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Classes, Strata and Parties in West Germany and the United States*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 June 2009

David R. Segal
Affiliation:
University of Michigan

Extract

As a major socio-political doctrine in the industrializing West, Marxism has had great impact on die research and theory of political sociology and behavioral political science. Particularly, a great deal of research energy has been expended on establishing the nature and degree of the relationship between social class and political partisanship in Western democracies.

Type
Aspects of Political Community
Copyright
Copyright © Society for the Comparative Study of Society and History 1967

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References

1 See, for example, Berelson, Bernard R. et al. , Voting (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1954), pp. 5556Google Scholar; Campbell, Angus et al. , The American Voter (New York, Wiley, 1960), pp. 333Google Scholar ff.; Alford, Robert R., Party and Society (Chicago, Rand McNally, 1963).Google Scholar

2 George Lichtheim argues for the applicability of Marxian categories in “Class and Hierarchy: A Critique of Marx?”, Archives Européennes de Sociologie, tome 5, numéro 1 (1964), pp. 101–112. Changes in industrial society that make Marx appear less relevant are discussed in Dahrendorf, Ralf, Class and Class Conflict in Industrial Society (Stanford, Stanford University Press, 1959), pp. 3671Google Scholar; Schumpeter, Joseph, Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy (New York, Harper and Row, 1962), pp. 59 ff.Google Scholar

3 See, for example, Lipset, Seymour Martin, “The Changing Class Structure and Contemporary European Politics”, Daedalus, vol. 93 (Winter, 1964), pp. 271303Google Scholar, and Lane, Robert E., “The Politics of Consensus in an Age of Affluence”, American Political Science Review, vol. LIX, no. 4 (12 1965), pp. 875894.Google Scholar

4 For a discussion of these issues see Janowitz, Morris and Segal, David R., “Social Cleavage and Party Affiliation”, American Journal of Sociology, vol. 72, no. 6 (05, 1967), pp. 601618.Google Scholar

5 These issues are discussed by Dahrendorf, , op. cit., pp. 241Google Scholar ff.; Schumpeter, , op. cit., pp. 72Google Scholar ff.; Berle, A. A. and Means, Gardner, The Modern Corporation and Private Property (New York, Macmillan, 1933)Google Scholar; Talcott Parsons and Smelser, Neil J., Economy and Society (New York, Free Press, 1965), pp. 252255Google Scholar; Bendix, Reinhard, Work and Authority in Industry (New York, Harper and Row, 1963)Google Scholar; Djilas, Milovan, The New Class (New York, Praeger, 1957).Google Scholar

6 See, for example, Lipset, Seymour Martin and Bendix, Reinhard, Social Mobility in Industrial Society (Berkeley, University of California Press, 1960), p. 178.Google Scholar

7 See, for example, Hoffman, Stanley, Le Mouvement Poujade (Paris, Colin, 1956).Google Scholar

8 The current dialogue between the Catholic Church and leading Communist theoreticians in Western Europe is indicative of the willingness of neo-Marxists to accept theology as something other than class-based ideology. See Garaudy, Roger, From Anathema to Dialogue (New York, Herder and Herder, 1966).Google Scholar

9 Weber, Max, Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft, Part III, Chapter 4, p. 635.Google Scholar

10 Hodge, Robert W., Siegel, Paul M. and Rossi, Peter H., “Occupational Prestige in the United States: 1925–1963,” in Bendix, Reinhard and Lipset, Seymour Martin, eds., Class, Status and Power, second edition (New York, Free Press, 1966), pp. 322334.Google Scholar

11 Robert W. Hodge, Donald J. Treiman and Peter H. Rossi, “A Comparative Study of Occupational Prestige”, in Bendix, and Lipset, , op. cit., pp. 309321.Google Scholar

12 Dahrendorf, , op. cit., p. 76.Google Scholar

13 The German data were collected by the Institut für angewandte Sozialwissenschaft (Infas) between January, 1963 and April, 1964. The American data were collected by the Survey Research Center, University of Michigan, and were made available through the Inter-University Consortium for Political Research.

14 See Morris Janowitz, Klaus Liepelt and David R. Segal, “An Approach to the Comparative Analysis of Political Partisanship”, paper given at the Sixth World Congress of Sociology, Evian, France, September, 1966.

15 For a discussion of German feudalism, see Bloch, Marc, Feudal Society, trans, by Manyon, L. A. (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1964), vol. 1, pp. 179 ff.Google Scholar

16 See Jackson T. Main, “The Class Structure of Revolutionary America”, in Bendix, and Lipset, , op. cit., pp. 111121.Google Scholar

17 See Wilensky, Harold L. and Lebeaux, Charles N., Industrial Society and Social Welfare (New York, Free Press, 1965), pp. 93 ff.Google Scholar

18 For insightful if unorthodox analyses of the revolt against the Church and feudal nobility in Germany see Erikson, Erik H., Young Man Luther (New York, W. W. Norton, 1962), pp. 234287Google Scholar, and Engels, Frederick, The Peasant War in Germany (Moscow, Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1956). Note that although the conversion of German peasants to Protestantism can be viewed as a class-struggle phenomenon, there was a significant degree of conversion among the nobility as well which resulted in part in the Schmalkaldic War against Charles V, resolved by the Religious Peace of Augsburg in 1555.Google Scholar

19 See Janowitz, Morris, “Social Stratification and Mobility in West Germany”, American Journal of Sociology, vol. 64, no. 1 (07, 1958), pp. 1015.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

20 See Lipset's, Seymour Martin metaphorical chronology, The First New Nation (New York, Basic Books, 1963), pp. 7982.Google Scholar

21 Janowitz, Liepelt and Segal, op. cit.

22 See, for example, Dahl, Robert A., Who Governs (New Haven, Yale University Press, 1961), p. 39.Google Scholar

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24 See Lipset, , The First New Nation, pp. 170204.Google Scholar

25 See Bell, Daniel, The End of Ideology (New York, Collier Books, 1962), Ch. 12, “The Failure of American Socialism”.Google Scholar

26 Kornhauser, Arthur, Sheppard, Harold L. and Mayer, Albert J., When Labor Votes (New York, University Books, 1956).Google Scholar

27 David R. Segal and Richard Shaffner, “Class, Party and the American Negro” (forthcoming).

28 “The benefits of large numbers and broadly based coverage proved to be greater than the benefits of timeliness”, Ithiel de Sola Pool, Abelson, Robert P. and Popkin, Samuel L., Candidates, Issues and Strategies (Cambridge, M.I.T. Press, 1964), pp. 6567.Google Scholar

29 We are grateful to the Inter-University Consortium for Political Research for making these data available to us. The analysis of the American data was carried out at the Computing Center, University of Michigan. We are indebted to Allen J. Rubin for his efficient handling of these data.

30 Seegers, J. H. G., “De Contrastgroepen-Methode: Nadere Uitwerking en een Tweetal Toepassingen”, Sociale Wetenschappen, no. 3, 1964, pp. 194225.Google Scholar

31 Sonquist, John A. and Morgan, James N., The Detection of Interaction Effects (Survey Research Center, University of Michigan, 1964).Google Scholar

32 See Cosman, Bernard, Five States for Goldwater (University, University of Alabama Press, 1966), p. 49.Google Scholar

33 See Lane, Robert E., Political Ideology (New York, Free Press of Glencoe, 1962), pp. 57 ff.Google Scholar

34 See, for example, McKenzie, Robert and Silver, Allan, “Conservatism, Industrialism and the Working Class Tory in England”, Transactions of the Fifth World Congress of Sociology, vol. III (1964), pp. 191202.Google Scholar

35 See Lenski, Gerhard, The Religious Factor (New York, Anchor Books, 1963), pp. 173, 181 ff.Google Scholar

36 Kirchheimer, Otto, “Germany: The Vanishing Opposition”, in Dahl, Robert A., ed., Political Oppositions in Western Democracies (New Haven, Yale University Press, 1966), pp. 237259.Google Scholar

37 Dahl, Robert A., “The American Oppositions: Affirmation and Denial”, in Dahl, ed., Political Oppositions …, p. 48.Google Scholar

38 See Dahrendorf, , op. cit., pp. 213 ff., for a discussion of superimposition and pluralism.Google Scholar

39 Dahl, , op. cit., p. 54.Google Scholar

40 Almond, Gabriel A. and Verba, Sidney, The Civic Culture (Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1963), p. 131.CrossRefGoogle Scholar