The Stalinist past of a popular sociologist has recently come back to haunt him. But do the ethics of his social analysis clear him of all charges? asks Andreas Hess
The British Sociological Association and the Irish Sociological Association will hold their annual meetings shortly and some shocking news will surely trigger much discussion at the two meetings.
Last month, the biggest German daily, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, published an article in which Bogdan Musial, a Polish historian, revealed renowned sociologist Zygmunt Bauman, one of the prophets of postmodernism and author of sociological bestsellers, once worked as an agent for the Stalinist military secret service. Citing files from a now-accessible Warsaw archive, the article further revealed that Bauman (code name "Semjon") participated in operations of political cleansing of alleged political opponents in Poland between 1944 and 1954. The Polish files also show Bauman was praised by his superiors for having been quite successful in completing the tasks assigned, although he seems, as at least one note suggests, not to have taken any major part in direct military operations because of his "Semitic background".
However, to be promoted to the rank of major at the youthful age of 23 was quite an achievement. As the author of the article pointed out, Bauman remained a faithful member of the party apparatus.
As a party soldier, Bauman continued to serve the Polish Communist Party (PCP) propaganda machine by writing books on such enlightening topics as The Role of Democratic Centralism in the Work of Leninuntil the anti-Semitic Gomulka troika of the PCP came to power, leading to Bauman's expulsion from the party and forcing him to leave Poland in 1968.
Certainly, Musial's article was not the first to discuss the Bauman files. It should not come as a surprise that Bauman's hidden past is so passionately debated in continental Europe. Despite their adversarial history, Germans and Poles are very critical when revelations come out about the fascist and communist pasts of their intellectuals.
The public attitude in continental Europe differs considerably from countries such as Britain and Ireland which were never under the spell of either fascism or Stalinism. Here in Ireland, it is still possible to read the lamentations of an unreconstructed communist like the historian Eric Hobsbawm who celebrated the Stalinist line taken during the Spanish Civil War - and to let him get away with it.
In Germany - which seems to have become the centre of the current debate - every major paper has commented on the Bauman revelation. In the Süddeutsche Zeitung, Thomas Urban argued that although the archives leave no doubt that Bauman was a member of the military secret service, very little is actually known about his exact role in the post-war Stalinist operations in Poland in which at least 50,000 people are estimated to have died, most of them civilians. Bauman has confirmed he was a member of the secret service; however, as the paper's commentator points out, he has remained silent on his actual deeds and level of involvement.
Thomas Assheuer, in the liberal weekly Die Zeit, suggests we need to take a closer look at the relationship between the man and his work. There is indeed plenty to discover in Bauman's sociology, particularly if you are interested in how individual ambivalence and organised irresponsibility are related.
Assheuer stresses that, in this respect, Bauman's work may have ironically set the high standards by which his life is now being judged.
Any sensible person will agree a one-sided trial by media needs to be avoided and the man himself should be given a chance to respond. There has been a strange silence from many of his admirers.
There exists now, particularly in Ireland and Britain, a pop sociology and industry to which the sociology Bauman promotes belongs.
Uncritical followers of such trends are usually quite outspoken when it comes to the wrongs of "post-modern" society but they seem to be at a loss when it comes to its ethical and political dimensions.
Maybe readers have not fully realised that Bauman's sociology is actually a structural argument in disguise. In Bauman's system, everyone becomes a victim of society. In such a sociology, culprits and perpetrators always appear as banal and as somehow innocent.
As Bauman once said in an interview, had he encountered Eichmann in person, and without knowledge of his crimes, he would have probably found him to be a likeable person.
The point about such a sociology is that there seems to be no such thing as individual choice or responsibility anymore. If all is liquid, so is morality.
In this context, it might well be, as Assheuer has argued, that the contemporary work of Bauman sheds light on his past. However, a closer reading of Bauman's work reveals it is always the anonymous structures and larger entities that shape the individual. Individuals become mere executors of decisions that modernity and bureaucracy force upon them.
In terms of ethics, Bauman's may turn out to be a very cynical sociology indeed. If everybody is a victim, we are either all innocent or all equally guilty.
If political catastrophes like the Holocaust or the Gulag are merely results of that abstract entity called modernity, nobody is to blame.
Instead of the International Court at The Hague, we could have a sociological congress where participants reflect endlessly on what went wrong in society.
• Andreas Hessis a senior lecturer in sociology