Article contents
The Emergence of Sociology in Austria 1885–1935
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 July 2009
Abstract
None would deny the fateful role of Austria in European political history during the past century. Her place in intellectual history is of equal importance, as several recent studies have reminded us. Her contribution to the emergence of sociology was both important and peculiar, yet its distinctiveness has often been overlooked. This is partly because of the tendency not to discriminate between Austrian and German thought, and partly because of concentration on successful and positive contributions, rather than on inhibited and negative ones. The latter, however, may be even more instructive than the former.
- Type
- Research Article
- Information
- European Journal of Sociology / Archives Européennes de Sociologie , Volume 17 , Issue 2 , November 1976 , pp. 185 - 219
- Copyright
- Copyright © Archives Européenes de Sociology 1976
References
(1) In addition to Carl Schorske's valuable studies, there is now Janik, A. and Toulmin, S. E., Wittgenstein's Vienna (London 1973)Google Scholar. Above all, I am indebted to William Johnston, M., The Austrian Mind (Berkeley 1972)Google Scholar, an indispensable work of synopsis and synthesis, although my sociological interstudies, pretations differ from his.
(2) On this, and the history of sociology in Austria generally, see Rosenmayr, L., Sociology in Austria (Graz 1966)Google Scholar, on which I have relied throughout for details of fact.
(3) I. L. Horowitz in his preface to Gumplowicz, L., Outlines of Sociology (New York 1963)Google Scholar from which the remainder of the quotations in the paragraph are also taken.
(4) The term is Sorokin's (Sorokin, P., Contemporary Sociological Theories (New York and London 1928)Google Scholar butu nlike Sorokin I would argue that sociologism is a necessary stage in the emancipation of sociology from liberal ideology.
(5) His champion in America was Lester F. Ward. In Germany, his most important disciple was Franz Oppenheimer.
(6) See especially Ratzenhofer, G., Die sociologische Erkenntnis, Positive Philosophie des socialen Lebens (Leipzig 1898)Google Scholar.
(7) As asserted by Rheinstein, Max, Sociology of Law, Ethics, XLVIII (1937–1938), 232–239Google Scholar.
(8) Ehrlich, E., Fundamental Principles of the Sociology of Law (Cambridge, Mass. 1936), p. xivGoogle Scholar. The remaining quotations in this and the next paragraph are from this translation.
(9) Ibid. p. 464 sqq., 499.
(10) Loc. cit.
(11) Kann, R. A., The Multinational Empire. Nationalism and National Reform in the Hapsburg Monarchy 1848–1318 (New York 1970), p. 57Google Scholar. Kann quotes the following illuminating passage from Redlich's, JosefDas österreichische Staats- und Reichsproblem (Leipzig 1920), vol. I, p. 36:Google Scholar
In Vienna and in the circles of the German bourgeoisie in general there had developed a vigorous, but not politically clear, concept of the Gesamtstaat. One became accustomed to the Great Power idea of the monarchy […] When the revolution, like a volcano, brought the tremendous power of the national idea to the fore, the Germans faced the other peoples as strangers with no understanding of their national ambitions. But they themselves began at that very time to turn vigorously their old cultural national feeling to the political sphere. That was perhaps just the reason why they considered the same phenomenon in other peoples as an inimical power which threatened them […] Even if this ‘state’, due to its absolutist character, was strongly repulsive to the bourgeois class of the Germans in Austria and their young political ‘world of ideas', they were soon reconciled to it by considering that the authority in this state represented a national asset to them, the expression of their old national master position in this empire.
(12) Schumpeter's words, as reported by F. Perroux: see Harris, Seymour E. (ed.), Schumpeter: Social Scientist (Cambridge, Mass. 1951), p. 110CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
(13) Schumpeter, J., Social Classes and Imperialism (New York 1955), pp. 101–103Google Scholar.
(14) Rosenmayr, L., op. cit. p. 17Google Scholar. Knoll, A. M., Sociology in Austria, in Roucek, J. S. (ed.), Contemporary Sociology (New York 1958)Google Scholar, gives the founders as M. Adler, K. Renner, R. Eisler, J. Redlich, W. Jerusalem, R. Goldscheid, M. Hainisch, L. Hartmann and B. Hatschek.
(15) Adler, M., Die Staatsauffassung des Marxismus. Beitrag zur Unterscheidung von soziologischer und juristischer Methode (Darmstadt 1964; first published 1922), p. 17Google Scholar. This work, from which the other quotation in this paragraph is also taken, and which is primarily a critique of Kelsen, was the only one of Adler's publications available to me at the time of writing
(16) R. Hilferding, Böhm-Bavierk's Criticism of Marx (in one volume with von Bohm-Bawerk, E., Karl Marx and the Close of his System, ed. Sweezy, Paul M., (New York 1966), p. 184Google Scholar. The remaining quotations in this paragraph are from the same translation.
(17) See Kann, R. A., op. cit. pp. 44–5Google Scholar.
(17a) Bauer, O., Die Nationalitätenfrage und die Sozialdemokratie (Vienna 1907)Google Scholar. An important influence on Baner's generation of Marxists was that of Carl Grünberg, who had treated this subject as an economic and social historian.
(18) Ilsa Barea, herself a Jew active in Viennese socialism, has remarked that the memmessage of Arthur Schnitzler's Der Weg ins Freie is that in Vienna, Jews as a group were imprisoned in their ethnic status. ‘There ia no “road into the open” for them; such a road is never for groups, always for individuals only’; Barea, I., Vienna, Legend and Reality (London 1966), p. 330Google Scholar. This would mean that Jews had to individualize and universalize their iden- tities by manipulating their group memmessage berships.
(19) Rieff, P., Freud, The Mind of the Moralist (London 1965)Google Scholar.
(20) Jones, E., The Life and Work of Sigmund Freud (abridged, London 1964), p. 401Google Scholar. But Carl Furtmüller has pointed coopeout that Jones exaggerated: only three Adler's seceding followers were socialists, Filrtincluding Furtmuller himself. Jones evidently wished to stress the political aspect of the rift to highlight the scientific integrity behind Freud's personal intolerance. But Furtmüller agrees that the personality clash between Freud's ‘tendency to ariatocratic individualism’ and Adler's ‘choice to be the “common man” among common men’ was connected with the fundamental divergence between Freud's view of man as a savage egoist who was only socialised through cultural repressions, and Adler's (and Marx's) conception of man as cooperative and socially oriented as well as striving for power and superiority. See Fürtmuller's biographical essay (1946) in Adler, Alfred, Superiority and Social Interest: A Collection of Later Writings (Evanston, III. 1964), pp. 345–369Google Scholar. I have largely relied on Furtmüller for Adler's relation to Marxism and quotations in the next paratocratic graph are from this source unless otherwise identified.
(21) See Deutscher, I., The Prophet Armed (Oxford 1954), ch. VIIGoogle Scholar; and Serge, V., Memoirs of a Revolutionary 1901–1941 (New York 1963)Google Scholar. Furtmüller himself appears to have married into Marxism in this way. Another instance is Ervin Szabo, who became a Marxist through acquaintance with Russian exiles while a student in Vienna at the turn of the century, and on his return to Budapest influenced the young Lukács. Lichtheim, G., Lukács (London 1970), pp. 37–8Google Scholar.
(22) An abridged translation is in Neurath, O., Empiricism and Sociology (Dordrecht and Boston 1973)CrossRefGoogle Scholar from which the quotations in the next two paragraphs are taken.
(23) On Wilhelm Neurath (1840–1901), see W. M. Johnston, op. cit. and further sources listed there.
(24) Lazarsfeld, P.F., An Episode in the History of Social Research: a Memoir in Fleming, D. and Bailyn, B. (eds.), The Intellectual Migration, Europe and America 1930–1960 (Cambridge, Mass. 1969)Google Scholar; also Qualitative Analysis (Boston 1972), ch. XIIGoogle Scholar, On Becoming an Immigrant; Zeisel, H., L'École viennoise des recherches de motiin vation, Rev. franc, sociol, IX (1968), 3–12CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Rosenmayr, L., Geschichte der Jugendforschungin Oesterreich (Vienna 1962)Google Scholar.
(24a) Jahoda, M., Lazarsfeld, P. F., Zeisel, H., Marienthal, the sociography of an Unemployed Community (London 1972), p. xvGoogle Scholar.
(24b) Cf. the discussion in Bottomore, T., Marxist Sociology (London 1975), pp. 23–28CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The major study is Leser, N., Zwischen Reformistmis und Bolschevismus, der Austromarxismus als Theorie und Praxis (Vienna 1968)Google Scholar.
(24c) But see Burghardt, A., Catholic Social Thought in Austria, Social Research XXXIV (1967), pp. 389–382Google Scholar.
(25) His Grundsätze der Volkswirthschaftlehre, tr. as Principles of Economics by Dingformistmis wall and Hoselitz (Glencoe 1950)Google Scholar. Menger, Walras and Jevons arrived at marginalist theory independently and almost simultaneously.
(26) In Untersuchungen über die Methode der Sozialwissenschaften und der politischen Ökonomie insbesondere, tr. as Problems of Economics and Sociology by Nock, F. H., ed. Schneider, L. (Urbana 1960)Google Scholar.
(27) Menger makes his political aims clear in the Untersuchungen. (He had already published an anonymous political pamphlet with Crown Prince Rudolf in 1878. See Johnston, W.M., op. cit. p. 35)Google Scholar. That he was interested in social science methodology before writing the Grundsätze, and did not attack Schmoller from pique at German neglect of it is shown in Hicks, J. and Weber, W. (eds.), Carl Menger and the Austrian School of Economics (Oxford 1973), pp. 31, 11Google Scholar.
(28) For details, and an illuminating discussion of Austrian Herbartianism, see Johnston, W. M., op. cit. ch. XIX, especially pp. 281–6Google Scholar.
(29) As argued especially by Nisbet, R. A., Conservatism and sociology, A.J.S., LVIII (1952), pp. 167–75Google Scholar.
(30) Leibniz in fact wrote his Monadologie and Principes de la nature et de la grâce while in Vienna as a guest of Prince Eugene.
(31) Johnston, W.M., op. cit. p. 283Google Scholar.
(32) The quotation is from Schorske, C.E., The Transformation of the Garden: ideal and society in Austrian literature, Am. Hist. Rev., LXXII (1967), p. 1310Google Scholar. Schorske is discussing the ‘hero’ of Andrian-Werburg's, The Garden of Knowledge (1895) — subtitled Ego NarcissusGoogle Scholar. He continues: ‘Life began as an “alien task” and ended without contact with “the other”’. Cf. Johnston's, treatment of the relationship of Mach's phenomenalism with literary impressionism in Vienna, op. cit. pp. 185–6Google Scholar and sources cited there.
(33) Johnston, W.M., op. cit. p. 198Google Scholar.
(34) Kolakowski, L., Positivist Philosophy (London 1972), p. 211Google Scholar.
(35) F.A. Hayek, Scientism and the Study of Society, repr. in J.O'Neill (ed.), Modes of Individualism and Collectivism (London 1973), p. 32.
(36) Lachmann, L.M., Methodological Individualism and the Market Economy in Streissler, E. (ed.), Roads to Freedom, Essays in Honour of F. A. Von Hayek (London 1969), p. 103Google Scholar.
(37) Menger, C., Problems, etc. p. 63Google Scholar.
(38) In 1884, Böhm-Bawerk agreed with Menger that the ‘economic subjects’ of the new school were the atoms of society and that its task was ‘to restore the precise atomistic tendency’. Quoted in Bukharin, N., The Economic Theory of the Leisure Class (New York 1970), p. 40Google Scholar. (Naturally sociologists do not have to be holists to deny —as they must— social atomism).
(39) In System der Werttheorie (Leipzig 1897–1898)Google Scholar.
(40) von Wieser, F., Social Economics (London 1927), pp. 3–9Google Scholar. (The original, Theorie der gesellschaftlichen Wirtschaft (1914) was commissioned by Max Weber).
(41) von Mises, L., Epistemological Problems of Economics (New York 1960), p. 13Google Scholar.
(42) C.E. Schorske, op. cit.
(43) Kelsen, H., General Theory of Law and State (New York 1961), p. 175Google Scholar.
(44) Weber, Max: methods and the man, Arch. europ. social., XV (1974), 127–165. Weber's ‘ideal type’ was also influenced by the Platonizing tendency of G. Jellinek, who was brought up and educated at Vienna and probably influenced by L. von Stein. The side of Menger's thought most favourable to sociology, the search for laws, was the very one which Weber rejectedGoogle Scholar.
(45) Hindess, B., The ‘Phenomenological’ Sociology of Alfred Schutz, Economy and Society, I (1972), pp. 1–27Google Scholar.
(46) Ibid, citing SCHUTZ, The Pheno- GELLmenology of the Social World (London 1972), p. 12.
(47) Loc. cit.
(48) Winch, P., The Idea of a Social Science (London 1960), p. 43Google Scholar. For its counter-sociological implications, Gellner, E., Cause and Meaning in the Social Sciences (London 1973), pp. 47–87Google Scholar.
(49) It is worth noting at this point that none of the major figures in the Austrian school of economics was Jewish. In Jurisprudence, Kelsen was of Jewish origin and converted to Catholicism.
(50) Jedlicka, L., The Austrian Heimwehr, Journal of Contemporary History, I (1966), p. 137Google Scholar. Cf. Johnston, W.M., op. cit. pp. 311–314Google Scholar.
(51) In: In: On the Concept of Social Value, in Clemence, R.V. (ed.), Essays of J. A. Schumpeter (Cambridge, Mass. 1951)Google Scholarwhich is partly devoted to a discussion of Wieser's methodology.
(52) von Wieser, F., op. cit. p. 158Google Scholar.
(53) von Hayek, F. A., Friedrich von Wieser, ap. International Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences, vol. XVI, pp. 549–50Google Scholar.
(54) On Schumpeter's methodology, see Machlup, F. in Harris, S. E. (ed.), Schumpeter, Social Scientist (Cambridge 1951), pp. 95–101Google Scholar. Wieser was critical of his rejection of introspection and the ‘psychological method’—see von Wieser, F., Gesammelte Abhandlungen (Tübingen 1929)Google Scholar.
(55) E.g. his essay on social classes uses the assumption that ‘the family, not the physical person, is the true unit of class and class theory’.
(56) Schumpeter, J., Imperialism and Social Classes (New York 1955) p. 119Google Scholar. Cf. also: ‘Instinctual tendencies can survive only when the conditions that give rise to them persist, or when the “instinct” in question derives a new purpose from new conditions’, ibid. p. 69.
(57) The most glaring case is his account of imperialism: ‘instincts of dominance and war derived from the distant past […] seek to come into their own all the more vigorously when they find only dwindling gratiwithin the socia, community’ (ibid. p. 22, my italics).
(58) See Sweezy, P.M. in Harris, S.E. (ed.), op. cit. p. 121Google Scholar. And cf. the lame, almost wistful treatment of the contrast between the way in which the relation of sociology to economics is handled by Marx, and by ‘most of us’, in Essays, pp. 286–87, nGoogle Scholar.
(59) Johnston, W.M., op. cit. p. 312Google Scholar.
(60) See Adler, Max on the relation between Stein, Kelsen and Spann in Die Staatsauffassung des Marxismus (Darmstadt 1964), pp. 43–49 and 137, nGoogle Scholar.
(61) In this sense, Austro-Marxism was an alternative to Zionism, which of course originated from the same milieu.
(62) Bukharin, N., op. cit. p. 57Google Scholar.
(63) Johnston, W.M., op. cit. p. 86Google Scholar.
(64) Schorske, C.E., op. cit. p. 1305Google Scholar.
(65) Marx, K., Capital, vol. I, p. 72Google Scholar.
(66) Marx, K., Grundriße der Kritik der Politischen Ökonomie (Berlin 1953), pp. 866, 909Google Scholar.
(67) Rosenberg, H., Econ. Hist. Rev., XIII (1943), 63–73Google Scholar.
(68) See social observations by I. Beidtel and K. Postl, quoted in Rosenmayr, , op. cit. pp. 14–15Google Scholar, and the treatment of what H. Broch called Stildemokratie in Johnston, , op. cit. pp. 44, 131Google Scholar.
(69) See Schnitzler, J., Gay Vienna —Myth and Reality, Journ. of the Hist, of Ideas, XXV (1954), 94–118CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
(70) For a recent ‘Austrian’ interpretation of Weber's methodology, which draws on Menger and von Mises, see Lachmann, L.M., The Legacy of Max Weber (Berkeley 1971)Google Scholar.
- 23
- Cited by