Kitabı oku: «The Social Science of the Citizen Society», sayfa 4

Lessons about “Auschwitz”—citizen societies and the refinement of the missions of their state

With its theories and contributions, the Frankfurt School, especially its exponent Adorno, can certainly be described as most influential for the social science thinking of post-war debates not only in Germany but worldwide. From these reflections on the war by Adorno, one can study how non-globalized social science thinking, even when it discusses national political activities, does not adopt the concerns of the German state or its self-representation, thanks to the idealizations of its missions—and yet, with its criticism of this state, theoretically sketches the foundations for the post-war self-portrait of this state.

Adorno’s reflections on what he circumscribes as “Auschwitz” are to be discussed here as an example of how this critical social science thinking at times, when those debates about a globalization of social science thinking were unknown, does not discuss the state program of a certain state, but, using the example of state activities of a particular country, here of Germany, discusses constitutive elements of state societies and their state in general, in this example, in that for these discussions of state missions components of war activities, i.e. activities between states are first constructed as affairs of an individual state, this thinking thus fades out the world of states and their imperialism, and in that this thinking, secondly, with its critique of state war practices, then, through the critical delimitation of war practices and the idealization of what the actual tasks of states against war are, makes itself common to the principle of state politics and, through this, to the German state—in its critically contested, idealized form—and in this way shows itself exemplary, how the—not global—social science thinking does not court any individual state, but rather the concept of state-constructed societies, like that of citizen societies and their political power, and how this thinking then endows this political power with the mission to actually stop the use of warlike violence, which only these political powers are capable of.

“The demand that Auschwitz may not happen again is the very first of education. It precedes all others to such an extent that I don’t believe I need or should justify it.”5

Auschwitz: The crushing of enemies within for the war against another state power outside that has been made an enemy, the violent subjugation of the rule of another state over land and people to its own power by destroying its means of violence and purifying its own society of citizens of its own state power within that has been made an enemy, this is how war goes—and that, war, is first and foremost a matter of what, of education?

War a matter of education? And what if one does not heed the not very squeamish admonition of this figurehead of critical sociological thinking, his view that “Auschwitz” is “first and foremost” a task of education and that this is so fundamental and, therefore, so self-evident that it does not need any justification, what if one does not obey this admonition after all and tries to trace which thoughts must have been made in order to be able to understand Adorno’s view, which indeed was and still is the most common critical view about “Auschwitz” after the war, not only among intellectuals in Germany, and what if one then also tries, in spite of his admonition, to find out how it is that this view means to present it as so self-evident that one must not ask for any why and for what, in order to immunize it against any criticism, and still takes the liberty of asking for any reasons for this view?

In order to anticipate the result of the transgression of this Adorno’s prohibition of thinking that “Auschwitz” is supposed to be a question of education, a theory that derives its entire conclusiveness of this theory about “Auschwitz” only from this prohibition of thinking: It is the state infatuation, not in Germany, but in state societies in general, which cannot be shaken by the war and “Auschwitz”, especially the state infatuation of sociological thought, which, with its diagnosis and with its prohibition of thinking, precisely sketches the view of the war and Auschwitz and precisely the pattern of the post-war raison d’être of German politics, and with which this politics sets off for the next attempt, this time on the economic path after the military path failed, at least for the time being, to become a European economic superpower again, and tackles this again immediately after the war. And today, now that this economic path has been successfully taken, the question is being discussed everywhere as to whether it is still possible to stay out of the world’s wars, in which one has long been involved everywhere, in other words, whether one wants to get even more involved in the military path again.

And how does a critical theorist end up with the pattern of Germany’s post-war raison d’être, including its new national self-image, far from being a nationalist thinker?

It goes like this: With the synonymization of Germany’s politics under the Nazi regime to “Auschwitz”, Germany’s war, i.e. the attempt to establish itself as a European and thus as a leading world power by destroying the political dominions in competing European states and conquering the power over them, this war is, first of all, with the help of scandalizing the destruction of all actual or supposed enemies within warring Germany, just as if there would be war without these scandalous excesses of violence, not only moved out of the focus of reflection, but, at the same time, also deprived any reflection on the connection of war, its specific forms of violence, which only states are capable of, and also on all the internal “cleansing” of the people who are considered enemies of society, of the ground for any reflection. With this scandalization, the war and everything that belongs to it is no longer an object of reflection, so removed from critical reflection, and thus also the internal “cleansing” of the population, carried out with state perfection, of parts of the population that are not considered suitable for war because they are politically and racially unreliable, all this is now no longer an object of any kind of reflection, and thus, as quite beyond the rationality of warlike actions of states, as the actual and only object of thinking about war. Isolated from war what is part of any wars because it is scandalized away, this is the arche typus of the post war (not exclusively) German way of thinking about the war. War, the kind of violence of states against states, is thus no longer the object of reflections on what is discussed by critical thinkers under the synonym “Auschwitz”, the world of states and their warlike dealings, including their internal excesses of violence against parts of their population from the observations of states in war, so successfully dissected from thinking as an object of social science thinking.

With this arrangement of the object of thinking synonymized as the scandalous “Auschwitz” and then, with the separation of state interests in war by means of the condemnation of its warlike means and its victims, then, with the next step, war made a matter of misguided morality and thus a matter of education, not only are the warlike activities inwardly are separated for outwardly, but also the state, the subject of the warlike actions, is finally socio-scientifically defined: All differences of state and subjects are dissolved, all, state and citizen without distinction between the politically ruling and the subjugated subjects, are equally held responsible for “Auschwitz”, and with the assignment of the internal war affairs, scandalized to the abomination, made to a mistaken educational matter, and with this in the next step they are made a question of criticizing the morality of the German citizen, so that the very state, the subject of war and the subject of “Auschwitz”, can appear as the corrective authority of the misguided morality of citizens, thanks to this kind of thinking, and with this the state is assigned its educational mission and through this mission attributed the new raison d’état of the state which is thus purified and reformed.

No wonder that the political representatives, in this cleaning made from warriors into supreme moralists, rejoice over the morally corrupt citizens who are thus made the real responsible for “Auschwitz”, and quickly blurt out that their hand may fall off when they reach for a weapon again.

Any questions about the state aims of things not so unusual for states, such as wars acts like the internal “purges” which, to recall briefly, no citizen, but only state and their political leaders can instigate and carry out, wars in which these states are the ones who burn their citizens, and if any citizens do not want they shoot them in line with all states war laws, wars against other states which are therefore accompanied by wars against these citizens, such as their internal “purges”, which are after all not a particularly unusual event in the history of states, all such questions after all the destructions of the just finished world war, all such questions about wars, which one could also raise as a scientist, what these states aim at with their wars, what duties they enforce on the citizens in them, the very war morality states create for this, with what kind forces all this is enforced on the citizens, not to mention what the German state wanted with its war against the world powers, all these questions are buried with the help of the power of persuasion of the moral force of the misery of a defeat, buried under the mountains of dead citizens and buried under the burden of destruction, buried with the accusation of a misguided moral education of the citizens of this state, all buried together with all the war debris.

The citizen and his morals are pilloried, and the state rises from the ruins of his war confronted with a massive accusation that, the war shows for thinkers like Adorno that it has completely failed in its educational mission—and thus, as an outline of the foundations of its future reasons of state, is assigned by this critical thinker the task of learning from “Auschwitz” by fulfilling its moral mission now educating its citizens to become morally decent citizens—just as if they, the citizens were the real war criminals. What better idea could the remaining remnants of the political class have than finally taking the ever very humane aims of states into their own hands and to take on the mission of finally educating the morally depraved subjects to educate them now to be good national citizens.

Now, one also understands how good it is that the critical sociologist adds that this noble mission of a purified morality and the politics purified by it must not be doubted by anyone. With this logic, which derives from the misery of a lost war together with its hardened prohibition to interpret all its atrocities differently than as the result of a failed moral education of the citizens, and which derives from this for the political class, the makers of the war and rulers over the remaining citizens, the mission to teach the citizens now mores for their disgrace, why one now feels attempted raising the question what this sociological thinker, in his unshakable infatuation with the state in his critical conception of the state as the failed guardian of humanistic ideals, what this thinker would have thought about the state and the morality of the citizens, if this state with its citizens had not lost but won this war and had celebrated this with its victorious citizens. The answer may be thought up by everyone.

In the same way, or as the critical spirit of Adorno conceived it, post-war political propaganda in the construction of the new joint imperial project of Germany and France, called Europe, puts the remaining citizens in charge of rebuilding not only their civic morale, but also the next project of imperial ambitions: The war was branded as a heinous “crime”—because Hitler had not won it, and the “Wehrmacht” was “abused” by Hitler for this purpose, so that the reconstruction of a new Wehrmacht began without interruption. For a short time, one could also think that this branding of war as a “crime” was a position against war (as I said, arm off when someone takes up a weapon again, Adenauer), but with the establishment of the new military force, this was quickly dismissed and corrected as unrealistic pacifism and instead, with the commitment to the moral inscrutability of its state history, which, similar to and thanks to the idea of Adorno’s prohibition of reflection, could not be explained by anything, with the assurance, to say it with Adorno, “that Auschwitz will not happen again”, with the reconstruction of the same state and the same market economy, new plans for the next, now peaceful conquest of Europe and the world were started with the morally clean means of a successful market economy, actively militarily supported by the USA, which through this war then instead of the Germans became a world power, now also militarily repaired by them for its war goals against the same enemy. No state in the world would, of course, reject this offer and with “Never again Auschwitz” as the proof of a new purified raison d’être, and, what a surprise, the fingers that were supposed to fall off when reaching for a weapon again, thanks to the successful application and redemption of Adorno’s demand for a purified moral education, not only remained on the line thanks to this ostentatious confession of a moral guilt, but were, as we can see today, the perfect garnishment of the strategy to make the German state for the time being, at least, a hegemon in Europe, with the best prospects to challenge the global supremacy of the world power USA under German leadership of Europe and to reopen an old calculation for the Russians. With this, we arrive in the ideological department of state politics in today’s world, thanks to the application of the socio-scientifically critical thought patterns of thinkers like Adorno.

For in this or a similar way, critical social science reflections before their “globalization” about the war of states construct their ideas about their actual higher humane, moral missions and thus strengthen the belief that all these states, despite all this, are actually always concerned about the well-being and morals of their citizens and that it is them, these states, who always have their concerns with the morals of their citizens. The real goal of states, set with the social-scientific criticism of the German state as the failure of its educational mission to educate morally integrity-conscious citizens, endows the world of states with their critical idealism and missions in a way similar to what happened for post-war Germany, and thus provides the states of the world with their critical images of their noble missions and those of their special missions in the world of nation-states, self-portraits, which sometimes, thanks to the course of world history, such as in the case of Germany, need to be readjusted. For this, for the rescue of the idea of the state as the guardian of all values, whose persuasiveness it has called into question with its war, social science thinking a la Adorno knows how to offer its theoretical services for correction to all doubters about what drives nation states. For Adorno, for this pre-globalized thinker, it was the German politics that he critiqued for misusing the nation state and failing to do what the nation states are originally for, for the moral education of the citizens and this state mission is for thinkers like Adorno so natural that he takes for granted that it is so redundant to be justified.

The Vietnam War—a challenge for the cohesion of a citizen society

Another social scientist, one of the world’s most distinguished thinkers and, a synonym for critical thinking like Adorno, is Bourdieu, another pioneer of social science theorizing before this “globalization” of theorizing.

The fact that the title of his famous book, “Homo Academicus,”6 insinuates that Bourdieu—a social scientist who, like Adorno, is certainly not suspected of being a nation-state biased thinker—announces under this title a theory about a species of man, the academics that can be found all over the world, does not in the least irritate this prominent and much-cited thinker, when his book, under this general title about a human species found worldwide, presents a study that deals with investigations at two faculties of a university in France, and a study which, quite apart from any “globalized” thinking, does not say a word about who and what distinguishes this Homo Academicus as a species that can actually be found worldwide. This study, unaffected by the actual worldwide existence of his subject, a human species of every citizen society, theorizes on the question, not what distinguishes this human species, the academic, but, after he flirtatiously debates in a long introduction about whether an academic like him can theorize about the academic in order to arrive at the result, he with his broadly rolled out self-critical methodical insights can do it, in order to, after he has awarded himself the theoretical suitability, debate under this ambitious title of his book the question why academics in these two faculties, of which one, obviously following the plausibility of an assumed common sense and—anticipating the answer to his whole questioning—stands for “conservative” and the other for “progressive” academics, what characterizes these “conservative” and “progressive” faculties and why these academics joined or did not join the protest movements in France in the 1970s.

Even if it is not easy to ignore the tautological answer to the question, which is already too openly predicated on the pretentious distinction between conservative and progressive academics, it is, nevertheless, remarkable how little the social science thinking of a theoretician who is, by no means, a nationalist, how little it somehow irritates this non-“globalized” thinking to think under the title of the species of academic about the differences between academics in matters progressive versus conservative that make him concerned as a sociologist, that is, the question of whether this homo academicus is, as one would sociologically say, a retarding or progressive social subject. Social science thinking before that “globalized” version does not reflect on any individual nation-state characteristics of phenomena, here that of the academic, but on nation-state constructed objects as such, beyond any comparison of nation states and their creatures such as the Homo Academicus, even if no one knows better than Bourdieu that the academic is a creature of state science that experiences quite diverse interpretations among the states of the world, differences unlike him globalized theorizing is so keen on.

Such questions of international comparative theories about the academic are not familiar to pre-globalized social science thinking, which is interested in the creatures of states in general, here the academic, and sociological thinking is interested in the academic—in what sociologists are interested in everything and everyone, which is why they are sociologists.

What does the sociological thinker, who is one of the most cited thinkers worldwide, theorize about under this title when he reflects on the academic under the question of their progressiveness versus conservatism? What moves this critical theorist under this question, under which he analyzes the Homo Academicus?

Dealing with the question of why the two departments at the Sorbonne have different political positions on what makes the student movement concerned, a thinker like Bourdieu knows, of course, that this protest by initially essentially intellectuals was directed against the US war against Vietnam, an object of protest that he is very familiar with and personally shares, but which is not addressed anywhere in his studies of conservative and progressive departments at the Sorbonne under the topic of a “homo academicus”. The Vietnam War, or rather the protest against it, is for this academic who theorizes about Homo Academicus only the political occasion promising him scientific attention, to debate the questions that interest him as a sociologist about any topic.

Vietnam War and protest against it, that is the world of politics, world politics is a subject of political science and for that reason alone it is not the subject of sociological studies. Sociological thinkers are concerned about a completely different, much more profound question, they always reflect on whatever they their object of thinking is: Bourdieu, social scientist, sociologist, left-wing thinker, what makes him concerned and what he does as a sociologist to answer the question why academics joined the protest against the war in Vietnam or not, a war, by the way, in which France, as the old colonial power, was still heavily involved—Bourdieu, who is above all whatever he thinks about a sociologist, and as sociologist, he does what sociologist always do: he digs in tons of all kinds of data, all of which have in common that they have nothing, absolutely nothing, to do with the Vietnam War or the war in general, but which are made up of all the ordinary kinds of data, the study of which provides sociologists with enlightening information about everything, really everything they study, data that sociologists find incredibly exciting, whatever they study, and which they also interpret when they are looking for an explanation, better after a confirmation of the explanation they have—which distinguishes conservativeness from its tautological opposite progressiveness—and do this through association-impregnated interpretations of data that should allow them to understand why people somewhere in the world are protesting against whatever, i.e. progressive, for him equals good, no matter what and where and why, just as the same data allow them to deeply understand why people only drink the same Coca Cola and others don’t, or why some beat up their children, i.e. are conservative, i.e. are bad.

Social scientists, here sociologists, know already, thanks to their disciplinary access to the objects of their theorizing, exactly how and where they find their answers to their questions, because they already have them, thanks to their disciplinary access, here why the world knows conservative and progressive academics and dig in their data on academics, just as if these subjects were a mere sociological synonym for any citizen in matters of progressiveness versus conservativeness. As for anything they dig in data like these: the family status, i.e. married, divorced, their sex, their age, what newspapers they read (conservative or progressive, enlightening), what kind of cars they drive, Deuschewo or Peuschewo, the districts where they live, Clichy or Bois de Boulogne, the size of their apartments in square meters, the number of children, the age when they got married, etc. and so on. ; in other words, all the card indexes constructed from a profoundly nation-state perspective and the state data derived from them on information defined by citizenship and collected accordingly, which serve the sociologically trained mind of a sociologist as profound “indicators” for theorizing about what sociologists always and in everything makes concerned, namely, the question of the extent to which citizens succeed in making friends with what sociologists have defined as their deepest need, their nationally defined duties, sociologically translated as the need for conformity with or deviations from their “social roles” or similar varieties of social classifications of the wholeness of societies, in order to pursue their sociological concern and to constantly observe whether the citizen simply follows their intended classification to and their community (conservative), i.e. everything remains as it is, or strives towards new kinds of interpretation of citizens life (progressively), so that the cohesion of society might be challenged on the basis of the given “norms”, and so that politics is challenged in its function, attributed to it by sociologists, of holding all and everything together, social cohesion they call the sociological top concern. Just as sociology ticks: Sociality as the noblest supreme task of state politics and sociological science as providing alarm signals for the demand for political intervention if this sociality is to be endangered. This is how sociologists look at the world, this is how they look at anything and this is how they look at academics.

For Bourdieu, in search of an answer to the question of who follows the protests and who does not, this question can thus be answered as easily as all sociologically constructed tautological questions. The fact that the objects of his research are academics can be entirely ignored; they only stand, anyway, for the only question that makes sociological thinking, no matter which genre of citizen arouses their interest concerned.

And one had almost suspected it: people who pay attention to their social status, who live in posh apartments in the Bois de Bologne, who drive fat cars, etc., etc., in other words, who have indicators pinned to them as proof of their conservatism, betray to the sociological mind that these conservatives can unambiguously only be conservatives and who—crystal clear—because conservatives, are conservative, and therefore do not join what is not conservative, i.e., the protest. And, who would have thought it, the other way round are those progressives: people who don’t get married when they should, drive a 2CV, live in cheap apartments in Montmartre, read critical newspapers, are people, as you can “conclude” from the indicators, who change or swap roles and these are without doubt the ones who go to protest for exactly that reason, and are therefore clearly—progressive.

Because sociological thinking translates every question about whatever and whoever into its one and only question, how the cohesion of society is, it has no problem asking the question of who is protesting against the Vietnam War and who is not, this question of a war, of a military conflict between states, to the sociologically translated completely detached question of who is the preserver and innovator, in order to understand sociological thinking as immensely critical with its concern for the preservation of the cohesion of a citizen society, so that there are citizens who join the protesters, because they, since they are progressive, represent the society’s future. And, because this sociological thinking can always use the same “indicators” for this kind of theoretical insight, which always addresses the same sociological question about everything and everyone, the competitive society is always criticized for this, with all its potential to endanger social cohesion, any society, sociological thinking knows originates from the nature of any society, any society is a society with all the invented worries about the eternally threatened cohesion of society. In line with of all the criticism, sociological thinking is also realistic enough to regard the state-made competitive society, with all its various private subjects and social conflicts, despite showing their most obvious nature as nation-state made subjects all being private property owners, as the archetype of all social life and to, therefore, keep a critical eye on it from sociological thinking to see whether anything does not cause this society to totter and require the intervention of its political violence.

Thus Bourdieu writes a book about what he, as a social science thinker, considers worth explaining about demonstrations against a war: first and foremost, himself, Bourdieu, the superior homo academicus, who ponders about homo academicus, its “social structure” or similar things that are immensely worth knowing for social science thinkers, who are all concerned about the existence of citizen societies, above all, their ever questioned cohesion and even more so about that of their representative of sociality, their state. This thinking, it must be noted, is all not nationalistic, despite all the concerns for the cohesion of the citizen society, or better not yet nationalistic, engaged by concerns about the cohesion of citizen societies and their states and committed to the sustainability of these citizen societies and their states, the more.