Hans Bayer’s journal book review presents Croner’s sociology of salaried employees as a foundational contribution to understanding their position in modern society. Its central concern is the distinction between salaried employees and manual workers: whether differences in occupational functions, career prospects, and social identification still justify treating them as separate groups. Bayer identifies Croner, alongside Lederer, as a pioneer of this field, but combines his recognition of the book’s importance with a concise account of the controversy surrounding its theoretical framework.
The review begins by stressing the breadth of Croner’s approach. Questions about salaried employment are not isolated occupational problems; they belong within an interpretation of modern society.
Es beschränkt sich nicht darauf, spezifische Angestelltenfragen zu untersuchen, sondern stellt die Einzelprobleme in den Gesamtzusammenhang der modernen Gesellschaft.
English translation: It does not confine itself to investigating specific questions concerning salaried employees, but places the individual problems within the overall context of modern society.
Bayer then concentrates on Croner’s answer to the question of what constitutes a salaried employee. For contemporary conditions, Croner gives particular weight to career opportunities. Qualified education at intermediate and higher educational institutions, including universities, increasingly becomes a prerequisite for work above the routine level. Yet Croner regards this as a change in the requirements for performing salaried work, rather than a fundamental transformation of employees’ sociological status. The possibility of pursuing a career remains the defining continuity.
The comparison with manual workers makes this distinction more precise. Workers can acquire skills, increase their earnings through experience, or become foremen. In Croner’s account, however, their advancement is restricted both in extent and in its temporal pattern: its high point generally comes relatively early, after which the occupational trajectory levels off. The difference is therefore not simply between having and lacking opportunities for promotion. It concerns the scope and duration of advancement, and the consequences these have for the social situation of the two groups. Bayer reinforces this account by recalling Croner’s intervention at the Dortmund Sozialakademie’s international conference in 1960, where he likewise made differing life chances central to the distinction.
Bayer’s endorsement of the book does not amount to acceptance of an uncontested classification. His discussion turns explicitly to objections raised at that conference:
Nach der überwiegenden Auffassung bei der erwähnten Tagung kann die von Croner entwickelte Funktionstheorie heute nicht mehr zu einer befriedigenden Abgrenzung zwischen Arbeitern und Angestellten führen.
English translation: According to the prevailing view at the conference mentioned, the functional theory developed by Croner can no longer provide a satisfactory distinction between manual workers and salaried employees today.
Against this reservation, Bayer sets evidence of the theory’s reception in trade-union practice. Drawing on Ernst Lakenbacher, he describes the Austrian salaried-employees’ movement as a setting already receptive to a functional understanding of employees’ social position. Its unions had faced the need to clarify that position before the First World War. This historical reception establishes the theory’s practical resonance, without resolving the objection to its present explanatory adequacy.
The final conceptual move shifts from occupational functions and advancement to employees’ sense of difference from manual workers. Bayer introduces Lockwood’s account of nonmanual work as a basis of identification that also divides employees into individuals with little shared consciousness. This complicates the argument: feeling oneself distinct from manual workers can support a separate social identity without producing strong solidarity among salaried employees.
The review thus proceeds from recognition of Croner’s broad sociological project through career chances, theoretical disagreement, union reception, and subjective identification. Its concluding judgment concerns the book’s indispensability to the debate, rather than the definitive validity of its theory:
Wie immer man zu den Theorien Croners stehen mag, niemand, der sich mit den Angestelltenfragen befaßt, kann sich einer Auseinandersetzung mit dem grundlegenden Werk Croners entziehen.
English translation: Whatever position one may take on Croner’s theories, no one concerned with questions of salaried employees can avoid engaging with Croner’s foundational work.
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