Franz Oppenheimer
Encyclopedia
Franz Oppenheimer was a German
-Jewish sociologist and political economist
, who published also in the area of the fundamental sociology of the state
.
and Berlin
, Oppenheimer practiced as a physician in Berlin from 1886 to 1895. From 1890 onwards, he began to concern himself with sociopolitical questions and social economics. After his activity as a physician, he was editor-in-chief of the magazine Welt am Morgen, where he became acquainted with Friedrich Naumann, who was, at the time, working door-to-door for different daily papers.
In 1909, Oppenheimer earned a Ph. D. in Kiel
with a thesis about economist David Ricardo
. From 1909 to 1917, Oppenheimer was Privatdozent
in Berlin, then for two years Titularprofessor. In 1914 he was one of co-founders of the German Committee for Freeing of Russian Jews
. In 1919, he accepted a call to serve as Chair for Sociology
and Theoretical Political Economy
at Johann Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt/Main. This was the first chair dedicated to Sociology in Germany
.
A Moshav
, Merhavia
, was founded by Jews using a plan for Agricultural cooperation written by Oppenheimer.
From 1934 to 1935, Oppenheimer taught in Palestine. In 1936 he was appointed an honorary member of the American Sociological Association
. In 1938, fleeing Nazi persecution, he emigrated via Tokyo and Shanghai to Los Angeles in the United States
. In 1941 he became a founding member of The American Journal of Economics and Sociology
.
Oppenheimer's son was Hillel Oppenheimer
, a professor of botany at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem
and an Israel Prize
recipient.
" and contributed to the "conquest theory" of the state
:
Oppenheimer also contributed a vital distinction by which human beings obtain their needs:
Albert Jay Nock
introduced these concepts to American readers in his own book "Our Enemy the State." His market and political ideas, especially about economic and political means, influenced Murray Rothbard
's thesis through Nock and Frank Chodorov
.
Oppenheimer's market socialist ideas are in line with other authors such as Thomas Hodgskin
, Benjamin Tucker
or Kevin Carson.
Ludwig Erhard
studied economics with Franz Oppenheimer and was strongly influenced by Oppenheimer's ideas of "liberal
socialist" economic policy that attempted to steer a middle path between state socialism
and liberalism
. Albert Jay Nock
, although a libertarian
and minarchist, as well as vocal critic of state-socialism, was deeply influenced by Oppenheimer's analysis of the fundamental nature of the state.
(The State).
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
-Jewish sociologist and political economist
Economist
An economist is a professional in the social science discipline of economics. The individual may also study, develop, and apply theories and concepts from economics and write about economic policy...
, who published also in the area of the fundamental sociology of the state
State (polity)
A state is an organized political community, living under a government. States may be sovereign and may enjoy a monopoly on the legal initiation of force and are not dependent on, or subject to any other power or state. Many states are federated states which participate in a federal union...
.
Personal life
After studying medicine in FreiburgFreiburg
Freiburg im Breisgau is a city in Baden-Württemberg, Germany. In the extreme south-west of the country, it straddles the Dreisam river, at the foot of the Schlossberg. Historically, the city has acted as the hub of the Breisgau region on the western edge of the Black Forest in the Upper Rhine Plain...
and Berlin
Berlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...
, Oppenheimer practiced as a physician in Berlin from 1886 to 1895. From 1890 onwards, he began to concern himself with sociopolitical questions and social economics. After his activity as a physician, he was editor-in-chief of the magazine Welt am Morgen, where he became acquainted with Friedrich Naumann, who was, at the time, working door-to-door for different daily papers.
In 1909, Oppenheimer earned a Ph. D. in Kiel
Kiel
Kiel is the capital and most populous city in the northern German state of Schleswig-Holstein, with a population of 238,049 .Kiel is approximately north of Hamburg. Due to its geographic location in the north of Germany, the southeast of the Jutland peninsula, and the southwestern shore of the...
with a thesis about economist David Ricardo
David Ricardo
David Ricardo was an English political economist, often credited with systematising economics, and was one of the most influential of the classical economists, along with Thomas Malthus, Adam Smith, and John Stuart Mill. He was also a member of Parliament, businessman, financier and speculator,...
. From 1909 to 1917, Oppenheimer was Privatdozent
Privatdozent
Privatdozent or Private lecturer is a title conferred in some European university systems, especially in German-speaking countries, for someone who pursues an academic career and holds all formal qualifications to become a tenured university professor...
in Berlin, then for two years Titularprofessor. In 1914 he was one of co-founders of the German Committee for Freeing of Russian Jews
German Committee for Freeing of Russian Jews
The German Committee for the Freeing of Russian Jews was created in August, 1914 by Franz Oppenheimer, Adolf Friedman and Leo Motzkin to lobby for the socio-political liberation of Jewish people living in the Russian Empire and ensuring their protection from pogroms...
. In 1919, he accepted a call to serve as Chair for Sociology
Sociology
Sociology is the study of society. It is a social science—a term with which it is sometimes synonymous—which uses various methods of empirical investigation and critical analysis to develop a body of knowledge about human social activity...
and Theoretical Political Economy
Political economy
Political economy originally was the term for studying production, buying, and selling, and their relations with law, custom, and government, as well as with the distribution of national income and wealth, including through the budget process. Political economy originated in moral philosophy...
at Johann Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt/Main. This was the first chair dedicated to Sociology in Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
.
A Moshav
Moshav
Moshav is a type of Israeli town or settlement, in particular a type of cooperative agricultural community of individual farms pioneered by the Labour Zionists during the second aliyah...
, Merhavia
Merhavia
Merhavia may refer to:*Merhavia , a kibbutz in northern Israel*Merhavia , a moshav in northern Israel originally known as the Co-operative in Merhavia...
, was founded by Jews using a plan for Agricultural cooperation written by Oppenheimer.
From 1934 to 1935, Oppenheimer taught in Palestine. In 1936 he was appointed an honorary member of the American Sociological Association
American Sociological Association
The American Sociological Association , founded in 1905 as the American Sociological Society , is a non-profit organization dedicated to advancing the discipline and profession of sociology by serving sociologists in their work and promoting their contributions to serve society.The ASA holds its...
. In 1938, fleeing Nazi persecution, he emigrated via Tokyo and Shanghai to Los Angeles in the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
. In 1941 he became a founding member of The American Journal of Economics and Sociology
The American Journal of Economics and Sociology
The American Journal of Economics and Sociology is a peer-reviewed academic journal established in 1941 by Will Lissner with support from the Robert Schalkenbach Foundation. The purpose of the journal was to create a forum for a continuing discussion of the issues raised by Henry George, a...
.
Oppenheimer's son was Hillel Oppenheimer
Hillel Oppenheimer
-Biography:Oppenheimer was born in Berlin, Germany in 1899. His father was Franz Oppenheimer, a German-Jewish sociologist and political economist. Between 1917 and 1922, Oppenheimer studied botany at universities in Berlin, Frankfurt and Freiberg in Germany and at the University of Vienna in...
, a professor of botany at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Hebrew University of Jerusalem
The Hebrew University of Jerusalem ; ; abbreviated HUJI) is Israel's second-oldest university, after the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology. The Hebrew University has three campuses in Jerusalem and one in Rehovot. The world's largest Jewish studies library is located on its Edmond J...
and an Israel Prize
Israel Prize
The Israel Prize is an award handed out by the State of Israel and is largely regarded as the state's highest honor. It is presented annually, on Israeli Independence Day, in a state ceremony in Jerusalem, in the presence of the President, the Prime Minister, the Knesset chairperson, and the...
recipient.
Origins of the State
Unlike Locke and others, Oppenheimer rejected the idea of the "social contractSocial contract
The social contract is an intellectual device intended to explain the appropriate relationship between individuals and their governments. Social contract arguments assert that individuals unite into political societies by a process of mutual consent, agreeing to abide by common rules and accept...
" and contributed to the "conquest theory" of the state
State (polity)
A state is an organized political community, living under a government. States may be sovereign and may enjoy a monopoly on the legal initiation of force and are not dependent on, or subject to any other power or state. Many states are federated states which participate in a federal union...
:
- "The State, completely in its genesis, essentially and almost completely during the first stages of its existence, is a social institution, forced by a victorious group of men on a defeated group, with the sole purpose of regulating the dominion of the victorious group over the vanquished, and securing itself against revolt from within and attacks from abroad. Teleologically, this dominion had no other purpose than the economic exploitation of the vanquished by the victors."
- "No primitive state known to history originated in any other manner. [1] Wherever a reliable tradition reports otherwise, either it concerns the amalgamation of two fully developed primitive states into one body of more complete organisation, or else it is an adaptation to men of the fable of the sheep which made a bear their king in order to be protected against the wolf. But even in this latter case, the form and content of the State became precisely the same as in those states where nothing intervened, and which became immediately 'wolf states'." (p. 15)
The economic and the political means
- "There are two fundamentally opposed means whereby man, requiring sustenance, is impelled to obtain the necessary means for satisfying his desires. These are work and robbery, one's own labor and the forcible appropriation of the labor of others. Robbery! Forcible appropriation! These words convey to us ideas of crime and the penitentiary, since we are the contemporaries of a developed civilization, specifically based on the inviolability of property. And this tang is not lost when we are convinced that land and sea robbery is the primitive relation of life, just as the warrior's trade - which also for a long time is only organized mass robbery - constitutes the most respected of occupations. Both because of this, and also on account of the need of having, in the further development of this study, terse, clear, sharply opposing terms for these very important contrasts, I propose in the following discussion to call one's own labor and the equivalent exchange of one's own labor for the labor of others, the “economic means" for the satisfaction of needs, while the unrequited appropriation of the labor of others will be called the "political means." (pp. 24-25)
Albert Jay Nock
Albert Jay Nock
Albert Jay Nock was an influential United States libertarian author, educational theorist, and social critic of the early and middle 20th century.- Life and work :...
introduced these concepts to American readers in his own book "Our Enemy the State." His market and political ideas, especially about economic and political means, influenced Murray Rothbard
Murray Rothbard
Murray Newton Rothbard was an American author and economist of the Austrian School who helped define capitalist libertarianism and popularized a form of free-market anarchism he termed "anarcho-capitalism." Rothbard wrote over twenty books and is considered a centrally important figure in the...
's thesis through Nock and Frank Chodorov
Frank Chodorov
Frank Chodorov was an American member of the Old Right, a group of libertarian thinkers who were non-interventionist in foreign policy and anti–New Deal...
.
Oppenheimer's market socialist ideas are in line with other authors such as Thomas Hodgskin
Thomas Hodgskin
Thomas Hodgskin was an Englishsocialist writer on political economy, critic of capitalism, free-market anarchist and defender of free trade and early trade unions...
, Benjamin Tucker
Benjamin Tucker
Benjamin Ricketson Tucker was a proponent of American individualist anarchism in the 19th century, and editor and publisher of the individualist anarchist periodical Liberty.-Summary:Tucker says that he became an anarchist at the age of 18...
or Kevin Carson.
Ludwig Erhard
Ludwig Erhard
Ludwig Wilhelm Erhard was a German politician affiliated with the CDU and Chancellor of West Germany from 1963 until 1966. He is notable for his leading role in German postwar economic reform and economic recovery , particularly in his role as Minister of Economics under Chancellor Konrad Adenauer...
studied economics with Franz Oppenheimer and was strongly influenced by Oppenheimer's ideas of "liberal
Liberalism
Liberalism is the belief in the importance of liberty and equal rights. Liberals espouse a wide array of views depending on their understanding of these principles, but generally, liberals support ideas such as constitutionalism, liberal democracy, free and fair elections, human rights,...
socialist" economic policy that attempted to steer a middle path between state socialism
State socialism
State socialism is an economic system with limited socialist characteristics, such as public ownership of major industries, remedial measures to benefit the working class, and a gradual process of developing socialism through government policy...
and liberalism
Liberalism
Liberalism is the belief in the importance of liberty and equal rights. Liberals espouse a wide array of views depending on their understanding of these principles, but generally, liberals support ideas such as constitutionalism, liberal democracy, free and fair elections, human rights,...
. Albert Jay Nock
Albert Jay Nock
Albert Jay Nock was an influential United States libertarian author, educational theorist, and social critic of the early and middle 20th century.- Life and work :...
, although a libertarian
Libertarianism
Libertarianism, in the strictest sense, is the political philosophy that holds individual liberty as the basic moral principle of society. In the broadest sense, it is any political philosophy which approximates this view...
and minarchist, as well as vocal critic of state-socialism, was deeply influenced by Oppenheimer's analysis of the fundamental nature of the state.
Writings
Franz Oppenheimer created an extensive oeuvre consisting of approximately 40 books and 400 essays which contain writings on sociology, economics, and the political questions of his time. One of the most renowned was Der StaatThe State (book)
The State is a book by German sociologist Franz Oppenheimer first published in Germany in 1908. Oppenheimer wrote the book in Frankfurt am Main during 1907, as a fragment of the four-volume System of Sociology, an intended interpretative framework for the understanding of social evolution on which...
(The State).
See also
- Social market economySocial market economyThe social market economy is the main economic model used in West Germany after World War II. It is based on the economic philosophy of Ordoliberalism from the Freiburg School...
- Political sociologyPolitical sociologyContemporary political sociology involves much more than the study of the relations between state and society . Where a typical research question in political sociology might have been: "Why do so few American citizens choose to vote?" or even, "What difference does it make if women get elected?" ...
- Economic sociologyEconomic sociologyEconomic sociology studies both the social effects and the social causes of various economic phenomena. The field can be broadly divided into a classical period and a contemporary one. The classical period was concerned particularly with modernity and its constituent aspects...
- Political economyPolitical economyPolitical economy originally was the term for studying production, buying, and selling, and their relations with law, custom, and government, as well as with the distribution of national income and wealth, including through the budget process. Political economy originated in moral philosophy...
- Marxist economics
Works
- A First Program for Zionist Colonization. (1903)
- The State. (1914/1922); pdf, OLL
- The Idolatry of the State. (1927)
- History and Sociology. (1927)
- TENDENCIES IN RECENT GERMAN SOCIOLOGY (Sociological Review, Vol. 24, 1932)
- A Post-Mortem on Cambridge Economics. (1943)