imagination of the revolutionary working class. Notwithstanding his ownemo-
tional ambivalence, Buttinger’sdescriptions bear witness to the“structures of
feeling”that constituted working-class cultureasasocial experience atapartic-
ular historical conjuncture.His ironicreferences to“self-evidentduty”and“ul-
timate bliss”suggest that strongemotionsinmassmovementsshould always be
seen as problematic–aconclusion thatmay reflect his personal responseto the
averted threat of National Socialism and the new danger of world communism
and that would not have been shared byWilliams writing about workingclass
and emotions around the sametime.Furthermore, Buttinger’sallusion to the
workers’emotional dependency on the Social Democratic lifeworld, with the de-
struction of its institutions by the Nazis likened toacompleteloss of self, serves
to validateliberaldemocracy asasuperior form ofgovernmentbasedonrational
self-interest and to downplaythe historical continuities between socialism and
National Socialism. Last but not least,the comparisons with“faith”and“reli-
gion”mayrecall the languageofthe earlysocialists but are added hereto diag-
nose the failureofall collectivist ideologies–except,ofcourse, for the ideology
of Americanism. Buttinger’sconclusion that nothing posesagreater threatto the
wellbeingofmankindthan“themagic spell”of ideology, and nothing ismore
importanttothe future of democracy thanthe protection of individual and soci-
ety from political emotions of anykind can be read asafinal and conclusive
breakwith the legacies of emotional socialism. However,the overdeterminedsta-
tus of emotions in his descriptions ofWilhelmine Social Democracy suggests that
emotions, especiallyinthe context of collective identifications,remain an unset-
tling presenceeveninthe most insistent arguments for individualism.With these
historical continuities in mind, including in assessments thathavebecome his-
torical themselves, the next chapter on choral singingreturns to one of the
founding sites of emotional socialism and offers the first of several case studies
that examine how symbolic(here:musical) practices at once relied on, and con-
tributedto,the imagination of the proletariat as an emotional community.
Emotional Socialism and Sentimental Masculinity 83