David Abraham

The collapse of the Weimar Republic : political economy and crisis

Analysing the conflicts within and between organised industrial and agricultural forces in Germany as well as those between capital and labour, the author shows how these conflicts made it impossible for a coherent political force to emerge to hold the democratic republic together and how, after a period of costly cooperation with labour, and faced with unacceptable alternatives, Germanys elites found unity in a dictatorship that removed the working class from politics and obliged the dominant classes to abdicate all but their economic interests.

State and Classes in Weimar Germany

SOME thirty-five years ago, Franz Neumann, though writing at a time hardly conducive to a generous reading of the political possibilities of the late Weimar Republic, observed that there had been several political alternatives to fascism, not just a socialist alternative. Much of the debate that has sought either to indict or exonerate capitalism (or capitalists) has taken the collapse of the bourgeois republic rather too for granted. Similarly, the study of the political development and social origins of modem state forms has allowed the importance (and horror) of fascism as a &dquo;final outcome&dquo; to do considerable

The Geometry of Inside and Outside

These are two important books. The Citizen and the Alien provides a rigorous and illuminating scrutiny of the conundrum faced by making out current concept and politics of citizenship work within liberal moral and political philosophy. The Birthright Lottery, a book with many virtues, recasts birthright citizenship in a manner analogous to the end of entailed property transmission brought about by liberal reform. This essay suggests that Bosniak is unduly pessimistic about bounded communities and that Shachar is unduly optimistic about the relationship between property rights and democracy.

Immigrant Integration and Social Solidarity in a Time of Crisis: Europe and the United States in a Postwelfare State

A cloud has settled over the immigration regimes of the European welfare states and the United States. Confidence has waned in the viability and value of integrating newcomers into a system of social solidarity. The weakening of civic nationalism and secular constitutional patriotism has unsettled national identities and undermined efforts to facilitate the inclusion of immigrants, especially Muslims. More forceful integration policies might better sustain the welfare state, but individual liberties and group recognition make this more difficult. Ironically, immigrants may now fare better in more unjust neoliberal societies such as the United States than in the advanced welfare states. This article looks at Europe (Germany in particular) and the United States to assess recent developments. Current arrangements are inadequate to resolve the dual crisis of integration and solidarity at the very moment that social equality is increasingly undermined by fiscal crises and aggressive neoliberal social policies.

America, Germany, Israel: Three Modes of Citizenship and Incorporation

In todays liberal democracies, the “social question” and the “immigration question” have become entwined as rarely before. Elites and citizens alike ask who belongs to the national political and social community of the “we” and what belonging entails in the way of rights and obligations. Under the impact of unprecedented free mobility for both capital and labor and the crises of the social welfare state, the borders and bonds of citizenship have been changing, mostly weakening. This essay takes a preliminary look at how these two questions are intertwined in the United States, Germany, and Israel.

The rule of law under siege : selected essays of Franz L. Neumann and Otto Kirchheimer

In the pathbreaking essays collected here, Neumann and Kirchheimer demonstrate that the death of democracy and the rise of fascism during the first half of the twentieth century suggest crucial lessons for contemporary political and legal scholars. The volume includes writings on constitutionalism, political freedom, Nazism, sovereignty, and both Nazi and liberal law. Most important, the Frankfurt authors point to the continuing efficacy of the rule of law as an instrument for regulating and restraining state authority, as well as ominous evidence of the rule of laws fragility in modern liberal democracy.