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How the AJES got its mission statement in 1941: Adolph Lowe's plea for cooperation and constructive synthesis in the social sciences - American Journal of Economics and Sociology
American Journal of Economics and Sociology, The, Oct, 2002 by Mathew Forstater
I
ADOLPH LOWE'S "PLEA FOR COOPERATION IN THE SOCIAL SCIENCES" in his greatly overlooked and underexamined Economics and Sociology (1935) remained an important theme of his life's work for the next sixty years. Even prior to 1935, Lowe was immersed in such a tradition. He held the Chair in Economic Theory and Sociology at Kiel University in the late 1920s and early 1930s. His mentor, Franz Oppenheimer, held the Chair in Sociology at Frankfurt University, then Germany's sole full professorship in the discipline (Simonds 1978:5). Lowe would still claim as late as 1965 that Oppenheimer's was "the most comprehensive system der soziologie ever written" (Lowe 1965:133). At a time when the Historical school still dominated the discipline (and especially the academy), Lowe identified Oppenheimer as one of the few scholars in Germany with whom "one could study theory in the classical and neo-classical meaning of the term" (Lowe 1959:60). Oppenheimer and Lowe were later founding members of the editorial board of The Ameri can Journal of Economics and Sociology. The Journal's founding editor, Will Lissner, has reported that Lowe's book was the inspiration for the title of the AJES, and the Journal continues to take Lowe's call for cooperation and constructive synthesis as its mission. (1)
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Following Oppenheimer's tenure, Lowe's close friend and associate, sociologist Karl Mannheim, held the same Chair in Sociology at Frankfurt. Lowe himself had moved from Kiel to Frankfurt in 1931. It was, in fact, to Oppenheimer and Mannheim that Economics and Sociology was formally dedicated. In the book's dedication, Lowe's reference to 1919-1939, those years in which the chair was occupied by Oppenheimer and Mannheim, as "a period of constuctive synthesis in the social sciences" (1935:5) recalls the fact that his influences, experiences, and intellectual environment were steeped in such collaboration. Joint seminars were offered by Lowe and Mannheim, and their collaboration continued during their exile after 1933, first in Switzerland, and then in England (Kettler, Meja, and Stehr 1984:71-72 81-82; Gansmann 1998). Lowe's work did not go unnoticed among sociologists. No less a figure than Talcott Parsons wrote in his review of Economics and Sociology:
Lowe successfully transcends the old dilemma which has plagued so much of the methodological discussion of these problems between, on the one hand, the dogmatic "reification" of a system of individualistic, competitive economic theory on the classical model and, on the other hand, the tendency to repudiate theory altogether, which has been typical of the German historical . . . school. (Parsons 1937:477)
That the influence on Lowe of these collaborative efforts was not limited to this period is evidenced in the Preface to On Economic Knowledge, published in 1965, 30 years after Economics and Sociology. After stating that his influences are too numerous to mention, Lowe names four individuals to whom he owes "an intellectual debt which a lifetime is too short to pay" (1977 [1965]:ix). In addition to Oppenheimer and Mannheim, a third sociologist is identified in this exclusive list: Lowe's colleague at the Graduate Faculty of Political and Social Science of the New School for Social Research during the 1940s and 1950s, Alfred Schutz, the father of phenomenological sociology (on Lowe and Schutz, see Gurwitsch 1969; Machlup 1969; Nagel 1969; Wagner 1983; Forstater 1997, 2000, 2001). Lowe also had important professional and personal relations with a number of other important figures relevant to economics and sociology, including Max Horkheimer, F. A. Hayek, Joseph Schumpeter, and Michael Polanyi (on Lowe and Haye k, see Hagemann 1994; Ruhl 1994; and Forstater 1997, 1999b, 2000, 2001; see the latter for Polanyi and Lowe as well).
II
IN ECONOMICS AND SOCIOLOGY, and in his writings on education from the same period, Lowe warned of "all the dangers of over-specialization" (Lowe 1937:387; see also Lowe 1940). The "trend toward specialisation," he suggested, was "the natural and inevitable result of our technical civilization" (Lowe 1940:13). In The Universities in Transformation (1940), Lowe proposed interdisciplinary curricula and educational reform to counter the trend:
No medical student can truly face his medical problems unless he becomes acquainted with the organisation of modern industry, with the housing problems, the distribution of wealth and income, etc. No theological student may pray the petition referring to our daily bread, who does not know that its fulfillment is largely frustrated to-day by political and economic institutions of which he himself is perhaps a beneficiary. We know only too well that the weakness of our modern economists lies in the fact that, however elaborate their methods of solving problems are, they are able only in rare cases to ask the right questions. Their usual excuse that the immense number of "data" prevents them from giving exact answers does not hold. They lack in judgment, not in knowledge, because their notions of psychology and sociology are often not above the popular level. (Lowe 1940:50-51)
