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Claus Offe (born 16 March 1940 in Berlin) [1] is a German political sociologist of Marxist orientation.
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He received his PhD from the University of Frankfurt and his Habilitation at the University of Konstanz. In Germany, he has held chairs for Political Science and Political Sociology at the Universities of Bielefeld (1975–1989) and Bremen (1989–1995), as well as at the Humboldt-University of Berlin (1995–2005). He has worked as fellow and visiting professor at the Institutes for Advanced Study in Stanford, Princeton, and the Australian National University as well as Harvard University, the University of California at Berkeley and The New School University, New York. Once a student of Jürgen Habermas, the left-leaning German academic is counted among the second generation Frankfurt School. He currently teaches political sociology at a private university in Berlin, the Hertie School of Governance.
He has made substantive contributions to understanding the relationships between democracy and capitalism. His recent work has focused on economies and states in transition to democracy.
He has been married to Ulrike Poppe since 2001.
Claus Offe is one of the founding members of Basic Income European Network, a network that later renamed to Basic Income Earth Network, and he has written several articles and books around the idea ever since the 1980s. Here are a few examples that indicates his way of thinking on the issue.
In the article "A Basic Income for All", published as a response to a text by Philippe Van Parijs in Boston Review, Offe clarifies some of his thoughts about the universal basic income and how to get there.
He starts off by saying that he agrees with Van Parijs that basic income clearly is a "morally attractive arrangement" and also think that Van Parijs provides a "normatively compelling argument for it in terms of real freedom and social justice". But then directly moves on to the question of why so many people, both elites and non-elites, seem reluctant or even against the idea of an unconditional basic income. He argues that one way of looking at this is to acknowledge that certain groups may well have legitimate or rational reasons to fear the introduction of unconditional basic income. Employers may, for example, fear that their control over the workers may be weakened. Individuals and organizations may also fear that the "moral underpinnings of a social order" will be substantially weakened, that is the idea that everyone should work, employed or self-employed, in order to have a legitimate right to a living income. There is also the fear, he notes, that the tax will be too high.
Taking these fears into account Offe suggests that the basic income implementation should be "governed by principles of gradualism and reversibility". Instead of thinking about basic income implementation as "before" and "after" he thinks it is better to think conceptualize and promote the system change in the dynamic terms of less and more. One way of gradually moving towards a universal basic income, according to Offe, could be to expand the list of groups, conditions and activities that are recognized as legitimate for something like a basic income already today. In other words, try to create a system of "participation income" before the real basic income, as Tony Atkinson earlier proposed in the name of a "participation income". [2]
Ulrich Beck was a German sociologist, and one of the most cited social scientists in the world during his lifetime. His work focused on questions of uncontrollability, ignorance and uncertainty in the modern age, and he coined the terms "risk society" and "second modernity" or "reflexive modernization". He also tried to overturn national perspectives that predominated in sociological investigations with a cosmopolitanism that acknowledges the interconnectedness of the modern world. He was a professor at the University of Munich and also held appointments at the Fondation Maison des Sciences de l’Homme (FMSH) in Paris, and at the London School of Economics.
Ecological modernization is a school of thought that argues that both the state and the market can work together to protect the environment. It has gained increasing attention among scholars and policymakers in the last several decades internationally. It is an analytical approach as well as a policy strategy and environmental discourse.
Anthony Giddens, Baron Giddens is an English sociologist who is known for his theory of structuration and his holistic view of modern societies. He is considered to be one of the most prominent modern sociologists and is the author of at least 34 books, published in at least 29 languages, issuing on average more than one book every year. In 2007, Giddens was listed as the fifth most-referenced author of books in the humanities. He has academic appointments in approximately twenty different universities throughout the world and has received numerous honorary degrees.
Alexander Theodore Callinicos is a Rhodesian-born British political theorist and activist. An adherent of Trotskyism, he is a member of the Central Committee of the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) and serves as its International Secretary. Between 2009 and 2020 he was the editor of International Socialism, the SWP's theoretical journal, and has published a number of books.
Zygmunt Bauman was a Polish–British sociologist and philosopher. He was driven out of the Polish People's Republic during the 1968 Polish political crisis and forced to give up his Polish citizenship. He emigrated to Israel; three years later he moved to the United Kingdom. He resided in England from 1971, where he studied at the London School of Economics and became Professor of Sociology at the University of Leeds, later emeritus. Bauman was a social theorist, writing on issues as diverse as modernity and the Holocaust, postmodern consumerism and liquid modernity.
Telos is a quarterly peer-reviewed academic journal that publishes articles on politics, philosophy, and critical theory, with a particular focus on contemporary political, social, and cultural issues.
Philippe Van Parijs is a Belgian political philosopher and political economist, best known as a proponent and main defender of the concept of an unconditional basic income and for the first systematic treatment of linguistic justice.
Paul Quentin Hirst (1946–2003) was a British sociologist and political theorist. He became Professor of Social Theory at Birkbeck College, London, in 1985 and held the post until his death from a stroke and brain haemorrhage.
Axel Honneth is a German philosopher who is the Professor for Social Philosophy at Goethe University Frankfurt and the Jack B. Weinstein Professor of the Humanities in the department of philosophy at Columbia University. He was also director of the Institut für Sozialforschung in Frankfurt am Main, Germany between 2001 and 2018.
Carole Pateman FBA FAcSS FLSW is a British feminist and political theorist. She is known as a critic of liberal democracy and has been a member of the British Academy since 2007.
Harry F. Dahms is Professor of Sociology, co-director of the Center for the Study of Social Justice and co-chair of the Committee on Social Theory at the University of Tennessee - Knoxville. Dahms also is an associate editor of Basic Income Studies and Soundings. An Interdisciplinary Journal, and was a founding member of the editorial boards of The Newfound Press, as well as of Anthem Studies in the Political Sociology of Democracy, on whose board he has remained. Since 2022, he has been a member of the AI Tennessee Initiative taskforce.
Scott Lash is a professor of sociology and cultural studies at Goldsmiths, University of London. Lash obtained a BSc in Psychology from the University of Michigan, an MA in Sociology from Northwestern University, and a PhD from the London School of Economics (1980). Lash began his teaching career as a lecturer at Lancaster University and became a professor in 1993. He moved to London in 1998 to take up his present post as Director for the Centre for Cultural Studies and Professor of Sociology at Goldsmiths College.
Ulrich K. Preuß teaches Theories of the State at the Hertie School of Governance.
The Hertie School is a German private, independent graduate school for governance located in Berlin. Hertie School is accredited to confer master's and doctoral degrees. Half of the school's students are international, with more than 95 countries represented among alumni and currently enrolled students. The working language is English.
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Legitimation Crisis is a 1973 book by the philosopher Jürgen Habermas. It was published in English in 1975 by Beacon Press, translated and with an introduction by Thomas McCarthy. It was originally published by Suhrkamp. The title refers to a decline in the confidence of administrative functions, institutions, or leadership: a legitimation crisis. The direct translation of its German title is Legitimation Problems in Late Capitalism. In this book, published five years after Knowledge and Human Interests, Habermas explored the fundamental crisis tendencies in the state-managed capitalism. Before the state-managed capitalism, states are primarily concerned with maintaining the market economy, while in the state-managed capitalism, states have additional roles such as providing a social healthcare, pensions, education, and so on. The expanded scopes of state administrations and influence helped managing crisis tendency of capitalism in economic field, but it created another crisis tendency in political as well as social-cultural field, which is legitimation crisis and motivation crisis, respectively.
Colin John Crouch, is an English sociologist and political scientist. He coined the post-democracy concept in 2000 in his book Coping with Post-Democracy. Colin Crouch is currently Emeritus Professor at the University of Warwick and an External Scientific Member of the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies.
Universal basic income in Germany has been discussed since the 1970s, with emphasis placed on its unconditional dimension by 2003. The universal basic income concept has many definitions, such as Philippe Van Parijs', which described it as the income paid by the government, at a uniform level and regular intervals to each adult citizen and permanent residents of the country. The Basic Income Earth Network's criteria constitute one of the most popular proposals and they include: 1) income must be paid to individuals instead of households; 2) income should be paid irrespective of income from other sources; and, 3) it must be paid without requiring performance of any work.
Heinrich Popitz was a German sociologist who worked towards a general sociological theory. Alongside thinkers like Helmut Schelsky, Hans Paul Bahrdt, Dieter Claessens, and others he was one of those sociologists in post-war Germany who founded their sociological reflections on insights from Philosophical Anthropology, thus creating an alternative to the then dominant paradigms of the Frankfurt School and Cologne School. His work revolves around the four central concepts power, norms, technology, and creativity.
Andreas Reckwitz is a German sociologist and cultural theorist. He is professor at the institute of social sciences at Humboldt University Berlin.
