International Journal of Politics, Culture and Society, Vol. 13, No. 4, 2000

Hans H. Gerth, C. Wright Mills, and the Legacy of Max Weber* Donald A. Nielsen In the Introduction to their book, Guy Oakes and Arthur J. Vidich cite an unnamed American Weber scholar who once suggested that "whoever controlled the interpretation of Weber's work would control the future of sociology." They chide this anonymous figure for excessive enthusiasm about his subject, yet in the end they agree that "he had a point" and that Weber's sociological questions are, in the main, those of sociology today (p. 6).1 Indeed, Weber and his ideas move like a shadow across this study of the collaboration of Hans H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills and occasionally threaten to obscure the authors' central focus on ethics in the academic career.2 The distribution of credit for the translation and editing of Weber's writings was at the heart of the endless and convoluted dispute between Gerth and Mills, one continued by Gerth long after the book's publication. The "intellectual capital" which Gerth had especially accumulated and which went into the creation of From Max Weber, Character and Social Structure, and perhaps even White Collar drew heavily on Weber and the Weberian tradition of German scholarship. The appropriation of the Weberian sociological legacy for American audiences not only haunts their personal relationship and informs their substantive intellectual creations, but also molds many of their interactions with other leading sociologists, for example, Karl Mannheim, Louis Wirth, Edward Shils, Talcott Parsons, and others involved in the transit of Weber to these shores. The appropriation of the Weberian inheritance implicates yet wider issues, including the relationship of American to German scholarship, the fate of the German sociological tradition during Nazi rule, and the intellectual dilemmas faced by those involved in the subsequent migration. Furthermore, Oakes and *Review essay of Guy Oakes and Arthur J. Vidich, Collaboration, Reputation and Ethics in American Academic Life: Hans H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills (Carbondale, Illinois: Southern Illinois University Press), 1999.

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Vidich suggest an inner connection between Weber's methodology and the incomplete character of Gerth's sociological work. Finally, perhaps first in terms of the book's logic, Weber's view of science and ethics provides a reference point for the authors' own critical reappropriation of his legacy. It is this Weberian thread, the struggle over Weber's inheritance, which I want especially to address in the present essay. At one level, this study of the Gerth-Mills collaboration is also a critique of the limits of Weber's views on science and ethics. Oakes and Vidich argue that Weber's seminal essay, "Science as a Vocation," maps out the general relationship between the value spheres of science and ethics, but does not fully confront the dilemmas faced in the actual pursuit of a scientific and academic career. It misses the conflict between the ethics and pragmatics of scholarship. In their view, Weber implies that the ethical ideal of science is carried over largely without remainder into actual scientific work and, therefore, comes precariously close to embracing the Hegelian notion of the rationality of reality (p. 145-46). Indeed, Weber does focus primarily on the confrontation among ultimate value spheres and not on pragmatics. He is not entirely insensitive to the real economic conditions governing the scientific career (Weber, 1946:129-34). However, he does not provide a full treatment of the moral casuistry which envelops the concrete decisions made in such real settings. Oakes and Vidich do. Indeed, this is their book's great accomplishment: providing a rich account of moral reasoning in the everyday predicaments faced by scholars as they mediate the ethos of science and the management of a career. It needs to be emphasized that the Oakes-Vidich volume is more than a study of the Gerth-Mills collaboration, although this will undoubtedly be its central interest for many readers. In addition, if less directly, it is an investigation into the conditions of fruitful intellectual creation and the sociology of intellectual life. Oakes and Vidich examine not only the ethics of collaborative work but also the institutional contradictions and ethical dilemmas faced by all academic intellectuals. These include the following (among others): the competition for credit in scholarly work in its ambiguous relationship to the ideals of science and the pursuit of an academic career; the relationship of the academic intellectual to publishers, book contracts, and funding agencies; the problem of plagiarism and intellectual property rights; the relationship of teacher and student in different cultures (e.g., Germany and America) and the uses of the results of graduate student research; the competition and conflict among colleagues in scientific work in their relationship to the growth of academic departments and job placement for rising stars (pp. 8-11). These problems are all examined through the specific medium of the Gerth-Mills collaboration. The authors stay close to the evidence about Gerth and Mills. However,

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they also want to say something of a more general nature about academic ethics. A certain tension exists between these two aims, and readers will want to ask whether the constellation of factors informing this particular case can be directly translated into wider generalizations about science and ethics. However, their concluding observations are striking. As they note, scientific work involves walking "the fine line between overweening ambition that inspires doubts about honesty and diffidence or restraint that disqualifies its possessor from participation in the contest for priority" (p. 154). This sentence nicely frames the ethical tensions in the Gerth-Mills collaboration and certainly has a more general applicability. Gerth is portrayed as an emigre intellectual accustomed to the institutional norms governing the relationship of student and teacher in the German university, where deference to professors was developed to an extent unknown in America. Gerth's position as an alien under town confinement during World War II, scraping out a living in a precarious appointment as an assistant professor, one quite below the margin required by his own image of an appropriate style of life, added to the pressures in his career. On the other hand, Mills emerges as the ambitious young careerist, devoted to the ethos of the "main chance" and the "big shot," interested primarily in seizing the day by self-advancement, impression management, and the artful "handling" of others to achieve his own career goals (including not only Gerth but also other academic colleagues as well as publishers and even government and corporate financial sponsors). Indeed, in this account, Mills ends his career as a discontented victim of his own ethos, succumbing to the anomic quest to achieve illusory and ever receding goals (p. 113). The emerging picture of Mills will hardly endear the two authors to Mills's extant admirers, especially those who have lionized him as the quintessential politically engaged academic intellectual. However, the picture of Gerth is hardly more attractive (indeed, there are no "heroes" in this book). It gains little through its juxtaposition with Mills's more freewheeling ethical style. Gerth appears a contradictory and constricted character. Despite his standing as Karl Mannheim's "most gifted" student (p. 157, fn. 6) and his genuine involvement with his extensive research files and manuscripts, he was unable to bring much of it to fruition in final form. At the same time, he combined a certain personal insecurity with a touch of arrogance as the representative of "high" European culture and was prone to conduct an "endless monologue" and "interminable lecture" with anyone who was present (p. 180-81, fn. 31). Mills thought him the only one at Wisconsin with anything worthwhile to say (p. 2). Gerth appears so little at home in the American academic and publishing milieux that he seems almost incompetent. This is the case to an extent beyond what might be expected from his situation as a late arrival among the German emigres,

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his subsequent treatment by the government as a "dangerous" alien in wartime, or his marginal position among the existing emigre community, suspicious of his lingering participation in German literary life (p. 25). Although Gerth was a legatee of the Weberian sociological tradition, the authors suggest that his efforts foundered on the reef of Weber's methodology, particularly his method of ideal types. Gerth is portrayed as a thinker devoted, on the one hand, to the elaboration of sociological typologies against the background of a rich knowledge of historical evidence. On the other, he was unable to obtain theoretical closure in the creation of typologies and, therefore, in the analysis of particular sociological problems. The authors attribute this failing primarily to the inherent features of Weber's method, rather than to any incapacity (personal or intellectual) on Gerth's part. In their view, Weber's typological method makes it impossible for any single typology to be internally grounded, as preferable in principle to any other in the analysis of any sociological domain. The method encourages the elaboration of typologies, but discourages logical closure. The authors seem to argue that, by adopting Weber's method, Gerth condemned himself to the life of the sociological virtuoso, endlessly if creatively elaborating typologies which led everywhere and ultimately nowhere. For Oakes and Vidich, the problem seems to lie in the method rather than the practitioner (see pp. 125-30). Were such consequences inherent in Weber's method? Or must we seek an answer elsewhere for Gerth's penchant for what Oakes and Vidich call "etudes," rather than fully orchestrated compositions (p. 130)? I think they are correct to argue that Weber's method, if taken by itself, provides no logical basis for prefering one typology over another. However, Weber makes it clear that typologies depend on the historical questions being asked, which in turn are rooted in the author's value sensibility. While there can be no comprehensive "system" of typologies, the process of typological construction can be brought to a satisfactory resolution in relation to particular historical questions. The achievement of typological closure depends less on the logic of the inquiry than on the inquirer, in the specific sense of the investigator's ability to clarify his or her cognitive interests and pose potentially answerable questions within that domain. In sum, and perhaps too simply, Gerth seems (for whatever reason) to have lacked some of this ability. It is not clear from the book—perhaps it was not clear to Gerth—what sociological questions drove him. One gets the sense that Weber's typological method fit badly with Gerth's intellectual "personality" (one as anomic, perhaps, as Mills's career orientation). Its logically open-ended character combined with Gerth's characteristic penchant for the open-ended monologue to yield a rich improvisation of ideas with little thematic unity. It is not surprising that his first American publica-

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tion, on the Nazi party, needed Edward Shils's editorial help before it could appear in print (p. 22-23, 159-60 fn. 23). Despite Shils's shifting account of his role, his assistance evidently involved substantial reorganization of the materials themselves and went beyond mere help with Gerth's English. By contrast, Weber's own use of the typological method produced a steady stream of coherent, if not entirely systematic results in the study of political domination, cities, religion, and many other fields, which emerged out of a relatively clear set of questions and research agenda. Driven by his historical questions, Weber was a greater sociologist than the logic of his method might otherwise have allowed. Perhaps a more meaningful comparison could be made between Gerth and other emigr£ scholars with similar training and intellectual background, such as Hans Speier or Albert Salomon (see Speier, 1952, 1989; also Krohn, Vidich, Kimber, 1993; Nielsen, 1993). Gerth seemed less able than these figures to do consistently focused work in the new American environment. One suspects deeper personality determinants at work in his situation, which played directly into his need for Milk's collaboration (one sought out equally by Mills for his own reasons). Was it entirely a self-deception (as Oakes and Vidich imply) when Gerth later referred to Mills as his "alter ego" during his speech at the Mills's memorial service at Columbia (p. 141)? It would be necessary to broaden the base of comparison with other individual emigres to gain a firmer sense of the relative importance of the various factors influencing his intellectual productivity. In Gerth's intellectual itinerary, one senses a particular constellation of individual character traits, historical circumstances, institutionally structured dilemmas, and even certain constraints emerging from the unintended consequences of the timing of earlier decisions. This configuration would need to be compared with (e.g.) Speier's situation. For example, Gerth stayed in Germany until 1937, writing for newspapers in Berlin between 1934 and 1937, much longer than other emigres. This seems to have had a decisive influence not only on his negative reception by the emigre community already in America but also by the American government. In turn, Gerth's reasons for staying, related many years later in an interview quoted by Oakes and Vidich (p. 4), mix personal motives—for example, his beautiful young fiancee (an evidently important figure about whom we hear little in this book), his desire to work within his native language, the rumors of hard times among the emigres—with objective estimates, proven illusory by later events, of the early economic collapse of the Nazi regime.3 Although this topic falls outside the center of the Oakes-Vidich study, the reader misses a juxtaposition of Gerth with a figure such as Speier, especially since Vidich is closely familiar with the latter's work. Of course, their careful dissection of the ethics of collaborative scholarship stands on its own merits,

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apart from its relationship to the general question of intellectual productivity and the fate of the Weberian inheritance. The authors trace the Gerth-Mills collaboration well beyond From Max Weber and the dispute over credit for its contents. They examine the conception of Character and Social Structure in the early 1940s and trace its development until its publication in 1953. They also discuss the role played by Gerth's scholarly resources in the genesis of Mills's White Collar. Both of these discussions greatly broaden their treatment of academic ethics. Much of the discussion seems to hinge on the authors' distinction between "intellectual" and "social" capital (i.e., ideas, theories, scholarly assets vs. social networking, strategic interaction and management skills, status and reputation based on publications). This distinction is helpful in structuring their presentation, but in itself seems an inadequate analytical framework for understanding the full dimensions of the collaboration. The authors provide a particularly detailed account of the shifting discussions between Gerth and Mills over the writing and credit for Character and Social Structure, a book which drew heavily on the inheritance of Weber's ideas about social structures and their corresponding character formations. As with From Max Weber, Mills once again appears as the "editor and expositor of Gerth's thought" (p. 130), a phrase which generally seems to capture the authors' sense of Mills's intellectual debt to Gerth. The latter had the "intellectual capital" drawn from the Weberian tradition, while Mills had the "social capital" needed to negotiate the relations with colleagues (including Gerth himself), academic institutions, and publishers. Oakes and Vidich also trace their increasing secrecy about the fact of simultaneous contracts for the same book with two different publishers (first Heath and then Harcourt, Brace, the ultimate publisher), their attempt to manage relevant colleagues and publishers, and the final publication of the book in Merton's series with Harcourt, Brace, rather than Howard Becker's series with Heath (see ch. 3). The lengthy treatment of this episode seems somehow less portentious than the discussion of the Weber translation. The potentially explosive ethical issue of simultaneous contracts with two publishers might have resulted in damage to their reputations had Becker (the editor of the scorned Heath series) reacted more negatively to his discovery of their secret. But he apparently did not or, at least, did nothing to damage Gerth's interests at Wisconsin. Moreover, after rather lengthy efforts to secure the original commitment, Heath's editors did not ultimately press any legal claims to the manuscript. Evidently, perhaps surprisingly, no one on any side came away from the episode with a sense of ethical outrage over violated norms of trust or fidelity to contracts. The central issues concerning the conflict of science and ethics involved in the Weber translation seem

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more substantial (e.g., whose intellectual capital was most fully engaged, who deserved primary credit for the scholarly work, the precise role of Mills as "editor" of Gerth's translations and introduction, and, especially, Mills's inadequate knowledge of German, which incapacitated him from any original contribution to the editing or translating of Weber's writings). The considerable "social capital" put into play by Mills in negotiating the contract for Character and Social Structure (p. 77-78), including his larger publication record than Gerth, who had devoted all his time to the Weber translations, gave him a claim, in his view, to joint authorship, as it had, in his view, to joint editorship of the earlier volume. But a claim for recognition on the basis of "social capital" seems to point in a different direction than the division between Gerth's possession of actual sociological knowledge versus Mills's desire to give the appearance of such knowledge in its actual absence (i.e., the knowledge/no-knowledge distinction is different than the intellectual/social capital distinction). Mills successfully negotiated claim to equal credit as coeditor of From Max Weber. The claim is fraudulent if judged on the basis of substantive contributions to the book's ideas, yet less so if we consider the necessary "social capital" needed to get the book into print, a form of capital that Gerth was unable to utilize in his Wisconsin circumstances (and perhaps would have had difficulty exercizing even under more favorable circumstances). However, did Mills's "social capital" alone qualify him for full coeditorship, or merely the credit line, "with the assistance of? How much weight in the distribution of credit for the ultimate outcome of collaborative scholarly work should be given to "social capital" versus "intellectual capital," given an American institutional environment of conflicted university departments, publishers, granting agencies, and so forth which requires both forms of capital, rather than merely the first? The fact that Mills was able to manage the situation to his ultimate advantage—and perhaps transgress ethical norms in the process—seems separable from the question of the value of his "social capital," assuming the absence of such manipulative management and possible ethical transgressions. Or was his "social capital" put to nothing but self-serving, strategic ends? Is "social capital" always only this and nothing more? The answers to these questions are less evident from the book than might be hoped. I think this results from the incomplete character of the analytical distinction between the two forms of capital. It is the treatment of White Collar which raises the most vexing questions, both about their collaboration and the Oakes and Vidich treatment of it. Here, there was no directly negotiated collaboration, no coauthorship. It was Mills's book, published under his name alone. However, the question of whose "intellectual capital" went into the book makes it a particularly interesting case for the study of academic ethics. Oakes and Vidich provide

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a rather contradictory account of the role of Gerth in the making of White Collar, although it is unclear whether the contradictions lie in the evidence or their interpretation of it. They note that "the extent of Gerth's contributions to White Collar cannot be fully documented," yet, in the same note, they indicate that Joseph Bensman (then a graduate student with Gerth) and Gerth worked over Mills's manuscript, which had been sent to Gerth, and returned it to him "with elaborate annotations and emendations" (p. 175, fn. 48). Moreover, Oakes and Vidich write, that of Gerth's "contributions to the genesis and development of White Collar it would be difficult to exaggerate" (p. 111). They add that Mills's book was "powerfully influenced by the literature on the German middle class of the Weimar period," which had been written in German and translated into English after the wave of emigration and included the writings of Emil Lederer, Jacob Marshak, Hans Speier, and others (p. 111). Yet, in another note, they maintain that "it would be a mistake to read White Collar as if it were derived exclusively from the German literature on the crisis of the middle class" (p. 175, fn. 49). Oakes and Vidich suggest that Mills's book was also inspired (perhaps to a greater degree) by other sources, including literary ones, especially the novels of Balzac as well as Veblen's writings (p. 104) and that it was Mills's sociological counterpart of the great American novel. The question of Mills's citation practices must also be mentioned. Oakes and Vidich write that Mills cites the English versions of German writings on the new middle classes, "but gives no indication of the specific ideas and arguments taken from each," indeed, their importance is "concealed by the fact that more than a dozen other publications are cited in the same note" (p. 111). Finally, an extremely intriquing piece of information is revealed in a footnote, where the authors write that the manuscript of White Collar delivered to Oxford University Press by Mills "included a substantial apparatus of notes and references, eighty-three pages of singlespaced typescript that Oxford decided not to publish [my emphasis]." In the same note, they further comment that "Mills regarded his voluminous notes ... as unnecessary and inappropriate for the book he had written" and add that Mills was unenthusiastic about Gerth's suggestion that this apparatus of notes be included in the German version of the book, published in 1955 (p. 175, fn. 50). From this account, it seems that Oxford University Press, not Mills, was responsible for the omission of the larger footnote apparatus, the contents of which are unknown (or, at least, are not discussed in this book—does the typescript still exist?). Perhaps Mills was not enthusiastic about its inclusion in the German edition, but since he had initially submitted it to Oxford for the English version, the authors' conclusion that Mills regarded it as "unnecessary and inappropriate" seems incongruent with

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the evidence they present. The issue at stake seems to be the status of the references which did finally appear in White Collar. How are the original eighty-three single-spaced typed pages submitted by Mills to Oxford related to the section that appears under the title "Acknowledgments and Sources" in the published book (see Mills, 1951:355-363)? The latter references make up fewer than eight printed pages. It is therefore impossible that the eightythree page apparatus submitted by Mills was retained in anything like its original form. If Oxford insisted on its omission, it is possible that they requested an alternative, perhaps more streamlined set of references (Oakes and Vidich present no evidence on this topic). In light of the authors' central concerns, this is a significant issue in evaluating not only Mills's willingness to acknowledge his (apparently heavy) debt to his precedessors (including Gerth), but the precise way in which he was willing to acknowledge it. We need to know more than we are told about his communication with Oxford. It is worth noting that White Collar contains few real footnotes (by my count, twenty-one, most of which are either specifications of statistics or terms). An additional fact is that the system of "Acknowledgments and References" begun in White Collar is not continued in any consistent form in his two other major publications with Oxford, The Power Elite and The Sociological Imagination. The former contains a much larger apparatus of actual notes, with references to literature and elaboration of issues mentioned in the text, than is found in White Collar (see Mills, 1956: 365-412), but they are located at the end of the book. The Sociological Imagination is marked by a relatively steady stream of footnotes—real footnotes, at the bottom of the page—but few do more than cite literature quoted or otherwise mentioned in the text (Mills, 1959). Where does this collation leave us? First, Oxford does seem to have been responsible for rejecting Mills's original, elaborate system of citations, but little else can be said with certainty of their role. Did they demand a more "streamlined" one? Did they demand any apparatus of notes at all? Given Oxford's rejection of the original one, did Mills protest the exclusion of the original apparatus of citations or insist on some alternative system? Second, given the inconsistency in the citation apparatus of his two other books, published within a decade by the same press, it seems improbable that Oxford dictated the precise form taken by the references found in White Collar (unless their editorial practices changed radically in the meantime) and that Mills—whatever the discussions with Oxford—must have been responsible for the final citations. Although direct evidence is lacking, the logical inference is that Mills, given the circumstances of Oxford's rejection of his larger apparatus, chose to acknowledge his predecessors in precisely the broad brush fashion found in the published book. What can be made of this from an ethical standpoint is less clear.

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Once White Collar was published, Mills seemed loath to resuscitate the full system of notes and references even for the German version (where it would have probably found a more friendly reception). It is less clear from the Oakes and Vidich account why Gerth's introductory essay, destined for the German edition, was replaced by Heinz Maus's introduction (p. 177-78, fn. 7). No evidence is presented that Mills was involved in this editorial decision. Perhaps Maus was simply better known to German audiences in the 1950s than Gerth, who must have been almost entirely unknown in Germany in 1953. Did Mills resist the idea of an introduction by Gerth, his teacher and the conduit for so much of his intellectual capital? From the standpoint of academic ethics, it is difficult to say much with any certainty about this episode. What about the book's content? What did it owe to Gerth? The authors' description of Gerth's own estimate of White Collar indicates that, while he praised the book, he was also quite critical of its main perspectives and what in his view were its major analytical errors and crucial omissions, including Mills's misuse of Marxian derived categories such as "lumpenbourgeoisie" (pp. 117-24). What conclusions can be drawn from Gerth's comments? Can we assume from Gerth's criticisms of the published version that Mills had not incorporated all, or perhaps any, of his suggestions for revision and improvement of the manuscript? If Mills had absorbed Gerth's comments wholesale into his study or even substantially modified his text to accommodate Gerth's criticisms, then Gerth would hardly have had reason to be so critical of the book (although he might instead have had good reason to wonder why Mills had not more directly acknowledged his extensive contributions to its final arguments). As noted above, Mills's book seems to have had an ambiguous relationship to Gerth's ideas and to other German literature on the middle classes. Had Mills fully absorbed the lessons of this tradition in his work, Gerth would surely have had less reason to be critical of the book. Also, on the book's very last page, the authors note that Mills's prodigious research files "contain a remarkable amount of material by Gerth" (p. 184, fn. 7). However, they do not attempt to link this material in any direct way to the contents of White Collar or any of Mills's other publications, for example, either The Power Elite or The Sociological Imagination, neither of which is discussed in this book. In the end, White Collar and its relationship to the Gerth-Mills collaboration and its significance for academic ethics remains something of an enigma. Perhaps what is needed is a new and more detailed reading of this book—its sources and arguments—than is provided in the present study. Such an analysis might include comparisons between the published version and any earlier manuscript drafts as well as Gerth's letters and files (whatever latter material survives). Despite their

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cautious attempt to tease out the ethical questions surrounding this book, Oakes and Vidich remain on ambiguous and ultimately inconclusive ground. What were the results for Mills of his devotion to the ethos of the big shot and main chance? Was he a "success" within the sociological profession or outside of it and on what basis do we make such a judgment? We have already noted the Oakes-Vidich verdict that Mills succumbed to the unhappy restlessness implied in his own ethos. Oakes and Vidich also note that White Collar as well as The Power Elite and The Sociological Imagination were "sociological best sellers," a term which they think today is "virtually an oxymoron" (p. 8). Granting their relatively wide audience and that of his other more "popular" political writings (e.g., The Causes of World War Three, Listen Yankee!), and the public notoreity they earned him, Mills's academic career remained stunted. Although he did "escape" Maryland, which he had come to despise (pp. 95-96), his career at Columbia was not entirely successful. As Oakes and Vidich note, in New York "no one seemed willing to acknowledge the merit of Mills's work" (p. 113). He was unable to exercize the scope of intellectual influence within sociology achieved by (e.g.) his colleague Robert Merton (an equally astute practitioner of academic career management). Oakes and Vidich argue convincingly that Mills was far from the political activist and critic of the American power structure later mythologized by his various leftist followers (p. 11113,175-77, fnn. 51-53), indeed, that his relationship to the "establishment" was both critical and personally profitable. However, this very same selfgenerated (mis)representation of his public persona hardly improved the reception of his ideas within the mainstream of postwar sociology, dominated by students of Parsons, Merton, and other proponents of "scientific" and "value neutral" sociology. What of the legacy of Weberian sociology which Gerth represented and on which Mills was keen to capitalize in his collaboration with Gerth? Mills died young. It is uncertain what his future intellectual production might have been. Horowitz provides a brief sketch of Mills's project for a "Comparative Sociology" of global proportions and long historical sweep, already hinted at in The Sociological Imagination (Horowitz, 1964: 39-46). Mills had enormous energy and the ability to bring projects to completion, a trait noted and admired by Nobuko Gerth in an essay oddly left uncited in this book (N. Gerth, 1993). There is perhaps reason to believe that, had he lived longer, he may have succeeded in completing this vast project (or at least much of it). On whose intellectual capital would it have drawn? On the other hand, Gerth's unpublished manuscripts have come more fully to light in recent years (thanks to Vidich and his associates), and we are beginning to appreciate what aspects of the Weberian legacy were lost

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in functionalist-dominated postwar sociology (for one small example, see Gerth, 1997). In one respect, it is unfortunate that the book's primary focus on the direct Gerth-Mills collaboration and secondarily on the implicit debt to Gerth's scholarship in White Collar necessarily leaves untouched the later careers of both authors. To fully understand the collaboration and the subsequent deployment of "intellectual capital" drawn from the Weberian inheritance requires that we also understand their emerging intellectual differences as they increasingly pursued their own separate paths. But this story—a chapter in the history of the Weberian inheritance in American sociology—remains to be told by future investigators. As matters stand, we owe Oakes and Vidich a considerable debt for having taken us this far along the path and marked it so clearly for future explorers.

ENDNOTES 1. 2.

3.

All page references in parentheses in the present essay refer to pages in Oakes and Vidich (1999). It should perhaps be noted that Guy Oakes is a foremost contemporary American translator and interpreter of Max Weber's writings, while Arthur Vidich was a student of Hans Gerth at the University of Wisconsin. Vidich has coauthored a volume about Gerth's work (see Bensman, Vidich, N. Gerth, 1982), has advanced the intellectual tradition represented by Gerth, and has done a good deal to enhance our appreciation of the work of other German emigre scholars such as Hans Speier, Albert Salomon, and others. Gerth was not alone in this estimate. The hope of imminent breakdown was shared, for example, by Theodor Adorno, who remained in Germany until 1934, two years after Horkheimer and others from the Frankfurt Institute had already emigrated to England, and even continued to visit Germany into the late thirties (Buck-Morss, 1979).

REFERENCES Bensman, Joseph, Arthur Vidich and Nobuko Gerth. 1982. Politics, Character and Culture: Perspectives From Hans Gerth (Westport, CT.: Greenwood Press). Buck-Morss, Susan. 1979. The Origin of Negative Dialectics: Theodore W. Adorno, Walter Benjamin and the Frankfurt Institute (New York: Free Press). Gerth, Hans H. 1997. "On Talcott Parsons' The Social System," International Journal of Politics, Culture and Society 10, 4(summer): 673-84. Gerth, Nobuko. 1993. "Hans H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills: Partnership and Partisanship," International Journal of Politics, Culture and Society 1, 1, 133-54. Horowitz, Irving Louis (ed.). 1964. The New Sociology. Essays in Social Science and Social Theory in Honor of C. Wright Mills (New York: Oxford University Press). Krohn, Claus-Dieter, Arthur J. Vidich, Robert Kimber. 1993. Intellectuals in Exile: Refugee Scholars and the New School for Social Research (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press). Mills, C. Wright. 1951. White Collar (New York: Oxford University Press). . 1956. The Power Elite (New York: Oxford University Press). . 1959. The Sociological Imagination (New York: Oxford University Press).

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Nielsen, Donald A. 1993. "Salomon's Ark: Experience, History and the Life of the Mind," International Journal of Politics, Culture and Society 6, 4: 573-83. Oakes, Guy and Arthur J. Vidich. 1999. Collaboration, Reputation and Ethics in American Academic Life: Hans H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills (Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press). Speier, Hans 1952. Social Order and the Risks of War (New York: G. W. Stuart). . 1989. The Truth in Hell and Other Essays on Politics and Culture, 1935-1987 (New York: Oxford University Press). Weber, Max. 1946. From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology. Edited by Hans H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills (New York: Oxford University Press).