Ventajas del “home office” vs presencialidad

Sociology without political economy is ‘blind’, but it is just as certain that political econ- omy without sociology is ‘empty’.1

Modern Sociology arose in the course of a critical encounter, first with the Enlighten- ment of the eighteenth century and then with its true heir in the nineteenth century, Karl Marx.2

The history of sociology is written in different ways, depending on what it is one wants to historicise.3 There has been thinking about men’s communal existence for as long as they have existed communally – witness the contractualism of the Sophists. Yet soci- ology as an academic discipline is barely over a century old.4 These age determinations mark the liminal points of a possible historicisation.

The historiography of Friedrich Jonas5 is still the most plausible one. He gives two conditions for the development of sociology. First, society must have differentiated itself from the social body hitherto previously referred to as ‘the state’. Second, society must be considered as an object sui generis, not from the perspective of moral or state phi- losophy. This was achieved around 1750.6 According to Jonas, originary sociology dif- fered from ‘state philosophy’7 from the outset, because it did not share the view ‘that people’s communal activity and communal existence presupposes a master that gives this activity a law and organises it’.8 But sociology also differed from the moralism of a mere ‘cultural criticism’.9 State philosophy resurfaces in French socialism, according to Jonas,10 while cultural criticism resurfaces in German idealism.11 This diagnosis can be extended: twentieth-century German sociology was still dominated by state philosophy

1.  Eisermann 1964, p. 127. 2. Zeitlin 1981, p. V. 3. Klingemann 2001. 4. Stölting 1986. 5.  Jonas 1976.

6. ‘The history of sociology begins with the separation of society and state’ (F. Jonas 1976, Vol. 1, p. 15). The ‘problem of social integration’ is first posed, ‘as a sociological problem’, by Montesquieu (Montesquieu 1977, p. 24; Aron 1965, Kuczynski 1975 and Althusser 1987 agree with this view). Rousseau 1950 still theorised in a moralistic manner; Smith 2009 was ‘the first to describe, within a fully developed theory, society as a self-regulating and hence free interrelationship of action’ (p. 105; see also Quesnay 1965, Locke 1988).

7.  Jonas 1976, Vol. 1, pp. 15, 27, 59. 8.  Jonas 1976, Vol. 1, p. 244.

9.  Jonas 1976, Vol. 1, p. 78. According to Jonas, the ‘motives and ideals’ of the Enlightenment were those of ‘educated and sometimes powerful social groups’ that ‘developed . . . principles by which to organise society’ (Jonas 1976 I, p. 22). ‘If the problem of social integration is discussed as a moral problem, then this is because, as Taine remarked, no one is thinking of actually acting on this notion’ (pp. 23 f.). It is clear that Jonas is, among other things, taking a sideswipe at German critical theory.

10. Jonas 1976, Vol. 1, pp. 178, 187. 11.  Jonas 1976, Vol. 1, p. 143.

and cultural criticism.12 Since Marx, who thought of society as his object of inquiry (see section 2.1.5), focused much of his criticism on both, Marx assumes a rather prominent place in Jonas’ discussion.13 But instances of Marx so freely being accorded a place within the history of sociology are quite rare.

Within the history of economics, Marx’s position is central: modern economic theory can be divided into classical economics, which is pre-Marxian, and neoclassical econom- ics, which is post-Marxian (see section 2.3.1). This is why Georg Lukács thought of sociol- ogy as a by-product of the transition from classical to neoclassical economics.14 Even though this is to underestimate the significance of pre-Marxian sociological thought, and to overestimate the significance of Marx’s work, it does indicate the considerable (if not universal) importance of Marx and neoclassical theory for the development of sociology. What would a more precise description of Marx’s status within the history of sociology look like? Authors such as Auguste Comte, John Stuart Mill, Herbert Spencer and Lorenz von Stein, who wrote around 1850 (that is, a century after the authors cited by Jonas), are generally considered the ‘founding fathers’ of sociology, whereas authors active around 1900, such as Simmel, Max Weber, Durkheim and Pareto, are considered ‘classics’ of modern sociology.15 The founding fathers were startled by the growing social grievances and political restlessness in the wake of the French Revolution, especially by the ‘social question’ raised by industrialisation.16 Their assessment and theoretical processing of these phenomena occurred in a freestyle manner, as there existed no consistent self- articulation of the rebellious groups,17 nor had the established social strata produced a hegemonic and coherent interpretation. Thus borrowings from other disciplines and ele- ments of emotion, opinion and utopianism (in brief: ‘value judgements’) were strongly in

12. Rehberg 1986, p. 8, identifies the fixation on the state that characterised German politics and the German churches as one cause of the hostile attitude displayed toward sociology, which focuses on ‘bourgeois society’. However, sociology itself was soon subject to the ‘primacy of poli- tics’ in theory (see 2.2 above).

13. Jonas 1976, Vol. 1, pp. 215 ff. ‘Marx expands the canon of sociological theory . . . in an impor- tant and consequential way . . . Marx is the first to explicitly pay attention to the progress of indus- trialisation . . . and the emergence of the industrial proletariat’ (p. 240; see also Krätke 1996). The greatest praise Jonas, a conservative, can bestow on Marx is to say that Marx was, at bottom, a conservative himself (p. 227). Jonas focuses less on Marx’s political views than on his scientific achievements (pp. 217, 223). A ‘conservative affinity with Marx’ (Kühne 1972, pp. 62 ff.) is also evident in Schumpeter, Hayek and Gehlen (see Rehberg 2000).

14. Lukács 1981, pp. 585–6. A similar claim can be found in Schumpeter: ‘Sociology is . . . the

mixtum compositum that remains when one substracts economics’ (Schumpeter 1953, p. 9; Papcke

1986, p. 80).

15. Lepenies 1985 includes Mill, Riehl and Durkheim among the ‘founding fathers’; Kaesler 1976 and Münch 2002 describe Marx, Simmel, Durkheim and Weber as ‘classics’. Kaesler 1984, pp. 446–76 distinguishes various ‘generations’, from great grandfathers to great grandchildren. Müller-Doohm 1991 (pp. 48 ff.) reverses this terminology.

16. Quesel 1989.

17. A ‘subjective sociology’ (König 1975). Early socialism had theoretical ambitions, but its influence was limited.

evidence in the works of these authors.18 By contrast, the classics were confronted with an internationally constituted labour movement that knew how to articulate itself not just politically, but also theoretically. It was led, at least in theory, by Marx. Thus Marx was positioned, once again, between two decisive groups of theorists. However, his influ- ence was much greater in Germany than in England or France – not because he wrote in German, but because there was in Germany a major workers’ party that invoked his authority. This political influence intersected with the theoretical influence of the new economic paradigm.

In Kaesler’s view, socialism is one of the sources of German sociology.19 Marx becomes still more important when one assumes the perspective of discourse analysis, rather than that of milieu-oriented analysis. While in 1934 (the last year examined by Kaesler), Marx plays only a marginal role in the self-interpretation of German sociologists (as is hardly surprising),20 there is no overlooking the fact that he was a crucial source of ideas for German sociology as a whole, and not just because German sociologists attempted to set themselves off from Marx. Here too, Marx influenced other theorists ex negativo, as the hidden fulcrum of their theoretical efforts.21 And, once again, it was a matter of specific readings of Marx exerting an influence.

18. Jonas presents Comte as a philosopher of history who reasoned aprioristically (Jonas 1976, Vol. 1, p. 266) and metaphysically (p. 271); Spencer is portrayed as a biologist who failed to com- prehend sociability (pp. 257 ff.) and Riehl as a rustic bard (p. 173). Jonas’s verdict on Lorenz von Stein, who anticipated the welfare state, is more lenient, although Von Stein is not accorded the status of sociologist either; according to Jonas, Von Stein was a philosopher of the state (pp. 301–2). Nietzsche was another central influence on German sociology. His ‘anti-sociology’ (Lichtblau 1997, pp. 82, 111) considered even theoretical engagement with the social question a form of ‘cultural decadence’ (p. 86; see also G. Adler 1891, Breysig 1896, Tönnies 1897, Hammacher 1909, Winterfeld 1909; see 2.5.2).

19. Kaesler 1984 distinguishes the following currents in early German sociology: a ‘critical Marx- ism’ (p. 400; Max Adler and Alfred Meusel, a ‘party sociologist’ from Aachen who was a member of the East German parliament until 1960); ‘confused’ socialists (Michels or Breysig; Simmel sym- pathised with the Social-Democratic Party before 1914, as did A. Weber after 1945; p. 432); a liberal ‘socialism without Marx’ (Geiger, Oppenheimer, Goldscheidt, Tönnies, A. Weber. ‘In the Wilhelm- ine era, “lectern socialism”, “university socialism” or “scholarly socialism” did not under any cir- cumstances want to be associated with the “party of subversion” ’: p. 442); and finally a ‘vehement anti-Marxism’ (p. 422) that sought to ‘dethrone historical materialism’ (p. 417; for example Spann 1932 or Sombart 1934; on this current, see also Pollock 1926).

20. See Kaesler account of the US sociologist E.E. Eubank’s travels through Germany (Kaesler 1985). The German Society for Sociology (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Soziologie), then headed by Freyer, disbanded in 1934 (see König 1987, pp. 343 ff.; Rammstedt 1986, Klingemann 1996).

21.  This was all the more true after 1933: ‘The odds-on favourite Marxism has long been over- taken by the fascist courser’, Rothacker declared (quoted in Lepenies 1985, p. 404). In 1933, Plenge preached ‘the relentless, inner and principled overcoming of Marxism out of the spirit of Ger- man idealism . . . I already identified Marx’s primary trait when I characterised him as a ‘Jew’ in 1911’ (quoted in Kaesler 1983, pp. 411–12; for a general account of National Socialism’s stance on Marx, see Nolte 1963, not Nolte 1983). It was not just in the Third Reich that Marx served as a negative point of comparison. Borrowing the terminology of psychoanalysis, one might describe Marx as an absent object (or ‘abject’) that surfaces repeatedly as a repressed ‘trauma’. ‘The history of sociological research can largely be described in terms of engagement with and rejection of Marx’s class theory. At times it even seems as if sociology derived its academic right to existence from its refutation of a theory that once questioned the stability of bourgeois society’ (Berger 1998,