Neither liberalism nor socialism: American progressives, German social reform, and the organicist model of the welfare state, 1870-1920

This study argues that German social thought and reform infused American Progressivism of the pre-World War I era with cultural-organicist ideas that rejected not only laissez faire Liberalism and revolutionary Socialism, but also the leviathan state. The Progressive campaigns for municipal reform, city planning, and social insurance exemplified the interplay of vying organicist, social-democratic, and liberal-administrative models of reform.;German-trained Progressives and social scientists created an idealized image of Germany that served to legitimize domestic reform efforts. The reformers advocated self-governed mutual insurance funds, municipal ownership of utilities, and comprehensive city plans as means of creating a broader sphere of public control and a sense of social interconnectedness. Frederic C. Howe, John Graham Brooks, Leo S. Rowe, Edward T. Devine, Benjamin C. Marsh, Richard T. Ely, Simon N. Patten, and Charles Henderson embraced cultural-organicist notions of society gleaned from the German Historical School of Economics. Florence Kelley and Isaac M. Rubinow were imbued with the ideas of revisionist Social Democracy. Frank J. Goodnow, Edward M. Bassett, and Ernst Freund paved the way for the adaptation of liberal-administrative models of the welfare state.;The changing image of Germany during World War I spelled disaster for many reform efforts. The popular perception of Germany as a well-governed civil-service state yielded to images of an autocratic, militaristic regime. At the same time, the war legitimized in the public mind the use of the state as a restrictive police power, rather than as an instrument of redistribution, social justice, and communal ethics. This was a significant element of the post-war transformation of the Progressive spirit and its subsequent embrace of either welfare capitalism, Neo-Liberalism, or moralism.