National Socialism Before Nazism: Friedrich Naumann and Theodor Fritsch, 1890-1914 By Asaf Kedar A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Political Science in the Graduate Division of the University of California, Berkeley Committee in charge: Professor Mark Bevir, Chair Professor Wendy Brown Professor Martin Jay Spring 2010 National Socialism Before Nazism: Friedrich Naumann and Theodor Fritsch, 1890-1914 Copyright 2010 by Asaf Kedar Abstract National Socialism Before Nazism: Friedrich Naumann and Theodor Fritsch, 1890-1914 by Asaf Kedar Doctor of Philosophy in Political Science University of California, Berkeley Professor Mark Bevir, Chair This dissertation is a rethinking and critique of the concept of “national socialism.” I show that this concept not only emerged in Germany years before Nazism, but also arose within the mainstream of German society, alongside and independently of parallel developments in the radical right. Alarmed by the dramatic rise of an internationalist, Marxist socialism in the years following German unification, a succession of prominent public figures gave voice to an alternative, nationalist reading of the social problems accompanying capitalist industrialization. This endeavor involved a wholesale reconceptualization of social life and social reform, and a marginalization of the concern for social justice and emancipation in favor of a preoccupation with national order, homogeneity, and power. The dissertation focuses on two variants of national socialism developed in Germany prior to the First World War, one by the left-leaning bourgeois reformist Friedrich Naumann and the other by the right-wing völkisch antisemite Theodor Fritsch. Their differences notwithstanding, both strands of national socialism shared two major ideational foundations. First, both were underpinned by a national existentialism: the claim that the nation is facing a “struggle for existence” which necessitates aggressive international expansion, colonization, and ethnic purification. The social reforms demanded by national socialism were, accordingly, geared at systematically harnessing all socio-economic forces in the service of these purportedly “existential” struggles. Second, both variants of national socialism adhered to a national productivism that, by stressing the need for cooperation among all the “productive” strata of the nation, elided the class-based exploitation characteristic of industrial capitalism. On the basis of their national productivism, both Naumann and Fritsch were opposed simultaneously to Marxism with its class-conflict view of society on the one hand, and to liberalism with its individualistic worldview on the other hand. Given that Naumann and Fritsch were pivotal figures in their respective social, cultural, and political milieux—Naumann in the reformist bourgeoisie, Fritsch in the radical right—their articulation of a national-existential claim on the social is indicative of a profound generational shift in the ideational climate of Imperial Germany. This generational shift did not consist in the appearance of national socialism itself, which had already been articulated in the 1870s by 1 prominent figures such as political economist Gustav Schmoller and Christian socialist Adolf Stoecker. Rather, the shift consisted in the shedding of the ethical-conservative sensibility of the first generation of national socialism in favor of a sense of existential urgency grounded in a biologistic imagination. The impact of national socialism on the generation of Naumann and Fritsch reached its apex in the First World War, when an existential national socialism constituted the ideological underpinning of Germany’s war economy, i.e. the systematic regimentation and mobilization of the national economy in service of the war effort. Beyond the fresh perspective it offers on the historical dynamics of Imperial Germany, the dissertation also sheds new light on the intellectual-historical context in which national socialism made its way into the name and program of the Nazi movement from 1920 onward. The study suggests that the conceptual field of national socialism into which Nazism entered after the First World War was more variegated, more sophisticated, and had deeper historical and intellectual roots than previously believed. 2 To Saya i Table of Contents ACKOWLEDGEMETS v CHAPTER 1 | WILHELMIE ATIOAL SOCIALISM : ITRODUCTIO & ORIGIS 1 I. ITRODUCTIO 1 II. ORIGIS 7 National socialism in its historical context 7 The 1870s: ethical-conservative national socialism 9 Pre-unification origins 14 Conclusion 21 CHAPTER 2 | FRIEDRICH AUMA ’S ATIOAL SOCIALISM : ITRODUCTIO & ORIGIS 23 I. ITRODUCTIO 23 II. ORIGIS 26 Naumann’s Christian Socialism 26 From Christian to National Socialism: Weber’s Impact on Naumann 31 Conclusion 45 CHAPTER 3 | FRIEDRICH AUMA ’S ATIOAL SOCIALISM : THE FOUDATIOS 47 I. ATIOAL EXISTETIALISM 47 National-existential framing of collective life 47 National-existential subordination of the social 52 II. ATIOAL PRODUCTIVISM 60 Conclusion 65 CHAPTER 4 | FRIEDRICH AUMA ’S ATIOAL SOCIALISM : THE POLITICS 66 I. COCEPTIO OF ATIOAL POLITICS 66 Affirmation of the Imperial order 66 Cross-class cooperation 70 Nationalizing socialism and the workers 72 ii Party politics 76 II. COCEPTIO OF SOCIAL & ECOOMIC POLICY 79 Affirmation of the industrial-capitalist order 79 Nationalization of social policy 82 Conclusion 87 CHAPTER 5 | THEODOR FRITSCH ’S ATIOAL SOCIALISM : ITRODUCTIO & ORIGIS 88 I. ITRODUCTIO 88 II. ORIGIS 93 Biographical overview 93 The formative intellectual influences: Marr and Dühring 95 From Christian ethics to national existentialism: a generational shift 103 Conclusion 108 CHAPTER 6 | THEODOR FRITSCH ’S ATIOAL SOCIALISM : THE FOUDATIOS 110 Introduction 110 I. ATIOAL EXISTETIALISM 110 National-existential framing of collective life 110 National-existential subordination of the social 116 II. ATIOAL PRODUCTIVISM 119 Labor 119 Capital 120 III. SYOPSIS: ATISEMITISM 124 Conclusion 128 CHAPTER 7 | THEODOR FRITSCH ’S ATIOAL SOCIALISM : THE POLITICS 129 I. COCEPTIO OF ATIOAL POLITICS 129 Repudiation of parliamentarism, suffrage, and party politics 129 Dictatorship and corporatist representation 134 Mass politics 136 The Mittelstand 137 II. COCEPTIO OF SOCIAL AD ECOOMIC POLICY 141 iii Land and Urban reform 141 The sphere of circulation: financial, fiscal, and monetary policy 150 Corporatist reorganization of the economy 152 CHAPTER 8 | ATIOAL SOCIALISM BEFORE AZISM : COCLUSIO 155 Friedrich Naumann, Theodor Fritsch, and national socialism: a synthetic recapitulation 155 National socialism as positive socialism 156 National socialism and the First World War 161 National socialism and Nazism 169 BIBLIOGRAPHY 172 iv Acknowledgements I am grateful to my teachers at UC Berkeley, above all to Mark Bevir, Wendy Brown, and Martin Jay. I thank Professor Bevir for inspiring me to try and match his razor-sharp analytical thinking; for leading me through my first and most difficult steps in the bewildering world of academic publication; for helping me to structure my time and my work in more efficient ways that I had thought was possible; and for helping to keep my spirits up during a particularly tough year on the job market. I thank Professor Brown for encouraging me to find my own voice; for offering me her warm and invaluable support at certain critical junctures on my path; and for her presence as a model of rigorous scholarship, devotion to teaching, and commitment to values. And I thank Professor Jay for sharing his encyclopedic knowledge in an unfailingly amicable and supportive way; and for helping me to spot the most vulnerable points in my argumentation, in ways that helped me time and again to refine and deepen my writing. Special mention also goes to Gerald Feldman, who was a member of my dissertation committee until his passing less than a year after my advancement to candidacy. I feel privileged to have benefited from Professor Feldman’s enormous experience and erudition, as well as from his kindness and generosity. I am grateful to the participants in Wendy Brown’s monthly dissertation workshop, which has been the single most useful resource I have had as ABD at Berkeley. I thank them not only for their kind, thoughtful, and illuminating comments on the draft chapters I presented, but also for having given me the opportunity to learn from their work-in-progress and from my attempts to articulate useful responses to it. I am grateful to all those on the administrative end who have made things so much easier: Gwen Fox, Paul Hamburg, Janet Newhall, Andrea Rex, Sandy Sanders, Jim Spohrer, the librarians at Interlibrary Services, and the custodians on the third and seventh floors of Barrows Hall; and in Berlin, the staff at the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin and the Bundesarchiv in Berlin- Lichterfelde. No less important is the financial support without which this project would have been impossible to carry out: a Fulbright Grant; fellowships from the UC Berkeley Graduate Division; pre-dissertation and dissertation fellowships from the UC Berkeley Institute for European Studies; a travel grant from the UC Berkeley Graduate Assembly; and various fellowships, GSIships, and other awards from the UC Berkeley Department of Political Science. I am grateful to friends and colleagues who, at different times and each in their own unique and irreplaceable way, were there for exchange of ideas, moral and emotional support, and just plain good company: