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Liberalism, fascism, or social democracy. social classes and the political origins of regimes in interwar Europe
Book
Reviews
639
Out of these developments comes the ‘true professional ideal’ at the beginning of the twentieth century viz., a dignified occupation proclaiming an ethic of service, organised into an association and practising a functional discipline. Along with distinguishing between those who have written about their own profession and those who have studied others’ professions, the functionalist view holds that specialised ‘scientific’ knowledge serves a social function, is usually created in a university and constitutes the foundation of a profession (Spencer, Veblen, Whitehead, Tawney, Flexner). Emphasis is placed on contextual and structural factors in analysing how a professional gained authority over a social function. Structural analysis concentrates on the organisation of professional associations and socio-economic structures that underpin the association and questions the integrity and objectivity of scientific expertise, the base of the functionalist approach. The ethic of selfless service, Kimball maintains, was invented to deflect criticism of professionals’ power and prestige by disguising their selfinterest. The question arises as to whether expertise or social structure is the cornerstone of professional authority and status, or is the difference between the two the consequence of the changes in the social status of the professoriate during the twentieth century? Parsons’ functionalism answers by asserting that cognitive rationality, the desired goal, is expressed mainly in the profession of learning itself and secondarily in the applied branches of the profession including law and medicine, the chief competitors to professors. The presentist erroneously sees medicine as the universal archetype of a profession, asserts a close link between professionalisation and the emergence of the middle class in the industrial and bureaucratic culture of the nineteenth century, and notes the neglect of theology as an important profession. In fact, academic standards, the value of endowments and property of theology schools were much higher than those of law and medicine. In general, scholars have failed, Kimball concludes, to examine carefully what the word ‘profession’ and its cognates meant in the past. At the beginning of the twentieth century, ‘profession’ had come to signify a dignified vocation, with these fundamental characteristics: functional knowledge or expertise, professional organisation as an association (autonomy, exclusion, licensing and certification) and ethic or professional service. Or succinctly the three ideas involved in a profession are learning, organising, and spirit of public service. The mistake was for twentieth century scholars to tell the story of past professions in terms of present experience of their own profession. Their presentism of analysis was derived from the professors’ preoccupation with the status and the nature of the professoriate, which entered the century pre-eminent and gradually declined. Henry Wasser City University of New York
Liberalism, Fascism, or Social Democracy. Social Classes and the Political Origins of Regimes in Interwar Europe, Gregory M. Luebbert (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991), 416 pp. $19.95 P.B. In the opening years of this century, a number of non-conformist radicals, of whom the Frenchman Georges Sore1 remains the best known, argued that the most effective blocks to solid working class organisation were the democratic political and ideological systems
640
Book Reviews
of their countries. Historians have often dismissed this as the rumblings of frustrated proto-fascists. This outstanding book by Gregory Luebbert shows not only the correctness of Sore13 assessment but how precisely the same phenomena were responsible for innoculating these democratic societies against fascism between the wars. Why did some societies turn fascist? Luebbert addresses this question in two unique ways. First of all, his comparatist analysis adds to the usual culprits (France, Britain, Italy and Germany) the other, less often-studied Central and West European cases (Czechoslovakia, Belgium, the Netherlands, Austria, Switzerland, and the Scandinavian countries). This wider selection adds significant refinement to his conclusions. Secondly, instead of separating his outcomes into the traditional division of democracy vs dictatorship, Luebbert makes a three-part classication into liberal, social democratic and fascist solutions to the inter-war crisis. But he gets there in two stages. He first divides pre-war societies into liberal and aliberal. In the first group (France, Britain and Switzerland) markets determine prices as the political hegemony of the middle classes absorbs the working class into a ‘lib-lab’alliance which effectively survives the war. In the aliberal states, like Germany, Italy and Scandinavia, divided and often disempowered middle classes cannot absorb labor which becomes both politically independent and more densely organised. Luebbert’s broader comparative analysis shows how other factors like the greater industrialisation of Britain (like Germany but unlike France) or the radicalisation of French labour traditionally associated with relative economic backwardness, are less politically significant. Aliberal societies appear where national or religious factors divide the middle classes. Here, Luebbert’s system explains the oft observed fact that pure fascist systems evolved in two of the most recently formed European states, Italy and Germany. But this is still half the story. After World War I some aliberal societies chose social democracy while others turned to fascism (here Luebbert includes Spain as a not fully fascist but essentially parallel case). Both solutions are aliberal in that politics replaces markets in setting prices. The key is the role of the family peasantry, allied with the working class in the social democratic outcomes, with the middle classes in fascist ones. Why? Societies turn fascist where the left becomes embroiled in rural class conflict (e.g. by backing the rural proletariat) thus blocking the possibility of alliance with the family peasantry. Otherwise the social democratic rural-urban coalition between family farmers and workers becomes possible, as in Czechoslovakia, Sweden, Norway and Denmark. This is the most convincing explanation I have seen of why the well-known organisational strength of German socialism was of so little avail. Frightened by socialist organising in the countryside, family farmers gave crucial votes to the Nazis in the depression crisis. Liberalism, Fascism or SocialDemocracy is a powerful example of the way a true social science can grapple with historical diversity and detail while avoiding the kinds of analytically simplistic yet common causative models that emphasise specific national traditions and history. The book also transcends worn out arguments over the precedence of economics or politics (or ideas) by showing that it is the way these forces interact that generates political outcomes. In a self-confident conclusion Luebbert calls his approach structuralist. When it comes to studies of extreme movements like fascism many scholars vigorously reject such arguments. But they will have trouble refuting Luebbert’s historically sophisticated demonstrations. Giolitti’s Italy makes a marvelous test case of the limits of political skill in a hostile social enivronment. The author points out that it was not for lack of tenacity that German social democracy failed while its Scandinanvian cousins succeeded. And the northerners’ ultimately useful failure to organise the countryside was due to lack of opportunity not exceptional prescience. But what Luebbert’s class-based analysis really shows is why, in a context of general political mobilisation, certain societies chose authoritarian, anti-labour right-wing solutions, not why fascism with all its distinctive
Book Reviews
641
political baggage emerged. For this, some more traditional explanatory models are still necessary. An assistant professor at Berkeley, Gregory Luebbert was killed in an accident before his book could appear. We have lost much. Allen Douglas Indiana University
The British Abroad: the Grand Tour in the Eighteenth Century, Jeremy Black (Stroud, Alan Sutton, 1992), xix + 335 pp., E17.99.
UK:
In 1985 Jeremy Black published The British and the Grand Tour. Reviewers acknowledged the wealth of anecdotes and accounts that the ever-industrious Dr Black had uncovered and enquired to what extent the book was more than anecdotal, some suggesting that the essential core of the book could have been achieved in an analytical essay, others wondering whether the wealth of details and accounts did not obscure whatever analysis the book contained. Reviewers usually raised questions of their own to which the book provided no answer, like the lack of information on topics such as the international marriage market that was approached in this way, the precise motives that led mercantile heirs to go abroad for several years, the role of British ambassadors when faced with young aristocratic gentlemen, the ideology of the Grand Tour. In particular they criticised the author’s decision to treat the Grand Tour as part of tourism in general, which begged the question. The book went out of print in 1987. ‘It has’, says Dr Black in his introduction to his new book, ‘been suggested on several occasions that it be reprinted, but I have preferred to write a different work’ and this is it. The chapter headings are almost identical. In an admittedly unsystematic review it is difficult to find any passage from the first book that has not been repeated almost verbatim in the later book-a word or two of each sentence being slightly changed. There has also been some research, and some new paragraphs have been inserted into the original framework. So have plenty of pictures, mostly of Englishmen who are referred to in the text. The whole effect is visually very pleasant. None of the criticisms made of the earlier book have been addressed. L.D. Schwarz University of Birmingham
The Gestapo and German Society. Enforcing Racial Policy 1933-1945, (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990), xiv + l-297 pp., E35.00 H.B.
Robert
Gellately
Earlier studies of National Socialist racial policy were mainly dominated by a concern with its intellectual and scientific origins, or with the quasi-forensic investigation of the structure and lines of authority within the agencies and institutions responsible for its implementation. Robert Gellately’s fascinating and important research monograph breaks new ground by setting one of the most notorious arms of the Nazi police apparatus within the sort of broader social context first explored by early modern historians of policing such as Geoffrey Elton in the case of Tudor England or Richard Cobb on revolutionary France. Although the book is essentially about the ways in which popular
Reviews
639
Out of these developments comes the ‘true professional ideal’ at the beginning of the twentieth century viz., a dignified occupation proclaiming an ethic of service, organised into an association and practising a functional discipline. Along with distinguishing between those who have written about their own profession and those who have studied others’ professions, the functionalist view holds that specialised ‘scientific’ knowledge serves a social function, is usually created in a university and constitutes the foundation of a profession (Spencer, Veblen, Whitehead, Tawney, Flexner). Emphasis is placed on contextual and structural factors in analysing how a professional gained authority over a social function. Structural analysis concentrates on the organisation of professional associations and socio-economic structures that underpin the association and questions the integrity and objectivity of scientific expertise, the base of the functionalist approach. The ethic of selfless service, Kimball maintains, was invented to deflect criticism of professionals’ power and prestige by disguising their selfinterest. The question arises as to whether expertise or social structure is the cornerstone of professional authority and status, or is the difference between the two the consequence of the changes in the social status of the professoriate during the twentieth century? Parsons’ functionalism answers by asserting that cognitive rationality, the desired goal, is expressed mainly in the profession of learning itself and secondarily in the applied branches of the profession including law and medicine, the chief competitors to professors. The presentist erroneously sees medicine as the universal archetype of a profession, asserts a close link between professionalisation and the emergence of the middle class in the industrial and bureaucratic culture of the nineteenth century, and notes the neglect of theology as an important profession. In fact, academic standards, the value of endowments and property of theology schools were much higher than those of law and medicine. In general, scholars have failed, Kimball concludes, to examine carefully what the word ‘profession’ and its cognates meant in the past. At the beginning of the twentieth century, ‘profession’ had come to signify a dignified vocation, with these fundamental characteristics: functional knowledge or expertise, professional organisation as an association (autonomy, exclusion, licensing and certification) and ethic or professional service. Or succinctly the three ideas involved in a profession are learning, organising, and spirit of public service. The mistake was for twentieth century scholars to tell the story of past professions in terms of present experience of their own profession. Their presentism of analysis was derived from the professors’ preoccupation with the status and the nature of the professoriate, which entered the century pre-eminent and gradually declined. Henry Wasser City University of New York
Liberalism, Fascism, or Social Democracy. Social Classes and the Political Origins of Regimes in Interwar Europe, Gregory M. Luebbert (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991), 416 pp. $19.95 P.B. In the opening years of this century, a number of non-conformist radicals, of whom the Frenchman Georges Sore1 remains the best known, argued that the most effective blocks to solid working class organisation were the democratic political and ideological systems
640
Book Reviews
of their countries. Historians have often dismissed this as the rumblings of frustrated proto-fascists. This outstanding book by Gregory Luebbert shows not only the correctness of Sore13 assessment but how precisely the same phenomena were responsible for innoculating these democratic societies against fascism between the wars. Why did some societies turn fascist? Luebbert addresses this question in two unique ways. First of all, his comparatist analysis adds to the usual culprits (France, Britain, Italy and Germany) the other, less often-studied Central and West European cases (Czechoslovakia, Belgium, the Netherlands, Austria, Switzerland, and the Scandinavian countries). This wider selection adds significant refinement to his conclusions. Secondly, instead of separating his outcomes into the traditional division of democracy vs dictatorship, Luebbert makes a three-part classication into liberal, social democratic and fascist solutions to the inter-war crisis. But he gets there in two stages. He first divides pre-war societies into liberal and aliberal. In the first group (France, Britain and Switzerland) markets determine prices as the political hegemony of the middle classes absorbs the working class into a ‘lib-lab’alliance which effectively survives the war. In the aliberal states, like Germany, Italy and Scandinavia, divided and often disempowered middle classes cannot absorb labor which becomes both politically independent and more densely organised. Luebbert’s broader comparative analysis shows how other factors like the greater industrialisation of Britain (like Germany but unlike France) or the radicalisation of French labour traditionally associated with relative economic backwardness, are less politically significant. Aliberal societies appear where national or religious factors divide the middle classes. Here, Luebbert’s system explains the oft observed fact that pure fascist systems evolved in two of the most recently formed European states, Italy and Germany. But this is still half the story. After World War I some aliberal societies chose social democracy while others turned to fascism (here Luebbert includes Spain as a not fully fascist but essentially parallel case). Both solutions are aliberal in that politics replaces markets in setting prices. The key is the role of the family peasantry, allied with the working class in the social democratic outcomes, with the middle classes in fascist ones. Why? Societies turn fascist where the left becomes embroiled in rural class conflict (e.g. by backing the rural proletariat) thus blocking the possibility of alliance with the family peasantry. Otherwise the social democratic rural-urban coalition between family farmers and workers becomes possible, as in Czechoslovakia, Sweden, Norway and Denmark. This is the most convincing explanation I have seen of why the well-known organisational strength of German socialism was of so little avail. Frightened by socialist organising in the countryside, family farmers gave crucial votes to the Nazis in the depression crisis. Liberalism, Fascism or SocialDemocracy is a powerful example of the way a true social science can grapple with historical diversity and detail while avoiding the kinds of analytically simplistic yet common causative models that emphasise specific national traditions and history. The book also transcends worn out arguments over the precedence of economics or politics (or ideas) by showing that it is the way these forces interact that generates political outcomes. In a self-confident conclusion Luebbert calls his approach structuralist. When it comes to studies of extreme movements like fascism many scholars vigorously reject such arguments. But they will have trouble refuting Luebbert’s historically sophisticated demonstrations. Giolitti’s Italy makes a marvelous test case of the limits of political skill in a hostile social enivronment. The author points out that it was not for lack of tenacity that German social democracy failed while its Scandinanvian cousins succeeded. And the northerners’ ultimately useful failure to organise the countryside was due to lack of opportunity not exceptional prescience. But what Luebbert’s class-based analysis really shows is why, in a context of general political mobilisation, certain societies chose authoritarian, anti-labour right-wing solutions, not why fascism with all its distinctive
Book Reviews
641
political baggage emerged. For this, some more traditional explanatory models are still necessary. An assistant professor at Berkeley, Gregory Luebbert was killed in an accident before his book could appear. We have lost much. Allen Douglas Indiana University
The British Abroad: the Grand Tour in the Eighteenth Century, Jeremy Black (Stroud, Alan Sutton, 1992), xix + 335 pp., E17.99.
UK:
In 1985 Jeremy Black published The British and the Grand Tour. Reviewers acknowledged the wealth of anecdotes and accounts that the ever-industrious Dr Black had uncovered and enquired to what extent the book was more than anecdotal, some suggesting that the essential core of the book could have been achieved in an analytical essay, others wondering whether the wealth of details and accounts did not obscure whatever analysis the book contained. Reviewers usually raised questions of their own to which the book provided no answer, like the lack of information on topics such as the international marriage market that was approached in this way, the precise motives that led mercantile heirs to go abroad for several years, the role of British ambassadors when faced with young aristocratic gentlemen, the ideology of the Grand Tour. In particular they criticised the author’s decision to treat the Grand Tour as part of tourism in general, which begged the question. The book went out of print in 1987. ‘It has’, says Dr Black in his introduction to his new book, ‘been suggested on several occasions that it be reprinted, but I have preferred to write a different work’ and this is it. The chapter headings are almost identical. In an admittedly unsystematic review it is difficult to find any passage from the first book that has not been repeated almost verbatim in the later book-a word or two of each sentence being slightly changed. There has also been some research, and some new paragraphs have been inserted into the original framework. So have plenty of pictures, mostly of Englishmen who are referred to in the text. The whole effect is visually very pleasant. None of the criticisms made of the earlier book have been addressed. L.D. Schwarz University of Birmingham
The Gestapo and German Society. Enforcing Racial Policy 1933-1945, (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990), xiv + l-297 pp., E35.00 H.B.
Robert
Gellately
Earlier studies of National Socialist racial policy were mainly dominated by a concern with its intellectual and scientific origins, or with the quasi-forensic investigation of the structure and lines of authority within the agencies and institutions responsible for its implementation. Robert Gellately’s fascinating and important research monograph breaks new ground by setting one of the most notorious arms of the Nazi police apparatus within the sort of broader social context first explored by early modern historians of policing such as Geoffrey Elton in the case of Tudor England or Richard Cobb on revolutionary France. Although the book is essentially about the ways in which popular