Only 4 per cent of German students surveyed qualified as stable democrats.

Evidence

The types of political tendency found were: genuine democrats, formal democrats, authoritarians, and those who were indifferent. The views of society typified were: those of the declining academic middle class, of inward values, of the intellectual élite, of social equality, and of the middle class in general. The point was now that, so far as political disposition and political tendency were ideologically stabilized by a corresponding view of society, it would be possible to draw conclusions about the implied political potential that extended beyond the status quo. If one assumed that a deep-seated democratic tendency was present when the political disposition of a committed person or of a thoughtful citizen coincided with a genuinely democratic tendency and a social-equality view of society, only 4 per cent of all those questioned were stable democrats. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 580

Categorization

• XREF: Indexes the Frankfurt School’s pessimistic mid-century diagnosis of democratic character in West Germany.