Staunch-democrat students’ egalitarianism reflected status insecurity, not socialist conviction

Evidence

The small size of the sample, 171 subjects, meant that the percentage figures given in the tables sometimes concealed absurdly small real numbers. But when quantitative data were being presented it was impossible to avoid giving the impression that they were representative, and in the spring of 1959 Friedeburg therefore undertook a supplementary study. The research work was carried out by fifty-nine sociology students, who interviewed 550 students using a standardized questionnaire. The supplementary study confirmed that the political tendency aspect of the main study was representative. This did not necessarily imply confirmation that the main study’s results with regard to the distribution of deep-seated political potential were representative. However, the social-equality view of society held by those classed as staunch democrats had nothing to do with socialist convictions or a sober view of power relations. It meant instead that social differences were being seen as something external, attributed to snobbishness on the one hand and feelings of inferiority on the the other. At the same time, it was denied that academics had a right to any privileges. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 2351

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the Frankfurt School’s empirical research program and the later ‘false consciousness’ debates; also echoes the Institute’s finding style in ‘The Authoritarian Personality’. — connects to: Working-class anxieties about upper-class rejection dampen support for equalitarian movements — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 2243; Some marginalized students want hierarchy inversion, not genuine disruption — bell hooks, Teaching to Transgress: Education as…, 378; Progressive students who actually pursued racial equality threatened the social order

Broader Connections

• Working-class anxieties about upper-class rejection dampen support for equalitarian movements #corroborates (0.78) — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 2243