Emergence of Sociology in Austria, Torrance

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The Emergence of Sociology in Austria 1885–1935

John Torrance

European Journal of Sociology / Volume 17 / Issue 02 / November 1976, pp 185 - 219DOI: 10.1017/S0003975600007359, Published online: 28 July 2009

Link to this article: http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S0003975600007359

How to cite this article:John Torrance (1976). The Emergence of Sociology in Austria 1885–1935.European Journal of Sociology, 17, pp 185-219 doi:10.1017/S0003975600007359

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JOHN TORRANCE

The Emergence of Sociology in Austria

N O N E would deny the fateful role of Austria in European polit-ical history during the past century. Her place in intellectual his-tory is of equal importance, as several recent studies have remindedus (1). Her contribution to the emergence of sociology was bothimportant and peculiar, yet its distinctiveness has often been over-looked. This is partly because of the tendency not to discriminatebetween Austrian and German thought, and partly because of concen-tration on successful and positive contributions, rather than on inhib-ited and negative ones. The latter, however, may be even moreinstructive than the former.

For the Austrian development was peculiar in two respects. First,although the sociological standpoint made a precocious appearance,the growth of a distinct sociological tradition was twice aborted.'Austrian sociology' never survived, as such, to take its place in thehistory of the discipline, and contemporary sociology in Austria islargely the offspring of artificial insemination carried out after WorldWar II from America, though under the auspices of the Austrianexpatriate, Paul Lazarsfeld (2). And secondly, the impact outsideAustria of Austrian thought in the human sciences —and especially,of Viennese thought—has been very great, yet largely hostile, or atleast obstructive, to sociology.

In what follows, I shall first describe how sociological innovationwas stimulated, in different ways, by the two lines of social fission inthe Hapsburg empire—ethnic and class inequalities—as these develop-ed into political conflicts, and how it was thwarted. Gumplowicz andEhrlich will be examined as sociological pioneers responding to ethnic

(1) In addition to Carl Schorske's valuable synthesis, although my sociological inter-studies, there is now A. JANIK and S.E. pretations differ from his.TOULMIN, Wittgenstein's Vienna (London (2) On this, and the history of sociology1973). Above all, I am indebted to William in Austria generally, see L. ROSENMAYR,M. JOHNSTON, The Austrian Mind (Berkeley Sociology in Austria (Graz 1966), on which1972), an indispensable work of synopsis and I have relied throughout for details of fact.

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strife, and Austro-Marxism as a new sociological departure arisingfrom class struggle. The evanescence of these innovations isexplained by the interest of the Austro-German bourgeoisie in main-taining the existing order, and by the strength of the opposing ideolog-ical currents of bourgeois liberalism and petit-bourgeois Catholicism.I shall argue that these dominant ideologies—especially in the contextof the academic human sciences—were characterized by culturaltraits or constraints that were fundamentally inimical to the sociologi-cal standpoint. Finally, I shall make some hypothetical suggestionsas to the sociological basis of these traits.

i . Gumplowicz, Ratzerihofer and Ehrlich: innovation isolated.

The universities of the Hapsburg empire formed part of Germanacademic culture, in which various tendencies converged to producethe well-known sociological innovations of the early twentieth century.After the Viennese revolution of 1848 and the subsequent liberalrenascence, Austrian scholars, especially in Vienna and Prague, beganto make major contributions in most fields of learning. In manyways the country was a favourable terrain for the emergence of socio-logical curiosity in a scholarly form. In Vienna, it possessed thefourth largest European metropolis, the social melting-pot and cosmo-politan centre of a historic, multinational, crisis-ridden polity, whichattracted a diverse, highly cultured, self-conscious intelligentsia contain-ing an unusually high proportion of Jews. There was an academictradition of firm adherence to scientific standards. So it is not sur-prising that one of the earliest exponents of the sociological approachanywhere, Ludwig Gumplowicz (1838-1909), and the founder of thesociology of law, Eugen Ehrlich (1862-1922), should both have beenproducts of the Vienna law faculty. Furthermore, both were Jews(though both converted to Christianity, presumably for convenience)and the sociology of both has always been interpreted as respondingto the tension-ridden ethnic pluralism of the Dual Monarchy.

Their sensitivity to ethnic strife and cultural diversity, thoughprobably sharpened by Viennese anti-semitism, owed less to Viennaitself, however, than to their upbringing and domicile on the Ukrai-nian fringes of the empire. Gumplowicz, after taking his doctoratein 1862, returned to his native Galicia, where his anti-Hapsburg andanti-Russian Polish patriotism denied him an appointment at CracowUniversity. For thirteen years he practised law and journalism inCracow, unsuccessfully agitating the Polish cause, and then left for the

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south, a disappointed nationalist, exchanging activism for provincialacademic security in Graz. Various works on Austrian law relatingto ethnicity and language preceded his first major book, Der Rassen-katnpf (1883), which made and fixed his reputation. Thenceforwardhis name was invariably associated with the theory of the polygeneticorigin of mankind, and of the origin of states in the conquest of oneethnic group by another. Though not a racialist, a militarist, oreven a social Darwinist, he was widely misinterpreted as all three.The notoriety earned by this book, in which Gumplowicz was settlingaccounts with his past and justifying his failure in Galicia, overshad-owed his more important Grundrifi der Soziologie, which appearedin 1885.

A recent editor has claimed that this much neglected book 'mustbe ranked among the most important statements of sociology in itsformative period, a work clearly on a par with Durkheim's Rules' (3).Few, probably, would agree; but also, few have read it. Champion-ing positivism in the tradition of Comte and Spencer, it anticipatesmost of Durkheim's criticisms of both. Gumplowicz proclaimedthe autonomy of the social no less trenchantly than Durkheim, defin-ing sociology as 'an inductive experimental method, which, toexplain social phenomena, relies on social facts'. He argued theirrelevance of methodological individualism for the study of 'socialunits', for 'it is not possible to ascertain their mutual relations fromthe properties of their constituent parts'. Psychological and culturalphenomena must be secondary for sociology, for which 'the socialphenomenon is always primary. The thought of the individual,and socio-ethical products such as religion, rights, morals, etc., arederivative '. He claimed both that 'the psychological method' —the pride of the contemporary Austrian school of economics — was'not at all useful for explaining social phenomena' and that 'econo-mic phenomena are also basically social'. These formulations of keypostulates of 'sociologism' (4) indicate that Gumplowicz had manyof the attributes of a 'founding father' — and indeed he exerted aconsiderable influence in pre-revolutionary Russia, Poland, Italy(upon Mosca, for example) and for a while in the United States (5).In Austria, however, he remained without honour. His suicide in

(3) I.L. HOROWITZ in his preface to L. York and London 1928) butu nlike SorokinGUMPLOWICZ, Outlines of Sociology (New I would argue that sociologism is a necessaryYork 1963) from which the remainder of stage in the emancipation of sociology fromthe quotations in the paragraph are also liberal ideology,taken. (5) His champion in America was Lester

{4) The term is Sorokin's (P. SOBOKIN, F. Ward. In Germany, his most importantContemporary Sociological Theories (New- disciple was Franz Oppenheimer.

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1909 was prompted rather by incipient cancer than professionaldisappointment, but had he received even as much recognition asFreud he might — who can tell ? — have displayed Freud's fortitudein the face of affliction.

Before this, Gumplowicz had been saddened by the death of hischief ally in the cause of sociology in Austria, Gustav Ratzenhofer(1842-1904). A military archivist of artisan origin, Ratzenhoferrose to the rank of general. His sociological works are obviouslythose of an autodidact, but show originality and depth. The usualestimate of Ratzenhofer as an epigone of Gumplowicz, and a conflicttheorist whose pluralism reflected that of his society, is an oversim-plification. He shared Gumplowicz' positivism and accepted histheory on the origins of states, but his basic propositions were different.Where Gumplowicz began from the social group, Ratzenhofer builthis sociology on conventional individualistic premises (6). Thetransition to social interaction was made, not very satisfactorily, byattributing to the individual 'social interests' of various kinds, con-nected with physiological, psychological and cultural needs. Heemphasized integration no less than conflict, and like many otherAustrian writers of the period looked hopefully towards a peacefuland cooperative resolution of the class struggles attendant on rapidindustrialization. Primarily a social philosopher and political sociol-ogist who hoped to lay a scientific foundation for policy, Ratzenhofer'sentire approach is recognizably that of a Viennese German of Catholicupbringing. His importance in sociological history is due to hisreception in America, where by stimulating the study of interestgroups (a term which he may have invented) by Small and Bentleyhe ranks as a founder of American sociological and political plural-ism. On this account, and because Gumplowicz and he were throwninto comradeship by their intellectual isolation in Austria, they canbe treated together without distortion. They shared, after all, aca-demic marginality. If Gumplowicz was a provincial in the academy,Ratzenhofer remained outside the academy in the metropolis; bothcould be just as easily ignored, as indeed they were.

Ehrlich was a more scholarly figure than Ratzenhofer, and a lessprovocative one than Gumplowicz. Having taken his doctorateat Vienna in 1886, he stayed there as an official, re-entering academiclife in 1895. Thereafter, he was professor of law at his native Czer-nowitz, in Bukovina, from 1897 to 1918, retiring when Roumania

(6) See especially G. RATZENHOFER, Die sociologische Erkenntnis, Positive Philosophicdes socialen Lebens (Leipzig 1898).

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annexed the province. If it be true that he 'saw the task of his lifein combating government by bureaucracy' (7), he neverthelessseems to have held aloof from local nationalisms and confined himselfto the weapons of learning. Ethnic pluralism, however, in the empiregenerally and Bukovina in particular, supplied the inspiration andevidence for his main thesis, that 'the centre of gravity of legal devel-opment lies not in legislation, nor in juristic science, nor in judicialdecision, but in society itself (8). His was by no means an unalloyedconflict theory. He stressed the military origin of the state, butexplained its modern expansion by 'the steadily progressing uni-fication of society'. 'The interdependence of all social associationsupon one another and the dependence of the whole upon its componentparts constitute the consensus universal of Comte and the social consen-sus of Herbert Spencer'. But he distinguished between functionalrelations of super- and subordination, which spring spontaneouslyfrom the 'inner order of associations', and coercive relations ofdomination and subjection, in which the ruled are treated as thingsand made to serve the rulers' interests. Parallel to this was a seconddistinction, between 'living law' — the operative, functional normsof group life — and 'norms for decision', rules emanating from thestate which, if they were not codifications of living law, were attemptsat domination. Thus Ehrlich, though opposed to socialism, couldpraise historical materialism for having 'pointed out to what extentthe law' is 'a superstructure erected upon the foundation of theeconomic order, and also to what extent the legal propositions arebeing fashioned and created under the pressure of the distributionof power in society'. He himself claimed that 'every social andeconomic change causes a change in the law'.

These quotations are from Ehrlich's major treatise Grundlegungder Soziologie des Rechts (1913), that culminated a train of publica-tions which, as he said, 'unconsciously applied the sociological methodof legal science, for which I subsequently sought to establish a theoret-ical basis'. My concern here is not with the adequacy or otherwiseof this basis, but merely to show how far it expressed a genuinelysociological standpoint. Ehrlich's chief aim was to demarcate andextrude practical jurisprudence from 'legal science'. In positivisticstyle, he saw the latter as inductive and observational in method, buteventuating in general propositions. Thus, in opposition to the

(7) As asserted by Max RHEINSTEIN, of the Sociology of Law (Cambridge, Mass.Sociology of Law, Ethics, XLVIII (1937-38), 1936), p. xiv. The remaining quotations in232-239. this and the next paragraph are from this

(8) E. EHRLICH, Fundamental Principles translation.

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German historical school, it forms 'a part of the theoretical scienceof society, of sociology'. In words reminiscent of Gumplowicz,he defined society as 'the sum total of the human associations thathave mutual relations with one another'. The unity of an associa-tion is secured by effective shared norms, which 'are social facts,the resultants of the forces that are operative in society'. Theseforces constrain individuals, for 'all compulsion exercised by thenorms is based upon the fact that the individual is never actuallyan isolated individual [...] In the last analysis it is his group thatsupplies him with everything that he sets store by in life [...] Hewho refuses to conform [to group norms] must face the fact that hisconduct will loosen the bonds of solidarity within his own circle'.Thus 'the social norms give shape and form to the individuality ofman'. These and similar passages show, I think, that what Ehrlichlacked in incisiveness, as a theorist, was compensated by sociologicalinsight.

That Ehrlich has always been regarded as a founder of the sociol-ogy of law was chiefly due to the recognition he received throughRoscoe Pound in America. In Austria, though on good terms withSlav scholars working on legal history and ethnography in the pro-vinces (9), he seems to have won little general acclaim. Apparentlyhe had to rebut charges of plagiarism levelled at him from Vienna (10).The institute for legal research that he founded at Czernowitz mighthave formed a nucleus for institutionalization if war, and the dismem-berment of the Hapsburg lands, had not buried his efforts. But it isdifficult to resist the conclusion that his sociological pluralism wasunwelcome in his native land in any case.

Both Gumplowicz and Ehrlich appear to have been victims of theethnic tensions which sparked their sociological interest. Bookswhich emphasized ethnic division, class cleavage and political domi-nation by ethnic and bureaucratic elites could hardly have beenread as neutral scientific texts in Vienna, for they would have touchedthe Austro-German liberal establishment on the raw. To Jews,they would have seemed to abet the antisemites' increasing effortsto dislodge their precarious but precious cultural identification withthe Germans; for Germans, their pluralistic holism would havecollided with the German Austrian 'intransigence in refusing toface the nationality problem as equals among equal nationalities' (11).In general, they were probably unwanted reminders of the rearguard

(9) Ibid. p. 464 sqq., 499. pire. Nationalism and National Reform in(10) Loc. cit. the Hapsburg Monarchy 1848-1318 (New(11) R.A. KANN, The Multinational Em- York 1970), p. 57. Kann quotes the

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action by which the Viennese bourgeoisie had to defend its privilegesagainst feudal reaction, provincial separatism and the threat of urbanmass democracy, and must have seemed ill-judged exposures of thefragile yet exploitative basis of a state which, as the symbol of Germancentralism, was also, paradoxically, a sacred rallying point for Austrianliberalism. By identifying sociology with the agitation of long-terminsecurities that Viennese elites preferred to ignore, these writersprobably ensured the indifferent reception accorded their infant disci-pline. Vienna's reply was to leave sociology to vegetate in provincialobscurity, where the odds were stacked against a successful institu-tionalization.

It may be a coincidence, but it is certainly a striking one, that oneof the few other academic Austrians to have made an enduring contri-bution to sociology, Joseph Schumpeter (1883-1950), having beenthe 'enfant gate et terrible' of the Vienna faculty (12), only managedto secure academic posts in Czernowitz and Graz up to 1924, whenhe left Austria after an unsuccessful spell in politics and business.For all his brilliance, his 'eclecticism' and 'independence of mind'were mistrusted by his seniors, and the lectures he gave at Czerno-witz in 1910, which developed into Social Classes in an EthnicallyHomogeneous Environment (1927), would not have reassured them.The title of this book was a belated tribute to Gumplowicz, whoseearly influence Schumpeter acknowledged. Further acknowledge-ments to Schmoller, Durkheim, Spann and Simmel only advertisedhow far he had moved away, in some respects, from the liberal econom-ics of the older Austrian school (13).

following illuminating passage from Josef Redlich's Das osterreichische Staats- undReichsproblem (Leipzig 1920), vol. I, p. 36 :

In Vienna and in the circles of the German bourgeoisie in general there had developed a vigorous, butnot politically clear, concept of the Gesamtstaat. One became accustomed to the Great Power idea ofthe monarchy [...] When the revolution, like a volcano, brought the tremendous power of the nationalidea to the fore, the Germans faced the other peoples as strangers with no understanding of their nationalambitions. But they themselves began at that very time to turn vigorously their old cultural nationalfeeling to the political sphere. That was perhaps just the reason why they considered the same phe-nomenon in other peoples as an inimical power which threatened them [...] Even if this 'state', due toits absolutist character, was strongly repulsive to the bourgeois class of the Germans in Austria andtheir young political 'world of ideas', they were soon reconciled to it by considering that the authorityin this state represented a national asset to them, the expression of their old national master positionin this empire.

(12) Schumpeter's words, as reported bridge, Mass. 1951), p. n o .by F. Perroux : see Seymour E. HARRIS (13) J. SCHUMPETER, Social Classes and(ed.), Schumpeter : Social Scientist (Cam- Imperialism (New York 1955), pp. 101-103.

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2. Austro-Marxism and Sociology: innovation suppressed.

Although Schumpeter's prime theoretical preoccupations derivedfrom his mentor Friedrich von Wieser, as we shall see, the loftycontrariness with which he flouted the shibboleths of the Vienneseschool of economics appeared at an early stage, when he claimed ashis masters Walras, J. B. Clark and Marx. More than Max Weber,Schumpeter engaged in lifelong mental strife with Marx's ghost.This debate began, at the latest, in Bohm-Bawerk's 1905 seminar(where he played a somewhat impish role between Bohm-Bawerkand Mises, on one side, and Otto Bauer and Hilferding on the other),continued through his reluctant participation in German and Aus-trian social democratic governments, and culminated in his influen-tial discussion in Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy. Togetherwith Popper's The Open Society and its Enemies, this familiarized theEnglish-speaking world with a distinction between Marx the prophetand Marx the sociologist which had been a commonplace of Austrianthought for the past half-century. The selectivity with whichAustrian social ideas were filtered to anglophone intellectuals afterthe Second World War meant that only through the distorting lensof criticism were they introduced to a unique feature of Marx'sinfluence in the Hapsburg monarchy. For nowhere else did thesociological perspective develop so exclusively under the aegis ofMarxism (the ethnic pluralists discussed above being the only distinctlynon-Marxist school, and they sympathetic to Marx's sociology)and nowhere else was Marxism so consistently interpreted as sociol-ogy.

Space and difficulty of access to sources forbid a full substantiationof these claims here. A convenient starting point is the founda-tion, in 1907, of the Vienna Sociological Society by Max Adler (1873-1937), the prime theoretician of Austro-Marxism and, after 1920,Vienna University's first (aufierordentlicher) professor of sociology.The Society linked up with the German Sociological Society and sur-vived into the 'twenties. It held discussion evenings with guest spea-kers, published works by members and also translations of foreignbooks, — Durkheim's Regies being one of the first, in 1908 (14). KarlRenner (1870-1950) was also among the founder members, and

(14) L. ROSENMAYB, op. cit. p. 17. M. Adler, K. Renner, R. Eisler, J. Redlich,A. M. KNOLL, Sociology in Austria, in W. Jerusalem, R. Goldscheid, M. Hainisch,J. S. Roucek (ed.), Contemporary Sociology L. Hartmann and B. Hatschek.(New York 1958), gives the founders as

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Renner's mentor, the social philosopher Wilhelm Jerusalem (1854-1923). Jerusalem was no Marxist, but like Adler he developed theneo Kantian perspective into a theory of social determination ofthought, and advocated a 'Soziologie der Erkenntnis' — a sugges-tion that may have influenced Durkheim — as early as 1909. Heeventually saw himself as combining philosophical pragmatism witha Durkheimian sociology.

Max Adler's own synthesis of Kant and Marx has often beendismissed as just another neo-idealist vagary. In this, his reputa-tion has suffered at the hands not only of orthodox Kautskyans andLeninists, but also of philosophical critics who have approached hisepistemology with no appreciation or knowledge of sociology. Theformer saw his rebuttal of materialistic reductionism as a return todualism, when Adler seems simply to have been arguing the meaning-lessness of metaphysical materialism, and hence its irrelevance toMarxism. The latter have regarded his 'social a priori' as no morethan an unsuccessful extension, in an 'anthropological' direction,of Kantian bulwarks against scepticism and relativism, whereassociologists might find in it suggestive parallels with Mead's interac-tionism and the concept of the 'generalised other', as well as premo-nitions of a critical sociological phenomenology modelled on thewritings of Marx's maturity. Adler's ideas, in other words, invitereappraisal from the standpoint of his central conviction that 'thespecial significance of the thought of Marx and Engels lies throughouton sociological ground. Both were wholly absorbed by the problemof the nature and lawfulness of social life' (15). For Adler, 'thestarting point of Marxism is thus the concept of society as socialexistence and social event, which rules out from the beginning anyidea of men as isolated beings, depicting them only as related toone another and therefore not merely as gregarious but as socialisedbeings.' From this proceeds the Marxian critique of economy,politics and consciousness as social processes. In insisting on theheterogeneity of infrastructure and superstructures Adler did no morethan anticipate arguments since made familiar by Althusser. Finally,Adler's first major work, Kausalitat und Teleologie im Streite urn dieWissenschaft, contemporary with Weber's main methodologicalwritings, was an important parallel treatment of the same issues.

(15) M. ADLER, Die Staatsauffassung des quotation in this paragraph is also taken,Marxismus. Beitrag zur Unterscheidung and which is primarily a critique of Kelsen,von soziologischer und juristischer Methode was the only one of Adler's publications(Darmstadt 1964; first published 1922), available to me at the time of writing,p. 17. This work, from which the other

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Nowadays, when there is dissatisfaction with Weber's approach —among other reasons, because the objective social consequences ofan objective sociology are not themselves socially neutral, and sociol-ogists know it in advance — Adler's search for a dialectical or reflexivesolution to the dilemmas of the Methodenstreit is due for reassess-ment.

In applied fields, the contributions of the major Austro-Marxistwriters are somewhat better known, and no more than a summarywill be given here. In economics, Rudolf Hilferding (1877-1941)is familiar as the author of Das Finanzkapital. His attack on the'subjectivist outlook' embodied in Bohm-Bawerk's Marxkritikcontains an exposition of the sociological approach in the economicfield. He defended Marx's theory of value as 'a theory which defi-nitely aims at disclosing the social determinism of economic phenom-ena, a theory whose starting point therefore is society and not theindividual' (16). The individual's economic relation to the socialworld is determined by his class membership and the relationshipbetween the classes as collectivities, and 'this significance of classgives expression to the law of value as a social law'. It thereby'becomes a law of motion for a definite type of social organization'and 'we are thereby led, in the most striking contrast to the outlookof the psychological school, to regard political economy as a part ofsociology and sociology itself as a historical science'. The bestknown strictly sociological works in this tradition are undoubtedlythose of Karl Renne. Renner had broached the question of acapitalistic transition to managerialism in Die soziale Funktion derRechtsinstitute (1904) which also put on to an explicitly Marxistbasis the sociology of law which Ehrlich was beginning to developon pluralist foundations at Czernowitz. The key problem, however,which both Marxist politics and a Marxian sociology had to confrontin pre-1914 Austria was that of ethnic nationalism. In politics,the Austro-Marxists were scarcely more successful in this than anyother Germanophile party, especially in Bohemia, but their sociolog-ical analyses of it were arguably better than others, and their fai-lures of practice cannot altogether be blamed on errors of theory (17).Renner, always perhaps as much a liberal as a socialist, adapted andpropagated the federal proposals of the 1848 liberal, Adolf Fischhof,in several publications. Analytically, however, he shared the view

(16) R. HILFERDING, Bohm-Bavierk's Cri- (New York 1966), p. 184. The remainingticism of Marx (in one volume with E. quotations in this paragraph are from thevon BOHM-BAWERK, Karl Marx and the same translation.Close of his System, ed. Paul M. Sweezy, (17) See R.A. KANN, op. cit. pp. 44-5.

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argued powerfully by Otto Bauer (i881-1938) that the Hapsburgmonarchy's ethnic struggles were disguised class conflicts, thusbringing the sociological heritage of Gumplowicz within the compass ofMarxian theory (17a). It is notable that in America — where pluralistsociology owed a large debt to Austrian pluralism through theinfluences of Ward, Small and Bentley—the work of Renner andBauer on ethnicity and class has had no detectable influence on thelater development of stratification theory, in a situation where atleast some of the major variables were similar.

The equation of Marxism with sociology in the Austrian mindis no less visible—and none the less interestingly so—in intellectualswho were more peripheral to the politics of the SDPO than thesepillars of the movement. The case of Alfred Adler (1870-1937)affords an opportunity to mention the role of both Jews and psycho-analysis in this connexion. It has often been noted that intellectualsocialism and psychoanalysis both recruited almost exclusively fromJews in pre-1914 Vienna. (Renner, amongst the leading socialists,was the only Gentile). The same was true of sociology, whether ofa pluralist or Marxist variety. We might speculate that sociologyand psychoanalysis were alike in appealing to scientifically inclinedJewish intellectuals who needed, within the general external identi-fication with German humanistic culture, a more intimate opposi-tional identity through which to achieve, by critical scholarship, aEuropean and hence universal status that would transcend the parti-cularism of the German elite—especially as the latter became increas-ingly antisemitic (18). If Gumplowicz sought this through identi-fication with the Polish minority, and thereby through nationalismwith man as a group being; and if the Austro-Marxists sought it byidentifying with the proletariat, and thus through socialism withman's historical self-emancipation, Freudians chose membership ina gnostic sect which, through the master's esoteric teaching, madethem heirs and dispensers of a universal wisdom. Freud, himself,with his penetrating curiosity about human nature, his boldness of

(17 a) O. BAUER, Die Nationalitatenfrage were imprisoned in their ethnic status.und die Sozialdemokratie (Vienna 1907). 'There ia no "road into the open" forAn important influence on Baner's genera- them; such a road is never for groups,tion of Marxists was that of Carl Grunberg, always for individuals only'; I. BAREA,who had treated this subject as an economic Vienna, Legend and Reality (London 1966),and social historian. p. 33°- This would mean that Jews had

(18) lisa Barea, herself a Jew active in to individualize and universalize their iden-Viennese socialism, has remarked that the tities by manipulating their group mem-message of Arthur Schnitzler's Der Weg ins berships.Freie is that in Vienna, Jews as a group

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innovation, and the persistence with which he institutionalisedhis doctrines, was in a sense Vienna's greatest sociologist manque.In the long run, psychoanalysis has served to implement the socialtheory of mind and a sociologically based psychology, but in itsViennese period this implication was far from obvious. Its biologisticorigins, its theoretical and therapeutic concentration on individualsubjectivity, and its adherents' preoccupation with cultural, aestheticand mystical themes all pointed in the opposite direction—indeed,in a typically Viennese direction—reinforcing Freud's own lack ofinterest in social aspects of personality. As Philip Rieff has argued,in Freud's hands psychoanalysis was above all an ideology for theemancipation of the private individual from pressures of instinct andculture (19). Of his leading disciples, only Alfred Adler combinedmembership of the Psychoanalytic Society and the Social Democraticparty, and this contributed to the Adlerian schism. Ernest Jonescommented: 'It is not irrelevant to recall that most of Adler's followerswere, like himself, ardent socialists [...] This consideration makes itmore intelligible that Adler should concentrate on the sociologicalaspects of consciousness rather than on the repressed unconscious' (20).

Adler was initially attracted to social reform by the same sort ofhumanitarianism as his namesake and fellow physician Viktor Adler.(None of these Adlers were connected by family relationship). Asa student, however, he had already become fascinated by Marxism,or more specifically by 'the sociological conception on which Marxismis based'. The idea that the established social situation uncons-ciously moulds the individual's emotional and intellectual life had,apparently 'a decisive influence on the whole development of Adler'sthinking'. His Russian wife brought him into closer contact withrevolutionary Marxism, although he remained hostile to Bolshevism.Russian exiles were an important fountain-head of Marxism in Vienna,

(19) P. RIEFF, Freud, The Mind of the men' was connected with the fundamentalMoralist (London 1965). divergence between Freud's view of man

(20) E. JONES, The Life and Work of as a savage egoist who was only socialisedSigmund Freud (abridged, London 1964), through cultural repressions, and Adler'sp. 401. But Carl Furtmuller has pointed (and Marx's) conception of man as coope-out that Jones exaggerated: only three of rative and socially oriented as well as striv-Adler's seceding followers were socialists, ing for power and superiority. See Filrt-including Furtmuller himself. Jones evi- muller's biographical essay (1946) in Alfreddently wished to stress the political aspect ADLER, Superiority and Social Interest : Aof the rift to highlight the scientific integrity Collection of Later Writings (Evanston,behind Freud's personal intolerance. But 111. 1964), pp. 345-369. I have largelyFurtmuller agrees that the personality relied on Furtmuller for Adler's relation toclash between Freud's 'tendency to aria- Marxism and quotations in the next para-tocratic individualism' and Adler's 'choice graph are from this source unless otherwiseto be the "common man" among common identified.

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especially after 1905 (21), and it seems to have been under the in-fluence of Trotsky or Joffe that Adler, in 1909, addressed the Psycho-analytical Society on 'The Psychology of Marxism'. From thestart, however, Adler had disagreed with the dogmatic determinismprevailing among Austrian Marxists, and stressed 'subjective evalua-tion' as the intervening variable between environmental determi-nants and behaviour. Although he was prepared to admit that inmass psychology these evaluations were affected by the ideologicalsuperstructure, whose 'effects force an equalization of individualdifferences' we can nevertheless see here the root of the voluntarismwhich led to his separation from Viennese socialism during the'twenties; for his prime concern was always with individual therapy,not social theory. In the meantime, however, his experience ofworking-class life amongst soldiers in wartime hospitals led to theformulation of his doctrine of 'social interest' (Gemeinschaftsgefiihl—'solidarity' might have been a better rendering) which remaineda central pillar of his later 'individual psychology'. This later devel-opment does not concern us here, for Adler's contribution to socio-logical theory has been slight—indeed, by encouraging the growthof holistic personality theory in America his influence was perhapsin some respects counter-sociological. As an early symptom, how-ever, of the ambivalence with which sociologists have confrontedFreudianism—aware of its profound importance no less than of thedifficulty of rendering it more tractable and assimilable to their scien-tific needs—Adler is of interest precisely because of the Marxistderivation of his 'sociological' heresy.

If the idealist wing of Austro-Marxism was represented by MaxAdler, its positivist extreme was formulated by Otto Neurath (1882-1943) who also contrasts interestingly with Alfred Adler. Bothresilient activists, their commitment to Marxism and their progresstowards sociology were cross-cut by competing intellectual claims:of psychoanalysis in Adler, and for Neurath, those of philosophicalphysicalism as the basis for unified science and a scientific conceptionof the world. While the opportunist Adler broke with Freud andthen with socialism, Neurath, the practical Utopian, remained unstint-ing in his support for both the Vienna Circle and Viennese socialism,and later, for what these had stood for. His Empirische Soziologie,

(21) See I. DEUTSCHER, The Prophet Szabo, who became a Marxist throughArmed (Oxford 1954), ch. VII; and V. SERGE, acquaintance with Russian exiles while aMemoirs of a Revolutionary igoi-ig^i student in Vienna at the turn of the century,(New York 1963). Furtmuller himself and on his return to Budapest influencedappears to have married into Marxism in the young Lukacs. G. LICHTHEIM, Lukdcsthis way. Another instance is Ervin (London 1970), pp. 37-8.

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published in 1931 as a contribution to the Circle's encyclopaedicprogramme, was a synthesis of Marx, Comte and behaviourism (22).

Neurath made large claims for sociology, which he saw as absorbingall the separate human sciences and especially as the synthesis ofeconomics and history. Traditional cultural categories such as reli-gion, art, science, law, etc., he considered 'unsuitable elements forsetting out the functional relations in society'. Culture is 'inter-woven into the social process' which consists of 'human behaviour,i.e. spatio-temporal events' in the form of 'relations of men withmen or with their environment'. Society thus consists of 'smalleror larger associations extended in space and time' and 'appears as astructure moved by the conditions of its surroundings to which itsown parts also belong'. For sociology 'the problem is to create aclosed and unified system of statements, by means of which one canmake testable predictions about spatio-temporal processes, on thebasis of the scientifically discoverable order'. Consequently, 'thequestion, which statistical magnitudes are dependent on each otherand in what way, permeates the whole of sociology'. And hence also'one has to have an approximate theory in order to put the rightquestions, and to make the right observations, in order to link statis-tical data successfully'. In theory construction, however, Neurathwas adamant that ' "empathy" is not a scientific tool, nor is a special"understanding" (verstehen) a special aspect of a "humanistic" science.Such terms originated in metaphysical ways of thought and theyshow a wish to introduce a treatment of the "other person's mind"instead of behaviour'. The individual is significant only as a statis-tical unit, not as ego or subject: sociology and empiricism alike 'standentirely on the side of "objectivism" ',

So far, Neurath has said little that contemporary positivists wouldcavil at. The arresting fact is, however, that his arrival at this posi-tion was inseparable from the leftward path which he travelled fromhis father's social reformism to Marxism (23). He claimed that 'of allattempts at creating a strictly scientific anti-metaphysical physicalistsociology, Marxism is the most complete', and that in Marxism'history and political economy become part of an inseparable unit,sociology'. For Neurath, the Marxist critique of idealism wasmerely the most far reaching and successful sociological engagementin the universal campaign to cleanse science of metaphysics. Not as

(22) An abridged translation is in O. NEU- (23) On Wilhelm Neurath (1840-1901),RATH, Empiricism and Sociology (Dordrecht see W.M. JOHNSTON, op. cit. and furtherand Boston 1973) from which the quotations sources listed there,in the next two paragraphs are taken.

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a philosophy, but simply as 'the most modern sociology on a materi-alist basis', Marxism was 'very closely linked with the workers'movement —in its causation, in what its findings revealed aboutsocial conditions, and as a means to social planning. Within sociologyitself, furthermore, 'the struggle between metaphysical and scientificsociologists cannot be avoided; it reflects the much stronger socialconflicts'. Thus sociology was the bridgehead on which convergedthe conflict of science with the remnants of religion, and of the massesof mankind with their embattled exploiters. There is no more strikinginstance of the selective reception of Viennese thought by Anglo-American intellectuals than the almost total neglect of Neurath'sMarxist sociology in an epoch saturated by Vienna Circle positivism.

Up to this point the sociologizing influence of Marxism had beenmainly theoretical. The junction of Marxism with philosophicalempiricism, however, helped to precipitate the important shift intoempirical sociology in the, twenties led by Paul Lazarsfeld (1901-1976)and his associates in the Institute for Economic Psychology. Lazars-feld and Zeisel have both given similar accounts of the intellectualinfluences upon them (24). It was characteristic of Vienna that theirmove towards sociology should have originated from psychology,even though the introduction of psychology into the Universitythrough Karl and Charlotte Buhler was itself an innovation which thesocialist city government thrust on the conservative academy. TheBiihlers' work on behaviourism and psycholinguistics was a significantstimulus towards survey research, and Lazarsfeld's new institute grewup under their sponsorship. This behavioural empiricism wasreinforced by ideas emanating from the radical wing of the ViennaCircle, particularly Neurath and Carnap. The influence of Freudentered through Siegfried Bernfeld who contributed the notion of'extended puberty' to Lazarsfeld's studies of class differences inadolescents' occupational choices. Lazarsfeld himself, wryly coiningthe slogan that 'A fighting revolution requires economics [Marx];a victorious revolution requires engineers [Russia]; a defeated revolu-tion requires psychology [Vienna]', acknowledged that his main refer-ence group was 'the movement around A. Adler, whose oppositionto Freud had a strong sociological tinge' and who was also then

(24) P.F. LAZARSFELD, An Episode in On Becoming an Immigrant; H. ZEISEL,the History of Social Research: a Memoir L'ficole viennoise des recherches de moti-in D. FLEMING and B. BAILYN (eds.), The vation, Rev. franc, sociol, IX (1968), 3-12.Intellectual Migration, Europe and America See also L. ROSENMAYR, Geschichte der1930-1960 (Cambridge, Mass. 1969); also jfugendforschungin Oesterreich (Vienna 1962).Qualitative Analysis (Boston 1972), ch. xn,

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working on educational psychology under the wing of the Biihlers.Other sociologizing influences were Lazarsfeld's own background asa graduate in Staatswissenschaft, the Vienna Circle's doctrine of theunity of science which favoured interdisciplinary research, and thework of Anglo-American sociographical pioneers like Booth and Lynd.Austro-Marxism, however, provided the unifying framework for allthese various impulses.

Lazarsfeld and his colleagues were no doubt humanitarian socialdemocrats rather than doctrinal Marxists. Lazarsfeld himself wasintroduced to socialism in adolescence by Hilferding. He considersthat the 'Marxist tinge' of their work is visible in the emphasis on socialstratification, itself a novelty at the time; in the attempt to developa socio-psychological reinterpretation of the idea of 'exploitation',from which emerged studies of the deprivations of 'proletarian youth';and in a 'special pride in showing the effect of objective factors uponindividual reactions'. This sensitivity to structural effects reappearedin the Marienthal study, conceived as a study of 'the unemployedcommunity and not the unemployed individual' (24a)—which owed itssubject matter to a remark by Otto Bauer. All in all, it is evidentthat but for the eclipse of Vienna's social democracy and the dispersalof its academic adherents, a pathbreaking school of empirical sociol-ogy would have become institutionalised there, unique for havingoriginated within a sophisticated Marxist tradition.

Austro-Marxist sociology, like the pluralist sociology which hadpreceded it, was the victim of the social division from which it sprang.Industrialization, class conflict and democracy had enabled theSDPO to oust the Christian-Socials from their political stronghold inVienna, provoking thereby the polarisation of the republic whichculminated in civil war, authoritarian dictatorship, and finally NationalSocialism. The decimation and expulsion of socialist and Jewishintellectuals by the Heimwehr and the Nazis completed an emigrationwhich Alfred Adler, Lazarsfeld and others had already voluntarilybegun. The extinction of Austro-Marxism meant the extinction ofAustrian sociology, for diverse as were the ideological currents withinthe movement, the interpretation of Marxism as sociology was adistinctive point on which they agreed. Partly as a result of the closeidentification of sociology with socialism, the discipline had littlefavour in the eyes of their victorious opponents. Most scholarsagree that the intellectual legacy of Austro-Marxism has still not

(24a) M. JAHODA, P.F. LAZARSFELD, H. ZEISEL, Marienthal, the sociography of an Unem-ployed Community (London 1972), p. xv.

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been fully appreciated or absorbed, and the causes of its neglect arewell known. Too moderate to please the Third International andtoo Marxist to please the Second, the demise of Austrian socialism wasmourned by few outside its ranks, while too few survived from withinthem to perpetuate its memory (246).

3. Counter-sociological Themes in Austrian Bourgeois Thought.

So far, the eclipse of Austrian sociology has only been explained interms of social and political manoeuvres. The pluralists were isolatedand ignored by the Austro-German liberal establishment, and theAustro-Marxists suppressed by the bourgeois counter-revolutionconducted in the name of petty-bourgeois clericalism and fascism.The difference between these two strategies reflects, inter alia, the factthat liberalism and Marxism shared belief in secular rationalism and ascientific approach to society, while social Catholicism subordinatedboth to religious ethics. So liberals would resort to argument againstsociology if it refused to be ignored, as their polemics against Marxismshow; but Catholic ideologists preferred the homiletic style andfound it easier to condone the coercion of recalcitrants. The adequacyof Catholic social theory, judged by rational standards, was thereforeof less importance to them than the adequacy of liberal theorywas to its exponents (24c). Liberal academics in the social sciences,especially, needed to be in a position of theoretical strength, whetherit was to be defended by neglect of their rivals or by polemical warfare.From the 1870's, bourgeois ideology in Austria took marginalisteconomics as its citadel, from whose methodological ramparts acontinuous barrage of polemic bombarded all whose intellectualattitudes seemed to favour a collectivist view of society.

Carl Menger (1840-1921), founder of the Austrian school ofeconomics, was a contemporary of Gumplowicz, and also hailed fromGalicia; but there the similarities ended. The son of an official,he travelled with Crown Prince Rudolf as his tutor, and having pub-lished in 1871 the treatise (25) which won him the economics chair

(246) Cf. the discussion in T. BOTTOMORE, XXXIV (1967), pp. 389-382.Marxist Sociology (London 1975), pp.23-28. (25) His Grundsatze der Volkswirthschaft-The major study is N. LESEH, Zwischen Re- lehre, tr. as Principles of Economics by Ding-formistmis und Bolschevismus, der Austro- wall and Hoselitz (Glencoe 1950). Menger,marxismus als Theorie und Praxis (Vienna Walras and Jevons arrived at marginalist1968). theory independently and almost simulta-

(24c) But see A. BURGHARDT, Catholic neously.Social Thought in Austria, Social Research

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at Vienna, devoted most of his later writings to methodologicalpolemic. By 1882, when he fired the opening salvo of the Methoden-streit against Schmoller and the German historical school (26), theLiberal Party, though still supreme in Parliament, had lost control ofgovernment to Taaffe's conservative ministry. With bourgeoisliberalism beginning to be threatened from above and below, Mengeraimed his attack at the kind of thinking which, in Germany, hadallowed a transition from nationalistic conservatism to the interven-tionism of the Kathedersozialisten (27). As the socialist threatmounted in Vienna, Bohm-Bawerk shifted the polemical target toMarx, and in later years, von Mises and Hayek have kept the rear-guard action going in exile. From Menger to Hayek, these economistsremained consistent champions of the dogmatic laissez-faire outlookof Austrian liberalism in its heyday of the 1870's, blaming most of theevils of modernity on its demise.

Their diatribes against the various brands of German historicism(to which may be added those of Popper, who has always acknowledgedhis debt to Hayek) also aligned them with an older Austrian traditionof anti-Hegelianism whose roots go back to the Enlightenment.Josephinist rationalism was split by the French Revolution into threecurrents. Administrative Josephinism became an instrument ofreactionary statecraft in the hands of Metternich, dominated Viennaduring the Biedermeier period, and lingered on in the authoritarianismof Franz Josef and his bureaucracy. Theological Josephinism re-emerged after the Napoleonic period as Reform Catholicism, andflourished chiefly at Prague, combining theological liberalism withsocial conservatism. A third current of individualistic secular ratio-nalism went underground, erupted in 1848, and thereafter cooled intothe liberal constitutionalism of Menger's generation. Metternich'spolice regime had discouraged the study of history and philosophy,harnessed universities to the vocational needs of the state, and fostereda narrow concentration on law, cameralistics, science and technology.The Church placed Kant's works on the Index, and state censorshipwas supposed to keep literature and the humanities untainted by

(26) In Untersuchungen uber die Methode 1878. See W.M. JOHNSTON, op. cit.der Sozialwissenschaften und der politischen p. 35). That he was interested in socialOkonomie insbesondere, tr. as Problems of science methodology before writing theEconomics and Sociology by F. H. Nock, Grundsatze, and did not attack Schmollered. L. Schneider (Urbana i960). from pique at German neglect of it is

(27) Menger makes his political aims shown in J. HICKS and W. WEBER (eds.),clear in the Untersuchungen. (He had Carl Menger and the Austrian School ofalready published an anonymous political Economics (Oxford 1973), pp. 31, 11.pamphlet with Crown Prince Rudolf in

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speculative thought and the spirit of critical idealism. Hegel, whoseteaching had been regarded as a pillar of the state in Prussia, wasmistrusted in Austria as a Protestant freethinker whose nationalistdoctrines appealed to Slav separatists. In pre-1848 Prague, whereReform Catholicism allowed some scope to philosophy, the doctrinesof Herbart had filled the gap left by the proscription of idealism, and after1850, through Robert Zimmermann and others, Herbartian philosophybecame dominant at Vienna also and was propagated throughout thecountry by educationalists as part of the ideology of an increasinglybourgeois monarchy. As interest in idealism reawakened at mid-century, orthodox Herbartians stifled by neglect the first stirrings ofneo-Kantianism, and pursued the few followers of Schelling andHegel with polemics and persecution (28). Thus, as liberalism wentover to the defensive against socialism in the i88o's, its protagonistsfound themselves attacking the same combination of historicism withprogressivism as their Josephinist forbears, Metternich's censors inthe 'thirties and 'forties and Herbart's Catholic disciples from the'forties to the 'sixties, whose functions of ideological repression in theinterests of the Austro-German elites they also inherited.

The significance of these developments for the history of sociologyis threefold. First, since Metternich relied on priests and policemenrather than ideologists to prop up his Restoration regime, Austrianever produced an indigenous conservative theory of the Burkeantype. Since such retrospective idealizations of Gemeinschaft appearto be an important precondition for sociology (29), sensitizing intel-lectuals to the changing quality of social relationships under capital-ism, its absence in Austria helps explain why sociology emerged onlyin marginal and oppositional subcultures. Secondly, since historicismcontained proto-sociological components, and in Marx precipitated adetachable sociology, the hostility of Austrian intellectuals to the oneextended also to the other, and traditional attacks on historicism easilybecame attacks on sociology. Thirdly, Herbartian philosophers andliberal economists had more in common than a dislike of historicism.For their positions were marked in different ways by a common cultur-al pattern—a dualistic and sometimes divergent accentuation of theindividual-culture polarity—and in this they seem to have beenrepresentative of Austrian bourgeois mentality in general. Since Ibelieve this pattern to have been deep-rooted, profoundly obstructive

(28) For details, and an illuminating (29) As argued especially by R.A. NlS-discussion of Austrian Herbartianism, see BET, Conservatism and sociology, A.J.S.,W.M. JOHNSTON, op. cit. ch. xix, especially LVIII (1932), pp. 167-75.pp. 281-6.

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to sociological thinking, and important in its ramifying consequences,I shall try to elucidate this rather obscure point.

Herbart was a Saxon Protestant, so the ascendancy of his philosophyin Austria from 1820 to 1880 owed nothing to national or confessionalpatriotism but must rather be explained by politico-religious expe-diency and cultural 'fit'. His doctrine attempted to restore the classi-cal harmony of the Leibnizian world-view that had prevailed in eigh-teenth-century Austria (30). It reaffirmed a modified realism againstspeculative idealism, and substituted for Hegel's dialectic a formallogic and a static ontology. Easily reconciled with traditional Catholicteaching, Herbart's system included a pedagogy that 'tended to traindocile, law-abiding citizens who relished work while despisingunrest' (31). It was clearly well suited to the Biedermeier ethos. Inits Austrian forms, however, which were strongly influenced byBolzano's Platonism, Herbartianism already displayed a latent dualism.Its exponents emphasized individual psychology, on the one hand,as the basis of knowledge, and the independent reality and validity ofthe forms and contents of culture, on the other, as reflecting an objec-tive world-order. Thus, for instance, on one side Exner unleasheda major controversy with his Herbartian critique of Die Psychologie derHegelschen Schule (1842), while on the other Hanslick and Zimmermannattacked Hegelian aesthetics in the name of Herbartian formalism(1854-1865): the separate autonomy of both personal and culturalvalues was vindicated against an immanentism which would make bothdepend on the dialectical movement of history and society.

The individual-culture polarity was not likely to be felt as a contra-diction by the buoyant, cultured haute bourgeoisie of Vienna's mid-century Ringstrasse period. Shortly, thereafter* however, this latentdualism split up into conflicting extremes. On the one hand, Zim-mermann's later works sought to systematize the whole of philosophyin terms of aesthetics, while on the other Brentano's Psychologie vonempirischen Standpunkt (1874) pushed Herbart's psychology in asubjectivist direction with the concept of 'intentionality' and foundeda psychologistic logic and epistemology. Mach's sensationalistepistemology carried psychologism to a further extreme, where theego vanished in the flux of experience—or, to put it from an anglewhich found expression in contemporary Austrian literature, subjectiv-ism intensified until the isolated monad 'cannot find the way to theworld because he sees rational self, outer reality, and personal feeling

(30) Leibniz in fact wrote his Monado- Eugene.logie and Principes de la nature et de la (31) W.M. JOHNSTON, op. cit. p. 283.grace while in Vienna as a guest of Prince

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as an undifferentiated continuum' (32). Mauthner, applying Mach'sempiricism to the critique of language, brought this trend to itslogical termination by recommending silence—for 'From within theprison of the ego each individual can watch life pulse by, while tosend signals from one prison to another entails distortion' (33). Buteach of these steps towards solipsism provoked a counter-swing backtowards the opposite extreme of cultural absolutism. Brentano'spsychologism stimulated the Platonizing ontology of Meinong, andthen Husserl's return to Bolzano's 'propositions-in-themselves' withthe concept of timelessly valid noemata, bracketing off the contentsof culture from psychological determinants. Mach's phenomenalismcaused Vienna Circle positivists to seek criteria of truth and meaningin the internal coherence of mathematics or science, or the impersonal-ity of scientific procedures, while Popper has moved on again to thequasi-Platonic theory of Objective Knowledge. Finally, Wittgenstein,convinced that 'what solipsism asserts is right, but that it cannot beexpressed' (34), nevertheless rescued language from Mauthner'snegativity to perform the 'ultimate' task of defining the limits of itsown powers—whether as the monistic totality of the sayable inTractatus, or as the pluralistic universe of language-games in Philo-sophical Investigations.

These oscillations marked stages in the decomposition of tradi-tional Catholic rationalism. If minds no longer form a communitywith God, to guarantee that their perceptions and reasonings conformto the rational order of God's world, then there remain only theplurality of dissociated centres of private experience, and confrontingthem, abstract symbolic systems codifying the acquisitions of thevarious specialised spheres of traditional culture. Philosophy, unableany longer to secure the metaphysical unity of the whole, is thrown toand fro between solipsism and the absolutization of cultural forms:art, logic, mathematics, science, language. No more than it candischarge its former function can it find a new one, as a science amongequal sciences. This anomic state of bourgeois culture, diagnosedby Comte and Durkheim, was general throughout Europe; nowhere,however, did the plight of philosophy stand out with such clarity and

(32) The quotation is from C.E. SCHOH- without contact with "the other"'. Cf.SKE, The Transformation of the Garden : Johnston's treatment of the relationshipideal and society in Austrian literature, of Mach's phenomenalism with literaryAm. Hist. Rev., LXXII (1967), p. 1310. impressionism in Vienna, op. cit. pp. 185-6Schorske is discussing the 'hero' of ANDRIAN- and sources cited there.WERBUBG'S The Garden of Knowledge (1895) (33) W.M. JOHNSTON, op. cit. p. 198.— subtitled Ego Narcissus. He continues: (34) L. KOLAKOWSKI, Positivist Philo-'Life began as an "alien task" and ended sophy (London 1972), p. 211.

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pathos as in Vienna—possibly because it paralleled that of the Germanelite as traditional guarantors of the cultural and political unity of thedisintegrating monarchy.

No longer an effective vehicle of bourgeois ideology, philosophyceded pride of place to economics, and to a lesser extent jurisprudenceand political science, which shared the same university faculty. Asacademic philosophers tried to restabilize their discipline as a generalmethodology, and academic economists and lawyers staked out newmethodological claims, they met on common epistemological ground.And, in the methodological debates which now surrounded the socialsciences, we can see the same dualistic tendency as in philosophy,only in a more complex form. Jurisprudence, for example, mosthighly developed in the 'pure theory of law' of H. Kelsen (1881-1973),veered entirely towards the pole of cultural objectification. Byseparating legal will from psychological will and defining legal respon-sibility as a relation of the former to the state—itself equated withthe laws—Kelsen's legal positivism isolated law as a closed, self-limitingand objective system. Economics, on the other hand, was foundedon the 'psychological method' and seemed to lean wholly towardsthe pole of individual subjectivity. Thus Hayek has claimed that'every important advance in economic theory during the last hundredyears was a further step in the consistent application of subjec-tivism' (35). By this he meant that they have drawn out implicationsof the basic tenet of the Austrian and other marginalist schools, thatvalue "is a relation between an appraising mind and the object apprais-ed, a manifestation of mental activity' (36), not an inherent propertyof commodities, and that such concepts as expectations, risk and uncer-tainty had proved fruitful for later theories. The method was'psychological' only in the sense that it explored imaginary conse-quences of the interaction of plans conceived as existing in the form ofmental calculations; and it was 'individualistic' in the sense that itwas committed to methodological individualism, i.e. that the calcu-lations should be realistically imputable to single human beings plan-ning individual performances as consumers, entrepreneurs, etc.Within this general tendency of the science, however, the same dualismcould reappear on another level.

In Menger's methodology it is clearly marked yet latent. Theoret-

(35) F.A. HAYEK, Scientism and the Individualism and the Market Economy inStudy of Society, repr. in J. O'NEILL (ed.), E. STREISSLER (ed.), Roads to Freedom,Modes of Individualism and Collectivism Essays in Honour of F. A. Von Hayek(London 1973), p. 32. (London 1969), p. 103.

(36) L.M. LACHMANN, Methodological

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ical economics, he argued, should not seek empirical laws by induc-tion, but 'exact laws' which would form a deductive system, notcorrigible by empirical tests. They are found by analyzing a realmof reality into its simplest elements, and then showing by the 'com-positive method' how complex phenomena and their interactionresult from these elements. Such laws follow logically from axioms,yet yield knowledge of facts. So far Menger's position is not unlikeHerbartian realism and points toward a self-sufficient closed systemdescribing 'the precautionary activity of human beings aimed atcovering their material needs' (37). However, since exact lawsare not corrigible by experience, their validity must depend on whetherthe primitive terms and axioms from which they derive really docorrespond to basic elements and connections in economic life. AndMenger grounded this correspondence in the combination of metho-dological individualism with social atomism and psychologism.Individuals are posited as the atoms of the social universe (38), andsince human beings are enough alike psychologically to understandone another's motives, the social scientist can claim privileged accessto the basic constituents of social reality. Thus economics appears,after all, to stand on a foundation of introspective and interpretativepsychology.

The implicit tension between psychologism and its opposite,'culturologism', was not slow to develop in the Austrian school.Some writers, like Emil Sax, accentuated the psychological basisor drew on empirical psychology in support of Gossen's law. Chris-tian von Ehrenfels, progenitor of Gestalt psychology, synthesizedMenger's theory of value into a psychology of desires derived fromBrentano (39). Menger's successor at Vienna, F. von Wieser, whoat one time called economics 'applied psychology', later denied thatit rested on scientific psychology yet still sought to ground it on atype of intuition. Unlike natural scientists, economists are not'strangers to their object' and the excogitation of basic laws is accom-panied by 'a consciousness of necessity': we 'hear the law pronouncedby an unmistakable inner voice' (40). From this subjectivismit was in practice a short step to Ludwig von Mises' economic theory

(37) C. MENGER, Problems, etc. p. 63. ogists do not have to be holists to deny -(38) In 1884, B&hm-Bawerk agreed with they must— social atomism).

Menger that the 'economic subjects' of the (39) In System der Werttheorie (Leipzignew school were the atoms of society and 1897-98).that its task was 'to restore the precise atom- (40) F. von WIESER, Social Economicsistic tendency'. Quoted in N. BUKHAEIN, (London 1927), pp. 3-9. (The original,The Economic Theory of the Leisure Class Theorie der gesellschaftlichen Wirtschaft(New York 1970), p. 40. (Naturally sociol- (1914) was commissioned by Max Weber).

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of human action, yet the latter nevertheless swung to an antipsycho-logistic extreme. Though they describe the real world, the theoremsof this 'praxeology' are universally true a priori because they are found-ed on the intersubjective validity of logic as the structure of allrational conduct. Psychology is irrelevant, for the sphere of econo-mic culture has its own inherent rationality—a 'logic of action anddeed' (41)—which imparts truth and coherence to economic science.Von Mises' economics, while still an application of 'subjectivism'in Hayek's sense, was also an objectivistic construction comparablewith that of Kelsen in jurisprudence. Still within the pale of metho-dological individualism, but independent of both the psychologyand logic of action, was Schumpeter's Walrasian attempt at a formalmathematization of economic theory as an econometric system.

It would be possible, but tedious, to trace the predominance ofthe individual-culture polarity in other fields of Viennese thought.It is worth recalling Schorske's analysis of the deepening privatisationand self-preoccupation of the intelligentsia visible through changesin the Austrian novel between Stifter's Der Nachsommer (1857) andthe works of the fin de siecle (42). Toulmin and Janik have empha-sized the ethical individualism of the Krausian circle which includedWittgenstein, and have also pointed out that Kierkegaard was vir-tually unknown in Europe until his vogue began to radiate fromVienna in the wake of Haecker's S. Kierkegaard und die Philosophicder Jnnerlichkeit (1913). The subjectivism of psychoanalysis hasalready been noted. The opposite tendency is perhaps visible inSchonberg's musical theory or the architectural functionalism ofAdolf Loos, but also more generally in the prevalent aestheticismof the Viennese bourgeoisie.

The effects of this polarity in Austrian thought were to conceal thesignificance of the social milieu as providing both individuals and cultur-al objects with their real interrelation, process and place in the world;and to impose an ideological pattern on the human sciences which led tothe neglect, demotion or obstruction of sociology in favour of ap-proaches which assumed the autonomy of personality or culture. Thishas been seen already in the case of Freud. The implication ofMenger's exact science of economics is that sociology, being aninductive science, as described by Mill, studying phenomena 'intheir full empirical reality', cannot aspire to theoretical status. VonMises was prepared to allow sociology to share the privilege of uni-

(41) L. von MISES, Epistemological Problems of Economics (New York i960), p. 13.(42) C.E. SCHORSKE, op. cit.

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versal truth accorded to praxeology, so long as it modelled itself oneconomics whose basic categories are those of human action ingeneral. Kelsen was an indefatigable critic of the sociologyof law, both Ehrlich's and that of the Marxists. Determined thatit had nothing to offer to jurisprudence, he carried the assault intothe other camp with the dubious argument that 'sociology can furtherdefine the phenomenon of law, the positive law of a particular commu-nity, only by having recourse to the concept of law as defined bynormative jurisprudence' (43). Like von Mises, Kelsen systema-tized the normative conceptual apparatus pertaining to his domain ofculture in a phenomenological style, interpreting it as a closed deductivesystem, and then allowed sociology to make derivative use of theresulting definitions for its own extraneous purposes. Even Popper,though he vindicates the autonomy of sociology vis-a-vis psycholo-gism, still insists on methodological individualism; and by advocat-ing explanations in terms of the 'logic of the situation' and 'insti-tutions' merely invites a combination of von Mises' action schemawith variables defined in cultural and historical terms a la Kelsen.Sociologists, however, are typically more interested in the effectsof less visible dimensions of social relationship—the integration ordisintegration of collectivities, their stratification, overlapping andconflict, etc.—which would largely escape such formulations.

Freud, Kelsen and Popper have obviously affected the growthof sociology far beyond the borders of Austria, but theirs by nomeans exhausts the influence of Austrian thinking. Menger's mixtureof methodological individualism, social atomism and emphasison the interpersonal understanding of motives deeply influencedMax Weber. Elsewhere I have argued that these ideas had a banefuleffect on Weber's methodology, and his degree of success as a socio-logical pioneer was attained despite rather than because of them (44).Not surprisingly, Austrian writers took up Weber's ideas on methodwith enthusiasm, and he was copiously cited as an authority insupport of Austrian positions. Perhaps the most pronounced effectof this retroactive methodological influence on sociology has beenthrough the work of Schutz.

As the pupil of von Wieser, von Mises and Kelsen in Vienna,

(43) H. KELSEN, General Theory of Law who was brought up and educated at Viennaand State (New York 1961), p. 175. and probably influenced by L. von Stein.

(44) Mas Weber: methods and the man, The side of Menger's thought most favour-Arch. europ. social., XV (1974), 127-165. able to sociology, the search for laws, wasWeber's 'ideal type' was also influenced the very one which Weber rejected.by the Platonizing tendency of G. Jellinek,

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Alfred Schutz was highly receptive to the Austrian themes in Weber,working them up into a sociological phenomenology that drew super-ficially on Husserl and Bergson. Schutz's use of Simmel's conceptof 'objective meaning' certainly allows for a structural analysis ofmeanings severed from psychologism, and his exploration of someof the logical dimensions of the Lebenstvelt supplements Simmel. Laterwriters have also found in his work pointers to a sociological analysisof cognition and consciousness. The general effect of his intersub-jectivism, however, is to legitimize only those explanations j'whichwould be understandable to the actor himself as well as to his fellowmen in terms of commonsense interpretations of everyday life' (45)which is the negation of social science. The promise of sociology wassterilised by Schutz's misconceived conviction, echoing von Wieserand Husserl, that: 'Here and here only, in the deepest stratum ofexperience that is available to reflection, is to be found the ultimatesource of the phenomena of "meaning" and "understanding". Thisstratum of experience can only be disclosed in strictly philosophicalselfconsciousness' (46). For the sociologist, understanding meaningsis a matter of observing and analysing communication. It is diffi-cult to resist the conclusion of a recent critic that for Schutz 'socialscience and history are subordinated to the interests of a more generalconcern: that of reducing the world of objective mind to the actionsof individuals' (47)—and that he deployed a dogmatic methodolog-ical individualism as part of the ideology of threatened liberal human-ism.

In its philosophical leanings, Schutz's influence has paralleledthat of the later Wittgenstein. The ultimacy of language-games hasbeen taken as a charter for explanations which eschew sociologicalvariables, and thereby any attempt to transcend cultural relativism,in favour of interpretation through the internal relations of culture.In the hands of his English disciple, Peter Winch, language philoso-phy leads to the conclusion that'[...] the central problem of sociology,that of giving an account of the nature of social phenomena in generalitself belongs to philosophy. In fact, not to put too fine a point onit, this part of sociology is really misbegotten epistemology' (48).

The counter-sociological effect of Austrian assumptions is very

(45) B. HINDESS, The 'Phenomenolog- (47) Loc. cit.ical' Sociology of Alfred Schutz, Economy (48) P. WINCH, The Idea of a Socialand Society, I (1972), pp. 1-27. Science (London i960), p. 43. For its

(46) Ibid, citing SCHUTZ, The Pheno- counter-sociological implications, E. GELL-menology of the Social World (London 1972), NER, Cause and Meaning in the Socialp. 12. Sciences (London 1973), pp. 47-87.

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noticeable in those few academic writers who, within the frameworkof the dominant liberal and Catholic ideologies, nevertheless culti-vated sociology (49) : von Wieser, his pupil Schumpeter, and OthmarSpann (1878-1950). None was an orthodox liberal, or strictlybourgeois by origin. Von Wieser was an aristocrat by birth, andSchumpeter by upbringing, while Spann came from a petty-bourgeoisbackground. All were critical of capitalism, which they saw as anextraneous system of domination imposed on harmonious marketsociety, although their remedies for its evils differed. Von Wieserand Schumpeter became unhappy advocates of a mixed economy,while Spann championed the Catholic corporate state and lived to seehis doctrines adopted by the Heimwehr and finally absorbed byNazism (50). All three, reared in the Vienna school of economics,found a stumbling-block in the doctrine of methodological individ-ualism (Schumpeter seems to have invented the phrase) (51).

Von Wieser was clear that 'the individual is determined by socialforces', that even 'what appears as individual in him is a particularform of the typical manner of life', and that 'needs, impulses andegoism itself are dominated by social powers' (52). He treated theindividualistic abstractions of economic theory as idealizing fictions,mostly relating to 'the theory of the simple economy' to whichsuccessive sociological assumptions must be added to ascend to thetheories of the 'social', 'state' and 'world' economies; but his attemptedcombination of economics and sociology was scarcely successful. InDas Gesetz der Macht (1926) he propounded an elite theory, basedon a Moscaesque 'law of small numbers' and anticipating Schum-peter's elitism, but also, pitting Hume and Tolstoy against Gumplo-wicz, arguing that all elite power rests on opinion (53).

Schumpeter, denying any logical connexion between psychologyand economic theory, whose starting-point was inevitably arbitrary,and between methodological and political individualism, adopteda pragmatic view of methodology. Choices between individualismand holism should be guided by convenience in relation to the prob-

(49) It is worth noting at this point that (51) In: On the Concept of Social Value,none of the major figures in the Austrian in R.V. CLEMENCE (ed.), Essays of J.school of economics was Jewish. In Juris- A. Schumpeter (Cambridge, Mass. 1951)prudence, Kelsen was of Jewish origin and which is partly devoted to a discussion ofconverted to Catholicism. Wieser's methodology.

(so) L. JEDLICKA, The Austrian Heim- (52) F. von WIESER, op. cit. p. 158.wehr, Journal of Contemporary History, I (53) F. A. von HAYBK, Friedrich von(1966), p. 137. Cf. W.M. JOHNSTON, op. Wieser, ap. International Encyclopaedia ofcit. pp. 311-314. the Social Sciences, vol. XVI, pp. 549-50.

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lem in hand (54). In practice, a central cleavage ran through allhis work, between a major economic component, consistently indivi-dualistic in method, and a minor sociological component, consistentlyholistic (55). In the important historical parts where these twooverlapped—his theories of capitalist growth and breakdown—hewas compelled to bridge the cleavage by a characteristic socio-psycho-logical concept: the 'social type' of the entrepreneur, the politician,the critical intellectual, etc. This was clearly a makeshift, foras a sociologist he recognized that 'the individual psyche is no morethan a product, an offshoot, a reflex and a conductor of the innernecessities of any given situation' and hence took a functional viewof psychological dispositions (56), yet as a historical economist heplugged crucial causal gaps with types of mentality that are somehowremoved from social conditioning and introduced as independentvariables (57). This recourse to collective psychologism seems to haveresulted from Schumpeter's desire to replace Marx's system withhis own "theoretical, historical and statistical analysis of the capitalistprocess "(58) which would complete the work of his Austrian precur-sors, and from his simultaneous avoidance of a thorough critique oftheir presuppositions.

In both these cases, sociology was subordinated to economics anda free use of the sociological approach was hampered by obeisance tomethodological individualism. The same cannot be said of Spann,who leapt to the opposite extreme of holism, or 'universalism', butsubordinated both sociology and economics to Catholic social philo-sophy. Spann affords some confirmation of the general thesis thatsociology was held back in Austria by the absence of conservativetheory. His main inspiration came from the Prussian romantic

(54) On Schumpeter's methodology, see question derives a new purpose from newF. MACHLUP in S. E. HARRIS (ed.), Schum- conditions', ibid. p. 69.peter, Social Scientist (Cambridge 1951), (57) The most glaring case is his accountpp. 95-101. Wieser was critical of his of imperialism: 'instincts of dominance andrejection of introspection and the'psycholog- war derived from the distant past [...] seekical method' — see F. von WIESER, to come into their own all the more vigor-Gesammelte Abhandlungen (Tubingen ously when they find only dwindling grati-1929). fications within the socia, community' {ibid.

(55) E.g. his essay on social classes uses p. 22, my italics).the assumption that 'the family, not the (58) See P.M. SWEEZY in S.E. HARRISphysical person, is the true unit of class and (ed.), op. cit. p. 121. And cf. the lame,class theory'. almost wistful treatment of the contrast

(56) J. SCHUMPETER, Imperialism and between the way in which the relation ofSocial Classes (New York 1955)* p. 119. sociology to economics is handled by MarxCf. also: 'Instinctual tendencies can survive and by 'most of us', in Essays, pp. 286-87,only when the conditions that give rise to n.them persist, or when the "instinct" in

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conservative Adam Muller. Although Muller spent his last years inAustria, serving under Metternich, his works were so unknown inVienna in the 1900's that Spann only stumbled on them by chance (59).The only other intellectuals who had transmitted this tradition inAustria were likewise Prussians. Vogelsang, converted from Protes-tantism, was brought to Vienna as a publicist by Count Leo Thun, andexpounded a neo-feudal Catholic corporatism in the 1880's which pavedthe way for Lueger's Christian Socialism. Lorenz von Stein, whotaught political science in Vienna from 1855 to 1888, after his ejectionfrom Kiel, was also a significant sociologizing influence behindWieser and Spann. Stein's early work was a unique blend ofHegelian and Saint-Simpnian perspectives which may have influen-ced Marx, and was certainly a rarity in Vienna. In one respect,however, Stein fitted Austrian anti-sociologism, for his sharp distinc-tion between state and society was drawn in such a way that, as withKelsen, sociology might deal causally with society, the sphere of indi-vidualism and class interests, but the state, as the realization of theuniversal interest, could only be scientifically defined in normativeterms (60). All of these influences played into Spann's organicism.From Muller he gained the genuine sociological insight that mentallife arises from social interaction, and that social relationships arewholes composed of complementary role performances. FromStein, probably, came the view of the state as normative totalityand embodiment of the universal, and from the Christian-socialtradition the notion of theory as means to a religious end. Thoughsometimes treated as a sociological pioneer, Spann was really as muchan example of the Austrian tendency to subordinate society, andthereby sociology, to one or the other pole of the individual-culturepair, or to the polarity itself, as were his critics in the liberal individ-ualist camp.

4. The Sociology of Counter-Sociology.

The argument so far has turned on peculiarities in Austria'sideological history, and can be summarized in those terms. Enlighten-ment, in the Hapsburg lands, was largely imposed from above.Philosophical rationalism was an official creed which seemed to har-

(59) W.M. JOHNSTON, op. cit. p. 312. Staatsauffassung des Marxismus (Darmstadt(60) See Max ADLER on the relation 1964), pp. 43-49 and 137, n.

between Stein, Kelsen and Spann in Die

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monize with the bureaucratic unity of the empire and reserved aplace for its rulers between the hierarchies of earth and heaven. TheNapoleonic interlude had not been preceded by the intellectualferment which, in Protestant Germany, impelled rationalism torevolt against feudal powers in the form of critical idealism. Henceno conservative theory was needed to buttress the Restoration.(If Metternich's inefficient police state sufficed to prolong the ancienregime, it was because causes of change were slow to appear). Witha heritage deficient in both critical idealism and theoretical conser-vatism, Austrian thinkers inevitably lacked sympathy with histori-cism, turning to doctrines which modernized and reinstated the classi-cal vision of Leibniz. But new ideological currents eventually welledbeneath the placidity of the Biedermeier: secularism, destroying thetheological premise of traditional metaphysics; economic and politi-cal liberalism, exalting the autonomy of the individual above theduties of his station; aesthetic humanism and scientific positivism,leading men to seek the value of life in the arts which adorned it, andits meaning in truths which could be tested by experience. Asliberalism triumphed in the 'sixties and 'seventies, the capacity formetaphysical synthesis collapsed around the poles of personalityand culture, between which, and between whose various facets,Austrian philosophy oscillated thereafter.

But victorious liberalism was almost immediately menaced byforces it had itself stirred into existence: from without, by provincialnationalisms; from below, by the new urban masses of Vienna demand-ing democratic and social reforms under Catholic and Marxistbanners; from above, by the illiberal reaction of aristocracy andofficialdom to these signs of insurgency. Liberal intellectuals beganto retreat from politics into extremes of individual subjectivity orcultural absorption: existentialism, psychoanalysis, aestheticism,scientism. Academics in the social sciences still tried to exploittheir public ideological function to preserve the liberal heritage, criti-cally isolating the pure metal from corrosion by Hegelianism, histo-ricism, socialism, and the holisms of church, nationality or class whichthreatened to betray it to its enemies. Because their constructionswere often of unique methodological sophistication and rigour, theyperfected the systematic autonomization of individual and culture thatwas inherent in their assumptions. In their formal perfection andahistorical closure, these multiple systems, like a broken mirror,fragmentarily recalled the static cosmos of traditional rationalism.Though losing ground politically, this liberal outlook continued todominate Viennese intellectual life until 1918. The dismemberment

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of the monarchy ensured its eclipse, and under the republic, liberalismdwindled into a doctrinaire anti-totalitarian centrism, as all butthe urban working class and their intellectual allies rallied behind theauthoritarian ideology of the increasingly anti-semitic and anti-socialist clerical party.

Liberalism's exclusive focus on culture and the individual, ascategories of human existence and objects of knowledge and value,inhibited perception of the social context from which they werenonetheless artificially abstracted. Even if social factors were per-ceived, the tradition lacked conceptual tools for isolating and analyz-ing them. Attempts to surmount these obstacles,] being deviant,met with inner resistance and social penalties. To give prominenceto social themes was at best thought tedious or vulgar, at worst wasseen as impugning the dignity of the individual or subverting culturalvalues. The scale of Vienna's scholarly achievements in non-socio-logical fields reinforced the neglect of sociology, while their prestigedeflected intellectual ambition from sociological paths. When roomwas grudgingly made for sociology alongside established disciplines,it was in a subaltern and dependent role only. Unlike France andGermany, therefore, where liberalism competed and mixed withother doctrines, in Austria a clear sociological perspective could onlybe gained from ideological standpoints radically opposed to the liberalascendancy. Since conservatism lacked a distinct ideology andCatholicism was slow to get one, minority nationalism and Viennesesocialism were the most available vantage-points for a sociologicalcritique of liberal assumptions. Conversely, both these movementshad some need for a sociological critique of liberalism. Both natio-nal minorities and industrial workers were oppressed precisely bydiscriminatory or exploitative social relations at which liberalismconnived; both wished to vindicate a social solidarity to which liberalindividualism and the culture of educated German elites accordedno value; and both aimed at making changes in a society that liberalismviewed as an expression of immutable laws. Socialism especiallycould use sociological weapons: for, while nationalism could appealdirectly to ethnic sentiment, socialist politicians had to win supportby convicting liberalism and Catholicism of hypocrisy by exposingthe social causes and meaning of working-class experience. HenceViennese socialism became uniquely Marxist and sociological.Amongst bourgeois intellectuals, especially social studies graduates,it seems to have attracted those whose own social experience alsobelied the values flaunted by their educators—mainly Jews, subject tothe covert racialism of liberal elites, seeking in the proletarian cause

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a substitute nationalism (61). More strikingly than other countries,Austria gave birth to sociology at its points of social fracture.

This ideological account is not yet an explanation, although allu-sions to underlying social and political factors have unavoidablycrept into it. To present a sociology of Austrian intellectual life isbeyond my scope here, but it is worth briefly reviewing four hypo-theses that seem relevant to its counter-sociological character. Theseare, first, the Marxian analysis of the structure of bourgeois ideology,supplemented by Luk&cs' ideas on 'reification'; secondly, Bukharin'sanalysis of Austrian economics as reflecting the 'basic mental traitsof the bourgeois rentier' (62); thirdly, Johnston's counter-thesisseeking 'to identify the Austrian school with the standpoint not ofrentiers but of bureaucrats' (63); and finally, Schorske's argument,mainly relating to non-academic intellectuals but applied by Janik andToulmin to Wittgenstein, that 'neither cUgages nor engages, the Austrianaesthetes were alienated not from their class, but with it from a societywhich defeated its expectations and rejected its values' (64). Theseare by no means mutually exclusive, for they relate to different levelsand aspects of the problem. A linkage between them can perhaps bemade with the help of a fifth theoretical perspective: that of themetropolitan urban milieu exemplified in Vienna itself.

The most general and comprehensive is obviously Marx's theory.According to this, the individual-culture polarity in Austrian thoughtwould be an ideological reflection of the everyday commodity fetishismof bourgeois society. Because the commodity-form of products is'only a definite relation between men that assumes, in their eyes, thefantastic form of a relation between things' (65), the spread of marketsociety in the wake of capitalism dissolves the visible context of socialrelations in which traditional economic life was carried on. Whatremains is a socio-economic universe consisting of commodities—thatis, use-values or objectivations of culture—which exist in relation toone another and for human beings only as reified quanta of exchange-value ; and of private individuals, subjectivations of culture, existingfor one another only as commodities personified. Value, embodied inthe movement of commodities and money, has become the 'reified socialbond' and 'externalized community' (66). As such it conceals fromall the real social interconnexion of their differentiated activities as

(61) In this sense, Austro-Marxism was (64) C.E. SCHORSKE, op. cit. p. 1305.an alternative to Zionism, which of course (65) K. MARX, Capital, vol. I, p. 72.originated from the same milieu. (66) K. MARX, Grundrifie der Kritik der

(6a) N. BUKHARIN, op. cit. p. 57. Politischen Okonomie (Berlin 1953), pp. 866,(63) W.M. JOHNSTON, op. cit. p. 86. 909.

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well as the social basis of their class divisions. Thus the 'reifiedconsciousness' of the bourgeoisie, starting from the subconsciousexperience and cultural definitions of these daily social givens, canconceive only of a world composed of individuals whose private wantsare ends in themselves, and cultural objects grouped into abstractsystems of predictability and value, confronting the individual asexternal constraints and means of satisfaction. The social dimensionis lost, and its scientific discovery systematically inhibited.

All fields of ideological production must necessarily be adapted tofit these assumptions as capitalism develops. The idea of God,corresponding to the traditional social order, whose constraint wasfelt but not fully comprehended, evaporates as the visible socialcontext of economic life dissolves. So long as markets are localized,petty commodity production prevails, and money is still a subsidiarysocial bond within the traditional political framework, philosophicalrationalism can still supply the theistic idea with a substance thatconforms to social conditions. When growth reaches the point oflarge-scale capitalism and the direct dependence of individuals onnational and world markets, however, commodity fetishism is univer-salized. Philosophy can no longer bridge the gap between subjectand object. Political community is subordinated to the reified bondsof economic life; the state places itself under the protection of eco-nomic theory as it had once availed itself of religion; cults of theindividual and of cultural abstractions proliferate. By their systematicneglect or subordination of social factors, all these forms of liberalhumanism—even the most decadent or critical—serve the interestsof the bourgeoisie who would like the exploitative social basis of theirwealth and cultivation to remain hidden and overlooked by all. Thecontradictions of the system forbid this, however: in Austria, it wasthe crash of 1873 and the ensuing depression which caused the generalrevulsion against liberalism, the rise of nationalism, socialism, anti-semitism, and the appearance of state intervention to aid big enter-prises and combat trade unionism (67)—and hence, indirectly, theappearance of sociological criticism.

The Marxist analysis illuminates what Austria had in commonwith other European countries, and the obstacles that sociologyhad to overcome everywhere, but not her distinguishing features. Forexample, the theory of commodity fetishism was designed to explainthe objective concept of value in the naive form it takes with theclassical economists, but applies less well to Austrian subjectivism.

(67) H. ROSENBERG, Econ. Hist. Rev., XIII (1943), 63-73.

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Here we could have recourse to Bukharin, who argued that the threedistinctive traits of the Austrian school—subjectivism, an unhistoricalpoint of view, and beginning from the stand-point of the consumer—reflect the outlook of the rentier stratum. This is supposed to beexcessively individualistic because devoid of social function, unhistor-ical because oriented to daily fluctuations in share-prices and fearfulfor the future, and it lives entirely in the sphere of pure consumption.This has some plausibility, and a glance at the family background ofthe later nineteenth-century Austrian intelligentsia does indeed sug-gest rentier interests and assumptions. Nor is Johnston's point thatthe economists displayed the class neutrality typical of bureaucratsan objection, for neither bureaucrats nor economists were impartialas between class interests. Both formed part of the same professionalstratum of the bourgeoisie, and holders of official and academic postsno doubt often had private incomes. Indeed, public and academicoffices were perhaps themselves more like secure holdings that yieldedan annual rent for men whose work was an honorable avocation thanthey were like salaried employments. It is important to rememberthat bourgeois Vienna was a consumer's city, where high and lownobility came to spend rural rents on selfish pleasures. From earlyin the nineteenth century observers had noted that political authori-tarianism was accompanied by a 'democratization of mores' based onthe consumption of public and private amusements (68).

Besides contributing to the consumerism of economic theory, theimmediate urban milieu may also have reinforced concentration onindividuals and culture at the expense of society, and sharpened thecontrast within the polarity, which we have seen to be more pro-nounced in Austrian thought than in Europe generally. From theBiedermeier onwards, middle-class Viennese cultivated the privacy ofdomestic life, and relationships outside the home were markedlyegoistic beneath a veneer of friendliness and charm. This wholesphere of middle-class domesticity and sociability contrasted sharplywith the grandiose institutions, buildings and pageantry of the publicarena—of court, army, church, theatre, etc.—and also with some ofthe most squalid industrial suburbs in Europe. The sedulouslycultivated myth of 'gay Vienna' was a way of concealing the socialcontradictions of the city behind the pleasures of private life and thesplendours of its public culture (69).

(68) See social observations by I. BEIDTEL TON, op. cit. pp. 44, 131.and K. POSTL, quoted in ROSENMAYR, op. (69) See J. SCHNITZLER, Gay Viennacit. pp. 14-15, and the treatment of what —Myth and Reality, Journ. of the Hist, ofH. BROCH called Stildemokratie in JOHNS- Ideas, XXV (1954), 94-118.

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The selfconscious urbanity of Viennese life helps us to placeSchorske's point also. If bureaucrats and academics were less caste-conscious than in Germany; if academic and nonacademic intellec-tuals mingled in salons and coffeehouses; and if the bourgeoisie ingeneral affected an aesthetic and intellectual personal culture so thatthe intelligentsia remained mostly immersed in its class of origin andhence alienated with it rather than from it, this was in part due to theharmonizing influence of the city. Beyond that, however, the bour-geoisie's growing sense of alienation was due to the ineluctable grossfacts of the social structure of the Hapsburg monarchy. With indus-trialization occurring so late and so localized, control of the state wasbound to pass from the agrarian-based aristocracy and gentry to thepetty-bourgeoisie of town and country. In the long view, the strugglebetween bourgeois liberalism and proletarian socialism in Vienna—crucial for understanding Austria's place in the history of sociology—was a struggle between class ideologies which, in their artificialViennese purity, could not possibly persist. Most Austrian sociologyperished with Austro-Marxism in the 'thirties, but the ideologicalneeds of Anglo-American capitalism in the 'forties and 'fifties ensuredthat Austrian liberal counter-sociologism survived in the anti-totali-tarian polemics of famous Emigres and the disseminated influences ofFreud, Wittgenstein and Weber's methodology (70). This is, there-fore, an important instance where the cause of sociology in the West,and especially of Marxian sociology, has suffered from the ideologicalconsequences of the uneven development of capitalism. For, ifclassical English liberalism found a belated echo in Vienna, undercircumstances that allowed it to be modernized and beamed back intothe West in a form suited to the ideological needs of later capitalism,this is, after all, one piece in the vast historical jigsaw-puzzle of thelongevity and resilience of bourgeois civilisation*.

• An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 1974 World Congress ofSociology (Research Committee for the History of Sociology). I am grateful to theUniversity of Auckland for facilitating the respite from teaching that allowed itscompletion. The earlier version is discussed in R. Strassoldo, II contribute) austriacoallo sviluppo delle scienze sociali, ap. La filosofia nella Mitteleuropa (Atti del nonoConvegno culturale mitteleuropeo), Gorizia 1979. »

(70) For'a recent 'Austrian' interpretation MANN, The Legacy of Max Weber (Berkeleyof Weber's methodology, which draws on I97i).Menger and von Mises, see L.M. LACH-

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Emergence of Sociology in Austria, Torrance