Amitai Etzioni

Amitai Etzioni (né Werner Falk; 4 January 1929 – 31 May 2023) was a German-born Israeli-American sociologist, best known for his work on socioeconomics and communitarianism.

He founded the Communitarian Network, a non-profit, non-partisan organization dedicated to supporting the moral, social, and political foundations of society.

He established the network to disseminate the movement's ideas.

His writings argue for a carefully crafted balance between individual rights and social responsibilities, and between autonomy and order, in social structure.

Amitai Etzioni was born Werner Falk in Cologne, Germany in 1929 to a Jewish family.

In January 1933, Etzioni was only four years old when the car he was riding in made a sharp turn and, in response, he grabbed a handle that opened the door.

Etzioni was pulled back into the car at the last moment by his father, but, as noted in his memoir, My Brother's Keeper, this memory foreshadowed the upcoming doom that would overtake his homeland during the Nazi rule.

Later in 1933, Etzioni and his grandparents were walking through the forest next to Frankfurt when they came upon a forest fire.

Suddenly, Hitler Youth ventured into the forest, riding in two trucks.

Etzioni's grandparents reacted by grabbing Amitai and rushing down the hill, without explaining what happened in this close encounter with the Nazis — feeding into his sense of fear and foreboding.

By the time he turned five, both of his parents had escaped to London, which left Etzioni in the care of his grandparents.

Etzioni was smuggled out of Germany soon afterwards, arriving at a train station in Italy with a non-Jewish relative, who soon reunited Etzioni with his parents.

Etzioni was stuck with his parents in Athens, Greece for a year, unable to enter Palestine since his family was awarded a bachelor permit instead of a family permit.

When the paperwork was finally resolved, Etzioni found himself learning Hebrew in Haifa, Mandatory Palestine in the winter of 1937.

At this time, he began to go by the first name Amitai instead of Werner, since the principal of Etzioni's new school strongly encouraged Etzioni to introduce himself by a Hebrew name.

He was given the name Amitai based on the Hebrew word for truth (emet) and the name of Jonah's father in the Tanach (Amittai).

Etzioni moved with his family to a small village, Herzliya Gimmel, which served as a base for an emerging community called Kfar Shmaryahu.

When Etzioni was eight, he moved to the new village, where his family was assigned to a small, boxlike new house and a small farming lot.

In the spring of 1941, Etzioni's father left to join the Jewish Brigade, which was a Jewish unit formed within the British army.

Etzioni, at the age of thirteen, was struggling at school, which then caused his mother to send him to a boarding school in Ben Shemen.

In the spring of 1946, at the age of seventeen, Etzioni dropped out of high school to join the Palmach, the elite commando force of the Haganah, the underground army of the Jewish community of Palestine, and was sent to Tel Yosef for military training.

When the Palmach learned that the British police had captured a list of the Palmach members, they were issued new, fake ID cards and had to choose new last names.

Amitai Falk chose Etzioni, a pen name he had used when he started writing in Ben Shemen at age 15.

During Etzioni's time in the Palmach, it carried out a campaign of blowing up bridges and police stations to drive out the British, who were blocking Jews escaping post-Holocaust Europe from immigrating to Palestine and standing in the way of the establishment of a Jewish state.

In contrast to the Irgun, the Palmach largely sought to affect British and global public opinion rather than cause casualties.

Etzioni describes his early life and decision to join the Palmach in the video "The Making of a Peacenik".

Etzioni's Palmach unit participated in the defense of Jerusalem, which was under siege by the Arab Legion.

His unit sneaked through Arab lines to fight to defend Jerusalem and to open a corridor to Tel Aviv, participating in the Battles of Latrun and the establishment of the Burma Road.

Following the war, Etzioni spent a year studying at an institute established by Martin Buber.

In 1951, he enrolled in the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where he completed both BA (1954) and MA (1956) degrees in sociology.

In 1957, he went to the United States to study at the University of California, Berkeley, and was a research assistant to Seymour Martin Lipset.

He received his PhD in sociology in 1958, completing the degree in the record time of 18 months.

Etzioni authored over 30 books.

About half are academic, the most important of which is The Active Society, and half written for the public, especially The Spirit of Community.

His early academic work focused on organizational theory, resulting in the often-cited A Comparative Analysis of Complex Organizations, published in 1961.

The book was well received in academic circles.

A book review in Political Science Quarterly by Peter Fricke called it "a principal text for students of organizations."

The book established Etzioni's academic credentials and led to many studies, which Etzioni reviewed and included in a revised edition of the same title, published in 1975.

In 2001, he was named among the top 100 American intellectuals, as measured by academic citations, in Richard Posner's book, Public Intellectuals: A Study of Decline.

Etzioni was the Director of the Institute for Communitarian Policy Studies at The George Washington University, where he also served as a professor of International Affairs.