bauman

Soc 50
June 22, 1998 Notes on "Sociology after the Holocaust"

Bauman argues that it is a mistake to view modern society as either the culmination of a long civilizing process that has rolled back the savage within each of us or as the final part in a project institutionalizing outcomes such as the Holocaust. Instead, modern society is Janus-faced; creation and destruction are inseparable parts of civilization. We can see this by looking at the Holocaust, which has much to tell us about modern societies as well as sociology.

The possibility of events such as the holocaust could only come with modernity In fact, every "ingredient of the Holocaust was within the realm of what is considered normal in western societies - these ingredients were just mixed together in a unique combination. Bauman thus concludes that the holocaust is a "test of the hidden possibilities of modern society."(12)

In particular, Bauman shows how the holocaust developed in a bureaucratic, rational manner - using such procedures as means-ends calculus, budget balancing, universal-rule application. That is, it was truly modern.

As Bauman summarizes:

...the rules of instrumental rationality are singularly incapable of preventing such phenomena [like the holocaust]; that there is nothing in those rules which disqualifies the Holocaust-style methods of 'social-engineering' as improper or, indeed, the actions they served as irrational. I suggest, further, that the bureaucratic culture which prompts us to view society as an object of administration, as a collection of so many 'problems' to be solved, as 'nature' to be 'controlled','mastered' and 'improved' or 'remade', as a legitimate target for 'social engineering', and in general a garden to be designed and kept in the planned shape by force (the gardening posture divides vegetation into 'cultured plants' to be taken care of, and weeds to be exterminated), was the very atmosphere in which the idea of the Holocaust could be conceived, slowly yet consistently developed, and brought to its conclusion. and I also suggest that it was the spirit of instrumental rationality, and its modern, bureaucratic form of institutionalization, which had made the holocaust-style solutions not only possible, but eminently 'reasonable' - and increased the probability of their choice. (18)

Social Production of Moral Indifference:

The vast majority of perpetrators of the holocaust were 'normal' people - not particularly vengeful, sadistic, or criminal. They did not like to see human suffering. In fact, particularly zealous individuals were weeded out from those groups closest to the killings - killing for desire and pleasure, instead of for organizational reasons, was penalized.

The task of the Nazi leaders was how to overcome animal pity in men. this couldn't be done through hatred, but through disciplined bureaucracy.

Moral inhibitions against the Holocaust are eroded once 3 conditions are met:

The violence is authorized (by official orders).

Actions are routinized (by rule governed practices and exact specification of roles).

Victims are dehumanized (by ideological definitions and indoctrinations). (p.21)

The first two conditions are integral parts of Weber's definition of bureaucracy - authorization and routinization are exactly what contemporary bureaucracies do.

Social Production of Moral Invisibility:

Further, the division of labor helped make possible the 'moral invisibility' of individual acts.

This may be better understood using the concept 'mediation of action' - "the phenomenon of one's action being performed for one by someone else, by an intermediate person, who 'stands between me and my action, making it impossible for me to experience it directly'." (24)

That is, there is a great physical and psychic distance between minute, individual acts and the consequences of all these acts added together. This eliminates the moral significance of the act - thus removing any dilemma between personal morals and the social consequences of the act.

At the same time, the victims were made invisible - with increasing technologies that kept Nazis away from the victims - getting rid of firing squads and replacing them with gas chambers, for example.

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