Conflict and Concord in Wilhelmian Social Thought

Abstract

In 1965, Ralf Dahrendorf published his compelling workSociety and Democracy in Germany. In this fruitful union of sociology and history, he argued convincingly that an overwhelming penchant for concord and synthesis has been the bane of the German mind for the past century and a half; not only in political thought but in traditional institutions such as the legal and educational systems, and ironically even in the supposedly radical Social Demorcatic Party. Everywhere in German life Dahrendorf preceived a quest for certainty—an obsessive need for some objective authority to deliver unimpeachable judgments that would find universal acceptance. More than settling disputes, such authorities were expected to obviate the need for disagreement altogether. The converse of this desire for harmony was an inability to accept conflict as normal; wherever conflict reared its ugly head, Germans sought to banish this unnatural phenomenon by appeal to a higher power. In this curious refusal to recognize ambiguity in life and society, Dahrendorf found the key to the German problem: what roadblocks the German ideology has placed in the way of development toward liberal parliamentary government.