Critical Sociology

The integration of the GDR into a united Germany constitutes a strategy fostered by West German elites. The GDR regime had lost its legitimacy and its depoliticized population lacked the resources to oppose this fusion. An artificial German nationalism, necessary to develop support for the economic sacrifices needed to rescue the GDR economy and integrate it into the West German system has been promoted. However, mounting social and economic problems will weaken national cohesion. Neither an escalation of nationalist sentiment nor welfare state measures will suffice to deal with these problems. Only a democratic constitutional process, a true "social contract," can mobilize the energies required to resolve the oncoming crisis.

This paper discusses the revolution in the GDR against the background of East German political culture and its social and political structures. The revolution caught up with the Hungarian and Polish transformation processes which had started many years earlier. In the GDR, the activists of the first hour intended neither to do away with socialism nor to put an end to the East German state. There was, however, a dual aspect to the revolutionary events. On one hand, they generated democratic innovations, and on the other, they prepared the way for adopting the overall structures of the Federal Republic.

While there is an abundance of literature on ethnicity and ethnic group formation, the relationship of ethnicity to the state is rarely addressed. This paper discusses some classical and contemporary approaches to this question and proposes the concept of "ideological labor": ethnic groups performing a specific ideological function within society. The case discussed here is that of postwar German Jewry. The presence of Jews in postwar West Germany, it is argued, was vital for domestic and foreign policy reasons and Jews performed the role that was expected of them.

The anti-Jewish measures that decimated the Jewish community of the GDR in 1952-53 and the subsequent rehabilitation of the remnant of that community after Stalin's death serve as examples of anti-semitism in Eastern Europe. Equally important, they reveal the role of the state in shaping its religious and ethnic minorities. The events of 1952-53 reduced the size of the Jewish community in the GDR and destroyed it as a grass-roots organization. Its ties to Western countries and institutions were cut, and it was attached directly to the East German state, on which it remained dependent and which it served. The Jewish community of the GDR was destroyed as a troublesome interest group and recreated as an embodiment of the GDR's claim to be the antifascist Germany.

After ten years of women's studies in West German universities, the number of women employed at these institutions has not increased. The anti-liberal arts policies of the present government negatively affect the social and cultural sciences, including women's studies. In addition, the policy of promoting an "elite" limits employment opportunities for a broader field of women scholars. Women already working at universities are pressured into functioning as lobbyists for women at universities and for women's issues. As a minority within the academic institution, however, they are not in a position to question traditional paradigms. Women's studies are only deemed "socially acceptable" when cloaked with a masculine identity.

Following the enormous international expansion of labor history, comparative approaches have been developed to systematize and explain the peculiarities of national patterns of working-class formation. One of the most fully elaborated recent approaches in this area is the collective investigation by Ira Katznelson, Aristide Zolberg, and associates (1986). Conceptually, this approach follows Jürgen Kocka's Weberian-Marxist class model in reducing E. P. Thompson's cultural Marxist class notion to only one analytical level amongst others. I argue that this approach is limited its failure to adequately integrate the cultural and moral bases of working-class formation in relation to the legitimacy of the social order. I exemplify this criticism, first, by referring to the strength of Thompson's interpretative method in The Making of the English Working Class; second, by indicating some weaknesses of Jürgen Kocka's analytical method in his recent social history of the German working class; and third, by suggesting some comparative cultural hypotheses for explaining the different English and German patterns of working-class formation.

Historians and sociologists point to the Bismarckian welfare reforms as the prime example of a strong state acting independently of class interests. Explanations of this sort ignore the class biases and contradictions embedded in the structure and functioning of the nineteenth-century German state. The class compromises between the industrial and agricultural fractions of capital as well as class conflicts between capitalists and workers were institutionalized within the state. The shape of the national welfare reforms can be understood as the outcome of protracted struggles and unstable compromises between a state-organized power bloc and a state-disorganized petty bourgeoisie. The theoretical insights of Nicos Poulantzas serve as a partial guide to this attempt to "being class back into" analyses of the policy making activities of capitalist states.

Scientific disciplines are defined not only by paradigms; they also respond to the prevailing political climate. Contradictory paradigms and lack of academic reputation marked the beginnings of German sociology. After World War I it had to defend itself against right-wing political mistrust. Therefore, many sociologists abstained from political comment and from empirical research as well. Beginning in 1925 there arose a new empirical orientation whose proponents were mostly on the right. Even for them, the take-over of the Nazis came as a total surprise. Jewish sociologists were forced to emigrate, leaving most others to accommodate to the new situation. Empirical social research flourished in the service of different political aims, while, with few exceptions, sociological theory disappeared or became insipid. After 1945 German sociology found a new historical identity which fitted the new political situation.