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Keeping Distance: Alf Lüdtke's “Decentred” Labour History

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LüdtkeAlf. Eigen-Sinn. Fabrikalltag, Arbeitererfahrungen und Politik vom Kaiserreich bis in den Faschismus. Ergebnisse, Hamburg1993. 445 pp. Ill. DM 38.00.

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 February 2009

Marcel van der Linden
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Information
International Review of Social History , Volume 40 , Issue 2 , August 1995 , pp. 285 - 294
Copyright
Copyright © Internationaal Instituut voor Sociale Geschiedenis 1995

References

1 Hereafter quoted as ES. I would like to thank my colleague Götz Langkau for his suggestions.

2 Lüdtke has added a second question: “How was this acquiescence, loyalty, and participation consistent with […] contrarieties and even uprisings […]?” (ES, p. 13).

3 Quoted according to Chaunu, Pierre, “Un nouveau champ pour l'histoire sérielle: le quantitatif au troisième niveau”, in Mélanges en I'honneur de Femand Braudel (Toulouse, 1973), vol. II, pp. 105–125Google Scholar, here 108.

4 Bloch, Ernst, Erbschaft dieser Zeit (Zurich, 1935)Google Scholar, also in , Bloch, Gesamtausgabe, vol. 4 (Frankfurt/Main, 1962)Google Scholar. In English: Bloch, Ernst, “Nonsynchronism and the Obligation to Its Dialectics”, New German Critique [hereafter NGC], 11 (1977), pp. 22–38CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Negt, Oskar, “Non-synchronous Heritage and the Problem of Propaganda”, NGC, 9 (1976), pp. 46–70Google Scholar; Rabinbach, Anson, “Ernst Bloch's Heritage of our times and the Theory of Fascism”, NGC 11 (1977), pp. 5–21Google Scholar.

5 A review of the GDR interpretation appears in Eichholz, Dietrich and Gossweiler, Kurt (eds), Faschismusforschung. Positionen, Probleme, Polemik (Berlin, 1980), esp. pp. 323–415Google Scholar.

6 There were some exceptions. For example, see Kuczynski, Jürgen, Geschichte des Alltags des deutschen Volkes, vols 1–5 (Berlin, 1980–1982)Google Scholar, and Tenfelde, Klaus, Sozialgcschichte der Bergarbeiterschaft an der Ruhr im 19. Jahrhundert (Bonn-Bad Godesberg, 1977)Google Scholar.

7 Negt, Oskar and Kluge, Alexander, Öffentlichkeit und Erfahrung (Frankfurt/Main, 1972)Google Scholar; English version: Public Sphere and Experience, trans. Labanyi, Peter, Daniel, Jamie and Oksiloff, Assenka (Minneapolis, 1993)Google Scholar; idem, Geschichte und Eigensinn (Frankfurt/Main, 1981); idem, Maβverhtältnisse des Politischen (Frankfurt/Main, 1992). Also see: Negt, Oskar, “Don't Go by Numbers, Organize According to Interests”, NGC, 1 (1974), pp. 42–51Google Scholar; idem, “Ernst Bloch: The German Philosopher of the October Revolution”, NGC, 4 (1975), pp. 3–16.

8 Medick, Hans, “‘Missionaries in the Row Boat’? Ethnological Ways of Knowing as a Challenge to Social History”, Comparative Studies in Society and History, 29 (1987), pp. 76–98, 82CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

9 Ibid.

10 In 1978, this endeavour resulted in an international study group of historians and social anthropologists, established at the initiative of Robert Berdahl, Alf Lüdtke, Hans Medick, David Sabean and Gerald Sider. See Berdahl, Robert et al. , “II ‘processo lavorativo’ nella storia: note su un debattito”, Quaderni Storici, 14 (03–04 1974), pp. 191–204Google Scholar. The group's publications include: Berdahl, Robert et al. Klassen und Kultur (Frankfurt/Main, 1982)Google Scholar; Medick, Hans and Sabean, David (eds), Emotionen und materielle Interessen. Sozialanthropologische und historische Beiträge zur Familienforschung (GÖttingen, 1984)Google Scholar; Lüdtke, Alf (ed.) Herrschaft als soziale Praxis (Gättingen, 1989)Google Scholar.

11 For example, see his criticism of the modernization theory in Lüdtke, Alf, “Der Prozeβ der kapitalistischen Industrialisierung – Eine Problemskizze”,Sozialwissenschaftliche Informationen für Unterricht und Studium [hereafter] SOWl], 3 (1974), 1, pp. 1–4Google Scholar and his discussion of the theories of state monopoly capitalism and organized capitalism in Geyer, Michael and Lüdtke, Alf, “Krisenmanagement, Herrschaft und Protest im organisierten Monopol-Kapitalismus (1890–1939)”,SOWI, 4 (1975), 1, pp. 12–23Google Scholar.

12 Lüdtke, Alf, “Faschismus-Potentiale und faschistische Herrschaft oder Theorie-Defizite und antifaschistische Strategic”, Gesellschaft: Beiträge zur Marxschen Theorie, 6 (1976), pp. 194–241, here 216Google Scholar. This essay does not appear in the anthology under review.

13 , Lüdtke's main contributions to historical analysis of German state repression in English are: “The Role of State Violence in the Period of Transition to Industrial Capitalism: the Example of Prussia from 1815 to 1848”, Social History, 4 (1979), pp. 175–221CrossRefGoogle Scholar; idem, “The State and Social Domination in Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-century Prussia'”, in Samuel, Raphael (ed.), People's History and Socialist Theory (London and Boston, 1981), pp. 98–105Google Scholar; idem, Police and State in Prussia, 1815–1850 (Cambridge and Paris, 1989).

14 Lüdtke, Alf, “Alltagswirklichkeit, Lebensweise und Bedürfnisartikulation”, Gesellschaft: Beiträge zur Marxschen Theorie, 11 (1978), pp. 311–350Google Scholar; reprinted in ES pp. 42–84. Compare Marx and Engels: The “mode of production [… ] is a definite form of activity of these individuals, a definite form of expressing their life, a definite mode of life on their part. As individuals express their life, so they are.“ KarlMarx and Frederick Engels, The German Ideology, in idem, Collected Works, vol. 5 (London, 1976), p. 31.

15 Some texts or excerpts from texts have also appeared in English. Chapter Four (“Lohn, Pausen, Neckereien”) was published as “Cash, Coffee-Breaks, Horseplay: Eigensnn and Politics among Factory Workers in Germany circa 1900”, in Hanagan, Michael and Stephenson, Charles (eds), Confrontation, Class Consciousness, and the Labor Process. Studies in Proletarian Class Formation (New York, 1986), pp. 65–95Google Scholar; Chapter Five (“Die Ordnung der Organisation”) bears a resemblance to “Organizational Order or Eigensinn? Workers' Privacy and Workers' Politics in Imperial Germany”, in Wilentz, Sean (ed.), Rites of Power. Symbolism, Ritual, and Politics Since the Middle Ages (Philadelphia, 1985), pp. 303–333Google Scholar.

A section of the long, concluding, synthetic chapter (“Arbeit, Arbeitserfahrungen und Arbeiterpolitik”) was published as “Polymorphous Synchrony: German Industrial Workers and the Politics of Everyday Life”, in van der Linden, Marcel (ed.), The End of Labour History? (Cambridge, 1993), pp. 39–84Google Scholar. I have quoted passages from ES that have already appeared in English according to the existing translations.

16 Despite the concept of Eigensinn's essential role in the work of Oskar Negt and Alexander Kluge (see their Geschichte und Eigensinn), Lüdtke insists that he developed the notion independently. See Lüdtke, Alf, “‘Kolonisierung der Lebenswelten’ – oder: Geschichte als Einbahnstraβe?”, Das Argument, 140 (1983), pp. 536–541, 541, note 7Google Scholar.

17 The Complete Grimm's Fairy Tales (London, 1975), pp. 534–535.

18 Göhre, Paul, Drei Monate Fabrikarbeiter und Handwerkerbursche (Leipzig, 1891), pp. 77–78Google Scholar. Compare Lüdtke, “Cash, Coffee-Breaks, Horseplay”, p. 78; “Organizational Order or Eigensinn?” p. 310; “Polymorphous Synchrony”, p. 52.

19 Also compare Lüdtke, “Herrschaft als soziale Praxis”, in idem, Herrschaft als soziale Praxis, pp. 9–63, 50.

20 Georges Bataille, “L'expérience intérieur”, in idem, Oeuvres complètes, vol. 5 (Paris, 1973), pp. 7–181, 11.

21 Hegel, G.W.F., Phänomenologie des Geistes, ed. Wessels, Hans-Friedrich and Clairmont, Heinrich (Hamburg, 1988), I, IV, A, p. 136Google Scholar.

22 Shankman, Paul, “The Thick and the Thin: On the Interpretive Theoretical Program of Clifford Geertz”, Current Anthropology, 25 (1984), pp. 261–270, 269CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Also see, from a somewhat different perspective, Scholte, Bob, ”The Charmed Circle of Geertz's Hermeneutics”, Critique of Anthropology, 6 (1986), 1, pp. 5–15CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

23 Rosenhaft, Eve, “History, Anthropology, and the Study of Everyday Life”, Comparative Studies in Society and History 29 (1987), pp. 99–105, 103CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

24 For Lüdtke's reply to critics, see: “Rckonstruktion von Alltagswirklichkeit – Entpolitisierung der Soziaigeschichte?”, in Berdahl et al., Klassen und Kulntr, pp. 321–353.

25 This reproach is not new. See Peukert, Detlev, “Glanz und Elend der ‘Bartwichserei’. Eine Replik auf Alf Lüdtke”, Das Argument, 140 (1983), pp. 542–549Google Scholar.

26 In one interview, Lüdtke claimed that the concept of appropriation (Aneignung) connected the macro and the micro levels: “This concept serves to investigate how people appropriate the conditions they encounter: the processes, the types of friction and suffering, as well as opportunities for creativity and change. It encompasses everything, from the things that change to those that remain the same. The open quality of the idea of appropriation fascinates me.” Sieder, Reinhard, “Alltagsgeschichte. Zur Aneignung der Verhältnisse. Ein Gespräch mit Alf Lüdtke”, Österreichische Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaften, 2 (1991), 2, pp. 104–113, 109Google Scholar.