order to be
brought into society. However, it is not only this belief which
is bourgeois, but the nature of ideology itself. As a con-
sciousness which is objectively necessary and yet at the same
time false, as the intertwining of truth and falsehood, which is
just as distinct from the whole truth as it is from the pure lie,
ideology belongs, if not to a modern economy, then, in any
case, to a developed urban market economy. For ideology is
justification. It presupposes the experience of a societal condi-
tion which has already become problematic and therefore
requires a defense just as much as does the idea of justice itself,
which would not exist without such necessity for apologetics
and which has as its model the exchange of things which are
 190 Aspects of Sociology
comparable. Where purely immediate relations of power pre-
dominate, there are really no ideologies. The thinkers of the
restoration and those who praise feudal or absolutistic condi-
tions are themselves already bourgeois, due to the form of dis-
cursive logic, of argumentation, which contains an egalitarian,
anti-hierarchic element, and therefore they always undermine
that which they would glorify. A rational theory of the
monarchical system, which is supposed to justify the irratio-
nality of that system, would have to sound like lese majeste,
wherever the monarchic principle still has substance: the
founding of positive power on reason virtually revokes the
principle of the recognition of that which exists. Accordingly,
the critique of ideology, as the confrontation of ideology with
its own truth, is only possible insofar as the ideology contains
a rational element with which the critique can deal. That
applies to ideas such as those of liberalism, individualism, the
identity of spirit and reality. But whoever would want to criti-
cize, for instance, the so-called ideology of National Socialism
would find himself victim of an impotent naivete. Not only is
the intellectual level of the authors Hitler and Rosenberg be-
neath all criticism. The lack of any such level, the triumph over
which must be counted among the most modest of pleasures, is
the symptom of a state, to which the concept of ideology, of a
necessarily false consciousness, is no longer directly relevant.
No objective spirit is mirrored in such so-called "thought,"
rather it is a manipulative contrivance, a mere instrument of
power, which actually no one, not even those who used it
themselves, ever believed or expected to be taken seriously.
With a sly wink they point to their power: try using your
reason against that, and you will see where you will end up; in
many cases the absurdity of the theses seems specifically
designed to test how much you can get people to swallow, as
long as they sense the threat behind the phrases or the promise
that some part of the booty will fall to them. Where ideologies
are replaced by approved views decreed from above, the cri-
tique of ideology must be replaced by an analysis of cut bono—
in whose interest? From this one can gatheA how little the cri-
tique of ideology has to do with that relativism with which one
 Ideology 191
has sought to place in the same category. It is the negation
defined in the Hegelian sense, the confrontation of the spiritual
with its realization, and has as its presupposition the distinc-
tion of the truth or falsity of the judgment just as much as the
requirement for truth in that which is criticized. It is not the
critique of ideology which is relativistic, but rather the abso-
lutism of the totalitarian type, the decrees of Hitler, Mussolini,
and Zhdanov, and it is not for nothing that they themselves
call their pronouncements ideology. The critique of totalitarian
ideologies has not as its task to refute them, for they make no
claim to autonomy or consistency at all, or only in the most
transparent fashion. What is indicated in this case is rather to
analyze on what human dispositions they are speculating, and
what they wish to evoke from these—and that is hellishly far
removed from such official declamations. Furthermore, there
remains the question, why and in what manner modern society
produces human beings who respond to such stimuli, who
require such stimuli, and whose spokesmen to a large extent
are the "Fuhrers" and demagogues of all varieties. The devel-
opment which leads to such changes in ideology has the char-
acter of necessity and not the content and coherence of the
ideologies themselves.14 The anthropological changes to which
the totalitarian ideologies are tailored are due to the structural
changes of society, but they are substantial only in that, and
not in what they state. Ideology today is the condition of con-
sciousness and unconsciousness of the masses, as objective
spirit, not the miserable products which imitate and debase this
spirit in order to reproduce it. For ideology in the proper sense,
relationships of power are required which are not comprehen-
sible to this power itself, which are mediated and therefore also
less harsh. Today society, which has unjustly been blamed for
its complexity, has become too transparent for this.
But just this is the last thing to be openly admitted. The
less ideology there is and the cruder its heritage, the more
research in ideology is pursued, research which promises to
survey the multiplicity of phenomena at the expense of the
theory of society. 15 While in the Soviet sphere the concept of
ideology has been forged into a weapon with which to strike
 192 Aspects of Sociology
not only the rebellious thought, but also the person who dares
to think it, here, in the traffic of the scientific marketplace, this
concept has been softened and deprived of its critical content
and thus of its relationship to truth. The first impulses in this
direction can be found in Nietzsche, who, to be sure, had some-
thing quite different in mind, and who wanted to strike the
proud face of limited bourgeois reason and its metaphysical
dignity. Then, just as positivistic sociology did throughout,
Max Weber denied the existence, or at least the knowability of
any total structure of society as well as of its relationship to the
spirit, and demanded that with the aid of ideal types, which
were not subject to any principle, but solely of interest to
research, one should, entirely without prejudice, pursue what-
ever was primary or secondary at the time.16 In this his work
coincides with Pareto's aim. Where Max Weber restricted the
doctrine of ideology to the establishing of specific dependencies
and in this way reduced it from a theory of the total society to
a hypothesis about specific findings, if not to a "category of
sociological insight" [Kategorie der verstekenden Soziologie]
so, with the same effect, Pareto extended this concept of
ideology so greatly, with his famous doctrine of the "deriva-
tives/ 7 that it no longer contains any specific differentiations.17
The social explanation of false consciousness is turned into the
sabotage of consciousness, pure and simple. For Max Weber
the concept of ideology is a prejudice which has to be tested in
each case, for Pareto all that is spiritual is ideology—in both
cases the concept is neutralized. Pareto draws from this the full
consequence of social relativism. Any character of truth is de-
nied for the spiritual world, insofar as it is more than
mechanistic natural science; it is dissolved into mere rational-
ization, produced by dispositions of interest, justification
presented by all and any conceivable social group. The critique
of ideology has become a spiritual law of the jungle: truth the
mere function of power as it asserts itself. In this, in spite of all
seeming radicalism, Pareto resembles the earlier doctrine of the
Idols, in that he attributes the ideologies, the "derivatives,"
simply to man as such. Although he expressly raises the posi-
tivistic claim, that he is doing research into ideology in a logi-
 Ideology 193
cal experimental manner, according to the model of natural
science and faithful to the facts—and in so doing shows him-
self to be completely impervious to the critical epistemological
reflections of Max Weber, with whom he shares the pathos of
freedom from value—still he uses expressions like "tout le
monde" or even "les hommes." He is blind to the fact that
what he calls human nature changes with the social conditions,
and that this also affects the relation between the actual motor
elements, the "residues," and their derivatives or ideologies. A
characteristic passage from the Traite de sociologie generate
reads:

Basically, the derivatives form means which everyone

employs. . . . Down to the present the jocial sciences consisted
frequently of theories which were composed from residues and
derivatives. They had a practical purpose they were to persuade
men to act in a certain manner considered useful for the society.
In contrast, the present work is an attempt to transfer these
sciences exclusively to the logical experimental level, without
any aim of direct practical utility, but solely with the intention
of establishing the laws of social events. . . . On the contrary,
whoever wishes to undertake exclusively logical experimental
research must take great care to avoid applying derivatives: they
are an object of investigation for him, never a means of ar-
gumentation.18

By relating to human beings as such instead of the concrete

configuration of their sociation Pareto falls back to an older,
one might almost say presociological, viewpoint of the doctrine
of ideology, to the psychological viewpoint. He stops at the
partial insight, that one must distinguish between that "which
a man believes of himself and says and that which he really is
and does," without meeting the complementary requirement,
that one must "to a still greater extent distinguish, in the his-
torical struggles, the phrases and illusions of the parties from
their real organism and their real interests, their conceptions
from their reality." The investigation of ideologies is to a cer-
tain extent directed back toward the private sphere. It has been
 194 Aspects of Sociology
noted quite correctly that Pareto's concept of derivatives is
closely related to the psychoanalytic concept of rationalization,
as it was introduced first by Ernest Jones and then accepted by
Freud: "Man has a strong tendency to attach logical reasoning
to illogical actions. . . ." 19 The fundamental subjectivism of
Pareto, which points back to his subjective economics, does not
actually derive the falsity of ideologies from social conditions
or objectively indicated delusory complexes [Verblendungs-
zusammenhaenge] but from the proposition that men seek to
give a rational foundation and a justification for their true mo-
tives after the fact. That element of truth in ideologies, which
cannot be comprehended psychologically, but only in its rela-
tion to the objective conditions, he does not even consider: the
ideologies are exhausted, as it were, by their anthropological
function. Hans Barth's formulation in Truth and Ideology hits
the mark here: that insofar as it lays claim to being anything
beyond the exploration of causal relations on the model of
mechanics, for Pareto the spiritual world possesses neither its
own autonomous lawfulness nor any value in terms of knowl-
edge.20 Endowing the doctrine of ideology with the appearance
of a science in this way also entails the resignation of this
science with respect to its subject matter. By blinding himself
to the reason contained in ideologies, as this was included in
the Hegelian concept of historical necessity, he at the same
time surrenders any claim of reason as to its right to judge the
ideologies. This doctrine of ideology is itself most eminently
suited to the ideology of the totalitarian state that relies solely
on power. As it subsumes all that is spiritual under the pur-
poses of propaganda and of domination, it makes it possible for
cynicism to enjoy a scientific good conscience. The relationship
between Mussolini's statements and Pareto's tract is well
known. Political liberalism in its late period with its concept of
freedom of opinion, which in any case possesses a certain
affinity to relativism, insofar as everyone is to be allowed to
think what he wishes, because they are only thinking what is
most favorable to their interest and self assertion, regardless of
its truth—this liberalism was by no means secure against such
perversions of the concept of ideology. And this proves once
 Ideology 195
again that totalitarian rule was not imposed on mankind from
without by a few desperados, that it was by no means a traffic
accident on the superhighway of progress, but that there were
the destructive forces in the midst of our culture which were
growing to ripeness.21
By the separate emergence of the doctrine of ideology
from philosophical theory a sort of apparent exactitude is
produced, but the real capacity for insight of the concept is
sacrificed. This can also be shown where this concept was ab-
sorbed by philosophy itself, as in Max Scheler. In contrast to
Pareto's shapelessly leveling doctrine of derivatives, Scheler
has sought to establish a kind of typology, if not ontology, of
the ideologies. Today, after not quite thirty years, his much-ad-
mired attempt strikes one as astonishingly naive:

. .. Among such formal modes of thought, determined by

class, I include, for example, the following
The contemplation of becoming—lower class; the con-
templation of being—upper class... .
Realism (the world predominantly as ''resistance")—lower
class; idealism—upper class (the world predominantly as the
"realm of ideas"). . . .
Materialism—lower class; spiritualism—upper class.. . .
Optimistic view of the future and looking back pessimis-
tically to the past—lower class; pessimistic view of the future
and optimistic view of the past—upper class. .. .
A mode of thought that looks for contradictions or the
"dialectical" mode of thought—lower class; the mode of
thought that seeks identity—upper class.. . .
These are inclinations of an unconscious sort and deter-
mined by class, to conceive the world predominantly in one or
the other form. They are not class prejudices, but more than
prejudices: they are formal laws of the formation of judgments,
and specifically, formal laws, which, as laws of the predominant
inclinations to form certain prejudices, are rooted solely in class
status quite apart from individuality. . . . If they were rully
known and their necessary derivation from class status under-
stood, they would constitute actually a new doctrine [Lehr-
 196 Aspects of Sociology
stueck] of the sociology of knowledge, which, in analogy to
Bacon's doctrine of the Idols . . . I would like to designate as
the "sociological doctrine of the idols" of thinking, contempla-
tion, and judgment.22

It is clear that this schema of lower and upper class, which

even in Scheler's own view is much too crude and which shares
the absence of any historical consciousness with its philo-
sophically polar opposite in Pareto, is neither adequate to the
concreteness of social differentiation nor to the formation
of ideologies. The opposition of static ontological and dynamic
nominalistic thought is not only crude and undifferentiated,
but also false as far as the structure of the formation of
ideologies is concerned. What is called in Scheler the "ideology
of the upper class" today to a large extent has precisely such
an extremely nominalistic character. Existing conditions are
defended by the charge that to criticize them is to impose arbi-
trary conceptual constructions from above, is "metaphysics,"
and that research has to keep to unstructured data, "opaque
facts": Pareto himself is an example of such ultranominalistic
apologetics, and the positivism predominant in the social
sciences today, which one can hardly attribute to the lower
class of Scheler's schema, shows the same tendency. And on
the other side, just the most important theories which Scheler
would classify as the ideologies of the lower class, stand in op-
position to nominalism. They took their departure from the ob-
jective total structure of society and an objective concept of un-
folding truth, derived from Hegel. Scheler's phenomenological
approach, as a passive adaptation of philosophy to allegedly
perceivable essentialities that renounces constructions, fell prey
also, in its late phase, to a positivism of the second order, a, to
a certain degree, spiritual positivism.
In Scheler and Mannheim the doctrine of ideology became
the academic branch of the sociology of knowledge. The name
is indicative enough: all consciousness, not only false but also
true consciousness, thus "knowledge," is to be subjected to the
investigation of its social preconditions. Mannheim himself
 Ideology 197
laid proud claim to the introduction of a "total concept of
ideology";23 in his chief work, Ideology and Utopia, it is stated,
for instance:

With the emergence of the general formulation of the total

concept of ideology, out of the mere doctrine of ideology, the
sociology of knowledge develops.... It is clear that in this
context the concept of ideology acquires a new meaning. This
entails two possibilities: the first consists in relinquishing all
aims of an "unmasking" in the exploration of ideology from
now on .. . and limiting oneself to working out the relationship
between the socially existing conditions and the views [Sicht]
at all points. The second possibility consists in afterwards com-
bining this "value-free" attitude with an epistemological atti-
tude. This . . . can . . . lead either to relativism or relationism;
the two must not be confused.

It is difficult to make a serious distinction between the

two possibilities which Mannheim envisages for the applica-
tion of the total concept of ideology. The second, that of an
epistemological relativism, or, in a nobler word, relationism,
which Mannheim confronts to the first possibility as an "epis-
temological" alternative, that of a value-free study of the rela-
tion between "conditions of existence and views," thus of base
structure and superstructure, does not really form an opposi-
tion to the former at all, but, at most, embraces the intention to
give protective cover to the procedures of the positivistic soci-
ology of knowledge by such methodological arguments.
Mannheim feirquTte clearly that the concept of ideology was
justified solely as that of a talse consciousness, but was no
longer capable of dealing with such a concept in terms of con-
tent, and therefore postulates it solely in a formal manner, as
an allegedly epistemological possibility. The specific
negation is replaced by a general worldview, and then the
details are filled in, the ascertainment of the empirical in-
terrelationships between society and spirit, by following the
model of Max Weber's sociology of religion. The doctrine of
 198 Aspects of Sociology
ideology splits apart into a highly abstract total design devoid
of any conclusive articulation, on the one hand, and mon-
ographic studies on the other. The dialectical problem is lost in
the vacuum between these two: that these ideologies are indeed
false consciousness but not only false. The veil which necessar-
ily intervenes between the society and its insight into its own
nature, by virtue of this necessity at the same time expresses
the nature itself. Ideologies in the proper sense become false
only by their relationship to the existing reality. They can be
true "in themselves/' as the ideas of freedom, humanity, and
justice are, but still they present themselves as though they
were already realized. The labeling of such ideas as ideologies,
which is made possible by the total concept of ideology, tes-
tifies much less to an irreconcilable opposition to false con-
sciousness than to the rage against that which could indicate
the possibility of something better, even when in terms of an
ever so powerless intellectual reflection. With some justice it
was once said that in many cases those who reject such
allegedly ideological concepts have in mind not so much the
misapplied concepts as that for which they stand.
The theoretical construction of ideology depends no less
on what actually is effectively active as ideology than it presup-
poses, on the other hand, a theory to define and gain insight
into ideology. Hardly anyone can escape the experiential
awareness that in the specific gravity of the spirit something
decisive has changed. If one may call to mind art as the most
faithful historical seismograph, there seems to be no doubt that
a weakening has taken place which stands in the greatest con-
trast to the heroic epoch of the modern around the year 1910.
Here social thought cannot remain content with simply tracing
back this debility, from which other spiritual domains, such as
philosophy, have hardly been exempt, to a so-called recession
of the creative forces or to the evil of technological civilization.
Rather it will sense a sort of subterranean movement. Com-
pared with the catastrophic processes in the underlying struc-
tures of society, the spirit itself has taken on something
ephemeral, thin, impotent. In the face of contemporary reality
 Ideology 199
it can hardly maintain unimpaired its pretension to being taken
seriously, which was so self-evident to the nineteenth century
faith in culture. The subterranean shift—literally one between
the superstructure and the base structure—extends into the
most subtle immanent problems of consciousness and spiritual
creativity, and it paralyzes the forces, rather than there being
any lack of these. The spirit which does not reflect on this and
goes about its business as if nothing had happened is con-
demned from the outset to helpless vanity. If from the very
beginning the doctrine of ideologies has warned the spirit of its
weaknesses, then its self-consciousness must take a position
toward this aspect today; one could almost say that today, con-
sciousness, which Hegel already had defined essentially as the
moment of negativity, can only survive at all insofar as it in-
corporates the critique of ideology within itself. One can speak
of ideology in a meaningful way only to the extent that some-
thing spiritual emerges from the social process as something
independent, substantial, and with its own proper claims. The
untruth of ideology is always the price paid for this separation,
for the denial of the social foundation. But its aspect of truth
too adheres to this independence, to a consciousness that is
more than the mere imprint of that which exists, and which
seeks to penetrate into this existence. Today the characteristic
of ideologies is much more the absence of this independence,
rather than the delusion of their claims. With the crisis of
bourgeois society, the traditional concept of ideology itself ap-
pears to lose its subject matter. Spirit is split into critical truth,
divesting itself of illusion, but esoteric and alienated from the
direct social connections of effective action, on the one hand,
and the planned administrative control of that which once was
ideology, on the other. If one defines the heritage of ideology in
terms of the totality of those intellectual products, which to a
large extent occupy the consciousness of human beings today,
then by this should be understood, not so much the au-
tonomous spirit, blind to its own social implications, as the to-
tality of what is cooked up in order to ensnare the masses as
consumers and, if possible, to mold and constrain their state of
 200 Aspects of Sociology
consciousness. The socially conditioned false consciousness of
today is no longer objective spirit, not in that sense either, as
crystallized blindly and anonymously out of the social process,
but rather is tailored scientifically to fit the society. That is the
case with the products of the culture industry, film, magazines,
illustrated newspapers, radio, television, and the best-seller lit-
erature of various types, among which biographical novels play
a special role. That the elements in this ideology, uniform in it-
self, are not new, in contrast to the multiple techniques of its
dissemination, but that many are actually calcified, is self-un-
derstood. This is linked to the traditional distinction already
marked in Antiquity, between the higher and lower spheres of
culture, in which the lower are rationalized and integrated with
debased residues of the higher spirit. Historically the schemata
of the contemporary culture industry can be traced back
especially to the early period of English vulgar literature
around 1700. This already has at its disposal most of the ste-
reotypes which grin at us today from the screen and the televi-
sion tube. But the social examination of this qualitatively novel
phenomenon must not allow itself to be duped by references to
the venerable age of its components and the arguments, based
on this, of the satisfaction of alleged primal and fundamental
needs. For it is not these components which matter, nor that
the primitive traits of contemporary mass culture have
remained the same throughout all the ages of a mankind
deprived of adult rights, but rather that today they all have
been placed under a central direction and that a closed system
has been fabricated out of the whole. Escape from it is hardly
tolerated anymore, the human beings are encircled from all
sides, and by means of the achievements of a perverted social
psychology—or, as it has been so aptly called, an inverted psy-
choanalysis^—the regressive tendencies, which the growing
social pressures release in any case, are reinforced. Sociology
has taken over this sphere under the title of communication
research,25 the study of the mass media, and has placed special
emphasis on the reactions of the consumers and the structure
of the interaction between them and the producers. That such
 deology 201
investigations, which hardly seek to deny their parentage in
market research, have a certain value as insights is not to be
denied; however, it would appear to be of greater importance
to treat the so-called mass media in the sense of the critique of
ideology, rather than to remain content with their mere ex-
isting nature. The tacit affirmation of the latter approach, in its
purely descriptive analysis itself constitutes an element of the
ideology.26
In the face of the indescribable power which these media
exercise over human beings today—and here sport, which for a
long time already has gone over into ideology in the broader
sense, must also be included—the concrete determination of
their ideological content is of immediate urgency. This content
produces a synthetic identification of the masses with the
norms and the conditions which either stand anonymously in
the background of the culture industry, or else are consciously
propagated by it. All that is not in agreement is censured, con-
formism down into the most subtle impulses of the psyche is
inculcated. In this the culture industry can pretend to the role
of objective spirit insofar as it is linked at the time to those an-
thropological tendencies which are active in the awareness of
those whom it services. It seizes on these tendencies, reinforces
and confirms them while all that is rebellious is either deleted
or explicitly condemned. The rigidity, devoid of any experi-
ence, of the thinking that predominate in mass society, is hard-
ened still further, if possible, while at the same time a sharp-
ened pseudorealism which in all its externals furnishes the
precise reproduction of empirical reality, prevents any insight
into the character of the preformation, in accord with the social
control, of that which is offered. The more alienated from
human beings the fabricated cultural products are, the more
these human beings are persuaded that they are being
confronted by themselves and their own world. What one sees
on the television tube is similar to what is only too familiar,
while the contraband of slogans, such as that all foreigners are
suspect or that success and career offer the highest satisfaction
in life are smuggled in as though they were evident and eternal
 2J2 Aspects of Sociology
truths. If one were to compress within one sentence what the
ideology of mass culture actually adds up to, one would have to
represent this as a parody of the injunction: "Become that
which thou art": as the exaggerated duplication and justifica-
tion of already existing conditions, and the deprivation of all
transcendence and all critique. In this limiting of the socially
effective spirit to once again presenting to the human beings
only what in any case already constitutes the conditions of
their existence, but at the same time proclaiming this present
existence as its own norm, the people are confirmed in their
faithless faith in pure existence.
Nothing remains then of ideology but that which exists it-
self, the models of a behavior which submits to the over-
whelming power of the existing conditions. It is hardly an ac-
cident that the most influential philosophers today are those
who attach themselves to the word "existence/' as if the
reduplication of mere present existence, by means of the
highest abstrace determinations which can be derived from
this, were equivalent with its meaning. This corresponds to a
great degree to the state within men's minds. They accept the
ridiculous situation, which every day, in the face of the open
possibility of happiness, threatens them with avoidable
catastrophe; to be sure, they no longer accept it as the expres-
sion of an idea, in the way that they may still feel about the
bourgeois system of national states, but make their peace in the
name of realism, with that which is given. From the outset the
individuals experience themselves as chess pieces, and yet
become acquiescent to this. However, since new ideology
hardly says more than that things are the way they are, its own
falsity also shrinks away to the thin axiom that it could not be
otherwise than it is. While human beings bow to this untruth,
at the same time they still see through it secretly. The glorifi-
cation of power and of the irresistible nature of present exis-
tence is at the same time the condition for divesting it of its
magic. The ideology is no longer a veil, but the threatening
face of the world. It is not only due to its involvement with
propaganda, but due to its own character, that it goes over into
terror. However, because ideology and reality are converging in
 Ideology 203
this manner, because reality, due to the lack of any other con-
vincing ideology, becomes its own ideology, it requires only a
small effort of mind to throw off this all-powerful and at the
same time empty illusion; but to make this effort seems to be
the most difficult thing of all.

Notes

1. Eduard Spranger, "Wesen und Wert politischer Ideologien," in Viertel-

jahreshefte fuer Zeitgeschichte, vol. 2,1954, p. 119.
2. See Theodor W. Adorno, Prisms, London, 1967.
3 . Francis Bacon, Novum Organum, in The Works of Francis Bacon.
London, 1857, vol. I, p. 164; [English translation: Bacon's Works, vol. 4,
James Spedding, R. L. Ellis, and D. D. Heath, eds. London, 1883, pp. 54
(.] quoted in Hans Barth, Wahrheit und ldeologie. Zurich, 1945, p. 48.
We are indebted to this work of Barth for a number of citations for the
development of the concept of ideology.
4. See Theodor Geiger, "Kritische Bemerkungen zum Begriffe der
ldeologie," in Cegenwartsprobleme der Soziologie. Gottfried Eisermann,
ed. Potsdam, 1949, p. 144. Geiger's positivism bars any access to the
problem of ideology: "The ideological deviation from the reality of
knowledge consists in that the statement does not refer or limit itself at
all to any reality of knowledge, but contains elements that are alien to re-
ality. Due to its nature and its subject matter the ideological statement is
not accessible to empirical verification or refutation. To be sure, an incor-
rect statement can be free from ideology. . . . But that it is ideological is
shown by an analysis which ascertains: the statement concerns some-
thing about which for all eternity, i.e., in principle, no assertion can be
made that can be either empirically confirmed or disconfirmed. This is
the case either because the object of the statement lies outside the know-
able reality (it transcends it) or because in it something is stated about an
object of reality which does not belong to those properties which deter-
mine this object as real" (Geiger, ldeologie und Wahrheit. Stuttgart und
VN'ien, 1953, p. 49 ff.).
5. Claude Adrien Helvetius, De I'Esprit, citation from Barth, op. cit., p. 65.
6. Helvetius, De I'Homme, quoted from Barth, op. cit., p. 66.
7. Paul Heinrich von Holbach, Systeme de la nature ou des his du monde
physique et du monde moral, quoted from Barth, op. cit., p. 15 ff.
8. Helvetius, De I'Esprit, in Barth, op. cit., p. 62.
9. Destutt de Tracy, Elements d'Ideologie. Brussels, 1826; see Barth, op.
cit., p. 15 ff.
10. Destutt de Tracy, Elements, op. cit., vol. I, p. xii.
11. See Barth, op. cit., p. 21.
 204 Aspects of Sociology
12. See op. cit., p. 23.
13. Vilfredo Pareto, Traite" de sociologie ginirale, Paris, 1933, vol. 2, #1793,
p. 1127, fn.
14. Seech. 11, "Prejudice," above.
15. "When a statement is suspected of ideology, the place in the stream of its
presuppositions is to be found where the troubled and obscuring brook
of uncontrolled emotive conceptions has flewed inte the clear water of
theory. At times one does not have to search very long, but occasionally
the source of the obscuration lies very far back. . . . It would be an attrac-
tive and presumably also rewarding task to investigate ideological state-
ments or those suspected of ideology and seek out the ideological source
and the mechanism of obscuration [Misweisungsmechanismus]. One
could expect, as a result, the classification of ideologies. Till now such a
systematically comprehensive investigation has not been undertaken, nor
can this be offered here. It would require the collection and analysis of
many hundreds, perhaps thousands of statements suspected of ideology.
The theoretician of knowledge would probably be better equipped for
this task than the sociologist" (Geiger, Ideologic und Wahrheit, op. cit.,
p. 92 ff.).
16. Max Weber, Gesammelte Aufsatze zur Wissenschaftslehre. Tuebingen,
1922, p. 520 ff.
17. Pareto, op. cit., vol. I, #1413; see also Pareto, Allgemeine Soziologie.
Carl Brinkmann, ed. Tuebingen, 1955, p. 161 ff.
18. Pareto, Traite de sociologie generale, op. cit., vol. II, #1403.
19. Op. cit., vol. I, #1403.
20. Barth, op. cit., p. 345.
21. See for this Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno, Dialectics of
Enlightenment. New York, 1971.
22. Max Scheler, Die Wissensformen und die Cesellschaft. Leipzig, 1926, p.
204 ff.
23. Karl Mannheim, Ideologie und Utopie, 3rd ed., Frankfurt am Main,
1952, p. 53.
24. Op. cit., p. 70 ff. "We are confronted with a particular concept of
ideology when the word is only to indicate that we do not wish to believe
certain 'ideas' and 'conceptions' of an opponent. For one considers these
% to be more or less conscious obscurations of a factual state of affairs, the
true knowledge of which is not in the interest of the opponent. The
whole scale from conscious lies to half-conscious instinctive obscuration,
from the deception of others to the deception of oneself, can be involved
here. . . . The particularity of this concept is clear at once when one
confronts it to the radical, total concept of ideology. In this sense one can
speak of the ideology of an age or of a specific historically or socially
concrete group—for instance, a class—thus referring to the distinctive
character and nature of the total structure of consciousness of this era or
this group. . . . The particular concept of ideology only addresses itself to
 Ideology 205
a part of the opponent's assertions—and even in these only with respect
to their contents—characterizing them as ideological, while the total con-
cept of ideology questions the entire worldview of the opponent
(including the categorial apparatus) and seeks to understand these cat-
egories too in terms of the collective subject" (op. cit, p. 53 ff.).
25. See, for example, Bernard Berelson, Content Analysis in Communication
Research. Glencoe, 111., 1952; Paul F. Lazarsfeld, Bernard Berelson, and
Hazel Gaudet, The People's Choice. New York, 1948.
26. See KulturindustrielAufklaerung als Massenbetrug, in Horkheimer and
Adorno, op. cit., p. 144 ff.
 Index

"Administrative social research": 127 Booth, Charles: 150

Adorno, Theodor W.: on jazz, 112, Bos well, James: 90
116; on the family, 133, 146; role Brave New World: 131
and nature of totalitarian character Buecher, Karl: 108
studies, 173-177; "ticket think- Burdach, Karl: 131,145
ing," 178-179; change in functions Burgess, Ernest W.: 133
of ideology, 183
Alienation: 65-66,149 Campanella, Tommaso: 34
Allport, Floyd Henry: 70-71 Cantril, Hadley: 115
Allport, Gordon: 115 Cardanus, Hieronymus: 21
Anthropology: and sociology, 31-32 Christianity: and the individual, 17,
Antiphon: 19 40
Anti-Semitism: 169,171 Cicero: 40, 89
Aristotle: 7, 42, 79, 183; and slaves, Cinema: 103-104
20; on relationship of population City: 149-150
increase and structure of society, Civilization: and culture, 89-100;
34; argument against Plato, 86; and hostility to, 98-99
social research, 126 Civitas Dei: 21
Art: sociology of, 101-108; and ideol- Community: and society, 35; studies,
ogy, 198-200 148-168
Augustine, St.: 20,109 Comte, Auguste: 1, 3-7, 11, 13, 41,
The Authoritarian Personality: 173— 73,186; and laws of society, 25-26;
177 and the individual, 43-44; on soci-
Authority: and family, 137-138; dual ety and the individual, 50; on civi-
character of, 146-147 lization, 100
Authority and the Family: 143 Comte s law: 60
Auxerres study: 154 Condillac, Etienne Bonnot de: 186
Cooley, C H.: 67; and small groups,
Bachofen, J. H.: 131-132 58-59
Bacon, Francis: 77,183-184 Cours de philosophic positive: 1
Barth, Hans: 194 "Critical research": 127
Baschwitz, Kurt: 83 Crowds. See Masses
Beethoven, Ludwig van: 107,109 "Cultural anthropology": 16
Bekker, Paul: 108 Culture: and civilization, 89-100
Benjamin, Walter: 104-105 Culture industry: 113-114,200-202
Berkeley Public Opinion Study
Group: 169 Dante, Alighieri: 89
Blaukopf, Kurt: 110 Darmstadt Institute for Social Science
Bluntschli,J.C.:33-34 Research: 156
Boethius: 38, 40 Darmstadt study: 154,155-162
Bogardus, Emery S.: and groups, 55; The Decline of the West: 96
definition of sociology, 60 Democritus: 38
206
 Index 207
De monorchia: 89 small, 57-59, 65, 70; and individ-
Descartes, Rene: 38 uals, 60-61; and alienation, 65-66;
Destutt de Tracy, 185-186 traditional and synthetic, 68
Deutsche Staats-Woerterbuch: 33-34 Group dynamics: 63
Differentiation, concept of: 30 Group Psychology and the Analysis
Divorce: 139 of the Ego: 77,143
Dollard, John: 153 Gulliver's Travels: 14-15
Doll's House: 138 Gumplowicz, Ludwig: 60; and groups,
"Domestication": 50-51 57-58; and family, 132
Dos Passos, John: 104 Guterman, Norbert: 171
Dunkmann, Karl: 61
Duns Scotus, Joannes: 38 Haecceitas: 38
Durkheim, Emile: 7, 132, 149; and Hagemann, Walter: 84
groups, 60,62 Hammond, S. B.: 154
Hauser, Arnold: 101-107
Ebony Concerto: 113-114 Hawthorne works: 59
Ecology: 41; human, 150,164 Haydn, Joseph: 107
Economics: and sociology, 28 Hegel, Georg: 6, 7, 40, 84-85, 103,
Economy and Society: 110 191,194,196,199; and individual's
Education: and family, 140 needs, 24-25; and the individual,.
Engels, Friedrich: 132 42, 47, 49, 52; and self-conscious-
Eternal Ideas, doctrine of: 2 - 3 ness, 45
Europe: community studies, 155-162 Helvetius, Claude A.: 184,185
Heraclitus: 19
Family: 66-67, 129-147; in French Herder, Johann Gottfried: 95-96
sociology, 132-133; and American High Scholasticism: 38
sociology, 133; crisis in, 134-145; Hirzel, Johannes: ix
and authority, 137-138; and edu- Hitler, Adolf: 111, 155.160, 190, 191;
cation, 140; crisis in Germany, 1 4 2 - and masses, 77,83-84; and family,
144 142,143; and prejudice, 171,172
Father: and crisis in the family, 141- Hobbes, Thomas: 22-23,184
142 Hofstaetter, Peter: 69
Fichte, Johann: 38,100 Holbach, Paul von: 184,185
Frankfurt Academy of Labor: 156 Homans, George C : 70,147; and
Frankfurt Institute of Social Research: groups, 64-65
156 Horkheimer, Max: 14, 53, 145, 146-
Freud, Anna: 160 147
Freud, Sigmund: 32, 133, 143, 194; Huxley, Aldous: 131
and masses, 77-50, 84; and panic,
85; on civilization and culture, 93 Ibsen, Henrik: 138
Future: and social development, 14 "Ideas for a Universal History with
the Aim of World Citizenship":
Galsworthy, John: 106 91-92
Geiger, Theodor. 55,77,184,203, Ideology: 182-205; classical doctrine
204 of, 188-191; and Enlightenment
The Genealogy of Morals: 43 doctrine, 189
George, Stefan: 92 Ideology and Utopia: 197
The German Ideology: 49-50 Idols of the Market: 183
Gestalt psychology: 62-63, 87 Individual, The: 37-53; and Christi-
Group: 54-71; defined, 54, 56-57; anity, 17, 40; and philosophy, 37-
and social formations, 55-56; 38; and classical sociology, 41-42;
 208 Index
and society, 46-47, 65-67; and Masses: 72-88; and psychology, 73,
groups, 60-61 76-77; use of, 80-81; and technol-
"Individualism": 51 ogy. 89
Institute for Social Research: vii, 111, Mass media: 81
143,169 "Mass psychology": 45-46. See also
Masses
Jazz: 113 Maus, Heinz: ix
Johnson, Samuel: 90 Mauss, Marcel: 132-133
Jones, Ernest: 194 Mein Kampf: 172
Joyce, James: 103,104 Middletown studies: 151-154
Jung, Carl Gustav: 87 Mill, John Stuart: 14
Juvenal: 97,145-146 Mischerlich, Alexander: 72
"Momism": 139
Kant, Immanuel: 38; and the individ- Monads, doctrine of: 39
ual, 42; and civilization, 91; and More, Thomas: 47
duty, 135 Morgan, Lewis Henry: 132
Katz, David: 87 Mozart, Wolfgang: 106
Kingdom of God: and the state, 20 Mueller, Adam: 97
Knowledge for What?: 121 Music: sociology of, 108-114
Koestler, Arthur: 84 Mussolini, Benito: 191,194
Kraus, Karl: 94
Kreuzer sonata: 110 Napoleon: 187-188
Kux, Ernst: ix National Socialism: 23, S7, 132, 170,
190
Labor, division of: 18 Natural Law: 19-22; of the Attic En-
Landshut, Siegfried: 53 lightenment: 19
Le Bon, Gustave: 73-76,77,80 Neurath, Otto: 13
Leibniz, Gottfried von: 39,186 Nietzsche, Friedrich. 16, 43, 77,192
Lewin, Kurt: 63 Nunberg, Hermann: 81-82
Levi-Strauss, Claude: 132-133
Locke, Harvey J.: 133 Oeser,0. A.: 154
The Lonely Crowd: 142 "One World": 31
The Loved One: 131 Oppenheimer, Franz: 54-55
Lowenthal, Lee: 171 Ortega y Gasset, Jose: 72
Lund berg, George S.: 129
Luther, Martin: 135 Panaitios of Rhodes: 20
Lynd, Helen: 151-152 Panic: 85
Lynd, Robert: 8-9,121,151-152 Pareto, Vilfredo: 7, 76, 149, 196; and
ideology: 187,192-194
McDougall, William: 77 Park, Robert E.: 150
Machiavelli, Niccolo: 86 Petrarch: 44
Maclver, Robert M.: 55,165-166 Petrus Pomponatius: 34
McKenzie, R. D.: 164 Phaido: 135
Mannheim, Karl: 196-197, 204-205 Philosophy: and sociology, 1-3; and
Marriage: 139-140 the individual, 37-38
Marx, Karl: 79,97; and separation be- Picasso. Pablo: 105
tween statics and dynamics, 26; and Pittsburgh Survey: 150
self-consciousness, 45; The Ger- Plato: 1-3, 7, 42,47, 77, 86, 109, 135,
man Ideology, quoted, 49-50; on 183,186; and the state, 17-19
the "production power of masses/' Pohlmann, Robert von: 12
86 Politics: 126
 Index 209
Poseidonios: 20,89 group, 55-56; research, empirical,
Positivism: 1,60; as applied to sociol- 117-128
ogy, 3-7, 41; and psychology, 7- Social History of Art and Literature:
11; logical, 13; contrasted to "meta- 101-107
physical" phase of history, 43; Sociation: and division of labor, 18;
mathematical science orientation and social conflict, 24; growth of.
of, 186 28-31
Prejudice: 121,169-181 Society: 16-36; defined, 16-17, 27,
Property, private: 22 33-34; as social superiority, 21;
Prophets of Deceit: 171,172 later doctrine of, 22-23; and com-
Protestant Ethic: 48 munity, 35; and the individual, 4 6 -
Proust, Marcel: 103,104 47, 65-67; theory of and empirical
Psychology: and positivism, 7-11; social research, 120; complexity of,
depth, 10, 77-78; and the individ- 148-149
ual, 45-46; and the masses, 73, 7 6 - Sociography: 150
77, and totalitarian ideologies, 170 Sociology: defined, 1, 60; positivistic,
Psychology of the Masses: 73 1, 3-7, 11; and philosophy, 1-3;
concept of, 1-15; as a term, 11-12;
Raphael: 106 as critique of society, 23; and eco-
Ratzel, Friedrich: 41 nomics, 28; and anthropology, 3 1 -
Ratzenhofer, Gustav: 60 32; classical and the individual, 4 1 -
Realsoziologie: 9 42; of art and music, 101-116; and
Reason: 22 empirical social research, 117-128;
Relationism: 197 and practical questions, 129
Republic: 1 Sociology of Music: 110
Riehl,WilhelmH.:132 Socrates: 2,135
Romains, Jules: 106 Sombart, Werner: 152
Rosenberg, Alfred: 190 Sophists: 17,19-20
Rousseau, Jean Jacques: 91-92, 97- Soviet Union: 191
98; on the family, 131 Spann, Othmar: 61, 84
Ruestow, Alexander: 51.99 "Spatialization": 103
Rural studies: 154-155,167 Spencer, Herbert: 7, 13, 57; and soci-
ety, 24; and growth of sociation,
Sacre du printemps: 111 28-30
Saint-Simon, Claude de: 24,51 Spengler, Oswald: 90, 91,92,96
"Sampling": 121-122 Spinoza, Baruch: 34-35, 47
Scheler, Max: 99,107. 125; and ideol- Spranger, Eduard: 182
ogy, 195-196 Springfield Survey: 150
Schering, Arnold: 108 Stein, Lorenz von: 132
Schiller, Friedrich: 100 Steinmetz, Rudopf: 150
Schlegel, Friedrich von: 43,50 Stirner, Max: 48
Schleiermacher, Friedrich: 35 Stoics: 20, 89
Schoenberg, Arnold: 105 Stravinsky, Igor: 111-113
Schweppenhaeuser, Hermann: ix Strodbeck, Fred L.: 70
Self-consciousness: 45 Suehman, Edward: 114
Siebente Ring: 92 Sumner, W. G.: 176
Simmel, Georg: 34, 66; on the indi- Swift, Jonathan: 8,14-15
vidual and society, 52, 53; and
groups, 68-69 Technology: and the masses, 89; and
Social: scientists, types of, 8; conflict civilization, 94-95
and sociation, 24; formations and Television: 200-202
 210 Index
Thomas Aquinas: 34 Warner, W. Lloyd: 153,165
Thuenen, Johann von: 51 Waugh, Evelyn: 131
"Ticket thinking": 178 Weber, Max: vii, 7, 61, 119,120, 129,
Toennies, Ferdinand: 35,99; and fam- 149, 159, 162, 197; and sociology
ily, 132 of music, 110; and ideology, 192-
Tolstoi, Leo: 110 193
Toscanini, Arturo: 115 "Why Is There No Socialism in the
Totalitarian character: 173-177 United States?": 152
Traite de sociologie generate: 193 Wiese, Leopold von: 154; and groups,
Trakl, Georg: 105 56-57,69; and masses, 72-73
Truth and Ideology: 194 Wilhelm Meister: 145
Tshakhotine, Serge: 80 Willkie, WendeU: 31
Turgot, Anne Robert: 90 The Will to Power: 42
Women, emancipation of: 139
Universal state: 20 Woolf, Virginia: 104
Utopia: 47 "Work and Rhythm": 108
Wylie, Philip: 139
Vierkandt, Alfred: on society and the
individual, 52-53; and groups, 6 1 - Yankee City Series: 153-154,165
62 Youth: in Darmstadt study, 160-161
Voltaire, Francois: 22
Zeller, Eduard: 12
Wagner, Richard: 98-99 Zhdanov, Andrei Aleksandrovich: 191