The Collapse of the Weimar Republic analyzes the complex political economy of inter-war Germany.
David Abraham examines how and why the countrys economic and political leaders turned away from social democracy and international integration, choosing instead to support the Nazi party to preserve their dominance. Theoretically sophisticated within a Marxist tradition and deeply researched in both public and private archives, the book sets out to answer key questions about capitalism and democracy. How did Weimar Germany, one of the first modern welfare states, balance the interests of working people and economic elites? What leads elites to undermine democracy, and what happens when they do? And what, ultimately, enables a liberal democracy to survive in a capitalist society?
Preface to the First Edition (1981)
Preface to the Second Edition
Foreword to the Third Edition
List of Figures
List of Tables
Abbreviations
Introduction to the First Edition
Introduction to the Second Edition
Introduction to the Third Edition
Benjamin Carter Hett
1 The State and Classes: Theory and the Weimar Case
1State and Economy in Weimar
2State and Society in Weimar
3Stability in Weimar: Bloc 3 and Labours Support
4Crisis and the End of Stability
2 Conflicts within the Agricultural Sector
1The Modes of Agricultural Production
2Estate-Owner Domination and the Bases of Rural Unity to 1924
31925 to the Crisis: The Absence of Alternatives and Immanence of Conflict
4The Agricultural Crisis, Its Resolution and Contribution to the General
Crisis
3 Conflicts within the Industrial Sector
1From Prewar Conflict to Post-inflation Equilibrium
2Industrial Politics in the Period of Stability
3Industrial Production
4Interindustrial Conflicts and Mechanisms: AVI, Tariffs, and Reparations
5Political Responses to the Crisis: Bürgerblock, Brüningblock, and
National Opposition
6A Note on Industry and Work Creation
4 Conflicts between Agriculture and Industry
1Dominant and Dependent Sectors
2Strategies for Sectoral Interaction after 1925
3The Economic Interaction of the Two Sectors
4Strategies 1 and 2: Exports versus Protection, 19251931
5Strategy 3: Modernisation, Conciliation, and Reform
6After Exports and Reform: Toward a New National Sammlung Bloc
71932: Ontogeny Recapitulates Phylogeny
8Strategies 4 and 5: Cartelisation and Imperialism
5 The Reemergence of the Labour/Capital Conflict
1Social Compromise: Its Results and Its Limits
2The Politics of Sozialpolitik
3Implementing Industrys Program
6 In Search of a Viable Bloc
1Organised Capitalism, Fragmented Bourgeois Politics, and Extrasystemic
Solutions
2Collapse of the Grand Coalition: End without a Beginning
3The Failure of Brünings Crisis Strategy
4The Break between Representatives and Represented
5Toward the Extrasystemic Solution
6From New Base to New Coalition
Bibliography
Index
David Abraham is Professor Emeritus of Law at the University of Miami. A historian and legal scholar, he has published extensively on the political economy of liberal democracyits successes and failuresas well as on contemporary issues of immigration and social solidarity.
