http://cepa.newschool.edu/het/profiles/weber.htm
Max Weber is best known as one of the leading scholars and
founders of modern sociology, but Weber also accomplished much economic work
in the style of the "youngest" German Historical School.
Although Weber and Sombart are often lumped together
as part of that generation in German economics, no two men could be less alike.
The superficial, fanciful and Kaiser-worshipping Sombart was nothing like
the thorough, rational and Kaiser-despising Weber. Nonetheless, while Weber was
not completely immune from German nationalism, he was just not
the military-imperial jingoist Sombart was. Weber firmly believed that the
Herrenvolk should circumscribe their ambitions.
That personal attitude was reflected in his most
famous economic work, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1905).
In it, Weber argued that the presumed anti-capitalist Puritanical rhetoric
of eschewing earthly acquisitiveness was actually an impetus for that very
acquisitiveness. The thesis was novel and well-known. Catholicism, Weber
argues,
was tolerant towards the acquisition of earthly gain and winked at lavish
expenditure, an idea engendered by hierarchical structure of the Church (which
required
struggling and jockeying for "position") as well as its own tradition of
lavish expenditure (the church) and its oft-used earthly powers of forgiveness
for sin. This might
make one conclude that the Catholic ethic was more predisposed towards
capitalism than the Protestant (as others, before and since, have argued).
But no, replied Weber. It is true that the Protestant doctrines
asked men to accept a humbler station and concentrate on mundane tasks and
duties and, without a hierarchical church structure, there was no example of
upward-mobility, acquisitiveness and expenditure. Yet it was precisely this
that engendered the "work-and-save" ethic that gave rise to capitalism.
Dedication to
and pride in one's work, Weber claimed, is inevitably a highly productive
attitude. The Calvinist ethic of "godliness" through the humble dedication to
one's
beruf (calling/duty/task), meant economic productivity was consequently higher
in Protestant communities. In contrast, the upward-mobility that was
possible in hierarchical Catholic society meant that a lot of people found
themselves in jobs which they saw only as way-stations to higher and better
positions -
thereby dedicating only a minimal or nominal attention to the given task as
finding it either beneath their dignity or certainly not worth resigning to as
their end in life.
Consequently, Weber concluded, Catholic communities tended to be less
productive.
The higher productivity of Protestant communities was coupled with higher
thriftiness. The sinfulness of expenditure and lavish display of earthly goods
was a
notable Protestant principle. So too was it Catholic, but the Catholic Church
had been more prepared to forgive these (and other) sins. The Protestant church
had
no such power and thus the inducement to the faithful to stay modest in
consumption was high. Yet the higher productivity of the Protestant essentially
meant that
they earned more than the Catholic, and yet because they saved more, they
essentially accumulated; the Catholic was less productive but spent more.
Thus, Weber concluded, the idea of "capitalist accumulation"
was born directly out of the Protestant ethic - not because the Protestant
churches and doctrines condoned acquisitiveness as such (quite the contrary),
but
rather quite inadvertently through its claim to productive dedication to beruf
and thriftiness in consumption. The subsequent ethical "legitimization" of
capitalist acquisitiveness in later society under the rubric of "greed is good"
was simply a distorted statement of what was already a fact. In no sense,
claimed
Weber, is the capitalist ethic of "greed" the creator of "capitalist society"
(however much it might later be a propagator), but, rather, quite the
opposite.
Weber's 1905 thesis (echoed independently by R.H. Tawney) was naturally quickly
disputed and has since been more or less discredited as a "complete" theory of
the rise of the capitalism. Whatever the case, it certainly engendered much
debate.
Weber's other main contributions to economics (as well as to
social sciences in general) was his work on methodology. There are two aspects
to this: his theory of Verstehen, or "Interpretative" Sociology and his theory
of positivism.
His Verstehen doctrine is as well-known as it is controversial and debated. His
main thesis is that social, economic and historical research can never be fully
inductive or
descriptive as one must/should/does always approach it with a conceptual
apparatus. This apparatus Weber identified as the "Ideal Type". The idea was
essentially
this: to try to understand a particular economic or social phenomena, one must
"interpret" the actions of its participants and not only describe them. But
interpretation
poses us a problem for we cannot know it other than by trying to classify
behavior as belonging to some prior "Ideal Type". Weber gave us four categories
of "Ideal Types" of behavior: zweckrational (rational means to rational ends),
wertrational (rational means to
irrational ends), affektual (guided by emotion) and traditional (guided by
custom or habit).
Weber admitted employing "Ideal Types" was an abstraction but claimed it was
nonetheless essential if one were to understand any particular social phenomena
for,
unlike physical phenomena, it involved human behavior which must be
understood/interpreted by ideal types. Economists prick up your ears - for here
is the
methodological justification for the assumption of "rational economic man"!
Weber's work on positivism or rather his controversial belief in "value-free"
social science, is also still debated. While his arguments in this respect were
not novel,
they did signal a complete and forceful break with Schmoller and the "Young"
Historical School.
Weber's other contributions to economics were several: these
include a (seriously researched) economic history of Roman agrarian society
(his 1891 habilitiation), his work on the dual roles of idealism and
materialism in the
history of capitalism in his Economy and Society (1914), present Weber on his
anti-Marxian run. Finally, his thoroughly researched General Economic History
(1923)
is perhaps the Historical School at its empirical best.
Max Weber's position as an economist has been debated, and indeed, it is
generally accepted now that it is in sociology that his impact was greatest.
However, he
comes at the end of the German Historical School where no such distinctions
really existed and thus must be seen as an "economist" in that light. Major
Works of Max Weber
* Roman Agrarian History, 1891.
* "Roscher and Knies and the Logical Problem of Historical Economics",
1903-5, Schmoller's Jahrbuch.
* "The Objectivity of the Sociological and Social-Political Knowledge",
1904, .
* The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, 1905.
* Economy and Society, 1914.
* "Politics as a Vocation", 1918.
* General Economic History, 1923. - (1)
* The Methodology of the Social Sciences, 1949. - (1) Resources on Max
Weber
* "Dead Sociologists" page on Weber - very good review.
* Verstehen: Max Weber Homepage
* German Weber page.
* Collected Works of Max Weber.
* "Criticisms of Weber's Thesis" by Sandra Pierotti
* Basic Terms -- Summary of Max Weber's Ideas
* Dutch Max Weber page.
* M. Kuchenbrod's Unternehmerethos und Asketischer Protestantismus. Max
Weber (1864-1920)
* L. Bornmann's "Grundbegriffe und leitende Annahmen der
Handlungstheorie Max Webers"
* H. Kippenberg and P. Schilm Detektivarbeit an Max Webers Text
'Religionssoziologie'
* D. Spilker's Das Bürokratiemodell Max Webers und dessen Bezüge zur
Unternehmertheorie
* "Lecture: Max Weber on Capitalism" by R.J. Kilcullen at Maquarie
Univ, Australia
* "Lecture: Max Weber on Bureaucracy" by R.J. Kilcullen at Maquarie
Univ, Australia
* "Discredited Theories Live on in Academia", Richard Hamilton
* Max Weber Page at Laura Forgette
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