Retarded Germany
Mosse, George L.
Retarded Germany Society and Democracy in Germany by Ralf Dahrendorf. Doubleday. 482 pp. $6.95. Reviewed by George L. Mosse The "German question" maintains its fascination for Germans and...
...Free competition of the market place must inform all of society: economics, politics, and ideas...
...This point of view makes him suspicious of psychological and even historical explanations of human attitudes which lie outside the measurable social structure...
...Moreover, in the face of problems raised by a liberal democracy, the younger generation searches for a new metaphysics, for a morality, which will supersede that liberalism which to them disguises a new centralization of authority and power under a rhetoric of freedom and participation...
...He covered Senator Kennedy's 1966 campaign and wrote the article, "Robert F. Kennedy: The Making of an Electorate," in the January, 1967 issue...
...Their problems center around the viability of liberal democracy in terms of the military-corporate complex, of the limits of citizenship and free competition...
...ANNE CURTIN is a free lance journalist and critic...
...must emphasize the conflict of interests within the framework of citizenship: where all men have equal political rights, though differing class status...
...He wrote "The Crisis of Ideology: Intellectual Origins of the Third Reich...
...Such a concentration upon the social structure gives the book a guarded optimism about the future of liberal democracy in the Federal Republic...
...He is the author of "The Conservative Tradition in America" and "The Wound in the Heart: America and the Spanish Civil War...
...There can be little quarrel with Dahrendorf's always stimulating analysis of why Germany became a "retarded nation...
...The emphasis rests upon the social structure itself and not upon the attitudes which went into the creation of this structure...
...ALLEN GUTTMANN is an associate professor of English and American Studies at Amherst College...
...Dahrendorf not merely condemns the German political Right but also Social Democracy and the labor movement for avoiding meaningful political struggle and relying instead upon the organic unity of men, whether enforced through the pressure of national interest, or, in recent times, through direct participation in the running of certain industries...
...The social structure remained static during the Empire and even during the Weimar Republic...
...German society adhered to a patriarchal ideal symbolized by the family structure, retreating into a private sphere of life rather than following the path of public virtue...
...Dahrendorf has demonstrated the courage of his convictions, for he has recently accepted the candidacy for the Bundestag on behalf of the Free Democratic Party (FDP...
...Yet this change in social structure lacks the concomitant of political liberty...
...The ways in which Society and Democracy in Germany poses and answers that question are of special importance for an understanding of that nation's constant battle with modernity...
...WILLIAM McCANN, a free lance writer, edited "Ambrose Bierce's America...
...The German bourgeoisie failed to become a political class and instead clung to the pre-capitalist values of an earlier time...
...Dahrendorf's ideal of liberal democracy may, in spite of his purpose, demonstrate even more dramatically than his analysis the "retardation" of Germany...
...The real break came with the Nazi seizure of power...
...Metaphysics must be renounced...
...Ludwig Erhard as the creator of Germany's successful free market economy loosened the traditional social structure and gave Germans another chance to catch up with liberalism...
...The nations of the West have already entered a different stage of development...
...GEORGE t. MOSSE is a professor of history at the University of Wisconsin...
...CHARLES ALAN WRIGHT is a professor of law at the University of Texas...
...Germany was and is a "retarded nation" because the economy of Imperial Germany became industrial but not capitalist: German society remained semi-feudal...
...the search for ultimate answers and for an organic society must give place to pragmatism...
...Reviewed by George L. Mosse The "German question" maintains its fascination for Germans and non-Germans alike...
...East Germany has given, once more, a negative response to the "German question...
...The Nazis warred against the traditional base of German society and managed to destroy it...
...Why is it that so few in Germany embrace the principle of liberal democracy...
...Dahrendorfs model is fruitful in discerning the causes for Germany's dilemma, but as a model for the future it might well prove "too little and too late"—another negative answer to the "German question...
...Such democracy THE REVIEWERS JUtES WITCOVER is a Washington correspondent for the Newhouse papers...
...Dahrendorf sees the collapse of Weimar as caused by the contradiction between a political system which permitted modernity and a social structure which forbade it...
...German society was engaged in the search for security through an organic view of life and the quest for ultimate solutions which lay outside the sphere of free competition and political participation...
...Status was not defined through individual endeavor or worth, but in relation to state service instead, and even for intellectuals "the name plate on the door, the title, and the pension became more important than the word...
...Germany seems to be puffing towards a station which other industrial nations are about to leave, though their destination is far from clear at the moment...
...Dahrendorf illustrates the struggle of such values with liberal democracy and uses a great deal of statistical evidence to prove the point...
...The needs of mass politics and the growing impersonality of society have meant, in the West, a new search for ultimate answers, for the organic view of society which the book rejects so forcefully...
...German education perpetuates this state of affairs...
...The reason for this lies in Dahrendorf's definition of liberal democracy...
...The retreat from participation in public life meant undue emphasis upon the authority of the state...
...After the war, the German Democratic Republic completed the road towards modernity by granting social equality to all its citizens...
...This small group of embattled liberals (closely tied to industry) provides the only parliamentary opposition to the "grand coalition" which governs Germany...
...Their attempt to push Germany towards a liberal democracy may, like the book, have relevance to the German experience although, as a matter of practical politics, the majority of the FDP seem reluctant to accept this ideal...
...Having posed the question in these terms, Ralf Dahrendorf, a German sociologist, goes on to analyze the barriers which German society has erected against the realization of this goal...
...Not only are secondary and higher levels of education closed to the vast majority of the population, but education stresses the abstract ultimate goals of society and the nation instead of preparing youth for economic competence and practical citizenship...
Vol. 32 • February 1968 • No. 2
