Johann Plenge

Johann Max Emanuel Plenge (7 June 1874 – 11 September 1963) was a German sociologist. He was professor of political economy at the University of Münster.

In his book 1789 and 1914, Plenge contrasted the 'Ideas of 1789' (liberty) and the 'Ideas of 1914' (organisation). He argued: "Under the necessity of war, socialist ideas have been driven into German economic life, its organisation has grown together into a new spirit, and so the assertion of our nation for mankind has given birth to the idea of 1914, the idea of German organisation, the national unity of state socialism".^[2] To Plenge, as for many other German nationalists and socialists, organization meant socialism and a planned economy (central direction). He regarded the war between Germany and England as a war between opposite principles, and believed that the "struggle for victory were new forces born out of the advanced economic life of the nineteenth century: socialism and organization".^[1]: 127