PhD Dissertation Prospectus National socialism in German bourgeois discourse, 1890-1918 1

Department of Political Science University of California, Berkeley

Fall 2006

“Die Herrschaft ‘des nationalen Sozialismus’ komme noch.” (“The rule ‘of national socialism’ is yet to come.” Friedrich Naumann, 1903, quoted by C. Werth)

Table of contents

Research agenda and scope.............................................................................................. 2

“National socialism” and auxiliary concepts.................................................................. 5

State of existing research................................................................................................ 15

Dissertation structure and selection of empirical cases............................................... 21

Metatheory and methodology ........................................................................................ 28

Conclusion ....................................................................................................................... 33

Bibliography .................................................................................................................... 35

Notes ................................................................................................................................. 45

Research agenda and scope

The term “national socialism” intuitively conjures up, and not without reason, the

most morbid associations: Nazism, Fascism, the Third Reich, the Holocaust. National

socialism, indeed, deserves to be numbered among the defining features of these

historical phenomena. Yet the prevailing usage of the term has tended to throw the baby

with the bathwater, misleadingly conflating national socialism with extreme right-wing

ideology (and, in the German context, with Nazism). Ever since the fall of the Third

Reich, the term “national socialism” has been cowering beneath the swastika’s forbidding

shadow, incapable of setting itself loose from that conceptual and historiographical

quarantine.

My prospective dissertation aims to take a first step towards breaking the spell

cast over “national socialism”. It seeks to demonstrate that national socialism was a far

broader phenomenon than Nazism or fascism, in terms of both its sociocultural reach and

its temporal depth. Socioculturally, national socialism will hopefully be shown to have

flourished as naturally in the discourse of bourgeois reformist circles as it thrived in the

minds of revolutionary right-wing ideologues and activists. Temporally, my dissertation

will try to furnish proof to the full-blown existence of national socialism in bourgeois

discourse well before the interwar period.

More specifically, my dissertation will conduct a two-tiered examination of

national socialism in bourgeois circles in Wilhelmine Germany (1890-1918). The first

tier, covering the pre-1914 period, will try to show that the discourse of national

socialism was already in full bloom before the outbreak of the Great War. The second

tier, chronologically coextensive with World War I, will examine the bourgeois discourse

2

of national socialism against the backdrop of war as existential national crisis. My

investigation will assess the role played by that discourse in legitimizing and sustaining

Germany’s catastrophic war effort, especially its ideological role in the establishment of

Germany’s (in)famous war economy. In addition to the separate exploration of each of

the two time-periods, an important task of my reseach will also be to examine the

complex relationship between them, revealing continuities as well as discontinuities, and

discussing the significance of these temporal configurations.

The terms “bourgeois” and “discourse” are employed here in a rather loose sense,

designed mainly to delineate negatively the boundaries of my research in accordance with

its particular agenda. The term “bourgeois” is intended to exclude both left- and right-

wing anti-bourgeois and revolutionary social actors. My dissertation thereby exempts

itself from having to deal with manifestations of national socialism not only in various

predecessors of the Nazi party, but also in German social democracy. My aim is to

explore national socialism in circles that in many respects held an affirmative stance

towards the existing political and socioeconomic order, but at the same time were deeply

concerned about some of its fundamental features. It is the presence of national socialism

in these social circles, in or close to the mainstream of Wilhelmine society, that provides

the starkest counterpoint to the extreme right-wing movements with which national

socialism is traditionally identified.2

The term “discourse” is also employed here in a loose and negative mode.

“Discourse” refers here to conceptual constellations circulating through social networks

and occupying roughly what Keith Baker (1990: 14) called the “complex middle ground,

where ideas seem neither to merge with the practice of concrete social life nor to separate

3

out as the object of a set of specialized intellectual activities.” The discursive orientation

of my research means that concrete political activity (e.g., policy formulation and

implementation) will not be investigated, unless it is directly relevant for the clarification

of certain issues at the discursive level and no more than will be required for that specific

purpose.3 At the other end of Baker’s spectrum, canonical and purely philosophical texts

will comprise only a small portion of my primary sources.

Two final points concerning the general agenda of my dissertation must be

clarified immediately. First, my inquiry will persistently seek to avoid a teleological

narrative presenting pre-1918 national socialism as the embryonic form of Nazism or as

“anticipating” Nazism in some way. Such a teleological frame would defeat the above-

mentioned begriffsgeschichtliche agenda of removing national socialism from beneath

the Nazi shadow. The aim, rather, is to set up national socialism as a concept with a life

of its own, such that ultimately it would become part of the historical, non-teleological

context within which Nazism can be better understood. Wilhelmine national socialism

must be fleshed out within the framework of its own historical context; only then, once its

independent historico-conceptual foothold has been secured, can it start to shed new,

richer light upon the interwar years. Only then can National Socialism be assessed in

terms of the broader context of “national socialism” and not vice versa.

A second point I wish to stress is that my research, even though it is restricted to

Germany, is not intended as a resuscitation of the now notorious Sonderweg thesis, i.e.

the claim that it is Germany’s purported digression from the “normal”, “Western” road to

modernity that is accountable for the triumph of Nazism and the perpetration of the

Holocaust. I do not wish to argue that national socialism was a purely German

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phenomenon. Indeed, I believe an examination of late-nineteenth and early-twentieth

century bourgeois discourses in Britain, France, and Austria (to mention just the most

important European countries at that time) would yield substantial evidence of national

socialism as well. Thus in France, the reformist doctrine of “solidarism” – propounded

primarily by Léon Bourgeois (1907), who in turn synthesized ideas of Alfred Fouillée

(1885, 1910), Emile Durkheim (1958, 1997), and others – is in many ways a doctrine of

national socialism. Solidarism, and the related discourse that proliferated through

numerous bourgeois movements of social reform, stressed the need for national harmony

and social cohesion in an age of crass egotistic materialism and increasing atomization

and alienation of the individual: a set of themes very familiar from the German arena.4 In

short, German national socialism must be understood as merely part of a European-wide

phenomenon.

“National socialism” and auxiliary concepts

National socialism is a complex phenomenon which, accordingly, requires an

elaborate conceptual apparatus in order to probe its depths and grasp its historical

significance. In what follows, therefore, I will start by presenting the basic ideal type of

national socialism, followed by a series of auxiliary concepts and analytical distinctions

designed to enhance the heuristic powers of the basic ideal type and to situate the latter

within a broader theoretical context. These concepts and distinctions are (in their order of

presentation): (1) the political-economic logic of late modernity; (2) economistic vs. non-

economistic political-economic discourse; (3) social hermeneutics as an inflection of non-

economistic political-economic discourse; (4) positive vs. negative social hermeneutics;

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(5) diachronic, counterfactual, and inverted negative hermeneutics. While each element

in this series serves as a kind of conceptual artery from which the next element branches

off, each element also has its own autonomous heuristic value, its own immediate contact

with the empirical domain. Accordingly, as I go about elaborating the series, I will

include references to the ways in which its elements will hopefully touch upon and help

to illuminate some aspect or other of Wilhelmine national socialism.

National socialism: a basic ideal type

The term “national socialism” experienced relatively infrequent usage in

Wilhelmine Germany. Concomitantly, my research will not take primarily the form of a

semasiological Begriffsgeschichte tracing the multifarious and shifting meanings of the

term itself.5 Rather, “national socialism” will be employed as an ideal type6 seeking to

highlight a particular conceptual constellation, a discursive formation that existed and

circulated historically despite its partial tendency to remain nameless. This ideal type is

based in part on preliminary encounters with relevant cases in late-nineteenth and early-

twentieth century Germany, France, and Austria; and in part on Zeev Sternhell’s

extensive explorations of national socialism in the framework of his work on fascism,

proto-fascism, and Zionism (1973, 1976, 1986, 1994, 1998, 2000). Such a broad ideal-

typification is intended to suggest that national socialism might have constituted a

discursive axis shared by a broad spectrum of political thinkers and movments, an axis

transcending our conventional left/right, reformist/revolutionary, or bourgeois/anti-

bourgeois classifications.7 At any rate, the ideal type I will now present is not necessarily

a finished product; it may well undergo all kinds of modifications as I work through the

historical sources.

6

The ideal-typical category “national socialism” refers to a mode of social,

political, and cultural thinking that calls for social solidarity and harmony by force of,

and/or in intimate relation with, common membership in the national community. It

views the nation as the primary social unit and strives to harmonize and organize the

social according to the needs of the nation. More specifically, the social vision of national

socialism typically revolves around two organizing principles: national service and

national participation. First, the idea of national service envisions a state of affairs

wherein the productive exertions of all members of the nation are placed at the service of,

or at least in concurrence with, the nation’s well-being. This idea entails an abhorrence

towards class conflict, and instead demands cross-class cooperation in the interest of the

nation. National socialism is, concomitantly, suspicious towards any inter- or trans-

national form of class activity or organization. The idea of national service also tends to

favor a productivist rather than class logic, viewing the distinction between producers and

non-producers (or even parasites) as the most fundamental and existential social divide

and source of social conflict within the nation. Second, the idea of national participation

strives to guarantee that all members of the nation are integrated both materially and

culturally into the life of the nation.

Capitalism and the free play of economic forces are criticized by national

socialism only insofar as they pose obstacles to the establishment of a healthy,

harmonious nation. Consequently, national socialism seldom seeks to bring about a

comprehensive overhaul of the capitalist system. Rather, national socialism advocates

organizational measures and/or reformist agendas designed to achieve a number of

possible objectives, all of which fall short of dismantling the capitalist economy. Such

7

measures and agendas may include: channeling economic activity in its existing forms (or

certain segments of that activity) towards the fulfillment of the material, cultural, or

political needs of the nation; eliminating (metaphorically or literally) the existence or

dominance of parasitic social elements living at the expense of the nation with no

contribution whatsoever on their part; promoting “social peace” by way of

institutionalization or encouragement of cross-class cooperation; or bolstering and

restoring certain norms and values, aesthetic forms and principles, and cherished cultural

heritages that are considered to make up the spiritual backbone of a harmonious nation.

Underlying the various programs of socioeconomic and cultural reform

propagated by national socialism is a comprehensive “reading” of the logic of collective

life and its pathologies under modern, industrial conditions, a reading that is engaged in

active contestation with other, especially Manchesterian and Marxian, readings. Like

Manchesterism and Marxism, national socialism articulates a certain vision of the

political-economic logic of modern collective life. At the same time, national socialism

diverges from the other two in the specific shape it wishes to bestow upon this logic.

The political-economic logic of late modernity

One of the defining characteristics of late modernity is the mutual entanglement

of the political and the social. In very rough terms, “the social” is that dimension of

collective life which has to do with providing for material and non-material needs of the

members of a given human grouping construed as a collective household.8 “The

political”, within the political-economic logic, is that dimension of collective life which

has to do with giving shape, direction, order and meaning to the social: with shaping, in

other words, the conditions of life in common and the rules according to which this

8

shaping occurs.9 These two analytically distinguishable dimensions of late-modern

collective life have come to form a skein which it is perhaps no longer possible to unwind

back into two separate threads, despite the occasional tantalization on account of a

glimpse of political thread here, a loose end of social thread there. It is this mutual

entanglement of the political and the social – in its ever-changing historical vicissitudes

and multiple, contested conceptual and discursive constructions – to which my term

“political-economic logic of late modernity” refers.10

The social-political entanglement is not primarily an empirical one between

certain concrete, empirically identifiable political institutions and other concrete

socioeconomic phenomena. Rather, it is above all a logic underlying and informing the

empirically given activities and institutions. The logical entanglement of the political and

the social is, to be sure, always manifested in empirical political and social activities; but

my historico-theoretical interest is in the historically contingent, conceptual-discursive

contestation and construction of the logic itself. This focus on the stratum of logic is

significant because surfaces can deceive: a given conception of the political-economic

logic (e.g. national socialism) can manifest itself in more than one mode at the surface-

level of empirically given political life. By fixing our gaze upon the deeper level of the

underlying logic, it is possible to discern common threads running through apparently

divergent movements, programs, actions, or institutions.

My dissertation will focus on national socialism as one of the major conceptual

and discursive articulations of the political-economic logic in Wilhelmine Germany.

Wilhelmine national socialism (in its various permutations) did not merely advocate

certain changes in concrete, empirically identifiable political and socioeconomic

9

practices. It also represented a distinct conception of the political-economic logic

underpinning German collective life, a conception comprising both a critique of the

existing political-economic logic and a national socialist alternative.

Economistic and non-economistic political-economic discourses

The political-economic discursive field is studded with multifarious conceptions

of the relationship between the political and the social. Within this variegated field, a

distinction can be made between economistic and non-economistic discourses.

Economistic political-economic discourses reduce both the political and the social to

purportedly “natural” economic laws of production, exchange, and consumption.11

Non-economistic political-economic discourses, however, are more important for

our purposes, since it is this domain that national socialism inhabits. Non-economistic

discourses insist on the irreducibility of both the social and the political to the economic.

The relationship between the political and the social can appear in these discourses in two

non-mutually exclusive forms. First, the relationship can be construed as socially

oriented: that is, caring for the social is understood to be one of the principal tasks of the

political. In contrast to economistic discourses, however, the non-economistic caring for

the social follows (at least to some significant extent) an extra-economic roadmap.

Second, the political-social relationship can be construed as politically oriented: that is to

say, the social is looked upon as a source of energy, as a kind of collective “human

motor”12 that can and must be harnessed for the sake of certain political endeavors (war,

state-building, and so on).

National socialist discourse can display both social and political orientations or

directionalities; thus the abovementioned vision of national participation can be regarded

10

as a socially oriented element of national socialism, while the idea of national service

seems to be a manifestation of political directionality. (The two types of orientation can

also appear in various degrees of admixture.) My research will need to flesh out the

discursive functions and historical dynamics of these two dimensions. For example, it

appears that the outbreak of the Great War brought about a massive shift of national

socialist discourse from social to political directionality, due to the perception of acute,

existential political crisis.

Whatever the specific directionality (i.e. political or social) attributed to the

political-social complex, the latter is sometimes conceived in non-economistic discourses

as analogous to a psychophysical entity. The social (or the strictly economic dimension

thereof) is regarded in this framework as, so to speak, the “physical” or “exterior”

dimension of collective life, whereas the political is understood as purveying the

collectivity with its interiority, i.e. its soul, its will, its self-consciousness, its ethical

content, or what have you. In this psychophysical model, the “political-economic” nexus

is given a broader “interiority-exteriority” inflection. Thus in the case of Wilhelmine

national socialism, so it seems, the national principle tends to function simultaneously as

supreme political end, ethical substance, and cultural content with which the social needs

to be imbued and for the sake of which the social needs to be cared for, harmonized,

organized and harnessed.13

Social hermeneutics

The interiority-exteriority template represents not merely a psychophysical

imaginary, but also a hermeneutic one. Hermeneutics has to do inter alia with attaching

some “inner” meaning or substance to externally perceived human artifacts. Modern

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hermeneutic thought, from its theological beginnings through its nineteenth-century

application to literary and historiographical criticism, has been preoccupied largely with

written texts or agglomerations thereof (e.g., literary genres). Toward the end of the

nineteenth century, Dilthey (1989, 2002) accomplished a crucial transposition of

hermeneutic theory from the textual sphere to social life as such. A transition, in other

words, from textual to social hermeneutics.14

Dilthey, however, was only the theoretically most articulate tip of the iceberg.

Wilhelmine social thought and discourse seem in fact to have been saturated with a social

hermeneutics of this type. The social world was often given a hermeneutic “reading” by

sociologists, cultural critics, artists, political activists and others. That is to say, the social

was conceived to be amenable to, and best understood through, attempts to grasp the

inner content inhabiting the outer expressions of social life.

Positive vs. negative social hermeneutics

Social hermeneutics can manifest itself in two major modalities: positive and

negative. These valences refer to the way the relationship between the inner and the outer

is construed. Positive social hermeneutics represents the simple, straightforward

conception of outer social phenomena as expressions of inner content, as explained above

with respect to Dilthey. It assumes a fullness of interiority gradually recovered by the

interpreter as she moves from her initial perplexity towards a mental state of

understanding.

Negative hermeneutics, on the other hand, is more complex. It is a critically

oriented hermeneutics that seeks to highlight certain negative tendencies in the dynamics

of the inner-outer relationship: tendencies such as the depletion, hollowing-out, or moral

12

degeneration of the interiority of social life. At its methodological core, negative

hermeneutics still relies upon discrete applications of positive hermeneutics: it is still

engaged in attributing certain inner contents to outer expressions. But it goes beyond

positive hermeneutics in that it perceives some kind of lack or emptiness in those inner

contents.

Three types of negative hermeneutics

Negative social hermeneutics can appear in either diachronic, counterfactual, or

inverted form. Diachronic negative hermeneutics traces the diminution of interiority

across time. It links together a number of individual “positive” interpretations (at least

two) into a temporal sequence that reveals an ongoing negative process.15 The second,

counterfactual type of negative hermeneutics identifies a diminution of interiority not

across time, but rather in relation to an explicit or implicit counterfactual model that

usually represents some normative expectation as to the desirable state of affairs.16 The

third, inverted type of negative hermeneutics is usually grafted upon one of the other two

types. It is inverted in the sense that it not only identifies a diminished interiority,

whether diachronically or counterfactually; it also attributes this diminution to an active

impact exerted by the exterior form upon its own interiority. This inversion constitutes

perhaps the most radical form of negative hermeneutics, since it disrupts the most

fundamental logic underlying hermeneutic theory. Instead of the outer forms of social life

serving merely as passive containers of inner content (as in classical positive

hermeneutics), this social interiority is now conceived as subjected to the deleterious

impingement of the constraints, demands, or sheer weight of its own exteriority.17

13

In Wilhelmine national socialism, all three types of negative hermeneutics can be

found in its critique of contemporary society. For example, Walther Rathenau’s concern

about the “de-Germanization” (Entgermanisierung) characterizing the “age of

mechanization” ([1911]1918a: 89ff; [1912]1918b: 50ff) is a blend of all three

negativities. The diachronic dimension is evident immediately in Rathenau’s prefixes and

suffixes; the counterfactual, in his distinction between soul and (rationalist, materialist,

utilitarian) intellect as superior and inferior interiorities, respectively (1918b: 48f); and

the inverted dimension surfaces as Rathenau discusses the subjugation of “all forces of

thought and feeling” (i.e., all interiority) to the (exterior) demands of a mechanized

society preoccupied with the ceaseless production of material goods (1918b: 51).

It is against the backdrop of these myriad hermeneutic negativities that national

socialism calls for the rehabilitation of the nation’s interiority and its harmonization with

the ineluctable demands of modern industrial society. One of the central tasks of my

analysis of national socialist discourse will be to trace this movement from negative

hermeneutics to hermeneutic social reform: the drive to imbue the social with national

content against the backdrop of a perceived sociocultural (and, with the outbreak of the

Great War, outright existential) crisis. More broadly, the negative-hermeneutic character

of national socialism’s political-economic critique indicates the firm rootedness of

national socialism in profound cultural anxiety.18

14

State of existing research

National socialism

National socialism as a phenomenon both transcending Nazism and predating

1918 was first given scholarly attention by Byrnes (1950) and Eugen Weber (1962) in the

framework of French historiography. Yet both took national socialism to be a purely

right-wing ideology, and so did every subsequent scholar who dealt with this issue.19

This is true as well for the work Zeev Sternhell, who has undertaken the most system

analysis of national socialism to date in the framework of his entire oeuvre. Sternhell

shows the centrality of national socialism in the French revolutionary right at the turn of

the twentieth century, in European fascism, and in the ideological origins of the Zionist

Labor movement in pre-state Palestine.20 However, despite their importance for

demonstrating the broad scope of European national socialism, Sternhell’s writings

nevertheless figure national socialism as a phenomenon largely restricted to forces at the

fringes of European society.

atic

The historiographical treatment of national socialism in Germany does not fare

much better. Even when German national socialism appears at all in the literature, it does

so in two modes: either sporadically, in the course of treating (and implicitly reducing

national socialism to) other phenomena such as “reactionary modernism”, “the

conservative revolution”, “National Bolshevism” and so on; or else as characterizing a

specific thinker (such as Oswald Spengler) or movement (such as the DAP in Austria),

without construing it as a phenomenon in its own right.21 The existing research on the

German war economy and the discourse surrounding the war economy between 1914 and

1918 has also largely failed to flesh out the national socialist dimension of that

15

discourse.22 While Bruendel (2004) does identify the national socialist aspect of wartime

discourse, his account lacks systematic conceptualization of national socialism, and fails

to make the connection between wartime and prewar national socialist discourse.

Klemperer (1957) similarly mentions the “socialist orientation” of the “war experience”,

growing out of “a general national feeling of solidarity” (57). But his discussion thereof,

spanning no more than three pages, underestimates the scope and depth of the

phenomenon;23 and, like Bruendel, he disregards the rootedness of wartime national

socialism in the prewar era.

Weißmann (1998) and Werth (1996) are notable exceptions to this general

tendency of the existing literature. Weißmann offers a book-length examination of

national socialism as a distinct ideological formation transcending the boundaries of

Germany and described by him as a phenomenon of profound, epochal significance. But

Weißmann’s account is seriously flawed in a number of ways. First, his conceptualization

of national socialism is rather superficial, inaccurate, and at times bizarre.24 Second,

Weißmann’s analysis of national socialism is restricted largely to the radical right. When

he does mention non-right-wing strands of national socialism (such as the Fabians in

Britain or Friedrich Naumann), they are only discussed fleetingly, and there is no serious

attempt to identify the divergences as well as similarities between those different types of

national socialism. Finally, and most dramatically, Weißmann’s alarming record as a

“revisionist” historian of Nazism and the Holocaust25 casts a dubious light on his work

on national socialism. Thus one of his critics has pointed out that, by emphasizing th

continuity of the NSDAP with a broad and deep ideological tradition of national

socialism, Weißmann sought to lend Nazism an image of respectability and to downplay

e

16

and divert attention from the centrality of racism for Nazism.26 My own research, by

contrast, will make sure to distance itself from any implication in this kind of agenda in at

least two ways. First, as noted earlier, I will seek to de-teleologize the concept of national

socialism, and to leave it to future research to determine the impact of my

conceptualization upon our understanding of Nazism. Second, even within this non-

teleological schema, my general attitude towards national socialism and its historical

consequences in World War I is a strongly critical rather than apologetic one. By

extending national socialism to the mainstream of bourgeois society, I believe I do more

to condemn the latter than to whitewash the former.

Werth (1996), the second major exception to the existing literature on German

national socialism, examines eleven thinkers and movements that strove after a synthesis

of nationalism and socialism in the interwar period. Werth goes as far as submitting

Naumann and Rathenau to the same analytical framework as Jünger, Spengler and other

revolutionary right-wing figures. Yet Werth’s work suffers from two important

shortcomings. First, his account is a rather descriptive exposition of social and political

ideas with almost no theoretical depth and only a minimal degree of historical

contextualization. Werth presents each thinker or movement in isolation, thereby failing

to grasp their interconnectedness as parts of a broad historical phenomenon. Second,

Werth’s study does not treat the Great War and the period preceding it (with the

exception of a brief discussion of Naumann and of Rathenau’s pre-1918 activity). That is

of course a legitimate delimitation of the scope of investigation, but it leaves much work

to be done in terms of highlighting the historical profundity of national socialism.

17

More general works on the relationship between nationalism and socialism have

usually failed to observe national socialism as a synthesis that is greater than the sum of

its parts. Most studies in this area are content with exploring the way socialists “proper”

have viewed the phenomenon of nationalism, as a component that was inherently

exogenous to their own socialistic outlook.27 Jacob Talmon, in his monumental trilogy

(1955, 1960, 1980), follows the diverging paths of nationalism and socialism in the

nineteenth and twentieth centuries (i.e. their mutual polarization), while completely

ignoring their points of convergence.

National socialism and the Wilhelmine bourgeoisie

Bourgeois national socialism in Wilhelmine Germany has as yet received

extremely scant attention as a phenomenon worth detailed examination in its own right.

The literature on Friederich Naumann, a declared national socialist, provides ample proof

of this. In Meyer (1967), the national socialist elements in Naumann’s thought appear

only fleetingly. Shanahan (1951) is concerned with Naumann’s strong statism, including

the tension between this statism on the one hand and his christian orientation, his

liberalism, and his individualism on the other hand; the relation between Naumann’s

social orientation and his nationalism is not discussed. Zimmermann (1982) does analyze

certain aspects of Naumann’s national socialism, but he waves away the complex

significance of the phenomenon by dubbing Naumann’s world-view as “ ‘national-

social’ism”, cautioning in a footnote that “Naumann’s ‘national social’ism should not be

confused with Hitler’s ‘National-Socialism’.”28 This anti-teleological stance is not, of

course, incorrect as such. But in Zimmermann’s case, it serves to block off any serious

confrontation with national socialism as a broad and deep phenomenon in its own right,

18

regardless of its relation to Nazism. Theiner (1983) deals mainly with Naumann’s party-

political activity; Naumann’s ideology is treated relatively marginally and is not

integrated into the overall analysis of his political development.29

Düding (1972) devotes a little more attention to ideology, and even purports to

map out Naumann’s “synthesis of nationalism and socialism” (63ff). Yet his efforts, too,

are inadequate. First, the socialist and nationalist dimension are, curiously, discussed in

two separate sections, thereby structurally undermining the author’s own idea of a

synthesis between the two. Second, even when the nationalist dimension makes a brief

appearance during the discussion of Naumann’s brand of socialism, the nationalist-

socialist nexus is limited by Düding to the idea that, for Naumann, socialism can only be

realized within the framework of a strong national state. While this idea certainly

constitutes one aspect of Naumann’s national socialism, it is merely a small part thereof.

Düding, in short, barely scratches the surface of the national socialist phenomenon. The

lack of depth in Düding’s understanding of national socialism is accompanied by a lack

of breadth: he discusses Naumann’s national socialism in complete isolation, as if

Naumann and his Nationalsozialer Verein (NSV; National-Social Association) were the

sole bearers of this ideological formation. Finally, Düding’s preoccupation with ideology

at all is quite limited. Most of his book concentrates on the party-political life of

Naumann’s National-Social Association, and he seems to deploy the terms “nationalism”

and “socialism” (as well as “liberalism”) in the sense they possessed within that

Wilhelmine party-political context, rather than in a political-theoretic orientation. In two

early works on the NSV, dating back to the first half of the twentieth century – Gauger

(1935) and Wenck (1905) – the nationalist-socialist synthesis figures more prominently

19

that in any other work. Yet here, too, national socialism is not conceptualized

systematically and is not grasped as a broad phenomenon transcending the limited case of

the NSV.30

The most recent volume devoted to Naumann’s life and work, edited by Rüdiger

vom Bruch (2000), examines Naumann mainly in the double context of German

liberalism and social Protestantism (4). National socialism is not deemed to be a major,

defining framework of analysis. In other words, Naumann’s national socialism is

relegated to the sidelines, despite occasional acknowledgements in the book of the

centrality of nationalism in Naumann’s social thought.31

Works discussing left-liberalism and bourgeois reformism in general do not

change the pattern established so far of ignoring national socialism. Heckart (1974),

Sheehan (1978), Langewiesche (1988a, 1988b), Mitchell (1988) and Thompson (2000)

focus mainly on the party-political and social dimensions of German liberalism, with

ideological patterns remaining relatively undeveloped; under these circumstances, it is

not surprising that the national socialist aspect of left-liberal thought and discourse fails

to surface in these studies. At most, there is mention of the attempts to infuse elements of

social reform into the classical liberal program, but the relation of this reformist

dimension to the liberals’ nationalist outlook is not explored. This lack of linkage

between nationalism and social reformism is also to be found in Hübinger (1988), who is

generally more sensitive to the ideational dimension. In Bruch (1985), the national-social

nexus surfaces occasionally in his meticulous portrayal of bourgeois reformism in the

Kaiserreich.32 Bruch sometimes even explicitly recognizes the national horizon of

bourgeois reformism,33 but no systematic development of the issue ensues. The same

20

tendency is repeated in Repp (2000). Nevertheless, the evidence these authors provide is

sufficient to expect this direction of inquiry to be rewarding.34

Perhaps the most encouraging recent historiographical signal comes from Eley

and Retallack (2003), who associate the concept of “Wilhelminism” with “the nexus that

formed around the turn of the century between capitalist dynamism, national state

formation, and social improvement”, and consider this distinct configuration to be

epitomized by Walther Rathenau (8). The authors thereby not only point up the centrality

of the national-social nexus for the entire epoch, but also figure bourgeois reformism as

its quintessential manifestation. This historiographical perspective suggests that the

concept of national socialism might help to bring into sharper focus one of the most

fundamental features of early-twentieth century Germany.

Dissertation structure and selection of empirical cases

The year 1914 seems to represent a crucial temporal watershed between two

continuous, but nevertheless in some important respects discontinuous, periods in the life

of Wilhelmine bourgeois national socialism. Accordingly, it will serve as a pivotal

structural principle in my dissertation, dividing the latter into two main sections: prewar

and wartime national socialism.

The rationale underlying this structure is twofold. First, there is the profound

alteration, marked by the outbreak of the Great War, in the sociopolitical and cultural

contexts in relation to which the discourse of national socialism oriented and defined

itself. Before August 1914, national socialism was articulated in response to what was

perceived as an ominous rise of class conflict and a profound cultural crisis permeating

21

all walks of society. During the war, these anxieties were replaced by a Janus-faced

attitude: on the one hand, a conviction that Germany had become embroiled in a life-or-

death struggle for its very existence (rather than merely for its moral fiber, social

cohesion or cultural values); on the other hand, a perception of the Great War as an

unprecedented historical opportunity for national rejuvenation and harmonization, for a

radical overhaul of its entire political-economic logic.35

The second, and probably more crucial, reason for choosing 1914 as the

dissertation’s pivot is that, during World War I, national socialism became a living reality

in the form of Germany’s war economy. Not surprisingly, the establishment of the war

economy was initiated and led by two figures, Walther Rathenau and Wichard von

Moellendorff, who had already participated in the production and circulation of national

socialist discourse before the war, and now found the ideal context – that of existential

national crisis – to realize their ideas.36 Without the systematic organization of the

national economy, of the national oikos, for the benefit of the war effort, Germany might

well have been defeated within a few months’ time, due to a severe raw materials crisis.37

In other words, the war economy and its underlying, legitimating national socialist

discourse furnished the structural and ideational conditions for the very possibility of

carrying out a four-year war with such mind-boggling costs in human lives and such

pervasive social devastation. This perspective highlights the profound historico-

theoretical link between Rathenau and Moellendorff’s national socialism on the one hand

and the blood-drenched fields of Verdun and the Somme on the other: the catastrophic

unfolding of World War I needs perhaps to be understood, not simply as a hypertrophy of

22

the political, but as a hypertrophy of the political-economic logic in the garb of national

socialism.38

1890-1914: national socialism and the crisis of culture

The first, prewar section of my dissertation will trace the emanation of national

socialism out of two tightly interwoven sites of bourgeois discursive production: (1)

German sociology and political economy, and (2) social and political reformist

movements, including the writings and activities of the individual actors associated with

those movements.

The German social sciences were a major site of intellectual production of

national socialist ideas. The latter crystallized at the junction of historicist thought and the

critique of classical political economy, and received substantial impetus with the

dominance of the Historical School of Political Economy39 at the universities and at the

Verein für Sozialpolitik (VfSP; Association for Social Policy). Gustav Schmoller and

Adolf Wagner, two of the founding fathers of the Verein and venerated intellectuals in

the Second Reich, expounded national socialist ideas as early as the 1870s. Schmoller, for

example, viewed in 1872 the significance of the “social question” as deriving from the

question of the “future of the German Empire” and “our [i.e. German] culture”.40 Within

this context, the principal aim of reform was, for Schmoller, to interpolate the lower

classes in “harmony and peace” into the “organism of society”.41 He advocated the idea

of national participation through culture, education (Bildung), and welfare.42 Underlying

this social program was a negative-hermeneutic critique of contemporary society,

including an admonition against the harsh mechanistic character of industrial work,

which no longer has any “educating and cultivating” effect.43 A similar negative

23

hermeneutic was also expounded by Adolf Wagner.44 Both Schmoller and Wagner

continued to be intellectually active throughout the period discussed here. Other, younger

generators of national socialist ideas within fin-de-siècle German sociology include Max

Weber (mainly in the 1890s), Johann Plenge, Gerhart von Schulze-Gävernitz, Edgar Jaffé

and Werner Sombart.45 Thus Weber (1994), in his famous inaugural lecture of 1895, not

only posited the nation as the most fundamental socioeconomic entity in modern

civilization. He also fiercely insisted on the need to harness all economic activity to the

needs of the nation, especially in its struggle for survival in the international arena.46

(This lecture had a central role in prodding Naumann to make the conceptual transition

from Christian to national socialism.47) Another example is Plenge (1911), who regarded

“national economy and society [Volkswirtschaft und Gesellschaft]” as “organic totalities”

(7), and envisioned a kind of organizational socialism that would bring about a systematic

political ordering of this national organism (178ff). These ideas subsequently formed the

core of Plenge’s (1916) more extensive elaboration of national socialism in his famous

wartime essay, 1789 and 1914. As this title suggests, Plenge conceived his national

socialism as a sweeping civilizational alternative to all that the French Revolution stood

for, replacing individualist liberty with organization, and universalism and class interests

with the “higher idea” (18) of German nationalism. As for Sombart, his national

socialism is much harder to pin down, but there seems to be clear evidence that he did

contribute consistently to the prewar bourgeois discourse of national socialism, from as

early on as the late 1880s.48

A second site of production of national socialist discourse were some of the many

Vereine (associations) that sprouted in the dozens from the early 1890s onwards. The

24

most prominent national socialist movement is, of course, Friedrich Naumann’s

Nationalsozialer Verein (NSV; National-Social Association). The activities, protagonists,

and publications of this (admittedly short-lived) association will have to be explored in

great detail.49 Another paradigmatic case seems to be that of the Deutscher Werkbund, an

association established with the aim of elevating the aesthetic quality of German

industrial, mass-produced commodities. As Schwartz (1996) brilliantly demonstrates, this

mission of the Werkbund is not to be understood merely at the surface-level of an attempt

to render German commodities more competitive in the international economy. At a

deeper level, the Werkbund enterprise emerged out of a deep concern about the depletion

of German culture under the conditions of industrial capitalism and mass society.50 The

Werkbund might prove to be of prime importance for my research since, in its

preoccupation with the culture-industry interface, it constitutes a paradigmatic instance of

the hermeneutic inflection of bourgeois-reformist political-economic discourse.

Moreover, the Werkbund drew into its orbit many stellar figures of bourgeois reformism,

ranging from sociologists Sombart and Simmel to architects Hermann Muthesius and

Peter Behrens.51 Other relevant Vereine might include the Heimatschutz, the Dürerbund,

and the Flottenverein (Navy League). But, in order to keep my research within

manageable proportions, my tendency at this point is to focus exclusively on the NSV

and the Werkbund as two representative foci of national socialism in the Vereine.

In addition to examining these social and intellectual sites of discursive

production as worthy of investigation in their own right, I will also try to determine the

extent to which the architects of the German war economy took part in, and were

25

influenced by, the prewar discourse of national socialism. With respect to Rathenau, the

existence of such links is suggested by Repp (2000: 262f).

1914-1918: national socialism at war

The outbreak of war witnessed a number of continuities. Thus the German social

sciences remained an important discursive field, accompanying the establishment of the

war economy with lively commentary and debate (Krüger 1983). Most of the scholars

encountered in the prewar era will therefore continue to figure prominently in this section

as well.

The main shift in focus compared to the prewar section will be a central

preoccupation with those figures who became directly associated with the war economy:

most prominently Rathenau and Moellendorff, but also Josef Koeth, Richard Sichler,

Johannes Tiburtius, and others. Furthermore, it may prove worthwhile to go farther afield

and examine the percolation of national socialism into the German army as the latter

gradually assumed more and more authority over social, economic, and cultural life,

realms into which it had never ventured before the war.52 However, at this point it seems

to me that extending my research into the army would inflate my project to unwieldy

proportions.

26

Tentative chapter outline

PART I – historiographical, theoretical, and analytical framework

1. Introduction: Research agenda and conceptual apparatus [This chapter will address

the issues discussed in this prospectus under the sections “Research agenda and

scope” and “National socialism and auxiliary concepts”, above]

2. Metatheory and methodology [see the section by the same name, below]

PART II – 1890-1914: national socialism and the crisis of culture

3. National socialism in the German social sciences [This chapter might turn out to be

too massive and may therefore end up as two shorter chapters]

4. Friedrich Naumann’s national socialism

5. The National-Social Association

6. The Deutscher Werkbund

PART III – 1914-1918: national socialism at war

7. The civilian protagonists of the German war economy

8. The sociological discourse on the war economy

PART IV – Conclusions.

27

Metatheory and methodology

Conceptual history of the political

My dissertation research is configured as an application of Rosanvallon’s (2006)

idea of a “conceptual history of the political”.53 Rosanvallon, a student of Claude Lefort

and François Furet, laid out in his Collège de France inaugural lecture of 2002 the

metatheoretical foundations for his project of an histoire conceptuelle du politique.

Rosanvallon’s metatheory rests on four major pillars, all of which inform my research

plan: (1) a distinction between “the political” and “politics”; (2) a historical dimension to

the study of the political; (3) a conceptual or ideational dimension; and (4) rejection of

exclusive reliance on canonical texts for the study of the political.54

First, then, Rosanvallon draws a fundamental distinction between “the political”

and “politics”. The political, for Rosanvallon, is both a “field” and a “project”. As a field,

it is “the site where the multiple threads of the lives of men and women come together …

allow[ing] all of their activities and discourses to be understood in an overall

framework”. As a project, it is “an always contentious process whereby the explicit or

implicit rules of what [the members of a community] can share and accomplish – rules

which give a form to the life of the polity – are elaborated” (34). Politics, by contrast, is

“the immediate field of partisan competition for political power, everyday governmental

action, and the ordinary function of institutions.” The political, in other words, is what

underlies, frames, and gives shape to politics as well as to society as such.

The definition of the political as a “project” immediately endows it with an

ineluctable temporal and thus historical dimension, which brings us to the second pillar of

Rosanvallon’s metatheory. “Such a conception of the political,” claims Rosanvallon,

28

makes a historical approach the condition of its thorough study. In fact, one

cannot make sense of the political as I have just defined it except in recalling, in

some tangible way, the breadth and density of the contradictions and ambiguities

that run through it. (38)

A full and permanent closure of the conditions of life in common, according to this

conception, is never possible. There would always remain some surplus of

“contradictions and ambiguities”, “of trial and error, of conflict and controversy, through

which the polity sought to achieve legitimate form” (38). The historicality of the political

thus emerges from, is coterminous with, the latter’s contestability (i.e. absence of full

closure) and contingency (i.e. absence of permanent closure). The study of the political,

under these conditions, is to a large extent an analytic of this absence of immobility, of

this fullness of motion through time.

A third pillar of Rosanvallon’s metatheory is the ineradicability of the conceptual

or ideational dimension. The political as project, according to Rosanvallon, proceeds

largely through an ongoing elaboration, contestation, and clarification of fundamental

political concepts such as “democracy, liberty, equality, and so forth” (45). Concepts and,

more generally, “[r]epresentations and ‘ideas’ amount in this approach to a structuring

material of social experience. … [they] orient action, impose on the field of possibilities

the limits of the thinkable, and demarcate the ground on which contest and controversy

can take place” (45f).

We now arrive at the fourth pillar of Rosanvallon’s metatheory. His emphasis on

the centrality of concepts and ideas notwithstanding, Rosanvallon does not advocate

studying the political in the form of an intellectual history that isolates concepts and ideas

29

from their sociopolitical context. The political always unfolds “in the tangle of practices

and representations” (46); therefore the study of the political has as its object not just

works of great intellectual merit, but the entire range of phenomena comprising the

tapestry of “political culture”: “the reception of literary works, the analysis of the press

and movements of opinion, the life of pamphlets” and so on (46).

All four pillars are present in my dissertation plan. First, the distinction between

politics and the political (first pillar) underlies my conception of the political-economic

logic as distinct from the surface of political-economic activity and institutions. The latter

can be regarded as a particular (and, in my view, central) modality of the political in late

modernity. Second, in keeping with Rosanvallon’s historical notion of the political

(second pillar), I construe the political-economic logic of late modernity as resisting full

and permanent closure, as subject to ceaseless contestation and experimentation. Third,

the combination of the third and fourth pillars situate Rosanvallon’s concept of the

political as project precisely in Baker’s “complex middle ground” which earlier I

identified with my notion of discourse qua socially circulating conceptual constellations.

The political, according to the third pillar, does not (in Baker’s words) “merge with the

practice of concrete social life”; but, as suggested by the fourth pillar, neither does the

political completely “separate out as the object of a set of specialized intellectual

activities”.

The ideal type

A conceptual history of the political requires conceptual apparatuses that would

be sensitive to historical contingency and diversity and compatible with an interpretive

30

mode of historical inquiry. Weber’s ideal type, I believe, offers such an apparatus. The

Weberian ideal type, as presented in his essay, “ ‘Objectivity’ in Social Science and

Social Policy” (1949), displays two major features. First, the ideal type is “one-sided” in

its conceptualization of empirical phenomena (90). It does not claim to identify the

“essence” of its empirical referents, but rather chooses to highlight a certain aspect of

those empirical cases, some aspect that is deemed significant by the investigator from a

certain cultural or value standpoint (64, 76, 81, 90). The ideal type thereby serves as a

heuristic tool for detecting aspects of the empirical world that are significant but would

have been much harder to track down without conceptual articulation. At the same time,

ideal-typical concept formation also exempts the scholar from having to demonstrate that

other conceptualizations of the same empirical phenomena are false. Conceptualizing

Friedrich Naumann as a “national socialist”, for example, does not necessarily preclude

his conceptualization, in the framework of other research agendas, as a “left-liberal”, a

“social reformist”, a “liberal nationalist”, and so forth. I do not claim that, by

characterizing Naumann as a national socialist, I have finally found his true essence, and

that consequently any other form of conceptualizing his social and political thought is

perforce inferior. Rather, I merely argue that, from the standpoint of a certain research

agenda, it is worthwhile to examine Naumann as a national socialist. Naumann’s case is

relatively easy, however, since he himself used the term “national socialism”. The

heuristic value of “national socialism” as an ideal type is even more evident where the

term does not surface explicitly in the empirical domain. Such is the case with Walther

Rathenau and with much of the discourse surrounding the activities of the Deutscher

Werkbund.

31

A second major feature of the ideal type is its distance from empirical reality. The

ideal type is made up of components that are “more or less present and occasionally

absent” from the relevant empirical cases. Hence, concrete historical phenomena can at

most “approximate to” the ideal type or “diverge from” it (90). Ideal types, in other

words, “are pure mental constructs, the relationships of which to the empirical reality …

is problematical in every individual case” (103). This feature allows for diversity within

the pool of cases joined together by the ideal type, to such an extent that sometimes there

would only be a partial overlap between the various cases. The criterion for assessing the

validity of an ideal type therefore does not depend on a naturalist logic of commonality:

that is to say, its validity and explanatory power do not diminish if all the concept’s

attributes are not shared by all empirical cases. Rather, an ideal type’s validity depends

solely upon the extent to which it manages convincingly to highlight a significant feature

of the empirical world that has hitherto been overlooked. Concomitantly, I do not expect

Friedrich Naumann, Walther Rathenau, Johann Plenge and other national socialists to be

national socialists in exactly the same way. There might well be only a partial overlap

between their respective national socialisms, amounting to a Wittgensteinian (2001)

relationship of family resemblance. This partiality, however, would not undermine the

validity of my concept of national socialism if I manage to demonstrate that all of these

figures had some role in sustaining a particular space in the political-economic discourse

of Wilhelmine Germany, a space that might moreover be of great significance for making

sense of Germany’s trajectory in the twentieth century.

32

Conclusion

Nationalism and the preoccupation with the socioeconomic upheavals associated

with industrial capitalism were two of the most powerful, formative undercurrents

informing German collective life following its unification. My dissertation will try to

show that these two discursive moments also converged to form a distinct, and extremely

significant, mode of political-economic thinking.

The concept of national socialism brings into visibility a common thread running

through a bewildering array of other, more familiar terms: “social reformism” and “social

liberalism”, “socialism of the lectern” (Kathedersozialismus) and “Prussian socialism”,

“conservative socialism” and “organizational socialism” and “state socialism”, “war

socialism” and “cooperative economy” (Gemeinwirtschaft). All of these terms are

perfectly legitimate and important in their own way, in their own historiographical

contexts. Nevertheless, they all fail to shed light on what I believe is a fundamental

moment in late modernity: namely the drive to anchor the national in the social and the

social in the national;55 to synchronize the rhythms of national brotherhood, social

solidarity, and economic productivity.

National socialism was not born ex nihilo in 1890 or 1870, nor did it find its death

in 1918 or 1945. Before Germany’s unification, elements of national socialism can be

discerned in the thought of Fichte, List, and Lassalle; and outside Germany, in that of

Saint-Simon, Comte, and Mazzini. After 1945, national socialism was triumphant – under

varying guises – in many anti- and post-colonial movements and regimes, and may also

be found in most versions of the ”Third Way” ideology.56 I hope my dissertation will be

helpful in opening up and encouraging further research into the national socialist

33

phenomenon beyond the fin-de-siècle German case. In addition, and here I come full

circle to the beginning of this prospectus, I hope my research will help to shed new light

on Nazism and fascism, by clarifying a cardinal element in the context within which they

emerged.

At the metatheoretical level, my hope is that I will be able to carry out a

convincing implementation of a Rosanvallonian conceptual history of the political.

American political theory has, over the past few decades, lost much of its historical

sensibility. At the same time, the Cambridge School metatheory as developed primarily

by Skinner (2002) and Pocock (1985) focuses too narrowly on strategies of linguistic and

discursive contextualization, thereby verging on a fetishization of methodology and

foreclosing many important avenues of political theorization. Rosanvallon’s metatheory,

I believe, offers at least one way of broadening the horizon of Anglophone political

theory such that a healthy degree of historical consciousness is combined with a good

dose of theoretical and analytical sophistication. Rosanvallon’s approach enables us to

theorize history and historicize theory in a way that neither collapses the one into the

other, nor deflates the tension between the two through some grand, Hegelian synthesis.

34

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Notes

1 This is a heavily revised version of a PhD dissertation prospectus entitled “Bourgeois National

Socialism in Germany and in France, 1890-1914”, submitted and approved in the fall of 2003 at the

Hebrew University of Jerusalem. I would like to acknowledge the formative and lasting impact of my

teachers in Jerusalem – Zeev Sternhell, Steven Aschheim, and Dan Diner – upon my dissertation program.

National socialism, of course, is a Sternhellian concept par excellence; Professor Sternhell nevertheless

supported my efforts to take this topic beyond his own realms of specialization. Thanks to Professor

Aschheim I developed an interest in cultural history and in bourgeois culture in particular. And it was in

Professor Diner’s Colloquium on German History that I became acquainted with the fascinating world of

hermeneutics. My present dissertation prospectus, despite all the revisions it has undergone, would have

been virtually inconceivable without this distinct amalgam of influences.

2 While the term “bourgeois” will not have a significant function in my research beyond this

negative delineation, it is nevertheless worth noting that my choice of this term also follows a dominant

tendency characterizing German historiography in the past two or three decades. Since Blackbourn and

Eley’s (1984) paradigm-altering book, there has been a massive flow of research on the bourgeoisie as a

pivotal actor in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Germany. This enormous body of research powerfully

argues that Germany’s persistent authoritarianism and eventual descent into catastrophe cannot be

attributed to a combination of weak bourgeoisie and powerful reactionary forces such as the Junkers and

the monarchy, as had been claimed in the 1960s and 1970s by Barrington Moore (1966), Ralf Dahrendorf

(1967), Hans Ulrich Wehler (1973), and many others. Rather, it is a dynamic, vibrant bourgeoisie that in

many ways constituted Germany’s socioeconomic, cultural, and political driving force ever since its

unification. (Besides Blackbourn and Eley [1984], other pioneering texts include Evans [1978] and Eley

[1980].) While this new historiographical paradigm initially took the form of social history, the late 1980s

and the 1990s witnessed a substantial expansion of scope, especially into the realm of cultural and

intellectual history. See e.g. Weindling (1991) on the dynamics of the construction of bourgeois identity as

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exemplified in the intellectual and social activity of the medical profession; Applegate (1991) on the

changing meanings of the concept of Heimat and its problematizing impact on our understanding of

bourgeois culture; Frevert (1991), a “thick description” of middle-class duelling; Hettling (1999) on the

tension and interaction between the individualizing and socializing moments permeating bourgeois thought

and culture; and Repp (2000) on the articulation, dissemination, and application of reformist ideas across a

dense network of voluntary associations, academic circles, and personal connections that together

comprised a broad and vibrant “reform milieu” in Wilhelmine Germany. As part of this cultural turn, the

German bourgeoisie itself (indeed, the category of “bourgeoisie” as such) came to be understood in cultural

rather than (or as well as) socioeconomic terms (Kocka [1987]; Hettling [1999]; Lundgreen [2000]). My

focus on Wilhelmine bourgeois discourse owes a great deal, and hopes to add its own contribution, both to

the initial paradigm shift concerning the historical significance of German bourgeoisie, and to the

subsequent cultural and intellectual inflection of the paradigm.

3 The analytical distinction between political “discourse” on the one hand and “concrete” political

activity on the other is to a certain extent, of course, arbitrary and can only be validly upheld for practical

research purposes such as demarcation of scope, as is done here.

4 On these and other aspects of bourgeois social reformism in fin-de-siècle France, see Elwitt

(1986), Stone (1985), Offen (1984) and Rabinbach (1990).

5 Begriffsgeschichte seems to have a tendency to favor semasiological over onomasiological

inquiry. Thus Koselleck’s (1985: 79) “initial” definition of Begriffsgeschichte is at its core a semasiological

one: “Begriffsgeschichte … is initially a specialized method for source criticism, taking note as it does of

the utilization of terminology relevant to social and political elements and directing itself in particular to

the analysis of central expressions have social or political content.” Koselleck subsequently qualifies this

initial definition: “The investigation of a concept cannot be carried out purely semasiologically; … the

semasiological approach must alternate with the onomasiological” (85f). Nevertheless, it is significant that

onomasiology here comes in only as a qualification, a complementation of the core semasiological

definition.

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6 My understanding of the ideal-typical method is articulated below, under the section

“Metatheory and Methodology”.

7 That said, I have no intention to deny the value of these distinctions for other aspects of my

inquiry or for other research purposes.

8 This definition of the social as a collective oikos is derived from Arendt (1958) and Myrdal

(1955), and concurs, I believe, with Foucault (2000). It is a more specific definition than the one offered by

Mouffe (2005: 17). Two further points of clarification: (1) It is a historically specific term, tethered to the

conditions of modern European civilization; (2) “The economic” is a narrower term, referring strictly to the

mechanisms of production, exchange, and consumption of material goods. It is part of the social, and can

also become coextensive with it. Indeed, many critiques of capitalism make precisely this latter claim.

9 This definition of the political relies heavily on Rosanvallon (2006). Rosanvallon’s ideas have a

crucial place in my dissertation’s metatheory; see the section “Metatheory and methodology” below. But

see also Wolin (2004: 9-12, 16f).

10 In its original Greek denotation, “economy” refers to the administration of the family

household; that is, the set of rules and actions designed to provide for the needs of the family. In the course

of the eighteenth century, the attribute “political” was added to denote the extension of the term’s

application to the level of large, state-governed collectivities. “Political economy” thus came to denote the

administration of the social qua collective household. The rise of the term “political economy” is part and

parcel of the transition from early to late modernity and represents a pivotal feature of late modern life,

namely the reorientation of the political towards the social and vice versa; in other words, their mutual

entanglement.

On the rise of “political economy” and its historico-conceptual significance for our understanding

of late modernity, see Arendt (1958: esp. 28-33); Foucault (2000; 2003: ch. 2, 11); Myrdal (1955: esp. ch.

1, 6); Polanyi (1957); Wolin (2004); and in the German context: Tribe (1995), Steinmetz (1993). What

Foucault presents as a transition from sovereignty to governmentality, discipline, and biopolitics can be

refigured as a transition from the juridico-political logic dominating early-modern collective life to the

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political-economic logic characterizing late modernity. An interesting insight into this transition can be

gained from the juxtaposition of Rousseau’s Discourse on Political Economy (1997) and Sieyes’ What is

the Third Estate? (2003). Rousseau’s discourse, despite the fact that it has political economy as its topic,

still reflects the juridico-political logic insofar as it construes political economy itself in juridico-political

terms. Sieyes’ essay is the diametrical opposite of Rousseau’s. Despite the fact that it deals mainly with

juridico-political matters such as representation, popular sovereignty, and constituent vs. constituted

powers, the entire discussion is founded upon a political-economic understanding of collective life.

We are also, of course, heavily indebted to Marx and the Marxist and post-Marxist intellectual

tradition for highlighting and analyzing the political-economic logic of late modernity, even though this

tradition has often over-emphasized the logical and ontological primacy of the economic over the political.

Important exceptions include, among many others, Marx’s “Critique of Hegel’s Doctrine of the State”

(1975a), “On the Jewish Question” (1978), and “The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte” (1950);

Gramsci (1971); and Laclau and Mouffe (1985). My own approach to the political-economic logic

particularly concurs with Laclau and Mouffe’s emphasis on the symbolically and discursively constructed

nature of the social. I expand this constructivism to encompass not only the social but also the political and

the political-economic logic.

11 According to economistic discourses, the political obeys, or should obey, the dictates of the

economic system. The political, in this view, knows no laws but economic laws; it thereby effectively

disappears into the fold of the (economized) social. It becomes an ancillary organ of the social, a lubricant

for its machinery. And, like any other lubricant, the political too derives in this conception its constitutive

features, its mode of utilization, indeed its very raison d’être, from the nature and the needs of the social

qua economic machine. Furthermore, economistic discourses often posit an ideal horizon of a

spontaneously harmonious society in which the political as a distinct dimension of collective life becomes

redundant. On the nightmarish rise of economism in late modernity, see inter alia Polanyi (1957), Wolin

(2004).

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This general tendency towards the deflation of the political in economistic discourses

notwithstanding, it must be noted that these discourses sometimes serve to mask, and/or include discursive

loopholes enabling a hypertrophy of the political, the latter spinning out of economic control, either in the

name of economistic purposes such as the protection of property rights, or as a state of exception. In such

cases, as Marx (1978: 36) puts it, the political “set[s] itself in violent contradiction with its own conditions

of existence”.

12 This term is borrowed from Rabinbach (1990).

13 The cultural is basically a subset of the social, just like the economic. The cultural and the

economic often vie for predominance within the social, harnessing the political for their cause. Non-

economistic critique in many cases decries the depletion of the cultural at the hands of the economic. In

non-economistic discourses, the political and the cultural share a certain affinity vis-à-vis the economic,

because in those discourses both of them are construed as animated by extra-economic principles and

therefore as capable of curbing the encroachment of the economic (or a certain modality of the economic,

e.g. capitalism) upon the social. For example, the political can be conceived as the domain in and through

which the cultural can be fostered within the social. In the case of nationalism, the political is oftentimes

conceived to be inherently imbued with cultural content. In national socialism, this cultural content of the

political is expected to flow back into the social as a way of restoring or guaranteeing social cohesion and

harmony in the face of the ominous rise of the economic. Even more deeply, the economic itself was often

understood in Welhelmine national socialism to be a cultural domain, and the national socialist task was

construed as imbuing the economic with a different “spirit” than the cold, rational, calculating,

individualistic and cosmpolitan spirit of contemporary capitalism.

14 For Dilthey, social life consists of an inner world that is constantly expressed in outer

manifestations such as gestures and words, music and poetry, churches and universities, and so on.

Understanding the social world in the human sciences can only be achieved by way of an interpretive

movement from the externally given expressions of life to the inner content that these expressions refer

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back to. Dilthey himself explicitly endorsed “the conceptual pair of outer and inner” (2002: 105), as he

called it, in developing his social hermeneutics.

The social hermeneutics that developed within the fold of the German human sciences at the turn

of the twentieth century is ultimately rooted not just in the hermeneutic tradition stricto sensu, but more

broadly in the German tradition of philosophical idealism.

By pointing up the transition from textual to social hermeneutics I do not mean to imply, of

course, that textual hermeneutics was abandoned. Rather, it was merely embedded within a broader

hermeneutic horizon.

15 The last pages of Max Weber’s Protestant Ethic (1976) offer a good example of diachronic

negative hermeneutics. In a somber conclusion to his essay, Weber laments the severe depletion of the

interiority of capitalism, from the days of its inner robustness in the early modern era down to its emptiness

in Weber’s own time: “Since asceticism undertook to remodel the world and to work out its ideals in the

world, material goods have gained an increasing and finally an inexorable power over the lives of men …

To-day the spirit of religious asceticism … has escaped from the [iron] cage. … [T]he pursuit of wealth,

stripped of its religious and ethical meaning, tends to become associated with purely mundane passions …”

(Weber 1976: 181-2; emphasis added).

16 To take another example from Weber, his depiction of the rationalized interiority of modern

bureaucracy derives its negative character in part from its implicit juxtaposition with charismatic

interiority, which is portrayed by Weber as rich, active, self-determining and versatile. See Weber (1958:

245ff); Gerth and Mills (1958: 52, 72). Another classic example of counterfactual negative hermeneutics is

Ferdinand Tönnies’ (2001) distinction between “Community” (Gemeinschaft) and “Society” (Gesellschaft).

Consider the following passage: “All creative, productive activity of mankind is a kind of art … When this

process serves to maintain, promote or give pleasure to the Community, … it can be understood as an

intrinsic function of the Community. … Commerce, the skill of making a profit, is the opposite of all such

art” (68; original emphasis). Commerce is earlier identified with Gesellschaft (64).

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17 The passage cited above from Weber’s Protestant Ethic includes also an element of inverted

hermeneutics when it endows material goods with “an inexorable power over the lives of men”. Also, in his

essay on “Science as a Vocation”, Weber (1958: 129ff) shows how the interior meaning of modern

scientific work is all but snuffed out by its own “external conditions”. Lukács (1971) is another

paradigmatic example of inverted negative hermeneutics. Not surprisingly, Lukács was strongly influenced

by Weber and by late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century German social thought in general. At the same

time, the case of Lukács might suggest that the tradition of inverted negative hermeneutics goes as far back

as Marx’s early writings and his concept of alienation in particular (1975b: esp. 322-34 [“Estranged

Labor”]).

18 On the relationship between the cultural sphere and the political-economic logic (especially in

non-economistic discourses), see n.13, above. The deep rootedness of national socialism in cultural revolt

has been emphasized with respect to its radical right-wing strand by Sternhell (1994), who figured the rise

of fascism as a trajectory leading “from cultural rebellion to political revolution”. See also Stern (1974).

19 Santarelli (1965); Mosse (1972); Payne (1995); Flynn (1992); Weißmann (1998).

20 Sternhell (1973, 1976, 1986, 1994, 1998, 2000).

21 For the first set of cases, see Herf (1984), Klemperer (1957), Lebovics (1969), Woods (1996).

For the second, see Stern (1974), Merlio (1982), Whiteside (1962). Mosse (1964, 1970) provides a very

broad and rich picture of Volkish thought and discourse, a key component of which is national socialism;

however, Mosse never explicitly acknowledges the existence of national socialism as a phenomenon that is

not entirely reducible to Volkism and that is deserving of attention and systematic analysis in its own right.

Bracher (1973), too, construes national socialism as a basically right-wing phenomenon.

22 Kocka (1984); Feldman (1992); Zunkel (1974) ; Horne (1997); Krüger (1983); Verhey (2000);

Mommsen (2004). See also the historiographical overview provided by Winter and Prost (2005).

23 Klemperer suggests that the wartime “national” or “German” socialism was “inherently

conservative” (57). This claim deflates the complexity and richness of influences composing national

socialist discourses.

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24 For example, one of the three major components of Weißmann’s concept of national socialism

is what he calls “a socialistic nationalism that stemmed above all from France’s Jacobin tradition”

(Weißmann 1998: 12). Yet it is unclear how national socialist movements in twentieth-century Germany,

for instance, were linked in any way with the Jacobin heritage (except perhaps by way of negation rather

than appropriation). This is true especially for radical right-wing national socialism (the main object of

Weißmann’s inquiry), which explicitly positioned itself in violent opposition to all aspects of the heritage

of the French Revolution, including Jacobinism. In fact, Weißmann himself becomes embroiled in self-

contradiction when, only a few pages after dubbing national socialism as carrying Jacobin features, claims

that national socialism could historically only attain political success after World War I had swept away all

the “political coordinates” set by the French Revolution (14). Furthermore, Jacobinism was characterized

above all by a radical political egalitarianism and rationalism, which has nothing to do with any strand of

national socialism, certainly not as a central, defining component of national socialist ideology.

25 In a book commissioned in the mid-1990s by the German publisher Propylaen, Weißmann had

sought to diminish the scope of the Holocaust; his book was consequently withdrawn from publication.

26 This claim was brought forth by Theodor Wieser in his review of Weißmann’s book for the

Neue Zürcher Zeitung, 6/2/1999. A look at Weißmann’s personal website (http://www.karlheinz-

weissmann.de) seems to confirm Wieser’s claim. A number of Weißmann’s books have been published by

Edition Antaios, a radical right-wing German publisher. His most recent book, Das Hakenkreuz: Symbol

eines Jahrhunderts, aims to rehabilitate the swastika’s respectability by embedding it in a broader history

of the symbol. This is precisely the same strategy that Wieser has shown to have been adopted by

Weißmann with respect to the concept of national socialism.

27 Davis (1967); Lovell (1992); Schwarzmantel (1991); Vincent (1992).

28 Zimmerman (1982), p. 691.

29 For example, Theiner discerns a turn taken by Naumann in 1903 from national socialism to

liberalism. However, this turn is construed only in terms of the social base on which Naumann relied from

that time on (i.e., a purely bourgeois social base, instead of attempting to create a party based on both the

53

bourgeoisie and the proletariat). Theiner disregards the clear continuity in Naumann’s national socialist

Weltanschauung. See pp. 111f and esp. p. 129.

30 Wenck had served as secretary of the NSV and his book was published just two years after the

NSV’s dissolution. Hence his book is much more a primary than a secondary source. As for Gauger, his

work, although begun in 1931, was published in 1935, and the shadow of National Socialism can almost be

touched when the author notes the contemporary popularity enjoyed by the nationalist-socialist synthesis as

bestowing historical importance upon Naumann’s movement. By contrast, I hope to show that Wilhelmine

national socialism is significant in its own right, even without the teleological pull exerted by the NSDAP.

31 See e.g. Jähnichen’s contribution (2000: esp. 163-5). Jähnichen, among other things, quotes

Ernst Troeltsch’s observation that “[Naumann’s] politics [is] less democratic or even socialistic as

nationalistic” (Jähnichen 2000: 165 n.75). See also Hübinger’s contribution (2000: esp. 169).

Another example of blindness towards national socialism in the world-view of key bourgeois

figures is the literature on Max Weber, whose political outlook contained a national socialist dimension

(especially in the 1890s); indeed, he was among those who influenced Naumann to move from Christian to

national socialism. Nevertheless, national socialism has never been imputed to Weber: neither in the above-

mentioned sources on Naumann nor in the major works on Weber’s political life, such as Mommsen (1984)

and Mayer (1944). Only Bracher (1973) couples Weber and Naumann together as liberals “advocating an

imperialist solution to the social problem in a ‘national social’ state” (p. 50). At the same time, however,

his flash of insight is unfortunately swept away in the strong teleological current characterizing the overall

narrative of his book: Weber and Naumann, too, appear as nothing but pawns in the march of history

towards the National Socialist dictatorship. It is precisely this simplistic teleological scheme that the current

research seeks to avoid.

32 See e.g. Bruch (1985: 62, 67, 69, 70, 130)

33 Bruch (1985: 7, 72, 78, 111, 119, 148, and esp. 120f, 133f)

34 For further examples (among many) of blindness to the significance of the national-social nexus

in bourgeois reformism, see Campbell (1989); Schwartz (1996); Mitzman (1973).

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35 Krüger (1983), Thimme and Legien (1915). The latter book – a collection of wartime essays by

notable German intellectuals including Meinecke, Troeltsch, Tönnies, Jaffé and others – is saturated with

national socialist discourse.

For some, the new and dramatic developments were merely a consummation of tendencies already

visible in the prewar era. See e.g. the continuity between Johann Plenge’s diagnoses before (1911: 178) and

after (1916) the outbreak of the War.

36 On Moellendorff, see Barclay (1978). Rathenau’s prewar writings contain evidence of national

socialism, as suggested in my earlier discussion of Rathenau’s notion of “de-Germanization”. On

Rathenau’s connection with the Wilhelmine reform milieu, see Repp (2000: 262f). See Rathenau (1918c)

for his account of the emergence of Germany’s war economy and his involvement therein.

37 Feldman (1992: 51).

38 On the pervasive political-economic reach of the War, see Feldman (1992) and Kocka (1984).

On some of the aspects of the discourse surrounding the political-economic dimension of the War, see

Michalka (1996), Krüger (1983), Bruendel (2004). An excellent primary source on wartime political-

economic discourse is Thimme and Legien (1915).

39 Quite suggestively, the intellectual tradition of political economy has in Germany acquired the

name of “national economy”.

40 Schmoller (1890: 2; see also 10, 12, 55f, 153).

41 Schmoller (1890: 11; see also 44, 62).

42 Schmoller (1890: 12, 55).

43 Schmoller (1890: 34).

44 Wagner (1872: 7-9).

45 Schmoller (1890), Wagner (1872), Schulze-Gävernitz (1893), Weber (1994), Plenge (1911,

1916). Mommsen’s (1984) analysis of Weber’s nationalism reveals some clear streaks of national

socialism. On the other sociologists or “national economists”, see Krüger (1983).

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46 See esp. pp. 14-17.

47 Wenck (1905: 33f).

48 Thus in 1889, Sombart chided Marxism for being blind to the “national movement of our day”

and to the fact that “cosmopolitanism is completely and entirely obsolete” (Repp 2000: 157). Similar

evidence, drawn from a variety of primary sources, is dispersed throughout Repp’s chapter on Sombart. In

addition to the direct evidence, one might also mention Sombart’s membership in the Deutscher Werkbund

from 1907 to 1911; his close personal and social ties with most if not all of the other figures and

movements mentioned here; his cultural, negative-hermeneutic critique of capitalism; his increasingly

virulent nationalism from the early 1910’s onwards; and finally – though here we must beware of

teleologizing – his ultimate support for Nazism and his book on “German socialism” published in the mid-

1930s.

49 See e.g. Naumann (1905, 1907, 1964), Damaschke (1898), Wenck (1905). The journal Die

Hilfe, edited by Naumann, will also probably be an important primary source.

50 Thus, as an illustrative example, the Werkbund in 1910 adopted as its motto the phrase “Die

Durchgeistigung der deutschen Arbeit” (“The Spiritualization of German Labor”). See Schwartz (1996:

60).

51 Interestingly, Hjalmar Schacht – future Minister of Economics in the National Socialist regime

– was also listed in 1913 as one of the Werkbund’s members. See Die Kunst in Industrie und Handel:

Jahrbuch des deutschen Werkbundes 1913 (1913). On the Werkbund in its reformist context see, aside

from Schwartz (1996), also Petsch (1980).

52 Cf. Feldman (1992: 38): “Although unalterably opposed to the internationalism of the

Socialists, [many officers] were potentially receptive to a more nationally oriented ‘Prussian socialism’.”

53 This expression appeared in the title of the original publication of the inaugural lecture

(Rosanvallon 2003), and was discarded in the English translation.

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54 Wolin’s (2004: ch. 1) metatheory bears a striking resemblance to Rosanvallon as far as the first

three of these four pillars are concerned, but in Wolin’s case these tenets are all transposed to a canonical

register, thereby diverging from Rosanvallon with respect to the fourth pillar.

55 I owe this metaphor to Dan Diner.

56 For a broad survey of the Third Way, see the Journal of Political Ideologies issue dedicated to

the subject [7(3), 2002]. The nationalist dimension is immediately evident even in the introductory essay

which provides an overview of the issue’s articles. See Bastow et al. (2002: 273ff).