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ОглавлениеCapitalism and Bureaucracy in German Industrialization before 1914
Max Weber’s analysis of western civilization has two central concepts of bureaucracy and capitalism. Nonetheless, Weber made uncertain conclusions about the association between the two concepts and their influence on western “rationalization”. This scholar defined bureaucratic administration as
A concept identified by promotion, documentary procedures, salary, distinct jurisdiction areas, formal employment, hierarchical sub- and super-ordination, pension, as well as specialized training and functional division of labor. Bureaucratic administration can achieve the highest efficiency level and, in this regard, is officially the most sensible and recognized tool to prove superior to human beings. It is greater than another type regarding reliability, the strictness of its discipline, stability, and precision. Therefore, the concept enables a specifically great level of result computability for organizational directors and others involved in this area. In the end, bureaucratic administration is high-ranking regarding its operations’ scope and rigorous efficiency. It also can officially use all types of administrative responsibilities. Bureaucratic administration is continually extended, which is seen in economic enterprises, clubs, church and state, interest groups, political parties, endowments, armies, and several other areas.
In this context, mentioned the inability of modern capitalism to function without bureaucratic administration, whether it is in big corporations or in the community as a whole, highlighting both bureaucracy and capitalism’s anti-traditional rationality.
Conversely, both the conflicts and key differences between bureaucracy and capitalism were well known to Weber. While resources and co-ordination are mainly assigned and offered by the market’s invisible hands in capitalist economies, the hierarchies’ visible hands are involved in the provision of coordination and allocation of resources in bureaucratic organizations. On the other hand, administrators are selected based on formal examinations and qualifications, whereas established regulations necessitate considering more market-oriented and less formalized criteria in hiring employees and workers in the market economy. Moreover, both employees and employers in the market economy have less secure and less predictable positions and rewards and more dependent on the market and quantifiable accomplishments, compared to administrators, who benefit from seniority rights and tenure in the areas of salary and raise. Even though rapid acceptance of change, innovation, risks, and initiatives are implied from capitalist success, the components guaranteeing the success of bureaucratic administrations include accomplishing the appropriateness criterion, handling individual constellations as cases of general and fixed regulations, and reacting as anticipated. Weber was anxious about the fact that the comprehensive expansion of bureaucratic structures might restrain entrepreneurial innovation and capitalist dynamics apart from individual self-realization and political leadership by and large even though he was captivated by bureaucratic organization’s higher-level efficiency.
A more appropriate context, in which the association between bureaucracy and capitalism could be debated concretely, was German industrialization earlier than 1914.
Similar to other industrialization examples prior to 1917, German industrialization had a capitalistic character without a doubt. Applying capital accumulation and profit as key indicators, private entrepreneurs made the most strategic decisions about the assignment of production factors. The privately-owned firms that were linked with each other mainly via market mechanisms were directed by these individuals. Wage functions on a clearly dominated contractual basis and various German society’s aspects were formed by the conflicts and tensions between labor and capital.
Conversely, the incline in public bureaucracies set the scene for capitalist industrialization in Germany in stark contrast to Britain’s situation. Ignoring regional differences, German industrialization (estimated based on urbanization, enhanced growth, the development of the factory system and wage labor, improved labor force redistribution, and the establishment of a class of wage workers) began in the 1840s, which was more than half a century later, compared to Britain. Meanwhile, powerful public bureaucracies, which were outstandingly similar to one analyzed by Max Weber, later on, were properly established by the large German states, specifically Prussia, Saxony, and Bavaria. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, they had instigated under absolutist regulation, and their continuity was broken by no revolution. The monarchical powers of patronage were repressed by the king’s servants in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries through gaining pension and seniority rights and tenure and making appointment conditional on formal qualifications. Thus, they had converted themselves into civic servants comparable to the kind explained by Weber. Through the limitation of the monarch’s power without establishing powerful parliaments or other representative organizations, constitutional reforms increased the power of the high civil service at the beginning of the nineteenth century. The status, power, and some exclusiveness of a post-aristocratic type obtained by the higher civil servants was not primarily based on birth and was rather according to the assigned authority and official education, which obviously could not be accessed by lower classes, and then not limited to the descendants of the traditional élites either. The lead in the “reforms from above” was taken by the higher civil service considering the weak economic status of the majority of Germany, the underdevelopment of her representative organizations, and the immaturity of her bourgeoisie. This resulted in the moving of the larger states of Germany from the corporate-absolutist Ancien Régime to the nineteenth-century civil society, which would still show the impacts of its bureaucratically directed genesis even in Germany in the twentieth century. Needless to say, the emerging bourgeoisie, especially in the west, was one of the most notable supporters of change among others. Notably, in contrast to their beliefs about themselves, higher civil servants did not just represent the “common good” and also had their own distinct interests. In addition, they did not operate independently from strong social classes, especially land-owning class. Evidently, the reform process promoted by these individuals had significant constraints: liberation cannot be obtained by decree in the last analysis, and the bureaucracy policy inclined to stagnate in the long run, hampering with change processes, the dynamics of which were susceptible to getting out of bureaucratic control. Strangely enough, though, the higher civil servants supported the bureaucratically led reforms from above (the relative success of which was jointly related to the failures of revolution from below in nineteenth-century Germany) under pressure from a competitive international system, impressed by West European models, and concerned to improve the positions of the state and their own. Meanwhile, there was not a consistent trend until the end of the nineteenth century: the early decades witnessed the strongest bureaucratic impact on social and economic change, which began growing again approximately in the last thirty years.
There were around 63,000 civil servants in Prussia or approximately 1% of the labor force on top of about 134,000 members of the armed forces in 1852. However, approximately 4% of the labor force or 1.2 million public employees existed in the German Reich (such as military people) in 1910. According to the comparisons, the government employees’ proportionate importance in Germany was almost twice that of Great Britain in 1890. Nevertheless, the mentioned educational background and political power were found only in a small minority of these civil servants. Even so, important features of the civil service status were shared by most of these individuals, as far as policemen and postal staff, even if on different levels. These features included a praising image aligned with power, formalized procedures, a sense of duty, high esteem, a certain legal status under public law, special privileges in and loyalties to the state, security, and hierarchy. In a way, they were not just private citizens and were part of the state and its authority. There was a very high demand for civil service positions at all hierarchy levels even though they had low salaries, and the request for these positions was often more than the needed amount. Since industrialization occurred after bureaucratization, the process and character of industrialization were formed in Germany by bureaucratic values, structures, and processes, compared to the United States and Great Britain.
This can be established regarding the public authorities’ role in the reaction to social protests, the government’s share of capital stock and the total product, the role of public economic policy, the role of businessmen and officials in local reform movements, and several other approaches. Nevertheless, we only focused on two minor areas of German industrialization in the current research, which showed much wider procedures: 1) industrial organization and management, and 2) the appearance of a white-collar employee class. with regard to these issues, we set to determine the difference made by the bureaucratic tradition, the way industrialization affected the social and economic change, as well as the mechanisms used in this area and the results obtained.
In the early factory system, managers and entrepreneurs obviously dealt with critical issues of discipline and organization, selection and motivation, and coordination and control, which had been mysterious to craft shops’ masters or the merchants in the domestic systems. However, primary managers and entrepreneurs reflected on traditional models to eliminate these issues. The bureaucratic models, belonging to the stock of tradition, were rational to be used in Germany.
Bureaucratic patterns were expanded to the developing factory system and its management through various channels in practice. The mercantilistic period was followed by different interdependencies between early enterprises and government agencies. Responsible for developing and managing roads and canals using a technically trained workforce, government department carried on with being and nurturing. In addition to civil servants operating as entrepreneurs, the government resumed managing some enterprises, specifically in the mining area and then in the area of the railroad. In the technical and industrial education system, which started in the 1820s and primary industrial and scientific associations, civil servants had a great influence. Engineering expertise focused on special military units and Prussian technical management. There were 220 officers and 4000 men in the Prussian engineering corps in 1850. The private railroads and other firms hired skilled civil servants and military men and paid them higher wages, compared to the government. Evidently, their work was associated with the emergence of bureaucratic values, styles, and patterns in developing private businesses. Moreover, the stereotypes and preferences that ruled the culture and social climate of that time were regularly shared between the primary entrepreneurs and their employees. The above-mentioned content included the wide identification and concurring public image of German civil servants to a great extent.
Regarding an enterprise’s experience, we can carry out a complete assessment of the bureaucratic impact on industrial organization. Developed in 1847, the Siemens & Halske electrical manufacturing company was the forerunner in the field of electrical engineering and installations and was able to stay in the lead up until now. In 1872, 1895, and 1912, the number of employees in Germany was 600, 4000, and 57000, respectively, without considering its foreign branches. The Siemens management had very obvious bureaucratic traditions. A considerably smaller part of the paid employees were previous Prussian civil servants. Werner Siemens (the founder of the company) had partially studied in a technical military school in Berlin. Before starting his own business, also, he worked in the military for 15 years. Shop instructions were developed and indicated in 1855 (the shop discipline’s written and general guidelines were used by other factories in Germany no later than the 1830s). A system of written and generalized guidelines, which presented static communication lines within and between the offices was rapidly designed by the Siemens firm. The sources present a mature sense of hierarchy and occasionally deliver similar to a contemporary administrative agency’s files. This great level of bureaucratization cannot be described only as a managerial reply to the enterprise’s operational needs and it also followed the receiving of old organizational models designed outside the industry.
The status and self-image of the paid primary employees at Siemens showed an obvious impact of bureaucratic patterns from outside the company. They were evidently distinguished from the salaried workers based on the paid nature of their work, vacation advantages, remuneration by monthly incomes (partially based on seniority), and their real job security. They were on a par with civil servants in these areas. As a matter of fact, they, who were called Privatbeamte, incorrectly considered themselves as a private type of civil servants who have the responsibility of assigned authority and were qualified for specific advantages.
Nevertheless, it is worth noting that numerous interrelated components evidently restricted bureaucratic tendencies in the administration of the primary Siemens company to a greater extent than later and bigger firms. The bureaucratic character of the firm was limited by the power of family traditions. The hierarchical lines were penetrated and the developed patterns of communication were modified by the strength of the owner-entrepreneur and closest assistants. The generalization of the young enterprise’s processes, the repetitiveness of its operations, and the institutionalization of its functions were delineated by its comparatively small magnitude and fast altering nature.
Nevertheless, the business’s success was directly influenced by the bureaucratic patterns exploited in this area. The more traditional, contorted, and slow performance artisan-type first-generation factory workers, which were still predominant, were checked by bureaucratic controls that emphasized punctuality, regularity, and accuracy. This contributed to the enhancement of work efficiency. Accordingly, more traditional types of behavior were overturned and altered by the joint efforts of bureaucratic rationality and capitalist industrial requirements. Moreover, the bureaucratic influence aided the enterprise’s success by revealing itself in the civil-service ideology of the paid workers. The civil- servant ethos of employees existed on behalf of the management specifically due to the lack of existence of adequate tools for direct control (uncomplicated communication over long distances and advanced accounting methods). As a sympathetic observer has mentioned, this ethos hinted at “a resolute sense of justice, selfless attentiveness, modest loyalty, public spirit, a sense of responsibility, and honesty”. Such attitudes and self-images of the primary employees satisfied a function that was partially carried out by professional ethics during the early industrialization in Britain to the extent that this was more than mere rhetoric. They examined the broad uncertainties and dishonest activities of abjectly managed workers; whose fidelity was pivotal for the initial firm. In addition, it was possible for white-collar staff to take concurring with the complaining income earners into account due to workers’ civil-service self-images. They evidently empathized with the administration and considered the blue-collar power as dissimilar and mediocre. The white-collar advantages were maintained by the management, at least in later years, due to their ability to present fidelity and steadiness.
Following the Siemens company’s history in any detail cannot be possible here. The 1880s was accompanied by a growth crisis, especially when the downsides of bureaucratic organization turned more obvious: a specific deliberateness of response, administrative bottlenecks, and over-formalization. Nevertheless, new developments were made after 1890 under the guidance of the second generation; the company initiated choosing professional managers who were mostly graduated from technical universities. In addition, the management structure was rigorously improved, which, along with the mentioned action of the firm, progressed the bureaucratic traditions of the firm and changed them.
In addition to applying a more systematic method and depending on the objective, general regulations by the top management, bureaucratic tendencies were more manifested than before on the middle management levels, within the large white-collar sectors, and in the administration of the factory. While acting adaptively in the market, the field offices and sales departments centrally operated based on the most comprehensive and centrally issued rules. Their preparation was similar to that of public organizations, and most of their activities were extremely particularized and assorted. An edited form of shop organization was presented by Siemens & Halske by 1910. New planning offices host the control and planning of the factory work in advance, which is evidently distinguished from the shop floor’s operations. In this regard, there was escalating standardization in production and processes. Applying various colors of cards and forms to an unparalleled extent, a meticulous system of written prescriptions and controls was announced to justify the process of production. Similar to other big organizations, Siemens seemed to use “Taylorism” components without the exploitation of the name, unexpectedly prior to the propagation of these American industrial organization principles in Germany in the last years before World War I.
Equally in absolute and in relative terms, there was an increase in the number of paid workers. 1:11 in 1865, 1:7 in 1890, and 1:3.5 in 1912 were the ratios of salaried to manual employees in 1912. In many ways, Siemens’ 12500 paid workers’ status in 1912 was more similar, compared to that of these individuals in public bureaucracies. Compared to previous years, the majority of these people (with the exception of the individuals at the top) gained wages that were mostly determined based on seniority, and achievement criteria played an insignificant role in this regard. General regulations about fringe benefits, remuneration, recruitment, controls, and promotion were considering in managing these individuals. In addition, there was a certain level of concentration on the generalized qualifications in the recruitment process, including degrees from technical, commercial, and general schools. The majority of these people carried out extremely particularized and ordered responsibilities in an inflexible network of rules and in offices and departments that were hierarchically organized.
These modifications demonstrated growing bureaucratization that emerged from various components: from the simple development of the enterprise, from the technological alteration and the precision needed by costly and complex machinery, from the growing use of science, and from the need for more revolutionary methods of sales and accounting. This enhancement around the turn of the century was greatly the result of modification happening in the enterprise even though the impacts from outside public bureaucracies had a certain level of continuous effect in this regard. An internally generated process of industrial bureaucratization now strengthened the bureaucratic features of the Siemens management, which were greatly formed due to outside effects before 1890.
Nevertheless, there were still various limitations to the bureaucratization at Siemens. There was a continuous impact of personal and informal components on the top management level. The network of bureaucratic roles of the top decision makers that were forced on managerial departments and shops did not limit them. Numerous significant procedures of decision-making occurred via information communication channels. In addition, the deliberate emphasis on non-hierarchical patterns of cooperation between departments was observed. Moreover, the establishment of an internal price system occurred, followed by the incorporation of market elements into the firm’s management. The salary of the highest-ranking administrators was determined based on financial, success-related incentives. The authorities used deliberate decentralization policies, and there were still obvious dissimilarities between the workers’ status and a thoroughly established status of civil service- all the wishes and demands of workers. The success of the firm was eventually the main determinant of tenure and seniority regulations. Even at Siemens, some workers were fired in depressions. Having a self-made career was possible, which is now less frequent while taking a “suitable” position in the company could not be guaranteed by graduating from specific educational centers. In addition, favoritism was probable in raising the status of workers and was extremely practical.
Needless to say, a single case study was used to extract these data. Owing to the biography of Siemens’ founder, the company’s close contacts with such big organizations (e.g., the post office and railroads), and requirements of electrical engineering for specific precision and scientific preparation, the Siemens company may have been affected by the bureaucratic tradition more than other firms. Nonetheless, our information about other companies symbolizes the same path even though to a lower level. This is particularly factual for the railways, which in Germany were extremely affected by the government primitively, and which in the United States established advanced management techniques. There has been dynamic and increasing literature on business management and administration since the 1870s, and my representation of the Siemens case study is supported by a reading of the journals, manuals, etc. Be that as it may, our conclusions must be still considered to be hypothetical.
Bureaucratic patterns strongly influenced the development of industrial management vigorously affected the industrial management’s development due to the detailed circumstances of German industrialization. Initially, they were principally persuaded from the outside despite their contribution to the administrative success of primary companies. Afterwards, bureaucratization continued under novel commercial and technological circumstances, which was more due to the modifications in the company, compared to external effects. Despite the need for adjusting the existing bureaucratic structures and dispositions, which are under modification and reconciliation, into novel operations and strategies, they could be applied by German large-scale businesses in later development stages. The presence of these structures could facilitate meeting the need for structured administration, more skilled employees who have formal education from outside schools, and precision and logical management.
The development of acceptable expansive administrations in an advanced industrial capitalism stage has been an extremely more complex procedure in countries that have no powerful bureaucratic traditions. Currently, a similar British list was used to compare the hundred largest German mining and manufacturing companies in 1887 and 1907. There are noticeable differences between German and British firms, including the extent of functional incorporation, size, and the diversification degree, for which there are several reasons. In this regard, one of the reasons could be the more effortless access to administrative and executive skills on the German side owing to the traditions and structures discussed earlier. Nevertheless, it is worth re-emphasizing that the techniques and structures of bureaucracy were always just one aspect of industrial management. Their checking and combining with other patterns, specifically with individual, family-based administrative methods, and with the mechanisms and incentives of the market were necessary in order to be practical. Specifically, the top management positions sustained working based on pre- bureaucratic patterns. In the previous study, all restrictions of bureaucratization in the industrial firm were caused by its dependency on the market and specific accomplishment orientation. In addition, it resulted from the endured as its main source of valid influence that was able to effectively evade yielding to the bureaucratization’s pressures.
All industrializing societies show the dissimilarity between salaried (non-manual) and wage (manual) employees. In addition, a great deal of sociological literature is related to the difference between Arbeiter and Angesttellte, ouvriers and employés, and blue-collar and white-collar. My first argument is that this practically omnipresent difference was specifically clear and socially appropriate in Germany in the 19th and early 20th centuries. My other argument is that the bureaucratic influence on the industrialization of Germany was partially responsible for the specific clarity of this “collar line”.
As mentioned before, factors such as job security, initial welfare advantages, and payment amount and type were mostly considered in the clear differentiation between wage workers and paid individuals in the early industrialization phases in firms. Compared to American firms in a similar period, there was a more obvious difference between wage earners and paid individuals in the industrial companies of Germany that were studied thus far. Despite the similarly visible difference between wage earners and paid workers in English companies in the 19th century, salesmen, technicians, clerks, technicians, and office employees never considered themselves as ‘'Pri'oatbeam te’ (private civil servants) neither in Britain nor in the United States.
To explore the significance of the emerging distinction between blue- and white-collar work and workers, it is necessary to consider it in general terms, rather than as a manifestation of the experience of individual enterprises. And in what follows I shall take draftsmen, technicians, and engineers as examples. Bureaucratic traditions contributed to the formation of these groups, and the school system served as an intermediating link.
Gewerbeinstitute and Gewerbeschulen, a series of public technical and industrial schools, were established by Prussia and other German states at the beginning of the 1820s. The national wealth, the government's aim of promoting the industry, and the state’s power are among the most important motives behind this initiative, which are numerous. The presence of several accessible scholarships and the simulated lack of entrance examinations in the early years made access to these schools easy. For instance, nearly 3500 technicians graduated from the Berlin Gewerbeinstitut in the first 50 years, the majority of whom took on paid positions in private companies, such as supervisors, foremen, managers, draftsmen, and engineers.
Nevertheless, a detailed academization procedure was conducted in some of these schools around the middle of this century. There was a decrease in practical education even though it was previously a crucial section of the courses. The comparatively independent status of faculties was pursued by teachers. Qualifications for entrance became stricter: while elementary school background was enough in the 1830s, Abitur-graduation from a Gymnasium or a similar secondary school was a condition for application by 1870. There was a rise in fees and a reduction in stipends. Lower-class families’ sons dealt with more access difficulties. The distinctive name of the organization grew inevitably from industrial school to industrial organization to industrial academy, and finally, in Berlin in 1 879, to technical university or technical college (Technische Hochschul).
The entire modifications were related to a complicated procedure, where industrial production methods would turn into more scientific ones. Changing the courses of schools and increasing their standards led to the responding of these centers to the growing requests from industry. In addition, the schools trained skilled workers, the hiring of whom by companies led to the introduction of more orderly and partially scientific techniques. Therefore, the 1850s were associated with the emergence of building offices in big machine construction companies of Germany and laboratories in the field of chemical industries and metal manufacturing. Meanwhile, thorough investigations demonstrate that the provision of educationally qualified individuals preceded the industry’s evident requests: not only schools answered to the prevailing requests, but also, they created these demands. We partially observe the teachers at work and the demands of graduates and managers for social upgrading behind those schools’ academization.
There seemed to be a low level of social prestige of employees, administrators, and businessmen in the private economy during the early phases of industrialization in Germany. Indeed, Germany was not unfamiliar with early businessmen’s low status, compared to more traditional positions and elites. Nevertheless, the solution to this problem was probably peculiar. In this country, education was an extremely significant factor for social standing, and qualifications that are formal and examination-proved aided as a significant stage for privileges of status, power, positions, and income. There was a close association between the education of a person and their eligible occupation. In other words, this close fit that did not exist in America or Britain in the 19th century was represented by foreign visitors who frequently observed and mocked the significant importance of titles. Meanwhile, all of these issues were a fragment of the bureaucratic legacy in Germany. Subsequently, a high level of hierarchical differentiation and functional specialization specified the school system of Germany, which was managed by civil servants anyhow. Technical schools were united with this system in the third quarter of the century, which led to the entrance of graduates and teachers of those schools in the system of positions and titles, which was an important source of recognition and esteem in Germany aside from honorable birth and landed property. This path to social promotion did not lead to a shortage of energy, human resources, and talents in the industry, which was in contrast to becoming a scholar or a landed rentier.
This bureaucratically directed procedure of academization in Germany aided as the foundation for the emergence of engineers’ profession, which was evidently distinguished from foremen, artisans, craftsmen, etc. Before that, there was no obvious distinction between engineers, mechanics, and technicians regarding semantic classification, self-identification, and job profiles. Formerly, the “engineer” word mostly denoted members of the special military establishment accountable for the development of war machines, bridges, and roads. Nonetheless, the meaning of “engineer” was altered in the mid-19th century, turning into a collective title for technical men who were non-military with a minimum of theoretical training, who did salaried work.
Verein Deutscher Ingenieure (VDI), which is the origins of the most effective engineering association, represented the close connection between the formation of the engineering profession and the academization of technical schools. An alumni association of the Berlin industrial academy encompassed the first emergence of this concept in 1856, the statutes of which emphasized greater technical training and theoretical background as a main characteristic of the Ingenieur. In the 19th century, there was no parallel expansion in England. At the minimum, on-the-job apprenticeship was still recognized as the main part of the training of an engineer in the British machine tool industry. Compared to Germany, the distinction between trained mechanics and salaried technical workers was evidently less delineated in England in this regard. Once more, this result seems to be verified by semantic variances. The English word “engineer” could also mean specific kinds of trained blue-collar employees, whereas the French and German words “ingenièur” and “Ingenieur”, respectively, obviously omitted wage employees, even the most trained mechanics.
Through the identification of the association between the changing pattern of class, group, and strata formation and changes in the training system in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, we could easily explain this line of argument. Nevertheless, I want to talk about another mechanism instead, which led to the contribution of bureaucratic impacts to the formation of a separate white-collar class, and incidentally to the comparatively obvious description of the German blue-collar working class.
Despite what was discussed earlier, there was still a fractured and ambiguous separating line between white-collar and blue-collar employees outside the single companies by the 1880s. In addition, this issue was still subject to public opinion and somehow unrelated to political matters. Various groups of white-collar workers (e.g., technicians, bank employees, and retail clerks) failed to partake in similar actions or share an adequate level of attitudes or experiences to exhibit a common consciousness. There was no conventional semantic separation between Arbeiter and Angestellte or Arbeiter and Prioatbeamte outside individual businesses, even though it was not unfamiliar in the 1880s.
Nonetheless, the picture had drastically altered by the start of World War I. The term “Angestellte had been fully recognized when public debates, books, periodicals, and pamphlets covered the issue of Angestelltenfrage. In addition, cooperation was initiated between various white-collar jobs to follow a common action. Moreover, the development of a white-collar movement, which included white-collar groups from various industries and jobs, separated them from the blue-collar employees and self-employed individuals. Indeed, adherence to special sectoral and occupational identities and being separated in various ways continued for different kinds of white-collar employees. Nonetheless, a real social group that had a kind of common consciousness, common organization, shared interests, clear visibility, and internal communication started to be referred to by the concept “Angestellte”. What did lead to this?
One of the impacts was alternations in the structure of the jobs and another stimulus for white-collar employees to mention the one thing they had in common (i.e., they were not wage workers) was the increasing challenge of a blue-collar working-class movement. Nevertheless, the bureaucratic tradition seemed to be the clear cause of this initial construction of a comparatively distinguishing white-collar class. It was extremely in line with the German reform tradition from above, with the civil service’s strength and self-consciousness, and with the overall expectations and values of numerous citizens that the government growingly interfered in the economy and in social relations in the 1870s and 1880s to control stresses and calm struggles that were mostly the consequence of industrial capitalism improvement. An articulation of interests was stimulated by the increase in the state intervention, which resulted in an enhancement that was planned to affect decisions made by the government and more clarified the formerly ambiguous lines of diversity and better establishment of social groups in the process.
Ratified in the 1880s, the public insurance system was the most significant problem, for which a common identity was formed by white-collar employees, which was different than blue-collar staff and similar employers. The obligatory accident, old age, and health insurance schemes designed by Bismarck encompassed both industrial blue-collar employees and a great number of white-collar staff, whose yearly salaries were lower than a specific range. The systems did not distinguish between manual employees and non-manual workers even though the benefits and payments were classified based on criteria such as length of membership and income levels. Nonetheless, if occupational groups were able to establish their own organizations to design voluntary insurance schemes that met specific criteria, the law would allow them to contract out of some of the public schemes.
It is no wonder that some groups of non-manual workers felt adequately unlike and greater than the mass of the workers to pick this alternative. The first organization of non-manual workers from various jobs and sections was caused by the founding of the “Deutscher Privatbeamten-Verein” in 1881, which encompassed office workers, engineers, bookkeepers, bank employees, etc. In addition, it provided an insurance scheme that imitated the benefits enjoyed by civil servants after retirement.
While the initiative had many limitations, a much larger movement started in the late 1890s, which followed similar objectives but had profound influences. At that point, numerous white-collar employees, who had an annual income of below 2,000 marks, were included in the public old-age pension plan along with a large number of industrial staff. Most organizations of employees managed by three associations of commercial employees and also the organizations of general office employees, banks, technicians, and foremen began disturbances for removing all Angestellte from the public insurance plan. They supposedly differed from blue-color employees by demanding a distinguished general insurance scheme for Angestellte, which could more suitably meet their special needs. They pushed for an insurance scheme that was designed based on the civil servants’ pension schemes as much as possible. In addition, they demanded special conditions, requested greater advantages and were prepared to pay a somewhat higher premium. In order to rationalize the argument that white-collar staff was different from and superior to blue-collar employees, an entire set of various ideologies and rhetoric was established during the period of more than ten years of growing tension to support such a law. Despite numerous continuous differences, a common identity of Angestellte was maintained across occupational lines during these years. This led to the more obvious distinction between blue-collar and white-collar employees. In addition, the“Angestellte” and “Fri'oatbeam te” concepts developed into completely defined, accepted, and famous ones.
Even though financial exigencies indicated that advantages were still falling short of the benefits of civil servants, the requested law was passed in 1911. Primarily, the success of the request for legal privilege occurred due to securing support from the government and various middle-class parties, wanting to guarantee the staying of the increasingly developing group of non-manual workers outside the powerful socialist camp and loyal to the current order.
Contrary to the United States, England, and France, Austria experienced similar legal improvements. At that time, the fact that a worker was skilled as white-collar staff (Angestellter) or not was a matter of legal significance in Germany. There were frequent distinctions between Angestellte and Arbeiter based on the labor and social legislation passed in the following years, which resulted in the incorporation of an explanation of the 1911 law (somewhat reviewed and engorged in later years). Regarding real-life opportunities, it seemed that the greater the differentiation caused by the laws, the more relevant the line between white-collar and blue-collar employees. The difference is more evident in Germany, compared to other countries, regarding public symbolism, industrial relations, social and labor legislation, political behavior, political language, union structures, collective mentalities, and in several other areas at least up to 1933 and even today to some extent.
The movement has led to profound political and social outcomes. For instance, there appears to have been an equally strengthening association between the acuity of the white-collar/blue-collar line on the one hand, and fairly insignificant importance of the distinction between trained and untrained blue-collar employees on the other hand. The separation between an upper group of trained wage employees and a large number of untrained or inadequately trained blue-collar staff was less emphasized in Germany in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, compared to the United States and Britain, regarding political behavior and union structure, maybe even culture and lifestyles. The fact that there has been no argument about a labor aristocracy in Germany might not be due to only a historiographical individuality but rather a use of social reality. I would claim that the German discussion about Angestelltenfrage, the political-social separation between blue-collar and white-collar employees (which was, evidently, a political discussion-would the workers join the camp of socialist, why did they not?) was a practical correspondent of British labor aristocracy discussion. It has been almost vague in the United States and Britain and active in Germany since 1910.
This paper is not suitable for debating the labor aristocracy issues. Nonetheless, it is appropriate to mention that the initial legislation of social welfare in Germany, which is a part of the German tradition of bureaucratic improvement from above, formed the conditions in which various kinds of non-manual workers addressed their commonalities as against the blue-collar working strata. Their requests were both inspired and legalized by the ideology of private civil servants. A strong, if the ideal, model was offered by this ideology of bureaucratic origin for communal self-identification that was neither practical nor dichotomic but class-conscious. It split occupational and practical variances between them and minimized them. Simultaneously, it emphasized the gulf, the social distance, between them, and the crowd of employees and lower-class individuals generally. Moreover, it explained the non-manual workers as fitting a middle stratum, evidently ticked off from the lower class, and distinguished from the élite and the employers. Moreover, precise declarations and objectives were highlighted by the ideology of private civil servants. It was not unintentional that non-manual workers were organized by insurance affairs. Not only private civil servants declared obviously outlines status, but also, they claimed security and shield against market changes and against risks, in general. Their mentalities and goals were engraved by bureaucratic, rather than capitalist, traditions. Subsequently, both their mission for security beyond the market and their clear rights for status extremely conflicted with the actual advancement of capitalism and related crises in the first third of the 20th century. The subsequent hatreds and objections were very severe, not without anti-capitalist implications and more highlighted than they would have been without the tradition of bureaucracy.
The current paper has been an extremely basic image of the situation that excluded numerous qualifications and diversities. Specifically, despite the fact that regional variances were highlighted in the current discussion on industrialization, they have been overlooked. Nonetheless, the application of the international comparisons and national context might be more logical in the debate of the bureaucratic conditions of industrialization, compared to the assessment of some other aspects of industrialization.
Regarding Germany, it seems that bureaucratic traditions and structures have simplified economic rationality and efficiency at the level of white-collar employees and industrial management. In this regard, Weber’s fascination with the bureaucratic virtues would be supported by the experience rather than the mentioned scholar’s doubts about bureaucratic conformity. Nevertheless, the bureaucratic tradition led to a level of inequality that was not completely understandable regarding capitalist industrialization in itself on the social-historical side. It is recommended that this conclusion be assessed through the examination of other aspects of industrialization in Germany from comparable points of view and by more continuous comparison with other countries.
Now let’s take a look at Social Capital, Consumption, and Industrious Revolution in what is now known as Modern Germany!
