ABSTRACT
This chapter is devoted to a thought experiment, comparing Karl Mannheim design for reconstituting Weimar political thought with the constitutional politics of moderate Socialist advocates. Most of them shared his enthusiasm for sociology and his scepticism about Marxist ideology. Neumann's topic is the relationship between the state and legal punishment. A truly sociological theory of the state, he maintains, is all but indistinguishable from a sociology of political parties, because the state is constituted by the activities of the parties. The new social legal doctrine of the political constitution sought by Neumann resembles the new sociologically reflective political discourse pursued by Mannheim. Franz L. Neumann and Mannheim both identify the old legal order with capitalism, liberalism, and a theory of universal natural law. Both find important hints and premonitions in conservative critiques of natural law.
