A Tribute to Lord Ralf Dahrendorf

A thanksgiving service was held today at St. Margaret church in Westminster Abbey for the life and work of Ralf Dahrendorf, a foremost sociologists and parliamentarian. I was fortunate to be his scholar at the London School of Economics. LSE boasts many peers among its professors but none of the rather many “academic lords” I met during my studies there stroke a comparable figure of intellectual and personal magnitude and formidability. For a young PhD student, talking to Dahrendorf was like conversing with a pure intellect itself.

“Are you writing a book at the moment?”, asked my fellow scholar Ebenezer Obadare during our first meeting with Dahrendorf. “Am I writing a book?- he seemed bemused. – I am always writing a book”.

I discovered Dahrendorf’s books before I met him, surprised how easily they read. They were texts, fine impeccable stories which helped make sense of the world and its past and present – like the book explaining origins of Nazism in Germany or a later one talking of the modern social conflict. There, I was amazed to find the suggestion that for young people to advance themselves and the society most, they should be having fun with what they do. What a far cry from statistics-crammed today’s  sociological books, geared to descriptory tables and graphs. “Sociologist nowadays try to prove they are not worse than engineers” – Dahrendorf joked to us.When I came back from my own fieldwork with insane amounts of data, he said, “I hope you will be able to make some sense out of what you’ve met rather than reporting that 30% of your subjects think one way and 15% another”. This was to a great relief, for it seemed he justified and encouraged my inclination to avoid numbers and produce ideas instead.

Dahrendorf  himself of course needed no endorsement – he was known to speak his truth whatever the context – and believed this was everyone’s right, too. At the time of technocrats, he was not afraid to draw on “irrational” as possible or partial explanations for the phenomena he studied, and say that out loud, too. He spoke for liberty and, in particular, the liberty of the individual – to grow, to develop, and to make a sincere and committed contribution to the society. He spoke against the big state, and for the parliamentary chamber full of responsible individuals free from constraints of party politics. An often lone voice in his lifetime, Dahrendorf’s ideas are gaining wider momentum. The “democracy of numbers” is giving way to “democracy of ideas”, faceless masses are yielding to active individuals that have ideas and agenda, and democracy again has a chance to be redefined in a way that takes it back closer to individual-focused liberty rather than egalitarian socialism.

Like many people for certain, I like to think that Ralf Dahrendorf was my mentor. We did not meet often, but he gave me guidance with my thesis, encouraged my quest into “irrational” within political sociology framework, provided recommendations for funding applications, and most crucially, supported my inkling to get out of the academia; the phrase “you want to be more than a senior lecturer at a Warwick university” inspired more than just me to look outside the “white tower” of universities and embrace the world. Today at the service, he inspired me again. Doing CIS politics, it was a first time in several years that I heard the word “democracy” being used not with a pejorative tint, but with respect and care, as a worthy goal of a society – and a person. Lord Dahrendorf enjoyed and savoured his life, while also enlightening millions through his outstanding books and helping thousands personally. A truly great man, a fully worthy life. A genuine inspiration.

Natalia Leshchenko