Hans Bayer: Review of Ludwig Henze’s Die Gleichstellung von Arbeitern und Angestellten (1964)

Hans Bayer’s short journal book review questions whether Henze adequately clarifies the distinction between manual workers and salaried employees. Its central objection is methodological: Henze begins by declaring his object of inquiry indeterminate, then proceeds by assuming that the two groups exist without establishing what distinguishes them. Bayer presents this unresolved starting point as a weakness in the book’s explanatory foundation.

The review moves from definitions to inherited stereotypes, workplace practice, and finally the book’s stated purpose. In discussing Henze’s treatment of “old clichés,” Bayer quotes his acknowledgment that apparently unreal distinctions nevertheless have practical significance:

Daß damit nur Scheinunterschiede stabilisiert werden, mag analytisch interessant sein.

English translation: That this merely stabilizes apparent differences may be analytically interesting.

Henze’s ensuing claim—that these apparent differences count as serious differences in social reality—recognizes the persistence of classifications beyond their analytical justification. Bayer, however, does not treat this recognition as resolving the initial conceptual difficulty.

His criticism becomes sharper when he turns to the report on workplace practice, which he judges to offer little that is new:

Der Betrieb ist der Ort, wo sich Arbeiter und Angestellte begegnen. Die Betriebsleitung entscheidet im Zweifelsfall darüber, ob eine bestimmte Tätigkeit als Angestelltenarbeit einzustufen ist.

English translation: The workplace is the place where manual workers and salaried employees encounter one another. In cases of doubt, management decides whether a particular activity is to be classified as salaried work.

These observations identify where classification occurs and who decides, but Bayer evidently finds them insufficiently illuminating. He closes by contrasting Henze’s ambition to discover the actual situation through practical experience with the book’s achievement: making that situation clear to the reader has, in his judgment, scarcely succeeded. The review’s relevance lies in this demand for conceptual clarity and substantive explanation in studying occupational status distinctions.