chapter 4 Third Phase: Continuity and New Challenges. Abendroth’s Retirement to the Early 1980s

1 Social and Political Context

The long period of uninterrupted economic prosperity (beyond the brief lapse in 1966–7) and the ‘Fordist regulation regime’ based on a tripartite corporat- ism between capital, labour, and the state would reach its definitive end in the mid-1970s. Accumulation of West German capital began to stall, economic growth slowed, and unemployment soared to heights long considered unima- ginable under the ideological spell of continuous prosperity. This development went hand-in-hand with a technological and organisational restructuring of the social labour process in West Germany, eroding the industrial working class and facilitating processes of objective and subjective individualisation across broad swathes of the population. The traditional social and cultural contours of capitalism in the country began to shift, albeit without altering its underly- ing economic logic. On the contrary, this logic would manifest in new, rigorous post-Taylorist strategies of exploitation resulting in ever-growing levels of mass unemployment, a sinking relation of distribution tipping the scales against wage labourers, along with deregulation and privatisation measures enacted by the liberal-conservative government under Chancellor Helmut Kohl elec- ted in 1982. This dynamic placed increasing pressure on the associations and representative organisations of the wage-earning class. Although IG Metall and IG Druck und Papier mobilised a strike for the 35-hour week in 1984, the economic effects of crisis and social-structural ruptures also carried implic- ations for the trade unions’ base. The ‘proletarian milieu’ collapsed, as the hitherto collective identity of interests began to differentiate into heterogen- eous group interests, and alienation – particularly on the part of the younger generation – vis-à-vis collective forms of trade union and political represent- ation and organisation increased. As a result, resistance and protest against the destructive consequences of the capitalist economy began to migrate away from the core industrial sectors towards other fields of social contradiction and the emerging ‘new social movements’ such as the women’s movement, the peace movement, and the environmental movement. The liberal-conservative government’s agenda of budget consolidation, privatisation (of telecommunic- ations and the postal service, for example), and cuts to the social safety net

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2020 | doi:10.1163/9789004410169_006 third phase: continuity and new challenges 89 along with the consequences of unemployment made the broad outlines of a ‘two-thirds society’ clearer than before, even if the levels of social-political hardship and decline failed to reach those of Thatcherism in Great Britain or austerity policies in France. Nevertheless, unemployment in West Germany rose alarmingly quickly between 1980–3, from 3.8 to 9.1 percent.1 The political state of the already weak West German left grew increasingly precarious. The influence of the left wing remained limited within the SPD, while left-wing functionaries and members of the trade unions found them- selves caught in a ‘war on two fronts’ against both their leaderships’ willingness to adapt to capital’s demands as well as the consolidation of the post-Fordist regime of boosting workplace productivity on a mass scale.2 Although the DKP – an increasingly important point of reference in the thinking of the post- Abendroth protagonists of the Marburg School – managed to stabilise organ- isationally and recruit large numbers of workplace activists, it remained utterly irrelevant in parliamentary terms beyond several local council seats. The DKP’s student wing, the MSB Spartakus, along with the left-socialist Sozialistischer Hochschulbund (SHB) successfully consolidated their position at a number of universities in cities like Marburg, Bremen, and Hamburg. Alongside Marburg, the newly-founded University of Bremen was most notable, where several pro- fessors including former students of Abendroth and Hofmann like Hellmuth Lange3 and Lothar Peter4 identified with the DKP’s politics and joined the party.

1 See Görtemaker 1999, p. 608. 2 On the problems confronting the trade unions as a result of post-Fordism’s consolidation see Deppe 2012a, esp. pp. 32–57. 3 Born in 1942, Hellmuth Lange studied sociology, political science, and German philology in Munich and Marburg. He completed his dissertation on the ‘new working class’ in France (Lange 1972) under Abendroth’s supervision and temporarily worked as a researcher at the Institut für politische Wissenschaft. Lange was appointed to a professorship of industrial and scientific sociology at the University of Bremen in 1973. He was an active member of the DKP, participated in the BdWi, and belonged to the local party leadership in Bremen where the party was relatively strong. Following German reunification and the collapse of the DKP, Lange distanced himself from Marxist positions and moved towards the Greens, albeit without joining the party. Lange would later serve for years as the spokesperson for the environmental sociology section of the German Sociological Association. 4 Born in 1942 and a member of SDS from 1965–70, Lothar Peter studied sociology, political science, and German philology in Marburg and Geneva. He worked as Abendroth’s student assistant from 1965–6 and was a student tutor under Werner Hofmann. After completing his dissertation in 1971 with a thesis on the relationship between authors and political activity supervised by Abendroth and Maus (Peter 1972), he worked as an assistant associé at the Uni- versity of Paris III from 1971–2 and was a lecturer in Marburg for a time, before being appoin- ted to a professorship of industrial and workplace sociology (later also general sociology) at the University of Bremen. He worked closely with the IMSF in Frankfurt beginning in 1970.