Baixei - Gemeinschaft - and - Gesellschaft - Societies3
Baixei - Gemeinschaft - and - Gesellschaft - Societies3
Baixei - Gemeinschaft - and - Gesellschaft - Societies3
Tony Waters
Department of Sociology
September 2014
Abstract
Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft Societies refer to the traditions of German
sociologists Ferdinand Tönnies and Max Weber who drew contrasts between a
modern society dominated by the rational calculations in the "Gesellschaft," and
the traditional affectual values of the "Gemeinschaft." Both saw a strong contrast
between the two types of society, and saw the transitions between the two types of
society as being at the heart of the industrial revolution of the nineteenth century.
Tönnies viewed this shift as a positive development in which the Gesellschaft
would eventually overwhelm the Gemeinschaft. In contrast, Weber was the two
coexisting but repelling each other as society became more modern but banal.
Introduction
Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft are two German words which are difficult to translate
into English, and roughly mean “community” and “market society.” However, the two
words, while not opposites, do typically define each other in German, particularly as they
have been used since the classical sociologist Ferdinand Tönnies highlighted the
distinction in his book Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft (Community and Society) in 1887.
Tönnies asserted that pre-modern society was dominated by Gemeinschaft ties, while
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The terms Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft are particularly important for understanding
the origin of German social theory, particularly theories that emerged from the ideas of
first Tönnies, and later Max Weber. Both classical theorists used the two words to
describe how modern society emerged from older sentimental values rooted in emotions,
Tönnies was the first sociological writer to use the German terms Gemeinschaft and
will.” Such relationships were important in the traditional world of feudalism and
rank. Thus, high-ranking nobles identified only with each other, low-status peasants
identified with only each other, as did members of the baker guild, militia members and
other such feudal groupings. These Gemeinschaft relations were maintained in the
context of private sentiment and loyalty, rather than simply productivity in the
cash wages, or what Tönnies calls “rational will.” These relationships typically meant
that people calculate the value relationships. Such calculations were made by evaluating
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In other words, Gemeinschaft-based relationships tend to be affectual, while
one, in which European societies emerging from the Industrial Revolution of the
older forms of Gemeinschaft society. He believed that this new modern society, while
impersonal. Tönnies’ formulation assumed that the new Gesellschaft society was superior
because the material advantages of modern life would eventually overwhelm the older
absorbed into a more modern rational Gesellschaft society and modernity, so that there
logically would be a time when the affectual, emotional, and traditional bases of the
Gemeinschaft were overwhelmed by the more modern rational bases of the Gesellschaft.
Later writers would claim that the newer life would naturally replace older traditional
forms of life completely; in this respect Tönnies logic is like that of his contemporaries
who celebrated the evolutionary “survival of the fittest” understandings of both biological
and socio-economic life of theorists like Charles Darwin and Herbert Spencer.
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customs, close-knit neighborhood ties, and face-to-face contacts.” He added that a
Or, as Tönnies himself emphasized, the social group has characteristics of the
Gemeinschaft, “so far as the members think of such a grouping as a gift of nature or
created by supernatural will.” About the Gesellschaft, Tönnies added that social classes
innovation for German sociology of the 1880s. Notably, the distinction was not used in
the same way by earlier German-language writers, such as Karl Marx and Friedrich
Engels who, while using both words, never drew the contrasts that Tönnies did. Nor for
that matter did Franz Kafka in his 1920 essay “Gemeinschaft” which is titled
“Fellowship” in English.
Tönnies and the classical French Sociologist Emile Durkheim both quibbled with the
concept in their own languages. And while they quibbled over details, Durkheim’s
dichotomy between the pre-modern “mechanical solidarity” and “organic solidarity,” and
Tönnies concepts of Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft were indeed similar (see e.g. Aldous,
After publishing his book Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft at age 32, Tönnies became a
major figure in the German-speaking sociological world. What is more, the dichotomous
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common everyday use, German speakers still often continue to see the terms as a
matched pair.
the English-speaking world only after Tönnies book was finally published in English by
Charles Loomis in 1957 with the bilingual title Community and Society (Gemeinschaft
both the title, and in the text. As a result, many English-speaking sociology students of
the 1960s and 1970s learned the two German words. However, reference to the terms
peaked in the 1970s, as did Tönnies’ influence on the English-speaking world, as the
classical works of sociologists Karl Marx and Max Weber became more important than
those of Tönnies.
with American sociologists in the 1960s who were interested in assisting the United
States government develop programs in the former European colonies of Asia, Africa,
and Latin America. In particular, Tönnies framework meshed well with the
rationalized efficient forms, especially market capitalism and democracy. Such values
also meshed well with American political goals during the Cold War of the 1960s and
1970s, and in this context Tönnies’ approach came to be associated with American
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foreign policy and its emphasis on “survival of the fittest” in both economic systems (i.e.
Tönnies use of the terms Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft was admired by Max Weber
when he was writing his master work Economy and Society in the 1910s (see Weber
1920/1968: 4, 41; and Radkau 2009:413-415). Like Tönnies, Weber explicitly puts the
distinction between Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft at the heart of his sociology, while
also pointing out that he used the terms in a slightly different fashion. In particular,
Weber sought to better explain how the traditional world during the nineteenth century
became the modernity of twentieth century industrial Europe. He saw this new society as
being enormously productive, but also soulless and heartless, i.e. not necessarily “better”
Weber followed explicitly in Tönnies’ footsteps when using the terms Gemeinschaft
and Gesellschaft. But he did this in a fashion that is less mechanistic than Tönnies had
with the “overtones of harmony and warmth.” Instead Weber adapted the concepts to
Thus Weber agreed with Tönnies that Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft were good
analytical categories. However, Weber disagreed with the assertion that development of
instead viewed modern life as banal, and believed that there was an on-going tension
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emphasize this tension, Weber introduced two German gerunds (i.e. “verbal nouns”)
For Weber, Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft co-exist like oil and water, repelling each
other while also mixing, rather than the unidirectional historical process described by
distinctions, he also emphasized that both types of society always coexisted, albeit
Gesellschaft was small and the Gemeinschaft all-encompassing. But most particularly
unions which emerge to protect the market position of labor as an example of how such
tensions play. Labor unions he said, emerged to address specific economic issues of the
But often labor unions eventually develop into club-like “brotherhoods” to which
the cold calculated values of the rational market on the one hand, and the sentiment
and objectification. These are of course concerns Weber shared with Marx, Nietzsche,
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Reception of Weber in the English-speaking World
Weber’s essays about Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft were first translated into English
in the 1940s by Hans Gerth and C. Wright Mills (1944 and 1947). In their influential
respectively, and not left in German as was to happen when Tönnies’ writings were
disappeared as concepts in Weber’s sociology for English readers. Scholars instead were
Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft were always critical for understanding the transition from
feudal societies rooted in personal loyalties, into modern industrial societies rooted in
markets.
Weber in 2010 with publication of new translations of Weber’s essay “Class, Stände,
Parties” by Dagmar Waters, Tony Waters, and others (see Waters and Waters 2010,
Weber 2010, and Waters and Waters 2015). It remains to be seen if this emphasis on
irrespective of whether or not people know about what Tönnies and Weber wrote. For
example, the German word for “corporation” which is a group formed specifically to
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conduct business in the marketplace is “Gesellschaft,” and is usually translated today as
such in this context. The word Gemeinschaft is used in German to describe many
relationships which include affective sentiments. It is even used to describe the European
Union which in German is called the “Europäische Gemeinschaft.” The fact that
European Union apparently reflects the fact that Germans see the European Union as a
Thus in many ways the distinctions that Tönnies and Weber focused on in their sociology
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Weber, Max. (2010). Translation of Max Weber’s Essay “Class, Status, Party.” Journal
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