Democracy and Facism: From Europe to America Author(s): Peter Rutkoff and William B. Scott Source: State, Culture, and Society, Vol. 1, No. 1 (Autumn, 1984), pp. 26-60 Published by: Springer Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/20006792 Accessed: 13-02-2020 21:35 UTC JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at https://about.jstor.org/terms Springer is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to State, Culture, and Society This content downloaded from 149.31.21.88 on Thu, 13 Feb 2020 21:35:37 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms Democracy and Facism: From Europe to America by Peter Rutkoff and William B. Scott War in Our Times, a study by European emigre scholars, was aimed at the tragedy of appeasement. Edited by Hans Speier, the volume examined the failure of parliamentary democracy during the Weimar Republic as an explanation for Munich.1 Its authors, the individuals who formed the Graduate Faculty at the New School, drew on their experiences in postwar European politics. As refugee intellec? tuals they believed that it was their duty to educate. Between 1933 and 1939 as sociologists, economists, and political scientists, these Euro? pean ?migr?s at the New School addressed the most important issue of their era: the nature of German and Italian fascism. They concluded that fascism was intimately bound up with the political democratiza? tion of European society. Indeed, they viewed fascism's success a consequence of the failure of parliamentary democracy. They argued that fascism was part of a larger social-political phenomenon which they called "totalitarianism" that encompassed the political extremes of left and right. This conclusion entailed a significant alteration of their own social and theoretical perspectives as they formulated a "totalitarian model" in the context of New Deal Liberalism. The Graduate Faculty compared the United States with Weimar Ger? many. Both were democratic and progressive, but in Germany fascism triumphed while in the United States democratic forms prevailed. Only by reorienting political democracy consistent with the ideals of eighteenth-century liberalism, they argued, could totalitarianism be checked.2 As intellectuals of the Left they viewed the crises of Germany, Italy, and the Soviet Union as indicative of the formal weakness of parliamentary democracy. In the 1930s at the New School, these ?migr? social scientists modified the most Utopian of their theoretical commitments as they affirmed the cosmopolitan values which they believed were inherent in the Enlightenment. They emphasized toler? ance, free discourse, and reason based on human plurality rather than cultural, national, or racial exclusivity. Only by avoiding the failures 26 This content downloaded from 149.31.21.88 on Thu, 13 Feb 2020 21:35:37 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms of Weimar's simple majoritarianism could the West resist the onslaught of authoritarian dictatorships. They came to believe that both fascism and communism, each of which promised a classless society or a "pure" community, were caused by an excess of egalitar ianism. As Social Democrats they earlier had been critical of the inequalities inherent in a liberal society. By the late 1930s they had decided that such inequities were of small moment compared to the unthinkable alternative of "totalitarianism." Only a liberal democracy that embraced tolerance, civil equality, and full political participation could escape the "totalitarian" consequences of a classless society in which the state ruthlessly enforced its communal ethic. Moreover, the Graduate Faculty developed a definition of "totalitarianism" which became a central ingredient of postwar defenses of American political institutions as they came to believe that only the United States embodied the ideas and institutions of the Enlightenment. As dean of the University in Exile and then of the Graduate Faculty, Emil Lederer prepared the way for the Graduate Faculty's shift from the more Utopian perspective of democratic socialism to a revelation of "democratic liberalism." Together with philosopher and Gestalt psychologist Max Wertheimer, Lederer voiced the gathering concerns of the Graduate Faculty. For him, the existence of the University in Exile, itself, became proof of the validity of American political institutions. In 1932, less than a year before his appointment to the University in Exile, Lederer's colleagues and former students, on his fiftieth birthday, celebrated his scholarly accomplishments. As professor of political economy at the University of Berlin, Lederer was considered by the Rockefeller Foundation as Germany's leading social theorist. For his birthday celebration he returned to the University of Heidelberg, where he had taught from 1910 to 1931. Prior to 1919 Heidelberg had been a center of academic and political dissent. Here, Lederer had participated in the intellectually charged salon of Max and Marianne Weber as well as joined the Young Socialists along with his friend and life-long associate Hans Staudinger. At Heidelberg, Lederer also established friendships with Karl Mannheim, Hans Speier, and Carlo Mierendorff. On his return in 1932 Lederer acknowl? edged these formative influences. In a birthday salute, Mierendorff, a former student and active social Democrat, identified Lederer's intel? lectual roots. Mierendorff described Lederer as Weber's successor as the intellectual and spiritual leader of Germany's post-war democratic Left. Recalling Weber's untimely death, Mierendorff said, "It was our misfortune that we lost that teacher so soon." Above all, he recalled, it was Weber who had "taught us that we must act."3 As a political 27 This content downloaded from 149.31.21.88 on Thu, 13 Feb 2020 21:35:37 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms economist Weber had combined historical with theoretical analysis. In 1905 he published his classic statement on capitalism and the Protes? tant ethic as well as his landmark essay on the problem of objectivity in the social sciences.4 The first dealt with the "rationalization" of modern society while the second examined the limits of scientific knowledge when applied to political issues. In 1919, just months after the armistice, Weber returned to these subjects at the University of Munich. Addressing what he called the "vocations of science and politics," he urged Germany's new student generation to embrace both the ideals of scientific objectivity and political responsibility. Mieren? dorff, who was in the audience, understood the speech as an admoni? tion to act in defense of the newly established republic. Weber's argument in favor of an objective social science rested on a barely articulated Kantian notion of mind. For Weber, the social world which humans had created was knowable through analytic constructs or "ideal types."5 Nonetheless, he believed that social science could not establish the "scientific" validity of criteria which deter? mined political choices. Rather, questions of value or ethics began where scientific questions left off. Individuals still had to choose. Science could not do this for them. But, in affirming such freedom Weber rejected what he saw as the limits of Marxist and positivistic determinism. Weber exhibited a profound ambivalence towards mod? ern, rationalized, and bureaucratic society. Deeply attached to the notions of scholarly inquiry, an intellectually free university, and political responsibility Weber's famous image of the "iron cage" expressed his misgivings.6 In 1919, in the last year of his life, he not only admonished his Munich audience to act "for politics," but he acted by participating in the Weimar government. For Lederer, Mierendorff, Speier, and Staudinger, a Social Demo? cratic Germany offered no such foreboding "iron cage." A socialist democracy promised to fulfill their dreams. In the 1920s Mierendorff, Speier, and Staudinger became political activists while Lederer served on the Weimar Socialization Commission. Each believed that they were faithfully following Weber's example. In 1931 Lederer received a full professorship at the University of Berlin, replacing Werner Sombart whom he had earlier succeeded as co-editor of Weber's journal, the Archive. By 1932 Lederer had established himself as Weber's successor and was known as "the Berlin sociologist." Born to an assimilated, middle-class Jewish family, Lederer had studied law and economics under Joseph Schumpeter in Vienna. He completed his studies in Berlin. In 1910 he abandoned a brief law career to accept a teaching appointment at Heidelberg where he met Weber, as well as 28 This content downloaded from 149.31.21.88 on Thu, 13 Feb 2020 21:35:37 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms the young socialist radicals, Rudolf Hilferding and Otto Braun. Through his Hungarian wife, whose Christianity he had accepted on their marriage, Lederer also became friends with the Marxist critic Georg Luk?cs. Under Weber's influence Lederer studied the relation? ship between society and politics and the role of government in social change. Before the war, as a Social Democrat, in a series of articles, he criticized the facade of Wilhelmian parliamentarianism as well as the awesome military power of the German state. For Lederer, democratic socialism offered an ethical system which would release humans from the bonds of economic and political repression.7 Intellectually eclectic, Lederer rejected the mechanistic Marxism characteristic of so many contemporary socialists as he drew from both Weber and Schumpeter. Lederer saw, in Weimar, the means to realize his hopes to create a popularly based and, ultimately, classless society.