ABSTRACT
It is generally acknowledged that Toennies is one of the classical authors in sociology, but that does not mean that he is wellknown or properly understood. Much better known are a host of misconceptions, which are quoted and requoted from one author to the next, about his basic concepts and their application, for instance that Gemeinschaft is “good” and Gesellschaft “bad,” that no concrete phenomena could be designated as either Gemeinschaft or Gesellschaft, and the like. One of the misconceptions is that Toennies is thought to be similar to authors from whom he differs greatly, like Durkheim, and different from others with whom he disagrees in particulars but not in fundamentals, such as Max Weber. Quite a few sociologists echo Sorokin’s erroneous reading of the sources, that “it is easy to see that Toennies’ Gemeinschaft is identical with what Durkheim later styled a group with mechanical solidarity” (Sorokin, 1928, 491–493). On the other hand, Guenther Roth and Claus Wittich in their three-volume English edition of Economy and Society, maintain that Weber’s work was “in part conceived in opposition to Toennies’s concepts of Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft” (vol. 1, pp. xcvi–xcvii). The truth of the matter can be ascertained because Durkheim and Weber have commented on Toennies’s works and Toennies has commented on theirs although Toennies’s comments are less wellknown, if known at all. A review of Toennies’s system of thought in comparison with those of Durkheim and Weber, in addition to a review of the mutual comments of these authors, will reveal similarities and dissimilarities. The three authors will appear in a sequence of thematic variations, but Toennies will play the first violin.
