This important critical study of three major Ger¬ man sociologists—the nineteenth-centmy pioneers Ferdinand Tonnies, Werner Sombart, and Robert Michels—is rooted in the context of German social and intellectual history. Arthur Mitzman shows how Tonnies’ interest in community and Michels’ critique of socialist bureaucracy were both inti¬ mately connected with their allegiances to an older, more communitarian and decentralized Germany that was being irreparably destroyed by Prussian domination. Under the influence of Tonnies, Som- bart’s analysis of modern capitalism and his evolu¬ tion from supporter of revisionist sociahsm to bitter critic of modernity are similarly related by the au¬ thor to the sociologist’s increasing estrangement from German society. These social theorists are here viewed as exem¬ plars of a frustrated bourgeois radicalism, men whose intellectual accomplishment reflected their hostihty to the German Empire’s fusion of Junker and middle-class energies, and so gave intellectual form and substance to the guilty conscience of the Imperial German bourgeois. With the brilliance of analysis that distinguished his study of Max Weber —The Iron Cage—Arthur Mitzman’s new book will revise long-held ideas about the beginnings of soci¬ ology-making clear that far from originating as an antiseptic development of scientific objectivity, it grew out of a passionate commitment to humanist values within a social order apparently determined to destroy them. Also by ARTHUR MITZMAN THE IRON CAGE: An Historical Interpretation of Max Weber 1970 THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK, Published in New York by Alfred A. Knopf Sociology and SOCIOLOGY AND ESTRANGEMENT Three Sociologists of Imperial Germany ARTHUR MITZMAN Alfred A. Knopf Mew York 1973 xras IS A BORZOI BOOK PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF, INC. Copyright © 1973 by Arthur Mitzman All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. Distributed by Random House, Inc., New York. Library of Congress Cataloging in Pubhcation Data Mitzman, Arthiu. Sociology and estrangement. Revision of the author’s thesis, Brandeis. Includes bibhographical references. 1. Michels, Robert, 1875-1936. 2. Sombart, Werner, 1863-1941. 3. Tonnies, Ferdinand, 1855- 1936. I. Title. HM22.G3M55 1973 30i'.092'2 71-111240 ISBN 0-394-44604-6 Manufactured in the United States of America FIRST EDITION