Ideas, Interests, and Institutions in Ralf Dahrendorf’s Materialist Liberalism Marius Strubenhoff, Pembroke College This dissertation is submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Submission Date: 24 June 2019 Declaration This thesis is the result of my own work and includes nothing which is the outcome of work done in collaboration except as declared in the Preface and specified in the text. It is not substantially the same as any that I have submitted, or, is being concurrently submitted for a degree or diploma or other qualification at the University of Cambridge or any other University or similar institution except as declared in the Preface and specified in the text. I further state that no substantial part of my thesis has already been submitted, or, is being concurrently submitted for any such degree, diploma or other qualification at the University of Cambridge or any other University or similar institution except as declared in the Preface and specified in the text. It does not exceed the prescribed word limit for the relevant Degree Committee. Marius Strubenhoff, Pembroke College Ideas, Interests, and Institutions in Ralf Dahrendorf’s Materialist Liberalism Abstract This thesis offers a comprehensive account of Ralf Dahrendorf’s liberal political thought between the early 1950s and the late 1980s, with particular emphasis on the role that his methodological ideas played in his conception of politics. It argues that materialist conceptions, borrowed from Karl Marx and other materialist theorists, informed his liberal outlook throughout his career, transcending his early abandonment of political socialism. Situating Dahrendorf within a tradition of debate about necessity and contingency in German social thought from the end of the First World War to the Positivism Dispute of the late 1950s and early 1960s and the cultural turn of the 1970s and the 1980s, the work studies his attempt to overcome the social-scientific ideas of Talcott Parsons and other structural-functionalists and to recast sociology as a causality-oriented discipline that takes interests and social structure rather than ideas and values as its subject. This also affected Dahrendorf’s academic politics. Examining his role in the foundation of the University of Constance between 1964 and 1966, it shows how an anti-idealist critique of German higher education and political culture informed his attempt to create an institution for the social sciences that could break the perceived dominance of the humanities and overcome the central role of Law departments in the formation of the Federal Republic’s elite. The final two chapters discuss Dahrendorf’s engagement with neoconservatism and neoliberalism. Covering his interaction with scholars such as Daniel Bell and Samuel Huntington at settings including the London School of Economics and Political Science and the Trilateral Commission in the wake of the student movement, it discusses the development of his ideas vis-à-vis an emerging consensus that politics had turned into a cultural – rather than socio-economic – conflict. Finally, the thesis discusses Dahrendorf’s critique of Friedrich Hayek, Thatcherism, and constitutional economics during the 1980s. Here, it highlights a divergence between Dahrendorf’s agonistic liberalism and a new liberalism built on the assumption that the vast influence of ideas meant that politics was highly contingent and unpredictable. Combining the history of political thought and the history of the social sciences, this thesis revises established readings of Dahrendorf as a straightforward ‘Cold War liberal’. By doing so, it provides a new perspective on the history of liberalism and political thought more broadly before and after the paradigmatic shifts of the ‘cultural turn’. 3 Στη Γεωργία 4 Preface This thesis would not have been possible without the guidance and advice of Professor Eugenio Federico Biagini. His advice, received months before starting the doctorate, to read ‘especially Marx, who was in the forefront of [Dahrendorf’s] generation’ in preparation for the project is exemplary for this.1 The results of this thesis more than bear out the validity of his recommendation to read Karl Marx in order to understand Ralf Dahrendorf, demonstrating as a case in point how much this thesis has profited from his supervision. I have also greatly benefited from the advice of many other scholars in the Political Thought and Intellectual History and Modern European History subject groups of the Department of History at the University of Cambridge, as well as academics associated with the Department of Politics and International Studies of the same university. Professor Duncan Kelly provided invaluable advice during my Research Assessment Exercise at the end of my first year. Other scholars who deserve to be mentioned especially are Dr Waseem Yaqoob, Dr Damian Valdez, Dr Bernhard Fulda, and Professor Peter Mandler. In addition, my thoughts on the intellectual tradition in which I have situated Dahrendorf have evolved as a consequence of my participation in the DAAD Workshop series ‘German Approaches to History’. Here, Charlotte Johann deserves to be mentioned especially as a stimulating partner for discussions of historiographical ideas. 1 Personal Correspondence, Eugenio Federico Biagini to Marius Strubenhoff, 16 May 2015. 5 In research seminars at German universities, my work has profited from feedback from Professors Joachim Scholtyseck, Andreas Rödder, Andreas Wirsching, Dominik Geppert, Jürgen Osterhammel, Christoph Dejung, Stephan Moebius, Jörn Leonhard, Lutz Raphael, Elke Seefried, and Thomas Raithel. Professor Paul Nolte and Professor Dirk Kaesler gave me invaluable advice on secondary literature during their visiting fellowships at St Anthony’s College, Oxford and Clare Hall, Cambridge, respectively. Dr Arthur Kuhle helped with making sense of Raymond Aron’s thoughts on contingency and his reception of Carl von Clausewitz. Two American scholars, Dr Daniel Steinmetz-Jenkins and David Sessions, have helped me in understanding the transatlantic history of the social sciences in conversations and correspondence. In Sheffield, the members of the Max Weber Reading Group, Dr Dina Gusejnova, Dr Dimitrios Tsarapatsanis, and Professor Martial Staub, aided me in making sense of the connections between German sociology and liberalism. Also Sheffield-based, Professor Henk de Berg has helped me by providing invaluable feedback on my work. This thesis would not have been written in the way that it has been had it not been for Philipp Benjamin Craik. Our recurring discussions on the philosophy of science since our days as undergraduates at St Edmund’s College, Cambridge have always been an inspiration. Last but not least, Philipp Rahlfs and Henning Grote deserve my gratitude for their indispensable logistical support at a crucial moment in the application process for the University of Cambridge’s PhD programme. 6 Table of Contents Introduction 7 I. Sociology and Modern Industrial Society 38 II. Dahrendorf’s Materialism 89 III. A New Sociology 136 IV. Dahrendorf’s Anti-Idealism: From Palo Alto and Columbia 179 to the ‘Non-Hegelian’ University of Constance V. Agonistic Liberalism after the Cultural Turn: Dahrendorf’s 215 Critique of Neoconservatism VI. Dahrendorf’s Critique of Neoliberalism 266 Conclusion 299 7 Introduction: Ralf Dahrendorf’s Question ‘I have sometimes dreamt of the weatherman after the television news being followed by a “social processes man” who points at various parts of the globe and describes the unstable and thunderous condition in the Middle East, the stable high-pressure area over the Soviet Union, and the disturbing influence of Atlantic depressions on Europe.’ (Ralf Dahrendorf, ‘Disjunction and Analysis’, London Review of Books 3, 19 February 1981.) In November 1997, writing for the left-liberal German weekly DIE ZEIT, Ralf Dahrendorf cautioned his contemporaries about the advent of an authoritarian century that he saw arising from the social, economic, and political consequences of an ever more globalizing and interconnected world.2 As a political liberal, he welcomed a more open and dynamic world that had introduced values such as ‘self- reliance and individual initiative’ that, he argued, had been discounted for too long.3 Yet as a methodological materialist, Dahrendorf also worried about the rise of a new social conflict as a consequence of the latest instance of the ‘revolutions of the productive forces’.4 A new divide had materialized between members of the ‘global class’, who were able to take advantage of new international opportunities, and those parts of the world population who either did not wish to or could not do so.5 Dahrendorf 2 Earlier versions of some passages of this introduction have been published as part of Marius Strubenhoff, ‘Materialist Method, Agonistic Liberalism: Revisiting Ralf Dahrendorf’s Political Thought’, History of Political Thought 39 (2018). Chapter II draws on revised material from the same publication. Chapter I draws on Marius Strubenhoff, ‘The Positivism Dispute in German Sociology, 1954-1970’, History of European Ideas 44 (2018). The title of this introduction takes inspiration from Wilhelm Hennis, Max Webers Fragestellung (Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck), 1987). 3 Ralf Dahrendorf, ‘Die Globalisierung und ihre sozialen Folgen werden zur nächsten Herausforderung einer Politik der Freiheit’, DIE ZEIT, 14 November 1997: ‘Selbständigkeit und Eigentätigkeit’. 4 ibid: ‘Revolutionen der Produktivkräfte’. 5 ibid: