User:Алый Король/Lachmann

1. It’s really my great honor to have a conversation with you. Another your book has been published in Russian recently, but people here (and in USA, as well, as far I know) still don't know too much about you as a scholar. Of course, you can use words of Russian poet Valery Bryusov, who said "If don't mention private side of my life, my biography fuses with my bibliography", but we are not looking for the easiest way and will try to provide readers with unity of both of them: biography and bibliography.

2. So first of all, where and when you were born? Could you briefly describe your family background? Do you have any siblings?

I was born in New York City 17 May 1956. My parents were German Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany. Each of them had a parent who was killed by the Nazis so I grew up with an understanding of nazism and an appreciation of US liberal democracy. My father worked for the United Nations. I have a brother, who recently retired after a career as a Congressional staffer and a sister who was an architect and who is deceased. Plz add few words about your mother.

3. Could you tell us your college experience?

I attended the United Nations International School in New York for high school and was among the first cohorts in the world to receive an International Baccalaureate. I attended Princeton as an undergraduate and Harvard for my PhD.

4. From your intellectual biography we know that you chose sociology faculty in Princetone just to understand what is happening in the world and "where are gilyotinies"? After entering university you participated in some political activities. Do you feel that nowadays US foreign politics not changed too much, but students activity is far from its level in 60-70's?

5. You mentioned. that modernization theory that had been ruling on sociology faculty in Pincetone, wasn't able to answer question: why capitalism arose and how it develops. Orthodxial Marxism also dind'nt help in anyway. But Weber did. Many historians believe his ideas are outdated. I think very few people come to mind to consider his ideas in terms of the theory of elites. In which way his ideas could be useful nowadays?

6. Let's talk about authors who did have influence on you. Except obvious ones as Marx and Weber. Your article "Class Formation without Class Struggle" was published in American Sociological Review in 1990. From 1987 that journal published some articles on the same topic (works of Michael G. Burton, John Higley, Paul Cammack), so there seems to have been some kind of framework where your ideas came from. Was elite theory really popular at that time?

There was limited Marxist influence in the 1970s at US universities and that influenced me. Certainly my choice of the origins of capitalism as a topic for my dissertation and subsequent work was molded by Marxist scholarship. I came to my interest in elite theory first through Weber. I found his writings on feudalism and his claim that there were multiple elites (although he didn’t use that word) in feudal societies enormously useful in understanding feudal conflicts. Of course C Wright Mills was a major influence from my undergraduate days and his explicit use of the term elite and his finding that the number of elites and their interrelations had changed over the course of US history was decisive in developing my elite theory. I read Burton, Higley and Cammack only after I developed my theory. Indeed, I first found Cammack when his article was published in the same issue of American Sociological Review as my "Class Formation without Class Struggle."

7. When I read Capitalists I felt that works of Lawrence Stone about gentry also had strong influence on you. He was Dodge Professor of history at Princeton University from 1963. Did you happenen to know him at time of studying in Princeton?

8. In his review Rosemary L. Hopcroft said: "Lachmann does not fully explain why, after consolidating their position, the English gentry did not become, like the Florentine oligarchs and Dutch merchants and so many before them, rentiers who assured their privileges through their control of the state. Instead, they continued to generate enough of a surplus to enable an industrial revolution". Actually I want to ask the same and don't know, maybe we really missed something in your book. Why did gentry become capitalists, not rentiers?'

The reason is political. The English gentry could not become rentiers because that would have opened space for deposed elites, above all the clergy, to make claims on the gentry’s ownership of former church lands. I argue explicitly in Chapter 6 of Capitalists In Spite of Themselves that the gentry did not become capitalists because they thought it was more profitable than being rentiers. In fact, they thought they were giving up income (and at first they did) by operating commercial farms, but thought (accurately) that they needed to do that to protect themselves politically. I think Hopcroft misread my book, perhaps because she approaches this period from her perspective which is heavily ecologically and demographically determinist.

9. Colin Mooers in his book, "Creation of bourgeois Europe" states, that the French and German 'Bonapartist' states after revolutions retained their essentially pre-capitalist character (ancien regime with sale of offices and sinecures). Left to themselves these state structures would have continued to reproduce themselves. But in England capitalists managed tо get seats in the parliament and limit the power of the king, so only revolution in England could be called bourgeois.

10. You strat your book "Capitalists in Spite of Themselves" with words "Something happened in Western Europe in the fifteenth through eighteenth centuries. Can we rephhase these words and say "Something happened in US in the 70's XX cetury" Could we find the starting point for American decline, which played the same role as Reformation for Middle ages?

11. Could historical sociology predict future? Do you have feeling that history repeats itself?

It can’t predict the future but it can alert us to the factors we need to predict the future. In the last chapter on my book States and Power I try to predict the future of states and in a forthcoming article (which I attach) I predict how global warming will affect states. Those predicted futures are different from the past. They are not repeats of history, but my study of historical elites makes it possible for me to build my predictions.

12.What current project are you working on?

I am working on 2 projects. I am writing a book entitled First Class Passengers on a Sinking Ship: Elite Privilege and the Decline of Great Powers, 1492-2015 which examines the decline of dominant economic and military powers in early modern Europe and the contemporary United States. I also am researching media coverage of war deaths in the United States and Israel from the 1960s to the present.

13. The last question is about our project Wikipedia, how often do you use it and for which purposes? This interview should represent you and your ideas correctly in Wikipedia, so after article would be finished your feedback will be welcomed. Thank you very much for interview.

I use Wikipedia to check facts of all sorts. I consult it at least once a day, sometimes more often. I do double check some Wikipedia articles against published sources, but then I also check published works against other published works. I try not to make any claim on just one source unless I know that source and its author well and am confident in their work.