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CHAPTER XV

GUMPLOWICZ AND RATZENHOFER

F the quartette of contemporaneous and original thinkers referred to in the preceding chapter Gumplowicz and Ratzenhofer remain to be studied. The reasons for their treatment in a single chapter grow out of their common nationality, their reactions to the same political and social environment and the similarity of their approach to the basic problems of social interpretation. Furthermore, their fundamental differences, which constitute the essence of their respective contributions to social theory, may be shown better by the method of comparison and contrast than by consecutive treatment.

NATIONAL AND RACIAL BACKGROUND

The development of scientific interest and its application to society, described in previous chapters, need not be repeated here. Both of the writers under review come under the spell of this influence. But as Tarde would say, sociological thought was refracted by the Austrian medium. Our search is for those elements of personality and training and of environment which produced this refraction. Two such factors, at least, in the Austrian situation, seem to shed light on our problem-the national and the racial-each so intricately interwoven with the other that no attempt is made to disentangle them.

Austria, as a sort of "monarchial machine," rather than a nation, was almost entirely immune from the forces which made for nationalism in Western Europe during the early decades of the 19th century. The chief bond of union in the conglomerate of nations was the House of Hapsburg. While the German element comprised only about onefifth of the population, it had control of the government, which relied on coercion rather than popular loyalty. The modernizing effect of the French Revolution in western Germany was neutralized in contact with the absolutism of Austria. Feudal lords still held their grip upon the masses. During the first third of the century, under the Metternich policy of repression, journals, books, plays, schools, and universities

were censored and the price paid was "intellectual stagnation." Political and industrial conditions likewise were bad. The political crisis of 1848 was complicated and influenced in its course by an antecedent industrial crisis. Vienna, "the citadel of despotism," was the storm center of both the revolutionary and the reactionary influences. "Whenever a blow at democracy was to be struck, Austria could be depended upon to strike it." Both Gumplowicz and Ratzenhofer, in their boyhood days, must have been familiar with the sanguinary conflicts of this period.

The loss of Lombardy in the Austro-Sardinian War of 1859 was a blow to absolutism and resulted in some necessary concessions to democracy in order to prevent popular uprisings. In the "February Patent" of 1861 the Reichsrat conceded limited representation of the people in the government, but among the non-German and the poorer classes it was exceedingly small. Race antagonisms further complicated the situation. Hungary was dissatisfied with the constitution of 1861 and demanded a separation of powers in a coöperative alliance. This "deadlock" resulted finally in the new constitution of 1867 by which the Dual-monarchy was established with separate governments under a common sovereignty and a common flag.

For the next decade the Reichsrat, which met alternate years in Vienna and Budapest, was under the control of German liberals who advocated "centralism," the exclusive use of the German language, and governmental freedom from interference on the part of the Roman Catholic Church which had been one of the most important influences in unifying the heterogeneous racial elements, all of which measures encountered violent opposition, and the country was kept in a state of turmoil.

The war with Denmark in 1864, in which Austria joined forces with Prussia, was easily a success for the allies, but the clash over the distribution of the spoils brought the two countries to the verge of war in 1865. Through the strategy of Bismarck, however, war was declared in 1866, but lasted for only seven weeks and resulted disastrously for Austria. Following the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71, Bismarck's policies were offensive to Russia and on account of this menace, friendly relations were established with Austria as the most natural ally and the treaty of 1879 was concluded.

If national interests seemed at times to predominate and to obscure those of race, it was due merely to their conspicuous character. The "accidents of history," had brought together under the rule of the

Hapsburgs, Germans, Magyars, Czechs, Slovaks, Poles, Ruthenians, Hungarians, Slovenes, Serbs, Croats, Roumanians, and Italians. A dozen distinct languages were spoken besides numerous dialects. No historian has failed to note that the conflict of races and languages has constituted a most serious problem in Austrian politics and social life for a century. Inter-race struggles have been so bitter that cities and districts, as Prague in 1893, have been placed by the government under "martial law" or declared to be in a "state of siege." In common with all other nations Austria has had her social stratifications on the basis of political power and wealth, but whereas among relatively homogeneous peoples these have been the predominating factors of social strife, here they have been comparatively unimportant as contrasted with racial antagonisms.

These, then, are the social problems which call most loudly for interpretations, and it would be most natural to expect that the minds of thinkers reared in such an atmosphere should be influenced by it, and that their philosophy of society should reflect, in some measure at least, the conditions which shaped them. Nowhere is this process better illustrated than in the theories of Gumplowicz and Ratzenhofer.1

The "conflict theory" of social interpretation, however, though popularized and grafted upon modern sociology by these writers, by no means originated with them. Without any attempt to trace the history of the theory 2 we may refer to a few instances of its occurrence in the course of our survey. The struggle for control between the "Two Powers" was, as we have seen, the determining factor in the problems with which Dante and St. Thomas dealt and which they sought to solve by justifying each in their respective claims to the right of social control Machiavelli, whose practical philosophy of statescraft reflected the prolonged and bitter struggles among the Italian city-states, not only assumed that the State originated in force, but that its continued existence depended upon its ability to conquer and command.* In the writings of Jean Bodin we came upon the interesting theory that the unit in social organization was not the individual, but the lesser social aggregates or primary groups, whose conflicting interests were reconciled in the social whole. The similarity of this view to

3

1Cf. Schapiro, J. S., Modern European History, Ch. VII and XVI.

2

Cf. Barnes, H. E., The Struggle of Races and Social Groups as a Factor in the Development of Political and Social Institutions, Journal of Race Development, Vol. IX, 1918-19, pp. 394-419.

3

Cf. supra., Ch. V.

Cf. supra., Ch. VI.

that of Gumplowicz's agglomeration of syngenetic hordes is unmistakable."

Among the writers of the Social Contract school it was Hobbes who championed the theory that the state of nature was a state of war, that the intolerable conflicts in this state forced men into society, and that the "Leviathan" acquired thereby a right to compel obedience in the interests of peace. While the State arose as an instrument of reconciling individual antagonisms by force, the process might with equal logic extend to the amalgamation of antipathetic groups or nations as well.®

However immediate or remote the influence of these and similar concepts may have been upon the minds of Gumplowicz and Ratzenhofer, it is certain that some of more recent origin had a profound effect.

So revolutionary have been the processes of thinking which resulted from the work of Darwin and his co-workers in the field of biology that the modern scientific age has often been dated from the publishing of the Origin of Species in 1859. The struggle for existence among men, which Malthus made the basis of his Principle of Population, Darwin seized upon as the key to natural selection in the entire organic realm and established it as a category of scientific thought. Bagehot reapplied it to social and political interpretation with invincible logic, and Spencer elaborated it into one of the foundation-stones of his theory of universal evolution. From this time on the concept of struggle for existence and for advantage has been a tool in the hands of the candid and impartial social scientist, and as well, of the impetuous and aspiring politician who sees in it the justification of his schemes. In view, therefore, of the often repeated observation that social theory reflects the character of the social environment, and in view of the obverse and equally obvious fact, namely, that social and political theories take root and thrive on the basis of their congeniality or serviceableness within a given social environment, it is not surprising to find, on the one hand, that the conflict theory acquired its most concrete form and highest development as a scientific theory of social control and that it found its chief champions in Austro-Hungary-the country of ceaseless racial struggles and national conflicts, and on the other hand, that the pseudo-scientific application of the theory in the form of Neo-Darwinism has found its greatest congeniality and widest ac

ceptance in the land of ultra-racial egoism, militarism, and Machtpolitik the modern Germany of Bismarck, Nietzsche, and Bernhardi.

LUDWIG GUMPLOWICZ

Ludwig Gumplowicz was born March 9, 1838, in the city of Krakau, on the Vistula-the Russian border-in the extreme North of Austria. His parents were Polish Jews, of considerable prominence, and were of Russian origin. After the usual preliminary educational training, and at the age of twenty, he entered the university of Krakau and later that of Vienna. While still in the latter university he began his journalistic career which culminated in the editing of his own magazine, Kraj (The Country) from 1869 to 1874. In 1875, at the age of thirty-seven, he was appointed lecturer on the Science of Administration and Austrian Administrative Law, at the university of Graz. In 1882 he was advanced to the rank of professor extraordinary, equivalent to our associate or assistant professor, and in 1893 to that of professor, a position which he held for fifteen years. As a result of ill health and advancing age he resigned in 1908, having served this one university for a consecutive period of thirty-three years.

Kochanowski says: "His students called him an angel, and this title was no exaggeration applied to a man who-without willing it—surrounded himself with the halo of a great soul and a noble mind." His writings covered a wide range, including history, jurisprudence and politics, but his reputation as thinker and scholar depends in the main upon his work in the field of sociology. His first sociological treatise, Race and State, appeared in 1875, his fundamental work, Race Struggle, in 1883 and his Outline of Sociology in 1885.

The wide appreciation of the value of his work is attested by the fact that his principal writings have been translated into many languages. A minor but interesting incident of this recognition was the making of his seventieth birthday, on the part of many eminent scholars, an occasion for showering him with ovations, and of the founding of a sociological society in Graz in his honor.

His death was tragic. In 1907 his health began to break and in November he wrote Ward, his great American friend and admirer, that he was suffering from "nervous prostration" but did not state its cause. In October, 1908, in another letter he explained that the cause

An article entitled Ludwig Gumplowicz, tr. by Mrs. Unger, American Journal of Sociology. Vol. XV, p. 405.