ABSTRACT
This chapter begins with a lengthy discussion of the historical origins of statism as a distinctive ideology in Germany. It then turns to the era of industrial capitalism and the German bourgeoisie in nineteenth century and first half of the twentieth. The main claim is that coercion, or statism, has consistently been the distinctive ideology of the ruling class in Germany. The main theme was concerned with the explanation and description of statism as an ideology wielded by the dominant classes. The very anti-statism means, that the state still sets the paradigm for ideological discourse in Germany. The chapter has also dealt with a parallel set of problems regarding the relation of ideology and modernity. Post-medieval Germany was notoriously and consistently politically backward. The contradictory concatenation of backwardness and modernity in the polity, is duplicated in the notion of rights that prevailed in German thought. The Germans saw the state as a means to perfect the morality of the individual.
