Book Review: Reflections on America by Claus Offe





By: Tofigh Maboodi & Massoud Hosseini Fard

Description

The full name of the book is Reflections on America: Tocqueville, Weber, and Adorno in the United States. The book was first published in German as Selbstbetrachtung aus der Ferne: Tocqueville, Weber und Adorno in den Vereinigten Staaten by Clause Offe Ó Suhrkamp Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2004. This translation first published in 2005 by Polity Press, Cambridge, UK. Professor Claus Offe (born 1940 in Berlin) is one of the world's leading political sociologists of Marxist orientation. Once a student of Jorgen Habermas, the left-leaning German academic is counted among the second generation Frankfurt School. He currently teaches at a private university in Berlin, the Hertie School of Governance. He has made substantive contributions to understanding the relationships between democracy and capitalism. His recent work has focused on economies and states in transition to democracy.

Summary

1- Introduction

In this book the author gives an account of the thoughts of three major European philosophers on Western world particularly on America as an example of a modern state. Tocqueville, Weber and Adorno traveled to US and got acquainted with its political, social and economic system. The common theme in the works of these three philosophers regarding America is the fate of liberty in modern capitalist societies. They emphasized on the negative characteristics of Western modernity and tried to find ways to obliterate its advance or change it for the better. They considered America as an ambiguous combination of free and equal individuals and imperceptible constraints that destroy equality and liberty.

2- Alexis de Tocqueville or the Tyranny of the Middle Class

Alexis de Tocqueville was a French judge who was sent to US to investigate America’s progressive penal system. The condition of the United States interested him because he considered it the symbol of a new age called ‘democratic’ age. He asserts that sooner or later Europe like America shall reach the equality of condition. Tocqueville praises the American democracy and grieves for European backwardness. However he thinks that America lacks a principal which has worked well in Europe and that is, the political rights of individuals are unequally distributed and acquired by birth. According to him America enjoys an exceptional condition in which liberty came into existence without mediation and without the transitional process of liberation. This will allow them to enter a stable cycle which consists of the bilateral strengthening of institutions on one hand and attitudes and habits on the other hand.

According to Tocqueville American laws and institutions encourage stability and prevent tyranny. He argues that bureaucratic centralism as it exists in Europe is a manifestation of tyranny and a danger to liberty. However in America the distinguished vertical divisions of powers (among federal government, states and autonomous municipalities) and the horizontal divisions of powers along with the independence of courts guaranty democracy. The pillar of Tocqueville’s theory of ‘democratic age’ based on the American example is that democracies are stable when they have religious and secular structures which are able to counter the two pathologies of ‘equality’: individualism and despotism.

3- Max Weber: American Escape Routes from the Iron Cage?

Weber in his work tried to explain the ‘special peculiarity of Occidental rationalism’. For him Europe is the dynamic core of the ‘Occident’ and the role of America in the formation of Occident isn’t clear. He argues that American society is taking shape on a structural type already existent and dominant in Europe. However America constituted the core of his research program because for him, it represented a ‘picture of freedom’ in contrast to the weak, depoliticized and opportunistic ‘indifferentism’ of Europeans. The main question for Weber regarding America was if he could distinguish a preferable model of capitalist modernization and liberal democracy there. Weber admired the puritanical asceticism of American sects and regarded it a revolutionary force. For him, Puritanism with its self-conscious, individualistic and sober attitude towards life created a counter-balance to confront state power. According to Weber there has been a change of motives in capitalism since its early days; it is no longer the inherent values of religious life which motivate the membership of Protestant sect but rather this membership brings about a ‘qualification certificate’ in the business world. Nevertheless he sees strong elements of individualism in this sectarian society.

4- Theodor W. Adorno: ‘Culture Industry’ and Other Views of the ‘American Century’

The work of Adorno is different from the other two philosophers because his trip to US was forced because of the Nazi government in Germany. His thoughts on America are that of a refugee not an academic. For him United States ‎is the country which saved his life. In comparison to the other two he is not interested in the social and cultural conditions in the US. Nevertheless a close observation of American cultural practices such as radio, jazz and sports drove him to develop a successful diagnosis of this society. Along with competitiveness and liberal democracy which are changing into monopoly and ‘authoritarian state’, he introduces a third tendency in this society: the development of autonomous bourgeois culture into mass culture and the culture industry. Adorno is concerned that the ‘European totalitarianism’ would replace the ‘American entertainment industry’ and fascism would take control in the US. According to him the prospect of the Cold War is a sign that American capitalism would take a fascist direction. Adorno asserts that Europe is becoming to resemble American condition. The first point in which the US is advanced is that there is no class conflict because no class consciousness exists there. Despite the early critics of America, Adorno in return to Europe presents the American democratic system and civil freedom as a model for postwar Europe and especially Germany.

5- The United States in the Twenty-First Century: Traditions of Religious Socialization and Struggle against ‘Evil’

The common ground in the work of the three authors is their perception of Americans as open-minded, trusting, cooperative and emotionally warm. However they all assert in different ways that American society enjoys a liberally ‘social capital’ which is lacking among Europeans. The three philosophers argue that the civilized world of ‘the West’ is going to resemble America because of the many similarities such as Christianity, Science, technology and industry between them.

Since World War II, American hegemony has led vast parts of the world to follow the United State. America has become territorialized particularly since the fall of Soviet Union but not because other countries choose to imitate American model as the three philosophers suggest; rather because of political-military, economic and cultural-ideological supremacy of the US. Most of the countries on earth are today either allies of the US or threatened by its military power. That is why the United States defines itself as responsible for global order. It has become a part of American identity to project itself on to others and to shape the rest of the world in its own image. Americans consider the fight for ‘freedom and democracy’ as the essential part of their identity. Behind the mission of bringing freedom to the world we can notice the obsession of ‘traditionless’ America for making an identity. As a result one of the most important differences between today’s America and that which the three authors discovered is that in case of claimed necessity, the rules, principals and agreements of other countries aren’t binding for it.

Format

The book begins with a Contents page followed by an Abbreviation page which introduces abbreviation symbols that are used throughout the book to refer to books by Tocqueville, Weber and Adorno. It’s a good way to do away with repetition of names. Next is the Acknowledgement page which precedes the main chapters of the book. The first main chapter, Introduction, is short; 6 pages. Chapters 2, 3 and 4 are on Alexis de Tocqueville, Max Weber, and Theodor W. Adorno’s views on various aspects of America and chapter 5 which is on the issue of American religious socialization concludes the book. The book which is based on Adorno Lectures presented in German by Claus Offe at the Institute for Social Research at the University of Frankfurt in November 2003. The book is an English translation of those lectures and everywhere in the book, where reference is made to the three scholars, the material is translated into English, usually explained in the footnote section. Each chapter begins with a description of fundamental beliefs of the scholar, and then applying those concepts to their understanding of America. Some other points worth noting are:

A good cover shows a skyline metropolitan area in New York;

A map, on page 48, shows the routes taken by Tocqueville and Weber in the United States on their visits; there are no other maps or illustrations in the book. This does not seem to limit the readability of the book;

Extensive footnotes give necessary background to the reader unfamiliar with thoughts and ideas of the three scholars, and

Comprehensive reference and Index sections are at the end of the book.

Content Analysis

The book has been able to give the reader a general account of what these three scholars think on American society, politics and culture. The scholars have viewpoints that have some common ground and some differences. While Tocqueville and Weber hold specific views, Adorno's viewpoint on America seems to have changed through time, maybe due to his long stay in America.The good point about the content of the book is that it compares and contrasts the three scholars' views on America on every subject and occasion so that the reader gets a good sense of how they think similarly or differently on various topics. What might be considered a weak point from an ordinary reader's perspective are the discussions that might be lengthy and boring.

However, all in all, the book is very informative and the content is developed in a scientific and scholarly fashion. The interesting approach of the writer to relate the present situation in America and Europe to the past and to provide the reader with a relatively deep understanding of issues is another advantage of the book.

Recommendation

This book is essential for every student of American studies, presenting a brief but multi-dimensional view on American democracy, society, culture and polity. It is also good to be read by students of European studies and those who are interested in the study of the western civilization in general.

Researchers in the fields of politics, sociology, religion and cultural studies will find this book very interesting. The book is a thought-provoking source of a lot of different ideas on American society and civilization and is a must-read book for everyone who wants to come to an understanding of how America came to be the America we know today.