Friedrich von Wieser, Die Revolutionen der Gegenwart (1920)

Friedrich von Wieser’s German-language essay, published in 1920, interprets the revolutions in Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Russia as consequences of wartime collapse rather than expressions of ascending social power. Moving from the development of the German bourgeoisie to revolutionary authority and postwar economic crisis, it culminates in a programme of social reconciliation. Its governing distinction is between destroying an established order and acquiring the capacity to lead a new one.

Comparison with the French Revolution establishes this distinction. Germany’s bourgeoisie in 1848 occupied an apparently similar position to its French predecessor, but Wieser warns against equating social positions across historical settings:

Im Deutschland von 1848 hatte das Bürgertum eine Stellung, die, rein äußerlich genommen, mit der des französischen Bürgertums von 1789 übereinstimmte.

English translation: In the Germany of 1848 the bourgeoisie held a position which, taken purely externally, corresponded to that of the French bourgeoisie of 1789.

The qualification “rein äußerlich” is decisive. German liberalism borrowed a programme without possessing the same creative conviction or collective momentum. The earlier revolutionary movement drew its force from a wider social alignment:

Fürs erste sei einmal betont, daß die Bewegung von damals ihre hinreißende Kraft davon hatte, daß sie eine Bewegung der ganzen Gesellschaft war.

English translation: For the present let it be emphasised that the movement of that time drew its enrapturing force from the fact that it was a movement of the whole of society.

For Wieser, revolutionary strength depends on shared conviction, not merely institutional opposition. In Germany, Bismarckian unification and industrial expansion subsequently satisfied important bourgeois aspirations without establishing parliamentary leadership. Technical achievement, however, becomes cultural progress only when its benefits extend adequately across society.

Prewar Social Democracy also moved toward accommodation. Wieser contrasts socialism’s critical and organizational development with the imaginative force he attributes to Rousseau. Parliamentary work, trade unions, and revisionism encouraged negotiation, although practical adjustment did not necessarily overturn doctrine:

Zwar haben sie nicht an die Dogmen selber gerührt, sondern sie haben nur die Taktik des Augenblicks den Forderungen der gegebenen Wirklichkeit näher angepaßt.

English translation: To be sure, they did not touch the dogmas themselves, but merely adapted the tactics of the moment more closely to the demands of the given reality.

This organizational maturity later helped contain revolutionary violence. Wieser locates the decisive rupture less in mounting class antagonism than in the war’s destruction of imperial authority. Subjects attribute success to their rulers; extraordinary sacrifice followed by defeat exhausts the prestige on which obedience depends. Revolutionary actors exploit the resulting fractures without necessarily having produced them.

The comparison is shaped by Wieser’s nationalist and hierarchical assumptions. His treatment of Bolshevism includes antisemitic claims that racialize its leadership and portray it as alien to Russian society. His prediction of its failure rests on a contrast between borrowed revolutionary forms and genuine social strength. Similarly, his defence of Habsburg cohesion interprets national secession chiefly through military defeat and great-power intervention, subordinating the independent force of national aspirations.

Germany nevertheless offers grounds for qualified hope. Bourgeois, peasant, and working-class institutions survived the monarchy, while socialist leadership and constitutional compromise demonstrated political competence. Yet governmental power cannot abolish the requirements of production. Wieser distinguishes political sovereignty from economic organization: democratization still requires stable management, recognized responsibilities, and effective leadership. Entrepreneurial authority remains defensible insofar as it performs indispensable productive functions, unlike obsolete inherited privileges.

This argument does not simply endorse prewar labour relations. Wieser recognizes hunger, exhaustion, and grounds for shorter hours and higher wages, but fears a deterioration of collective working energy. He places these conflicts within mutually reinforcing crises of currency, credit, public finance, food, transport, raw materials, and capital flight. Recovery cannot proceed through isolated remedies: imports require credit, exports require scarce inputs, and emergency expenditure further destabilizes economic resources. Inflation may stimulate activity temporarily without restoring losses caused by war and the peace settlement.

The conclusion seeks a transformation of public spirit rather than mere institutional restoration. Wieser rejects renewed war as destructive, though he leaves room for emergency coercive dictatorship. His preferred response expands social reform into social reformation: property must accommodate the dignity of labour without disabling productive leadership, and coalition must become durable solidarity rather than a temporary class truce. Religious renewal supplies an analogy for transformation through collective and individual leadership. The essay thus connects revolutionary legitimacy with economic interdependence, while making national recovery depend on a morally renewed—but still hierarchical—social order.