Industrial Factionalism in Modern German History

Abstract

At a time when the Republican party in America seems to have abandoned its brief hopes of proclaiming a new paradigm, it may seem apropos to observe that old ones die hard—and not only in public life. A case in point from the scholarly world is the subject of this essay: the persistent historiographical notion of industrial factionalism. Throughout this century, students of German political economy have tended to see the country's business world as divided between two groupings. One comprises the classic heavy industries of the first Industrial Revolution and the Ruhr: coal, iron, and steel. Supposedly oriented toward domestic markets, burdened with high labor costs, doomed to flattening gains in productivity and profits, and habituated to hierarchy within their plants and the nation, executives in this grouping have figured in the historical literature as consistently and intransigently united against free trade, labor unions, and parliamentary government—indeed, against modernization itself.