do political parties and labor unions influenceyou?”or“Do youhavehopes that
your situation will improvesoon?”or“Areyouwithout hope and, if so, why?”
indicate that Levenstein was looking for answers thatcould validatehis belief
in the importance of emotionsto the making of proletarian identifications.
The workers’answers confirmed that it was not the Marxist critique of cap-
italism but their personal need for recognition thatgave themasense of hope
and belonging in the workers’movement.Several miners declared:“Ihavebe-
come one and the samewith the movement.”Another confessed that the move-
ment“has turned me intoathinking person”and“filledme with hatred against
the divine world order and the capitalist class.”Ametal worker spoke formany
when he described the workers’movement as“life-giving,giving me relief, en-
joyment,andasense of belonging.” Several textile workers acknowledged
that the movement“has profoundlychangedmyentire thinking and feeling”
and“is the spring of life that restores and renews me inmydarker hours.”
And drawingonhumanistic ideas about education as cultivation,aweavercon-
cluded that through the movement“manisbeingrefined and thus becomesa
refined human being.”³
Levenstein’santhologyofworkers’letters and his questionnaire on the work-
er question were part ofawaveofworkers’life writings published beforeWorld
WarIthatsuggests abrief opening in the management of the social question,
made possible through the belief inashared languageofemotion.Hisspecula-
tions about“what nuances of feeling our daylaborer,that helot,iscapable of”
confirm the surfeit both of expectations and projections that made this self-
taught sociologist an important mediator between working-class writers and
middle-classreaders. Moreover,his conclusion that,“the proletarian of todayde-
mands more:cultivation of innatenatural energies, satisfaction of his spiritual
hunger (Seelenhunger),”⁴indicates to what degree the widespread interestin
workers’life writingsaround the turn of the century originatedincontempora-
neous debatesabout the social question, bourgeois concepts of psychological in-
teriority,and romantic ideas about the soul ofapeople.
These musingsabout workers’inner livescan be read asresponses to the
problems of modernization and massification, projected onto the social class
that was finallybeing givenavoice in the bourgeois public sphere. Confirming
his ownemotional investmentinthe process, Levenstein confessed in the intro-
moral outrage, see Barrington Moore,Jr.,Injustice:TheSocial Basis of Obedience and Revolt
(White Plains, NY:M.E.Sharpe, 1978), 191–216.
Levenstein,Die Arbeiterfrage,287,306,308, and 316.
Adolf Levenstein, IntroductiontoGeorgMeyer,Lebenstragödie einesTagelöhners(Berlin:
Frohwein,1909), 11.
Re/WritingWorkers’Emotions 139