toward a sociology of the state and war emil lederer's political sociology

d a n i e l r . h u e b n e r

Toward a Sociology of the State and War:Emil Lederer’s Political Sociology*

Abstract

Although recognized for innovations in economics and economic sociology, Emil

Lederer’s impressive contributions to political sociology have been almost com-

pletely ignored. Lederer wrote extensively on questions of practical and theoretical

relevance for a sociological analysis of the state and war, especially in response to and

anticipation of the World Wars of the last century. This article considers the

elements of his political-sociological work in the context of the circumstances under

which they developed and concludes with an attempt to construct an outline of the

basic tenets of a sociology of the state and war derived from Lederer’s writings. This

analysis highlights Lederer’s sensitivity to a dynamic understanding of the total

social configuration and its impact on the individual psyche as central to explicating

the characteristics of particular political-sociological phenomena.

Introduction

E m i l L e d e r e r (1882-1939) was admired during and after

his own lifetime for his important contributions to economic sociol-

ogy, and for his commitment to the mutual influence of practical-

political activity and intellectual study (Social Research 1940a). Yet

a major aspect of his work has been overlooked (Joas 2006, p. 241).

Lederer crafted a political sociology that attempts to relate socioeco-

nomic conditions to the modern state and war. His contributions are

especially remarkable as his political-sociological writings were brack-

eted by the two World Wars.

Through an analysis of the development of his works in relation to

the social turbulences of his time, this paper sketches the aspects of

* The author would like to thank BrianCody, Hans Joas, and Paola Castano Rodri-

guez for their helpful comments on earlierdrafts of this paper

65

Daniel R. Huebner, Dept. of Sociology, Universityof Chicago [[email protected]].Arch.europ.sociol., XLIX, 1 (2008), pp. 65–90—0003-9756/08/0000-891$07.50per art + $0.10 per page�2008

A.E.S.

a reflective political sociology. The paper is structured around the

major intellectual-biographical periods of Lederer’s life, which are

utilized to explicate the development of his sociology. Lederer’s

earliest work is characterized by its engagement in practical politics

and the intellectual debates of his contemporaries. With the advent of

World War I he became especially reflective about the social config-

uration that led to war and the subsequent transformations it effected,

resulting in an important sociological analysis of the war and the seeds

of his later analysis of totalitarianism. In the post-war period, he

continued to develop the ideas first generated in this period and refine

them with developments in Europe and Asia. With the rise of Nazism,

Lederer emigrated to the United States and began the enterprise of

reinterpreting his political sociology to understand the emergence and

implications of fascism. This development culminated in his post-

humously published State of the Masses, in which he analyzed the

novel sociological character of the totalitarian state.

The professional reception of Lederer’s final works provides

a further proving ground for his ideas, and indicates directions for

a political sociology of the state. Finally, this paper concludes with an

attempt to outline the basic tenets of a political sociology based on

Lederer’s work.

Early Writings

Emil Lederer’s earliest publications show him to be a social scientist

actively engaged with both academic critique and practical social

action. It is beyond the scope of this paper to evaluate all the

professional literature Lederer produced, let alone its relation to his

contemporary social politics1. Instead, a brief overview of his early

work serves as a point of departure for assessing the subsequent

development of a political sociology.

In 1907 Lederer made his first contribution to the journal he would

later edit, the Archiv f€ur Sozialwissenschaft und Sozialpolitik (here-

after, the Archiv) with an analysis of real-estate speculation and the

‘‘housing question’’ (Lederer 1907). Prior to his hiatus while lecturing

1 The only comprehensive bibliography ofwhich the author is aware is contained in theGerman translation of Lederer’s last book(Lederer 1995, p. 190-209). This translation

also contains an introductory intellectual bi-ography that places Lederer in his historicalcontext and locates his political action (seeKrohn 1995).

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daniel r. huebner

at Tokyo Imperial University in the early 1920s, Lederer was the

Archiv’s primary contributor on questions of the middle class, the

conditions of public and private officials2, and the organizations of

employers and workers (Lederer 1925, p. 56). He also contributed

over a dozen reviews of the latest literature of his time in economic

subfields and had a series of contributions under the title ‘‘Sozial-

politische Chronik’’ outlining the daily conditions of workers and

their organizations, agricultural social politics, public officials, trade

unions, and a number of other socio-political topics (Lederer 1925,

p. 28, 31-32). Evidenced in his contributions is the consistent attention

which Lederer gave to the practical social problems of economic

groups. Beyond publications in the Archiv and other professional

journals, Lederer wrote in socialist and trade union newsletters and in

popular newspapers on topics of timely political interest to the

publications’ readers. He not only wished to understand and explicate

social processes, he wanted to be engaged in guiding them toward

progressive outcomes (Social Research 1940a, p. 338).

Before the onset of World War I, Lederer’s intellectual engagement

with politics was primarily focused on the political movements,

organization, and struggles of the economic strata, especially the

newly emerging middle class. With the onset of the war, Lederer’s

attention became focused on studying the impact war had on these

socio-economic phenomena. To these particular studies he added an

outline of a more analytical and general perspective on the war, which

would become a touchstone of his political sociology.

Lederer’s first piece on war and the only piece in 1914, was an

article in Die Hilfe, a weekly revue of politics, literature and art, on the

early transformation of the national economy in war (Lederer 1914).

The following year he wrote eight articles of the war’s impact on the

trade union movement and ideologies, the labor market, owner’s

organizations, and the overall national economy and sociopolitical

situation. His contributions were part of a larger German intellectual

discourse aiming to impact the war through study and commentary on

it, a discourse that included three collections relating the war to the

economy, ‘‘Kriegshefte’’, issued by the Archiv in 1915 with three

contributions by Emil Lederer.

2 Lederer’s work identifying the emer-gence and implications of the ‘‘Privatanges-tellten’’ is widely regarded as one of his mostinnovative contributions to economic sociol-ogy (eg. Social Forces 1940b, Jackall 1987,

p. 277). This work is primarily available to anEnglish audience through a partial transla-tion of his 1912 Habilitationschrift (Lederer

1937a).

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toward a sociology of the state and war

Through reviews of this literature in professional publications, the

social science coming out of Germany, including the Kriegshefte,

became an access point for information on Germany for the British

academic public and government (eg. F.Y.E. 1917). In fact, John

Maynard Keynes published the commentary on the Kriegshefte for

The Economic Journal. His general impression was:

that Germany and Germans are not so different from the rest of the world as ourdaily Press would hypnotise us into believing. The German myth, which iscurrently offered for our belief, is of a superhuman machine driven by inhumanhands. The machine is a good one, but has by no means moved with suchuncanny smoothness, as we come too easily to believe when it is hidden from usby a curtain of silence. Nor are the drivers, after all, so changed from whatbefore the war we used to think of them. (Keynes 1915, p. 452)

Keynes stressed the ‘‘moderation, sobriety, accuracy, reasonableness,

and truth’’ striven for by this group of social scientists, despite the

exceptions, including the newly-emergent nationalist fervor of Edgar

Jaff�e (Keynes 1915, p. 452). He spoke somewhat disappointingly of

Lederer’s contributions as illuminating ‘‘very little which could not be

surmised a priori’’ (Keynes 1915, p. 446). Instead, these descriptive

studies did not anticipate the problems that a long-term war would

pose. Lederer stressed the problems of the reorganization of industrial

production, the reduction of unexpected unemployment, and official

measures for the regulation of food supplies, while ignoring problems

such as the reorganization of credit and the shortage of labor that

would become increasingly pressing (Keynes 1915, p. 446-52). Yet,

this was not a shortcoming only of Lederer, or of German intellec-

tuals; Keynes saw much the same shortsightedness in Britain.

Reading Keynes’ perception of German intellectuals, one would

have the image of a general adherence to sober, if overly descriptive,

analysis with notable exceptions. Yet this is clearly not the case, as

objectivity was the exception in the face of war fervor3. In fact, several

commentators have noted that Lederer was one of only a few social

scientists in any affected country to consistently write objectively, and

he, himself, remarked forcefully on the lack of objectivity among his

peers (Verhey 2000, p. 131; Joas 2003, p. 55; Lederer 2006, p. 260).

Lederer’s comments came in his 1915 article for the Archiv, ‘‘Zur

Soziologie des Weltkrieges’’,4 in which he attempted to make a

‘‘sociological’’ analysis of the war; an endeavor that, for him, required

3 Keynes was no doubt sensitive to thisobservation and had a moderating agenda ofhis own in writing of Germans as ‘‘not sodifferent from the rest of the world’’.

4 Translated in English as On the Sociologyof World War (Lederer 2006). The referencedpage numbers are from the English version ofthe text.

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daniel r. huebner

taking a detached position outside the claims of belligerents (Lederer

2006, p. 242). The uniqueness of this work both in his oeuvre and

among intellectual accounts of World War I demands an in-depth

explication.

‘‘On the Sociology of World War’’

In his ‘‘sociology of world war’’, Lederer expressly avoided a recount-

ing of ‘‘immediate causes’’ of the war in favor of an examination of the

‘‘deep-seated nexus of causes’’ because, to him, the discussion of

immediate causes was almost necessarily implicated in discussions of

guilt, and missed the larger picture (Lederer 2006, p. 243). He wished

to illustrate the configuration of developments in the military, the

state, capitalism, and ideology, the interaction of which led to war.

Ultimately, this study would become a watershed in the development

of Lederer’s political sociology, as the conceptual apparatus first

crafted in this article would remain a central reference point for his

later writings.

Lederer began with Ferdinand T€onnies’ distinction between

Gemeinschaft (community) and Gesellschaft (society). In mobilizing

for war the society is turned into a community – one feels a sense of

unity, a temporary lifting-out [Aufheben] of regular social relations

(Lederer 2006, p. 244). The unity created is a ‘‘coerced’’ totality; it

does not tolerate individual opposition. The military imitates the form

of community to mobilize people by assigning social forces to national

defense when existence seems threatened. This mobilization does not

appear as coercive, or even as state action, but as a ‘‘transcendental

fate’’ because of the perceived threat (Lederer 2006, p. 245).

For Lederer, the military takes distinct forms in history condi-

tioned by prevailing social relations. Thus, trench warfare was the

response to the new possibilities of technological weaponry and the

incorporation of masses of men and machines through universal

conscription (Lederer 2006, p. 246). The intrinsic logic of military

competition requires ever greater technology and manpower to

accomplish its end of enemy defeat (Lederer 2006, p. 248). New war

technology tended to homogenize the people who became soldiers and

led the military to be more organizationally autonomous from society

at the same time that universal conscription linked the military to the

people psychologically more than ever before (Lederer 2006, p. 249).

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This military autonomy developed further through the bureaucrati-

zation of military organization and the self-reinforcing development

whereby increased military power led to increased state power and

thereby further growth in military power (Lederer 2006, p. 253). The

militaries of combatants became more uniform in structures, strate-

gies, and capabilities under this military competition all despite their

intensified claims to unique social and cultural nationality.

The state’s sovereignty had until recently been experienced in

Lederer’s view as a consciousness of citizenship – the individual as

a citizen with rights was experienced as an end of the state – and not as

a ‘‘limitless power’’ (Lederer 2006, p. 250). But World War I

illustrated the state in a new way as having a ‘‘dual nature’’: internally

it is linked to its socioeconomic stratifications and thus to a normative

order while externally it is a unitary ‘‘sovereign centre of violence’’

with limitless command and disposal over the entire people and land

(Lederer 2006, p. 251). The political theorist Ernst Fraenkel credited

this paper as being the first recognition of the coexistence of the

‘‘normative’’ and ‘‘prerogative’’ states, which would become the

center of Fraenkel’s own later analysis of the Nazi regime (Fraenkel

1941, p. 168). The full strength of the sovereign violence of the state,

too, only arose with the development of universal conscription, giving

the state disposability over the whole population, and with the

growing autonomy of the military, cutting free all its ‘‘social embed-

ding’’ (Lederer 2006, p. 252-253). In war the state became the

‘‘universal organization of the entire social substance’’ and finds in

the army a social form that could prevent opposition between the state

and society.

Still further, Lederer argued that industrial capitalism conditioned

the modern military. Commodity production, agricultural transfor-

mation, and urbanization all facilitated universal conscription

(Lederer 2006, p. 255). The massive reserves of labor not involved

in production of necessities become surplus in times of war so that,

despite the economic strains of universal conscription, Lederer argued

that industrial capitalist economies are more adaptable to the man-

power demands of war (Lederer 2006, p. 256). Advanced capitalism

could also supply the modern army with all needed articles, replenish

supplies during war, and provide disciplined, semi-skilled industrial

workers as soldiers (Lederer 2006, p. 257). Thus, capitalism ‘‘as

the most universal current of our time encompasses the military

complex’s formation as a phase in its own development’’ (Lederer

2006, p. 258).

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daniel r. huebner

Lederer argued that all classes, despite their struggle with one

another, developed a consciousness of the superiority of the state as

an integral part of social development (Lederer 2006, p. 259). In

Lederer’s view an ‘‘ideology’’ of a unity of the people under a state

arises, especially when confronted with perceived danger, which is key

to overcoming social stratifications. The state, for Lederer, commanded

the domestic intellectual forces by ‘‘drilling of public argumentation

in favour of war’’ that went far beyond the limits of official pro-

paganda (Lederer 2006, p. 259). The state has a power to define itself

as a state of law while subordinating individual rights to its purposes

(Lederer 2006, p. 260). This is where Lederer returned to a critique

of the willingness of intellectuals to exploit the war for their own

ideological purposes. They simultaneously create and are taken by

ideologies that justify war as the ‘‘vehicle of consummation’’ (Lederer

2006, p. 261). This criticism was directed at every attempt to find

ultimate meaning in the war, whether Marxian attempts to justify it as

the expression of class conflict and imperialism or existentialist

attempts to view it as the ‘‘opportunity to sacrifice their lives to

a cause with firmness and sincerity’’ (Lederer 2006, p. 261-3).

Lederer drew a series of conclusions from his analysis. Firstly, war

is economically conditioned but not caused by economic motives; war

is latent in the very nature of the modern state (Lederer 2006, p. 265).

This is why one cannot talk of the proximate causes of war because

they only provide the ‘‘occasion’’ for war that is inherent in the very

logic of military competition. This leads his analysis to sound

deterministic, and this tendency is only amplified by his unwillingness

to discuss the war on a level of specificity with regard to causes that

could illustrate the radical contingency of its ‘‘occasion’’ and process

(see Joas 2003, p. 80). Secondly, because of the homogeneity of state

organization, the distinct qualities of people or culture are less

decisive; the war can be understood increasingly quantitatively, as

the relative level of organization of the belligerents (Lederer 2006,

p. 266). There is repeated emphasis on the increasing similarity of

states with respect to their organization, their capacities, and the

content of their claims to uniqueness. Thirdly, World War I, perhaps

especially, had the quality of enabling people to subjectively experi-

ence their individual goals as lying in the ultimate ends of the war.

In this transformation the actual historical experiences were under-

stood through the framework of the ‘‘August experiences’’, empower-

ing the collective narrative of German unity as the ‘‘real’’ story (Verhey

2000, p. 131). Fourthly, the state is not a real community, but

71


a powerful fabrication of one, and there is consequently a need to

resume the struggle for individual rights and for the society against

the ideational power of the state (Lederer 2006, p. 267)5.

From this analysis, Lederer had gained an important set of

analytical sensibilities. Lederer illustrated the importance of a view

of social dynamics as being conditioned by the interaction of the total

configuration of social, economic, and political institutions. From the

distinction between socially differentiated ‘‘society’’ and a unified

‘‘community’’ Lederer illustrated the essentially social-psychological

transformation of a society engaged in mobilization in response to

perceived threat. Under the pressures of intense military competition,

states are forced to adopt isomorphic forms and strategies just

as essentially as they must ideologically maintain their uniqueness.

With technological and social developments, the state gains near

limitless power and an increasing consciousness of its capabilities.

A fortiori, the ideological capacity of the state is dramatically increased

with its power, and with the increased susceptibility of the population

to unifying justificatory narratives under conditions of insecurity.

Lederer contributed a number of other articles on the war, yet none

of these works possessed the novelty or sociological insight of ‘‘Zur

Soziologie des Weltkrieges’’. This piece influenced later thought

on war across the political spectrum, from Carl Schmitt6 to Ernst

Fraenkel and Franz Neumann (Joas 2006, p. 242) and was treated

retrospectively as a surprisingly incisive and objective analysis of the

experience of World War I in Germany (Joas 2003, p. 78-81; Verhey

5 Toward this end Lederer offered threesolutions. The first is a hope for an interna-tional platform of oppositional voices akin toan international civil society (Lederer 2006,p. 267). The second is a radical reshaping ofthe economy to emphasize justice over pros-perity. The third, and most realistic, Ledererthought, is that states could be brought intointerrelation in all aspects of internationalaffairs to deny the freedom of movementof the dynamic conflictual tendencies of anyindividual modern state. See also Joas (2003,p. 80-81) for further analysis of Lederer’sproposed alternatives. War, for Lederer, pre-sented the limited opportunity for dramaticchange, for reconstruction of society notsimply along pre-war lines, but toward a morefree, just, and peaceful society.

6 Carl Schmitt takes up Lederer’s reversalof T€onnies in his 1927 article originallypublished in the Archiv, which Lederer was

editing at the time, translated as ‘‘The Con-cept of the Political’’. Schmitt used theconcept to critique ‘‘liberal individualist’’views of the state as simply the agglomera-tion of social associations. That society canbecome community under threat means thatthere exists a potential underlying unity ofthe political community beneath socialgroups, and this unity consists, for Schmitt,of the ‘‘ever-present possibility of a friend-and-enemy grouping’’ (Schmitt 1976, p. 45).It did not matter to Schmitt that Ledererconsidered this a fabricated unity, only thatthe potential for friend/enemy groupingsexists. On this point, see also Heinz Gur-

adze’s (1941, p. 229) review of State of theMasses, which notes that the fabrication ofa friend/enemy relation is ‘‘an essential pointof fascist mass psychology’’ set forth bySchmitt, and recognized by Lederer in hisposthumous analysis of the fascist state.

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daniel r. huebner

2000, p. 131). After this piece Lederer returned regularly to the

concepts distilled from his analysis, utilizing and modifying them to

understand later socio-political developments. Ultimately this article

would become the springboard for his analysis of the Nazi state

(Krohn 1995, p. 32) and, thus, a central aspect of Lederer’s contri-

bution to a sociology of the state and war.

Post-War Writings

Two interconnected developments that bear on a political sociology

can be detected in Lederer’s work in the post-war period. First,

Lederer redoubled his commitment to analyzing and engaging with

practical social problems, especially those of German reconstruction

and the Russian Revolution. Lederer identified the conjuncture of

causes leading to the growing socio-economic crisis in Germany, and

its implications for social and economic conditions across the globe.

This concern returned with the crisis of the Great Depression. The

second development is the project of understanding the impact of

social trauma on psychological states, an enterprise that led him to

make notable contributions toward a social psychology, especially on

the potential socio-psychical appeal of fascism. Throughout this work,

he drew from and in some cases extended his analyses first developed

in his 1915 article.

By 1917, Lederer was shifting his political-programmatic writings

toward the problems of a transition to post-war German reconstruc-

tion. In ‘‘Social Evolution During War and Revolution’’, Lederer

reiterated a thesis from his 1915 work: that industrial countries are

fundamentally better at waging war than agricultural countries,

because the productive forces can be immediately adapted to the

needs of war and this mobilization can be maintained for extended

times (Lederer 1921, p. 15). However, this observation now takes an

ironic turn as Lederer added a commentary on the war economy’s

after-war effects. The depression of consumption coupled with the

massive debts and costs of reparation imposed on all belligerents, but

especially on the defeated, had led to a cycle of social and economic

devastation. There was dramatically increased concentration of capital,

as smaller enterprises were ‘‘swallowed up’’ by larger ones during and

after the war (Lederer 1921, p. 18). The middle class was ‘‘wrecked’’,

as real wages dropped and the decreased level of consumption led to

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social degradation; in a word they were ‘‘proletarianized’’ (Lederer

1921, p. 19). An industrial country, thus, possesses only a ‘‘dubious

advantage’’ over the agrarian country in war: the ‘‘power to ruin

itself’’ (Lederer 1921, p. 27). Lederer wrote a number of other

commentaries on specific aspects of this crisis in Germany and

Austria, appearing in articles in the Archiv and in popular periodicals.

With the advent of the Great Depression, Lederer picked up on these

themes again to discuss the ‘‘paralysis’’ of the world economy and

potential ‘‘ways out of the crisis’’ (Lederer 1931; Lederer 1932).

Yet, perhaps the most remarkable of Lederer’s writings to come out

of this early post-war period was 1918’s ‘‘Zum sozialpsychischen

Habitus der Gegenwart’’7. Lederer attempted to outline a perspective

from which to understand psychological states as emerging from

social context. For Lederer, the psychological element in any period is

decisively affected by the totality of social forces – economic and

technological institutions and legal, political, and intellectual relation-

ships (Social Research 1940a, p. 352). To understand the character of

a situation or social action one must find the social frame of reference

and analyze the ways in which the social relationships determine social

action (Lederer 1937c, p. 32).

But for Lederer this social conditioning also happens on the

societal level so that the changing alignments of social forces of each

society affect the possibilities of the individual, independently of any

group’s particular position in the social strata, making ideas such as

‘‘national character’’ and ‘‘historical epoch’’ potentially meaningful

sociological concepts (Social Research 1940a, p. 349). In early twen-

tieth century Europe, Lederer argued, the psychic attitudes of all

social strata were profoundly affected by the permanent insecurity of

their rhythms of life caused by rapid economic and technological

development that increasingly detached them from the means

of production (Lederer 1937c, p. 3). This article has definite echoes

of his configurational analysis of the ‘‘deep seated nexus of causes’’ of

World War I and the psychological insecurity the war unleashed, and

may even be viewed as an attempt to work out the social-psychological

implications of a theory that centers socio-historical conjuncture. This

would also become a seed for Lederer’s view that the social insecurity

7 Translated in English as ‘‘On the Socio-psychic Constitution of the Present Time’’(Lederer 1937c). References are to this edi-tion. Robert Jackall argued that this piecewould later provide a foundational framing

for the work of the members of the NewSchool’s ‘‘University in Exile’’ who trans-formed the ‘‘social traumas that had tornapart their own lives and careers’’ into ‘‘in-tellectual problems’’ (Jackall 1987, p. 277).

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that comes with destructured ‘‘mass’’ society tends to make individ-

uals more susceptible to unifying ideologies, as in Fascist Italy and

Nazi Germany.

‘‘The University in Exile’’

During the 1920s Emil Lederer’s popularity in Germany seems to

have been at its peak. In 1922 he became the editor of the Archiv and

oversaw its publication until the journal folded in 1933. He wrote and

edited highly regarded books, articles, and journalistic pieces, and sat

on important government commissions8 in the Weimar Republic.

During this period Lederer became acquainted with the American

economist Alvin Johnson, the associate editor of the Encyclopedia of

the Social Sciences (hereafter, the Encyclopedia), for which Lederer

contributed eight entries. Under Johnson, the Encyclopedia became

the ‘‘center of a cultural and political movement expanding and

elaborating a system of liberal and internationalist norms and values’’

that joined American liberalism with the tradition of European social

science (Lentini 2000, p. 817-818). Liberals and social-democrats

‘‘were united in unique enterprise of liberal-democratic and interna-

tionalist definition of world situation, which would be later translated

into a solid antifascist alliance’’ (Lentini 2000, p. 818). The collection

became, in this view, a generative socializing experience for its

contributors, especially in their subsequent collaborative attempts to

understand the socio-political developments in Europe.

In 1933, when Lederer’s name appeared on the first list of

professors provisionally banned from lecturing in Germany, Johnson,

in his position as director of the New School for Social Research,

offered Lederer the leading position in a new faculty of political and

social science, which Lederer would assemble from banished and

threatened professors throughout Europe (Johnson 1939, p. 314).

Hence, the New School’s graduate faculty was born, and immediately

christened ‘‘The University in Exile’’. In year-long faculty ‘‘General

Seminars’’ and in a ‘‘vast outpouring’’ of books, monographs, and

articles, this group of scholars from ‘‘widely differing schools of

8 By 1919 Lederer was engaged in the‘‘Socialization Commissions’’ in Germanyand Austria. In fact, he is credited as being‘‘practically the leader’’ of the commissions,

with important contributions also beingmade by his former Vienna schoolmatesJoseph Schumpeter and Rudolf Hilferding(Social Research 1940b, p. 94).

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thought’’ and with ‘‘sharply contrasting temperaments’’ creatively

probed central interdisciplinary questions and was held together in

large part because of Lederer’s leadership and scholarship (Jackall

1987, p. 277; Johnson 1939, p. 314).

Lederer made notable contributions in a number of collaborative

publications, the political-sociological implications of which may be

divided into two interdependent themes. The first of these themes is

the increasing importance that Lederer gave to the question of the

potential of propaganda to shape minds, drawing from and improving

his theoretical grasp of the phenomenon. And the second is the

consequent need to defend democracy ideologically and, ultimately,

militarily against fascist infiltration.

In his contribution to Benjamin Lippincott’s volume on Govern-

ment Control of the Economic Order, Lederer argued that the true

functional strength of the Bolshevik social system was its ‘‘political

machinery’’ (Lederer 1935, p. 35-36). The state educational institu-

tions and press ‘‘molded the mind of the people’’ to accept its

elaborate propaganda. While in Russia the goal was to ‘‘entrench

the socialistic principle’’, in Germany the state aimed to shape minds

so the people would ‘‘accept all the state asks them to accept’’

(Lederer 1935, p. 38-39). That is, Russia, for Lederer, remained more

dialogical and reflective about its ideology, and Germany, without

a fixed ideology, conditioned its subjects to romanticize the state as an

end in itself (Lederer 1935, p. 39). Yet, Lederer concluded that,

despite these notable differences, the German and Russian dictator-

ships were broadly similar in terms of their monopolization of public

expression and the subjugation of the unarmed by the armed.

At the limits of the state’s ability to shape the human mind, and

thereby the socio-economic structure, Lederer found the ‘‘Economic

Doctrine of National Socialism’’ (1937b). The Nazi view of economics

was simple:

will power can mold and change economic data; [. . .] the national will is creativeand can draw on psychological resources which the capitalist economic processcannot mobilize. Propaganda and violence are the means used for this purpose.There are no limits for their application. By inflaming emotions the old notionsare invalidated. What was believed to be impossible becomes easy. Economicmiracles can be worked if everybody is enrolled in the common action (Lederer1937b, p. 221).

Thus, the problem of economic possibilities and, by extension,

the state’s capacity to fundamentally reconstruct social life be-

come problems of social psychology, and are therefore subject to the

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configuration of social forces in each particular nation and the spe-

cific goals toward which the activities are directed (Lederer 1937b,

p. 222).

Lederer’s residency in the United States witnessed a shift from

a purely intellectual defense of democracy against fascism toward

a more and more adamant conviction of the inevitability of military

confrontation. In the first edition of the New School’s newly formed

journal of 1934, Social Research, Lederer wrote ‘‘Freedom and

Science’’, in which he critiqued the agnosticism toward valuation

in the methodological statements of Max Weber and Werner

Sombart, his former superiors and colleagues at the Archiv, to reflect

upon the preconditions for science and democracy (Lederer 1934,

p. 221). He agreed with Weber that, despite the apparent arbitrar-

iness of values, one cannot simply choose between them as they are

constitutive of the individual. But this led Lederer to a conclusion

divergent from Weber’s: that some values may be excluded because

‘‘they would nullify the achievements of our past and – what

amounts to the same thing – the very substance of our being’’

(Lederer 1934, p. 223). Democracy, like science, is a value, a ‘‘way

of living chosen by a people’’ that necessarily excludes other values

and defends itself from values that endanger the free formation of

public opinion.

At this point Lederer defended democracy on a practical and

intellectual level; that is, he felt one must ensure the autonomy of

intellectual institutions for the articulation of free thought (Lederer

1934, p. 227). However, by 1939, Lederer was adamant about the

necessity of militarization to protect democracy. He thought that, for

totalitarian states, the view of the state as having prerogative sover-

eignty had triumphed over the international norm of non-intervention

(Lederer 1939a, p. 45). This dangerous new development of aggres-

sive insurgence and militarism in totalitarian states, for Lederer,

necessitated a mobilization ‘‘in all other nations’’, including modern

equipment, large standing armies, and full preparedness of all the

population, ‘‘with all the financial and psychological consequences’’

thereof (Lederer 1939a, p. 54). His recommendations for this process

of militarizing the economy in the face of such necessity included total

economic mobilization and control, the principle of which should be

the maximum increase in production and equalization (and thus

minimization) of consumption (Lederer 1939b, p. 206; Tobin 1939,

p. 638). With this piece Lederer had moved fully from an academic to

a political confrontation against fascism.

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The ‘‘State of the Masses’’

When Lederer died in 1939, he left behind a largely completed

manuscript, which was to form his sociological analysis of the

totalitarian state. With editing and an introduction by his former

student in Germany and colleague in the US, Hans Speier, it was

released in 1940 as The State of the Masses. The analytical elements of

this work bear a close continuity with the political-sociological themes

Lederer had been refining over the previous three decades of in-

tellectual enterprise, while its central thesis was something essentially

novel in political theory.

Lederer began his analysis with an extended discussion of ‘‘social

groups’’ and ‘‘masses’’, presenting them as formal analytical concepts.

Groups are ‘‘parts of the population which are united by the same

interest’’, the coexistence of which makes up society (Lederer 1940,

p. 23). They are, for Lederer, ‘‘centers of power’’ to the extent that

they are united by an ideology that focuses on their function, and to

the extent that they can control the whole community. The psychology

of groups was central to Lederer’s argument. For him, the interaction

between individuals within a group will tend to ‘‘enrich’’ their

reasoning. This occurs because individuals and groups are confronted

by opposing groups and must present argumentation, motivated by

emotional attachment, to support their positions (Lederer 1940,

p. 28). On a macroscopic level, then, stratification into social groups

facilitates reasoning and checks unrestrained emotions, especially

under the conditions of a set of rules for conduct as exist in societies

(Lederer 1940, p. 29).

Masses, in Lederer’s analysis, consist of large numbers of people

that have some ‘‘psychological unity’’, and which are inclined toward

action or emotional expression (Lederer 1940, p. 31). For a multitude

of people to become a mass, the members must be susceptible to

activation of the same emotions. For Lederer, this meant they most

likely speak the same language, and share a ‘‘common cultural basis’’

of values or common historical experiences, such as defeat or victory

in war, religious feelings, or race-consciousness (Lederer 1940, p. 31,

36). Psychologically, the crowd consists of individuals who cease to

think and instead ‘‘are moved, they are carried away, they are elated;

they feel united with their fellow members in the crowd released from

all inhibitions’’ (Lederer 1940, p. 32-3). Yet, unlike Freud’s ([1921]

1959) or Le Bon’s (1896) views of crowd psychology, crowds are not

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the awakening of a common ‘‘subconsciousness’’ of individuals

(Lederer 1940, p. 36)9. Instead, the content of crowd psychology

changes with the historicity of the conditions of the common cultural

basis of crowd emotion (Lederer 1940, p. 37). A crowd, to be

integrated, requires leadership that can activate and express its

members’ collective emotions, but also direct its expression, a ‘‘man

with charisma’’ (Lederer 1940, p. 40). With the advent of radio and

mass media the ‘‘abstract crowd’’ is possible, whereby the lone

individual can be ‘‘affected as if he were in a crowd’’ either because

the awareness of the other ‘‘hundreds of thousands tuned in. disposes

him to listen as if he were in the crowd’’, or because of the under-

studied appeal of ‘‘certain qualities of voice and wording’’ (Lederer

1940, p. 44).

Lederer acknowledged that the masses have played important roles

throughout history, as in revolutions, but their movements have been

periodic and short-lived phenomena (Lederer 1940, p. 45). Some

modern political leaders, however, had capitalized on the strengths

of masses as the basis of a movement that aimed at the permanence

of domination and the ‘‘swallowing up of the state’’ (Lederer 1940,

p. 45). This is the central element of Lederer’s thesis: totalitarian

states utilize the ‘‘institutionalized masses’’, turning them into

a ‘‘social steam roller’’ to destroy independent social groups and

create a monopoly not only of force but also of expression. This was a

fundamentally new phenomenon, in Lederer’s view, as even previous

dictatorships had maintained a society apart from the state.

Lederer argued that transforming a whole people into masses and

maintaining them in this excited state only became possible with the

new social conditions of the post-war period (Lederer 1940, p. 46).

Industrialization had dramatically increased the perceived insecurity

of all classes and ‘‘prepared their minds for a dramatic movement

which would not bother with scientific and calm analysis but promised

to strike boldly and ruthlessly’’ (Lederer 1940, p. 51). Nationalism

appealed to the middle class as a compensation of their feelings of

social inferiority, and the fear of Bolshevism had further increased the

insecurity of people with property or who had hoped to acquire it

(Lederer 1940, p. 53, 64). Science and democracy refused to take

stands to defend their own constitutive values, proposing a sharp

9 Lederer made explicit mention of bothof these theories, as well as Graham Wallas’([1908] 1921) and Jose Ortega y Gasset’s([1930] 1993), and as a result there is a danger

that a cursory reading would give too muchweight to his importation of these ideas andnot appreciate the historical development ofLederer’s own social-psychological thought.

79


difference between establishing facts and drawing conclusions, and

retreating into abstract justifications of liberty for all (Lederer 1940,

p. 54, 61). Lederer also concluded that World War I brought a great

psychological crisis in the traditional sources of authority, including

the state and, at the same time, the insight that ‘‘fundamental

psychical attitudes can be changed only under the impact of terrific

experiences;’’ that is, ‘‘war had proved that modern life made for

a stronger and at the same time a more vulnerable state’’ (Lederer

1940, p. 58-59).

From this understanding of the emergence of totalitarianism

Lederer proceeded to examine its primary exponents in Europe,

Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany. In Italy, he illustrated the ways in

which the party apparatus had begun actively destroying the tradi-

tional social structure and monopolizing social functions, all by

keeping the masses in agitated motion through terror and propaganda

(Lederer 1940, p. 73-85). The party functioned to supervise and

control the movements of the masses and buffer between the leader-

ship and the ‘‘street’’ (Lederer 1940, p. 89). In Nazism, Lederer found

this process even more complete than in Italy (Lederer 1940, p. 98).

Special emphasis here was given to the molding and mobilization of

the masses through the terrorism of the storm-troopers (Lederer

1940, p. 103). To demolish an independent society the party created

proxy organizations within its own apparatus for the various social

groups as it undermined their independent organizations (Lederer

1940, p. 107). An ‘‘active and offensive’’ foreign policy, Lederer

posited, served to keep people active in an artificial state of mobili-

zation for war: ‘‘the psychological education of the whole people for

war again paralyzes the social groups and destroys their foundations;

it canalizes mass-emotions and keeps them alive’’ (Lederer 1940,

p. 122).

Whether this collective state of mind could persist psychologically

continued to be a question, but Lederer remained skeptical of change

(Lederer 1940, p. 127). He found little left of an independent society

to challenge German totalitarianism, because it had been increasingly

co-opted by the ruling party (Lederer 1940, p. 176-84). And terror-

istic control within the party and loyalty to the leader prevented

independent voices to arise in its ranks (Lederer 1940, p. 185). Even if

the emotional basis for the regime disappeared, the machineries of

bureaucracy and coercion that it had created would remain as the

‘‘pillars’’ of social order (Lederer 1940, p. 192). Thus, for Lederer, the

increasingly inevitable battle with totalitarianism would not be merely

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an abstract fight for democracy but ‘‘for something more concrete: for

the existence of society and private life’’ (Lederer 1940, p. 201).

Finally, and perhaps most controversially, Lederer used this

analysis as a point from which to turn Marxist sociology against

Marxist eschatology:

If we realize that truth is a process in which mental and social forces areinterwoven in constant interaction, it is only a step toward the hypothesis thatthis articulation and stratification is necessary to the existence of society. Anunstratified society would become either a religious community or emotionallydriven masses. What else could it be, with all partial interest and the richcontribution of groups eliminated? The idea of a classless or of an unstratifiedsociety is empty. It lacks that tension which is life. It is an idyl, old as the dreamsof mankind, and tedious as all idyls if we must live in them. It is rather agitatingto see that even revolutionary Marxism, with all its realism and its pitilessanalysis of our present historic period, should envision a solution of all problemswhich would do away not only with conflicts, but with all the energy thatemanates from them. (Lederer 1940, p. 142-143)

Social struggle is the agent of progress in Marxism, and social

peace must, therefore, be understood as simply the ‘‘acceptance over

a certain period of the rules of the game’’ (Lederer 1940, p. 148). It

was an irony, for Lederer, that the ‘‘great movement for liberation’’

should have developed the concept of the ‘‘dictatorship of the

proletariat’’, and this irony was indicative of the inherent incompat-

ibility between the undifferentiated society and social progress

(Lederer 1940, p. 150-151). Because of this fundamental contradiction

Marxism had avoided the practical questions of how a classless society

would develop a public opinion, what free discussion would mean, and

in what way government would be carried on (Lederer 1940, p. 153).

Instead, Lederer argued that a more ‘‘realistic socialism’’ would

acknowledge the possibility of a gradual and evolutionary develop-

ment toward socialism, with economic planning and lower inequality,

but without complete classlessness (Lederer 1940, p. 158-69).

It is difficult to characterize the numerous ways in which this

analysis presents a culmination of his previous political-sociological

concepts, but certain elements of these connections deserve highlight-

ing. First, the discussion of social groups that was arguably a central

aspect of his ‘‘On the Sociology of World War’’ and is at least latent in

much of his subsequent work, had become the central analytical concept

of this text. Whereas in his analysis of World War I the state transformed

a differentiated society into an artificial community while maintaining

latent group identification, society had been destroyed outright in

totalitarianism through the institutionalization of the unstratified,

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emotional masses. The process of massification through the ideological

equalization of citizens and their practical equalization through univer-

sal conscription and industrialization was now a process intensified by

the conjuncture of social forces found after World War I. Concomitant

with this massification was the increased insecurity and emotional

susceptibility of the atomized people to unifying narratives. The new

technological possibilities of coercion and ideological control emerged

through technological development and the crisis of authority in World

War I. This whole analysis mirrors the configurational sensibilities

Lederer brought to bear on his analysis of the previous war. And his

lifelong engagement with Marxism concluded with this controversial

thesis, turning Marxian science against its religion.

Reception of Lederer’s Political Sociology

The immediate reaction to Lederer’s work was strong but ambivalent;

some greatly admired the originality and profundity of his thesis while

others thought it drastically oversimplified the complex dynamics at

play in totalitarian states. The reviews of the State of the Masses

shortly after its publication tended to emphasize its originality and

objectivity (eg. S. Neumann 1940, p. 1222; Guradze 1941, p. 228;

Kolb 1941, p. 588) while later assessments of it have tended to connect

it with the growth of ‘‘mass society’’ theory, and thus to view it as

‘‘far from earth-shaking’’ (Beck 1982, p. 413; also Bramson 1961,

p. 42; Hamilton and Wright 1986, p. 376).

The reviews of the text create a discourse in themselves, making

almost directly contradictory claims on the major aspects of the text.

This is seen most clearly in the discussion of the central thesis: that

totalitarian movements utilize the masses to destroy independent

social stratification. Some have argued that stratification remains a

vital aspect of the totalitarian state. Such is Franz Neumann’s criti-

cism of Lederer in his Behemoth, in which he concluded that Nazism

was necessarily a class phenomenon; the masses are mobilized and

atomized to strengthen the ruling class (F. Neumann 1944, p. 365-7).

Others point out that functional social stratification remains long after

civil liberties, such as freedom of expression, have died out (Odegard

1941, p. 203). But still others have countered these critics by pointing

out that what was essential to Lederer is that by being incorporated as

‘‘instruments of the state or party bureaucracy’’, social groups lose

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their freedom and become ‘‘only atoms in the state of the masses’’

(Guradze 1941, p. 231). Or, in comparing Lederer’s analysis with

Fraenkel’s The Dual State, two reviewers argued that despite the

incompleteness of the process, Lederer’s view of a movement toward

total state control is an important aspect, and that Fraenkel’s

argument of how elements of the normative state still existed should

be considered a ‘‘time of transition’’ (Kolb 1941, p. 588; Cole 1941,

p. 256).

Out of this Melee of reviews two important critical points emerge.

Goetz Briefs introduced the first of these in his review for The

Commonweal in which he argues that Lederer conflated class society

with all forms of social stratification (Briefs 1940, p. 26)10. There can

be societies in which a convivium of social groups, rather than class

tensions, willingly cooperates toward a common good, a model which

Briefs posited medieval society approximated. By missing this dis-

tinction Lederer was forced to accept the problems of previous

societies, including the nineteenth century processes that led to

massification itself, over the seeming dangers of classless society; he

had no alternative models for a stratified but not class-conflictual

society. To this, Gerhard Meyer added that in this conflation of class

and stratification, Lederer missed the fact that the party and bureau-

cracy in totalitarian states are themselves stratified through their incor-

poration of previous free group organizations (Meyer 1942, p. 454).

This distinction is important for the ‘‘possibilities of reconstruction in

the event of a German military defeat’’.

This critique was anticipated by Hans Speier in his foreword to

State of the Masses; he predicted that some would see Lederer’s

definition of social groups as defined too comprehensively so as not to

be able to distinguish between groups, classes, and institutions, or too

narrowly so as not to permit the recognition of the order in

tyrannically controlled societies as composed of groups (Speier

1940, p. 14). He, however, thought that this critique missed the

intention of Lederer, which was to assess the ‘‘relationship between

society and the modern state’’: under the hierarchical control of the

state, social forms lose their capacity to function as independent

sources of power.

10 Briefs’ criticism of Lederer was veryinfluential in later assessment of him. It isacknowledged in Franz Neumann’s Behe-moth (1944, p. 511) and Judith Shklar’s AfterUtopia (1957, p. 162) who emphasized Briefs’

implicit comparison of Lederer’s argumentto orthodox conservatism. Through his re-ception of Shklar, Leon Bramson (1961,p. 42) articulated this critique morepointedly.

83


The second important critique emerged from a review by William

Kolb in the American Sociological Review of several social-scientific

studies of the Nazi state. For Kolb, the analysis of totalitarianism as

a ‘‘crowd phenomenon’’ was only one aspect of the social-psychology

of the Nazi state, and it ‘‘would seem that a permanent National

Socialist state would reveal the characteristics of an extended primary

group, or of what has been called a sacred society, rather than a state of

the masses’’ (Kolb 1941, p. 588)11.

Aspects of these analyses can be found implicit in Lederer’s

writings. With regard to extended primary group identification in

World War I, Lederer indicated the phenomena of subsuming the

understanding of one’s own experiences to the master narrative of

national unity. And in State of the Masses Lederer stressed the

importance of a ‘‘common cultural basis’’ of values and historical

experiences as essential in constructing a ‘‘psychological unity’’. In

terms of the sacred, ritualistic analysis of collective identity in war

Lederer drew from Weber’s analysis of the religious character of social

cohesion, i.e. charisma (Lederer 1940, p. 40-‘1)12, and the mobiliza-

tion of the masses through collective ritual, the ‘‘drilling’’ of the

public. A thorough explication of the transformation of a state under

extraordinary circumstances into an ‘‘extended primary group’’ or

into a ‘‘sacred society’’ deserves greater attention, but it is important

to note that this perspective is not completely divorced from the kind

of analysis Lederer undertook in both his early papers on World War I

and his manuscript on totalitarianism.

By the 1950s, Lederer’s thesis was beginning to be defined as

a foundational piece for the growing ‘‘mass society’’ theory in sociology 13.

This literature constructed a lineage from the ‘‘aristocratic’’ critique of

11 Analyses that focus explicitly on collec-tive identity through primary groups andsacred ritual in war did develop. Shils andJanowitz’s (1948) study is a move towardunderstanding cohesion among German sol-diers not as the result of adherence to ideol-ogy, but as attachments to the local unit,which becomes a primary group throughtheir common experiences. And Roger Cail-lois’ Bellone (1963) and ‘‘War and the Sa-cred’’ ([1939] 2001) conceive of war asoccupying a place in the mind of man ho-mologous to ancient festivals: it was theexperience of the whole removed from ev-eryday life into an ecstatic state.

12 A whole discourse on the use of theconcept of charisma to analyze the leadership

of totalitarian states emerged in this period.See Hans Gerth (1940), who argued thatNazi leadership is the combination of char-ismatic and bureaucratic domination, and thecritique of Gerth in Arendt’s (1958, p. 361-362) Origins of Totalitarianism, who arguesthat Stalin, and even Hitler, cannot be seen ascharismatic orators, but rather as organiza-tional geniuses.

13 Summaries of this literature can befound in Beniger (1987), Kornhauser

(1959), and Selznick (1951). J. David Knot-terus (1987, p. 117) argues that the masssociety theory was a central influence onstatus-attainment research of social stratifi-cation and, thereby, mainstream sociologicalthought.

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the nineteenth century masses to the ‘‘democratic’’ analysis of the role

of the masses in the rise of totalitarianism (Kornhauser 1959, p. 21).

The former group usually consists of Gustave Le Bon and Jose Ortega

y Gasset, and sometimes Sigmund Freud, Wilfred Trotter, Gabriel

Tarde and others, while the latter group consists of Emil Lederer

and Hannah Arendt, and sometimes Karl Mannheim, Sigmund Neu-

mann14, Herbert Marcuse, C. Wright Mills, Daniel Bell, and others.

Discussions of the mass society literature have tended to see

Arendt’s ([1951] 1958) Origins of Totalitarianism and Lederer’s State

of the Masses forming a single thesis (see Shklar 1957, p. 161;

Kornhauser 1959, p. 22; Hamilton and Wright 1986, p. 376). This

conflation caused Lederer’s unique contributions to have been min-

imized and ultimately forgotten in the literature. The notability of

Lederer’s account having been crafted eleven years before Arendt’s

and before the outbreak of war has not been a part of this literature15.

And the focus on the similarity in their arguments about the

institutionalization of the masses ignores broad aspects of Lederer’s

social psychology, his analytical theory of social groups and masses,

and the complexity of the configurational narrative he illustrates, not

to mention Arendt’s theory of anti-Semitism and incorporation of

Lenin’s thesis of imperialism into her account.

In recent years, the reception of Lederer has been slowly improv-

ing. In the work of J€urgen Kocka, especially an edited volume of

selections from Lederer’s socio-historical writings (1979), German-

speaking audiences have been reintroduced to aspects of Lederer’s

work, including his sociology of World War I and excerpts of his

analysis of totalitarianism. His State of the Masses was also translated

into German in 1995 with a new biographical introduction (Krohn

1995) and a complete bibliography of his works. But to an English-

speaking audience he remains in obscurity (Barkin 1981, p. 147)

except through the work of Hans Joas (2003, 2006). In his introduc-

tion to the English translation of Lederer’s 1915 article, Joas laments

14 The thesis of Sigmund Neumann’s(1942) Permanent Revolution is almost iden-tical to Lederer’s State of the Masses, whichhe cites. This resemblance has not gone un-noticed (eg, Selznick 1951, p. 323). Neumannalso wrote one of the more positive reviews ofLederer’s text (see S. Neumann 1940).

15 The precise relation between Ledererand Arendt is unclear. Despite the noted

similarities between their accounts, Originsof Totalitarianism does not cite Lederer, butdoes cite works which engaged strongly withLederer’s writings, including Fraenkel’s(1941) and F. Neumann’s (1944) analyses oftotalitarianism. Lederer does not appear tohave ever cited Arendt, who only emigratedto the United States after Lederer’s deathand was 24 years his junior.

85


the fact that the article has not become a classic text in the sociology of

war – ‘‘a status that it would clearly deserve’’ (Joas 2006, p. 241).

Conclusion: Elements of a Sociology of the State and War

Lederer’s academic work defies simplistic characterization. He was

certainly far more than a ‘‘social economist’’, as he is sometimes

labeled (Speier 1987, p. 278). This paper is an attempt to highlight the

coherent political-sociological aspect in his writings. In this respect,

his most important works are in response to and anticipation of the

World Wars of the twentieth century. Because Lederer was so

responsive to the societal changes of his surroundings, his academic

writings present particularly penetrating insights into the sociological

character of the state and of war. The most central aspect of this work

is the relationship between society and the state, conceived of as the

dynamic process of the total configuration of social forces.

Lederer problematized the relationship between the mutual con-

ditioning of the economy, society, the state, the military, and cultural

institutions. In his analyses of the economy, for example, Lederer

examined the movements and formal groups of the different layers

that struggle over influence in the state, society, and the economy

itself. But even with regard to the state, Lederer questioned the

relation between the bureaucracy, the leadership, the military, the

party, and the various other societal aspects incorporated into its

apparatus. In his analysis of fascism, for example, Lederer fore-

grounded the importance of understanding the implications of the

monopoly of the entire state apparatus, including the bureaucracy and

military, by a single party. In the interrelation between the state and

society Lederer examined how the innovations of the state and of

technological development changed the configuration of this relation-

ship. For example, the development of mass media technology along

with the development of an awareness of its potential within the state

led to the new potentialities of mass mobilization that transformed

a stratified society increasingly into an emotionally unified weapon.

It would be a mistake to see in his analysis of World War I or of the

totalitarian state the ultimate end of social process. These relation-

ships were not treated as static states but as the transformation of the

form and structure of social institutions in response to the inherent

logic of social action and the interaction with other institutions. For

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example, while economic-technological development can condition

the possibilities for social action, and thereby determine to a certain

extent the timing of events, it is the logic of the emerging prerogative

state in interaction with industrial capitalism which led to the First

World War. And it is, in part, the necessity of the logic of continuous

mass mobilization that led the totalitarian state into confrontation

with the normative state, made possible in the first place by the

technologies of modern internal and external coercion and ideological

control. With the development of aggressive power in any state, the

necessity for analogous development of capacities in other states

results in increasing isomorphism of state mobilization, spiraling into

violent confrontation.

The models that Lederer provides expand the available ideal-types

for comparative analysis of the links between society and the state. To

the transformation from the traditional community to the socially

differentiated society, Lederer adds the possibility of the coerced

conversion of society to an artificial community through the emotional

susceptibility of the masses. He further adds the model of an

institutionalized movement of atomized individuals, again motivated

by force and emotional susceptibility, serving to perpetuate and

extend the totality of the movement’s coercion and ideational control.

This analysis is inextricably linked with a social psychology that

centers the social conditioning of the individual psyche. The config-

uration of social forces in which an individual interacts creates the

possibilities of that interaction. In stratified society the individual acts

in an intersection of social groups, which facilitate reason. But the

irrational basis of values becomes central in times of atomization and

insecurity in daily life and in times of crisis for the whole society. In

such times the longing for understanding leads to an increased

emotional susceptibility to collective identity and action that sub-

limates individual experiences to supra-individual purpose. Whole

societies can experience certain historical events in common, and this

can become the basis of mobilization into an extended ecstatic state.

Normatively, Lederer attempted to develop philosophical positions

which would allow him to defend civil society and the freedom of

thought which he found constitutive of democracy and science, while

leaving open the possibility for meaningful social conflict within these

spheres.

Lederer’s critics sensitize one to some of his shortcomings. The

differences in the content of social groups, and not simply their

independent existence, can have a major impact on this relationship

87


between society and the state. Any large society remains differenti-

ated, no matter how institutionally and psychologically unified it is,

which has important implications for developing theoretical models

and for a practical understanding of the possibilities of a society

beyond the bounds of perceived unity. The social psychological unity

of the mobilized masses is only one aspect of the interrelation between

society and the state. The expansion of the primary group to in-

corporate an abstract whole, such as a nation, and the development of

a sacred society through the collective production of rituals and

symbols of unity remain essential perspectives from which to consider

this relationship.

Lederer’s writings make a strong case for an understanding of the

development of the state and war that begins with a set of analytical

sensibilities, and not from a preconceived template of social process.

This perspective is all the more important in analyzing war, as war’s

essential contingency only emerges through a full understanding of

the dynamic interplay of the configuration of social forces and the

equally dynamic influence of these social forces on the behavior of the

individuals involved in them.

B I B L I O G R A P H I E

Arendt Hannah, 1958. The Origins of Total-itarianism (Cleveland, Meridian Books).

Barkin Kenneth D., 1981. ‘‘Review: Kapita-lismus, Klassenstruktur und Probleme derDemokratie in Deutschland, 1910-1940 byEmil Lederer’’, The Journal of ModernHistory, vol. 53, 1.

Beck Earl, 1982. ‘‘Review: Kapitalismus,Klassenstruktur und Probleme der Demok-ratie in Deutschland, 1910-1940 by EmilLederer’’, German Studies Review, vol. 5, 3.

Beniger James R., 1987. ‘‘Toward an OldNew Paradigm: The Half-Century Flirta-tion With Mass Society’’, Public OpinionQuarterly, vol. 51, Part 2, Supplemental,50

th Anniversary Issue.Bramson Leon, 1961. The Political Context of

Sociology (Princeton, Princeton UniversityPress).

Briefs Goetz. A., 1940, ‘‘Intellectual Trag-edy’’. The Commonweal, vol. 33.

Caillois Roger, 1963. Bellone, ou la pente dela guerre (Paris, Nizet).

—, [1939] 2001. ‘‘Appendix III. War and theSacred’’, Man and the Sacred (Urbana,University of Illinois Press).

Cole Taylor, 1941. ‘‘Review: An Interpreta-tion of the Nazi Regime’’, The Review ofPolitics, vol. 3, 2.

F.Y.E., 1917. ‘‘Extracts from German Peri-odicals Relating to the War’’, The EconomicJournal, vol. 27, 107.

Fraenkel Ernst, 1941. The Dual State: AContribution to the Theory of Dictatorship(New York, Oxford University Press).

Freud Sigmund, 1959. Group Psychology andthe Analysis of the Ego (New York, W.W.Norton & Company).

Gerth Hans, 1940. ‘‘The Nazi Party: ItsLeadership and Composition’’. AmericanJournal of Sociology, Vol. 45, 4.

Guradze Heinz, 1941. ‘‘Review: State of theMasses: The Threat of the Classless Societyby Emil Lederer’’, American Journal ofSociology, vol. 47 (2).

Hamilton Richard F. and James D. Wright,1986. The State of the Masses. Hawthorne,NY: Aldine Publishing Company.

Jackall Robert, 1987. ‘‘Review: New School:A History of The New School for SocialResearch by Peter M. Rutkoff; William B.Scott’’, Contemporary Sociology, Vol. 16 (3).

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R�esum�e

Reconnue en �economie et en sociologie po-litique, l’œuvre d’Emil Lederer en sociologiepolitique est a peu pres totalement oubli�ee. Ila pourtant beaucoup �ecrit sur l’Etat et laguerre en examinant la premiere guerremondiale et en anticipant la seconde. L’arti-cle entend proposer les bases d’une sociologiedes relations entre Etat et guerre dans la lignede Lederer. L’int�eret fort qu’il a port�e al’impact �evolutif de la configuration socialeglobale sur le psychisme individual, apparaıtcentral pour comprendre certains ph�eno-menes politico-sociaux.

Zuzammenfassung

Emil Lederers Beitr€age zur politischenSoziologie sind in Vergessenheit geraten,obwohl er f€ur seine Neuerungen in derWirtschaft und der Wirtschaftssoziologiebekannt war. Lederer hat sich mit demThema Staat und Krieg auseinandergesetzt,so in seiner Untersuchung des 1. Weltkriegsund seiner Vorahnung bez€uglich des 2.Weltkriegs. Dieser Aufsatz untersucht diepolitisch-soziologische Arbeit, die zeitgen€os-sischen Umst€ande einbeziehend, und schließtmit einer Zusammenfassung der Lederer-schen Staats- und Kriegssoziologie. Lederer’sInteresse am Einfluß der sozialen Gesamtlageauf das einzelne Individuum wird zum zen-tralen Element, um einzelne politische undsoziologische Ph€anomene zu erkl€aren

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