Modern Angst

Abstract

This chapter shifts the focus from fears and anxieties that primarily resulted from the Federal Republic’s external situation to internal fears. The modernization and stabilization of West German society generated their own fears. This chapter focuses on fears of automation during the late 1950s and 1960s. Contrary to conventional wisdom, West Germans did not display an unabashed optimism about technology but were keenly aware of the ambivalent consequences of technological progress. In particular, they remembered the negative consequences of the rationalization movement of the 1920s and their impact on the political stability of the Weimar Republic. The chapter analyzes first the debate about technology among West German intellectuals such as Friedrich Pollock, Helmut Schelsky, and Arnold Gehlen. It then focuses on the broader cultural debate on automation that brought into view anxieties about structural unemployment, deskilling of workers, and psychological impact of automation. As a case study, the chapter then analyzes the confrontation of the largest West German industrial union, IG Metall, with automation. Labor unions did not respond to automation with optimism but were keenly aware of its potentially detrimental effects. A more skeptical attitude toward automation and technological progress more generally thus predated the economic crisis of the 1970s.