Everything about Max Weber totally explained
Maximilian Carl Emil Weber (
21 April 1864 –
14 June 1920) was a
German political economist and
sociologist who was considered one of the founders of the modern study of sociology and
public administration. He began his career at the
University of Berlin, and later worked at
Freiburg,
Heidelberg,
Vienna and
Munich. He was influential in contemporary German politics, being an advisor to
Germany's negotiators at the
Treaty of Versailles and to the commission charged with drafting the
Weimar Constitution.
Weber's major works deal with
rationalization in
sociology of religion and
government. His most famous work is his essay
The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, which began his work in the sociology of
religion. In this work, Weber argued that religion was one of the non-exclusive reasons for the different ways the cultures of the
Occident and the
Orient have developed, and stressed importance of particular characteristics of
ascetic Protestantism which led to the development of
capitalism,
bureaucracy and the
rational-legal state in
the West. In another major work,
Politics as a Vocation, Weber defined the
state as an entity which claims a
monopoly on the legitimate use of physical force, a definition that became pivotal to the study of modern Western
political science. His most known contributions are often referred to as the '
Weber Thesis'.
Biography
Weber was born in
Erfurt in
Thuringia,
Germany, the eldest of seven children of Max Weber Sr., a prominent
liberal politician and
civil servant, and Helene Fallenstein, a moderate
Calvinist. Weber Sr.'s engagement with public life immersed the family home in
politics, as his salon received many prominent
scholars and public figures.
The young Weber and his brother
Alfred, who also became a sociologist and economist, thrived in this intellectual atmosphere. Weber's 1876 Christmas presents to his parents, when he was thirteen years old, were two historical essays entitled "About the course of
German history, with special reference to the positions of the
emperor and the
pope" and "About the
Roman Imperial period from
Constantine to the migration of nations". At the age of fourteen, he wrote letters studded with references to
Homer,
Virgil,
Cicero, and
Livy, and he'd an extended knowledge of
Goethe,
Spinoza,
Kant, and
Schopenhauer before he began university studies. It seemed clear that Weber would pursue advanced studies in the
social sciences.
In 1882 Weber enrolled in the
University of Heidelberg as a
law student. Weber joined his father's duelling fraternity, and chose as his major study Weber Sr.'s field of law. Along with his law coursework, young Weber attended lectures in
economics and studied
medieval history and
theology. Intermittently, he served with the
German army in
Strasbourg.
In the autumn of 1884, Weber returned to his parents' home to study at the
University of Berlin. For the next eight years of his life, interrupted only by a term at the
University of Göttingen and short periods of further military training, Weber stayed at his parents' house; first as a student, later as a junior barrister, and finally as a Dozent at the University of Berlin. In 1886 Weber passed the examination for "
Referendar", comparable to the
bar association examination in the
British and
American legal systems. Throughout the late 1880s, Weber continued his study of history. He earned his law doctorate in 1889 by writing a
doctoral dissertation on legal history entitled
The History of Medieval Business Organisations. Having thus become a "
Privatdozent", Weber was now qualified to hold a German professorship.
In the years between the completion of his dissertation and habilitation, Weber took an interest in contemporary
social policy. In 1888 he joined the "
Verein für Socialpolitik", the new professional association of German economists affiliated with the
historical school, who saw the role of economics primarily as the solving of the wide-ranging social problems of the age, and who pioneered large-scale statistical studies of economic problems. He also involved himself in politics, joining the left leaning
Evangelical Social Congress. In 1890 the "Verein" established a research program to examine "the Polish question" or
Ostflucht, meaning the influx of foreign farm workers into
eastern Germany as local labourers migrated to Germany's rapidly
industrialising cities. Weber was put in charge of the study, and wrote a large part of its results. who was instrumental in collecting and publishing Weber's journal articles as books after his death. The couple moved to Freiburg in 1894, where Weber was appointed professor of economics at
Freiburg University, After this, Weber became increasingly prone to nervousness and insomnia, making it difficult for him to fulfill his duties as a professor. next to his colleagues
Edgar Jaffé and
Werner Sombart. In 1904, Weber began to publish some of his most seminal papers in this journal, notably his essay
The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. It became his most famous work, and laid the foundations for his later research on the impact of
cultures and
religions on the development of
economic systems. This essay was the only one of his works that was published as a book during his lifetime. Also that year, he visited
United States and participated in the
Congress of Arts and Sciences held in connection with the
World's Fair (
Louisiana Purchase Exposition) at
St. Louis. Despite his successes, Weber felt that he was unable to resume regular teaching at that time, and continued on as a private scholar, helped by an inheritance in 1907.
During the
First World War, Weber served for a time as director of the army hospitals in Heidelberg. He became a member of the
worker and soldier council of Heidelberg in 1918. In the same year, Weber became a consultant to the
German Armistice Commission at the
Treaty of Versailles and to the commission charged with drafting the
Weimar Constitution. This article was later used by
Adolf Hitler to institute rule by decree, thereby allowing his government to suppress opposition and obtain
dictatorial powers.
Weber's contributions to German politics remain a controversial subject to this day.
Weber resumed teaching during this time, first at the
University of Vienna, then in 1919 at the
University of Munich. Weber is regarded as one of the founders of modern sociology, although in his times he was viewed primarily as a historian and an economist. Whereas Durkheim, following
Comte, worked in the
positivist tradition, Weber created and worked – like
Werner Sombart, his friend and then the most famous representative of
German sociology – in the
antipositivist,
hermeneutic, tradition. Those works started the antipositivistic revolution in
social sciences, which stressed the difference between the social sciences and natural sciences,). Weber's early work was related to
industrial sociology, but he's most famous for his later work on the
sociology of religion and
sociology of government.
Max Weber began his studies of
rationalisation in
The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, in which he shows how the aims of certain
ascetic Protestant denominations, particularly
Calvinism, shifted towards the rational means of economic gain as a way of expressing that they'd been blessed. The rational roots of this doctrine, he argued, soon grew incompatible with and larger than the religious, and so the latter were eventually discarded. Weber continues his investigation into this matter in later works, notably in his studies on
bureaucracy and on the classifications of
authority. In these works he alludes to an inevitable move towards rationalization.
It should be noted that many of his works famous today were collected, revised, and published
posthumously. Significant interpretations of Weber's writings were produced by such sociological luminaries as
Talcott Parsons and
C. Wright Mills.
Sociology of religion
Weber's work on the sociology of religion started with the essay
The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism and continued with the analysis of,, and
Ancient Judaism. His work on other religions was interrupted by his sudden death in 1920, which prevented him from following
Ancient Judaism with studies of
Psalms,
Book of Jacob,
Talmudic Jewry, early
Christianity and
Islam. His three main themes were the effect of religious ideas on economic activities, the relation between
social stratification and religious ideas, and the distinguishable characteristics of Western civilization.
His goal was to find reasons for the different development paths of the cultures of the
Occident and the
Orient, although without judging or valuing them, like some of the contemporary thinkers who followed the
social Darwinist paradigm; Weber wanted primarily to explain the distinctive elements of the
Western civilization. Why was that not the case with Protestantism? Weber addresses that
paradox in his essay.
Among the universal tendencies identified by Weber that those individuals had to fight were the desire to profit.
After defining the spirit of capitalism, Weber argues that there are many reasons to look for its origins in the religious ideas of the
Reformation. Many observers like
William Petty,
Montesquieu,
Henry Thomas Buckle,
John Keats, and others have commented on the affinity between Protestantism and the development of the commercial spirit.
Weber showed that certain types of Protestantism – notably Calvinism – favoured rational pursuit of economic gain and worldly activities which had been given positive spiritual and moral meaning. The phrase "
work ethic" used in modern commentary is a derivative of the "
Protestant ethic" discussed by Weber. It was adopted when the idea of the Protestant ethic was generalised to apply to
Japanese people,
Jews and other
non-Christians.
The Religion of China: Confucianism and Taoism
The Religion of China: Confucianism and Taoism was Weber's second major work on the sociology of religion. Weber focused on those aspects of
Chinese society that were different from those of
Western Europe and especially contrasted with
Puritanism, and posed a question why capitalism didn't develop in China. In
Hundred Schools of Thought Warring States Period, he concentrated on the early period of Chinese history, during which the major Chinese schools of thoughts (Confucianism and Taoism) came to the fore.
By 200 BC, the Chinese
state had developed from a loose
federation of
feudal states into a unified
empire with
patrimonial rule, as described in the
Warring States Period.
Early unification of the state and the establishment of central
officialdom meant that the focus of the power struggle changed from the distribution of land to the distribution of
offices, which with their fees and
taxes were the most prominent source of income for the holder, who often pocketed up to 50% of the revenue. The imperial government depended on the services of those officials, not on the service of the military (
knights) as in Europe.
Chinese civilisation had no religious
prophecy nor a powerful
priestly class. The emperor was the of the
state religion and the supreme ruler, but popular cults were also tolerated (however the political ambitions of their priests were curtailed). This forms a sharp contrast with medieval Europe, where the
Church curbed the power of
secular rulers and the same faith was professed by rulers and common folk alike.
According to Confucianism, the worship of great deities is the affair of the state, while ancestral worship is required of all, and the multitude of popular cults is tolerated.
Confucianism tolerated
magic and
mysticism as long as they were useful tools for controlling the masses; it denounced them as
heresy and suppressed them when they threatened the established order (hence the opposition to
Buddhism). Note that in this context, Confucianism can be referred to as the state cult, and Taoism as the popular religion.
Weber argued that while several factors favoured the development of a capitalist economy (long periods of peace, improved control of rivers, population growth, freedom to acquire land and move outside of native community, free choice of occupation) they were outweighed by others (mostly stemming from religion):
- technical inventions were opposed on the basis of religion, in the sense that the disturbance of ancestral spirits was argued to lead to bad luck, and adjusting oneself to the world was preferred to changing it.
- sale of land was often prohibited or made very difficult.
- extended kinship groups (based on the religious importance of family ties and ancestry) protected its members against economic adversities, therefore discouraging payment of debts, work discipline, and rationalisation of work processes.
- those kinship groups prevented the development of an urban status class and hindered developments towards legal institutions, codification of laws, and the rise of a lawyer class.
The Religion of India: The Sociology of Hinduism and Buddhism
The Religion of India: The Sociology of Hinduism and Buddhism was Weber's third major work on the sociology of religion. In this work he deals with the structure of Indian society, with the orthodox doctrines of Hinduism and the heterodox doctrines of Buddhism, with modifications brought by the influence of popular religiosity, and finally with the impact of religious beliefs on the secular ethic of Indian society.
The ancient Indian social system was shaped by the concept of caste. It directly linked religious belief and the segregation of society into status groups. Weber describes the caste system, consisting of the Brahmins (priests), the Kshatriyas (warriors), the Vaisyas (merchants) and the Shudras (labourers). Then he describes the spread of the caste system in India due to conquests, the marginalisation of certain tribes and the subdivision of castes.
Next, Weber analyses the Hindu religious beliefs, including asceticism and the Hindu world view, the Brahman orthodox doctrines, the rise and fall of Buddhism in India, the Hindu restoration, and the evolution of the guru. Weber asks the question whether religion had any influence upon the daily round of mundane activities, and if so, how it impacted economic conduct. He notes the idea of an immutable world order consisting of the eternal cycles of rebirth and the depreciation of the mundane world, and finds that the traditional caste system, supported by the religion, slowed economic development; in other words, the "spirit" of the caste system militated against an indigenous development of capitalism.
Ancient Judaism
In Ancient Judaism, his fourth major work on the sociology of religion, Weber attempted to explain the "combination of circumstances" which resulted in the early differences between Oriental and Occidental religiosity. It is especially visible when the interworldly asceticism developed by Western Christianity is contrasted with mystical contemplation of the kind developed in India. Stating his reasons for investigating ancient Judaism, Weber wrote that
Anyone who is heir to the traditions of modern European civilisation will approach the problems of universal history with a set of questions, which to him appear both inevitable and legitimate. These questions will turn on the combination of circumstances which has brought about the cultural phenomena that are uniquely Western and that have at the same time (…) a universal cultural significance.
Weber discusses the organisation of the early confederacy, the unique qualities of the Israelites' relations to Yahweh, the influence of foreign cults, types of religious ecstasy, and the struggle of the priests against ecstasy and idol worship. He goes on to describe the times of the Division of the Monarchy, social aspects of Biblical prophecy, the social orientation of the prophets, demagogues and pamphleteers, ecstasy and politics, and the ethic and theodicity of the prophets. Weber notes that Judaism not only fathered Christianity and Islam, but was crucial to the rise of modern Occident state, as its influence were as important to those of Hellenistic and Roman cultures. Reinhard Bendix, summarising Ancient Judaism, writes that
free of magic and esoteric speculations, devoted to the study of law, vigilant in the effort to do what was right in the eyes of the Lord in the hope of a better future, the prophets established a religion of faith that subjected man's daily life to the imperatives of a divinely ordained moral law. In this way, ancient Judaism helped create the moral rationalism of Western civilisation.
Sociology of politics and government
In the sociology of politics and government, one of Weber's most significant contribution is his Politics as a Vocation essay. Therein, Weber unveils the definition of the state that has become so pivotal to Western social thought: that the state is that entity which possesses a monopoly on the legitimate use of physical force, which it may nonetheless elect to delegate as it sees fit. In this essay, Weber wrote that politics is to be understood as any activity in which the state might engage itself in order to influence the relative distribution of force. Politics thus comes to be understood as deriving from power. A politician must not be a man of the "true Christian ethic", understood by Weber as being the ethic of the Sermon on the Mount, that's to say, the injunction to turn the other cheek. An adherent of such an ethic ought rather to be understood to be a saint, for it's only saints, according to Weber, that can appropriately follow it. The political realm is no realm for saints. A politician ought to marry the ethic of ultimate ends and the ethic of responsibility, and must possess both a passion for his avocation and the capacity to distance himself from the subject of his exertions (the governed).
Weber distinguished three pure types of political leadership, domination and authority: charismatic domination (familial and religious), traditional domination (patriarchs, patrimonalism, feudalism), and legal domination (modern law and state, bureaucracy). In his view, every historical relation between rulers and ruled contained such elements and they can be analysed on the basis of this tripartite distinction. He also notes that the instability of charismatic authority inevitably forces it to "routinize" into a more structured form of authority. Likewise he notes that in a pure type of traditional rule, sufficient resistance to a master can lead to a "traditional revolution". Thus he alludes to an inevitable move towards a rational-legal structure of authority, utilising a bureaucratic structure. Thus this theory can be sometimes viewed as part of the social evolutionism theory. This ties to his broader concept of rationalisation by suggesting the inevitability of a move in this direction.
Weber is also well-known for his critical study of the bureaucratisation of society, the rational ways in which formal social organizations apply the ideal type characteristics of a bureaucracy. It was Weber who began the studies of bureaucracy and whose works led to the popularization of this term. Many aspects of modern public administration go back to him, and a classic, hierarchically organised civil service of the Continental type is called "Weberian civil service", although this is only one ideal type of public administration and government described in his magnum opus Economy and Society (1922), and one that he didn't particularly like himself – he only thought it particularly efficient and successful. In this work, Weber outlines a description, which has become famous, of rationalization (of which bureaucratization is a part) as a shift from a value-oriented organisation and action (traditional authority and charismatic authority) to a goal-oriented organization and action (legal-rational authority). The result, according to Weber, is a "polar night of icy darkness", in which increasing rationalization of human life traps individuals in an "iron cage" of rule-based, rational control. Weber's bureaucracy studies also led him to his analysis – correct, as it would turn out, after Stalin's takeover – that socialism in Russia would lead to over-bureaucratization rather than to the "withering away of the state" (as Karl Marx had predicted would happen in communist society).
Economics
While Max Weber is best known and recognised today as one of the leading scholars and founders of modern sociology, he also accomplished much in other fields, notably economics, although this is largely forgotten today among orthodox economists, who pay very little attention to his works. The view that Weber is at all influential to modern economists comes largely from non-economists and economic critics with sociology backgrounds. During his life distinctions between the social sciences were less clear than they're now, and Weber considered himself a historian and an economist first, sociologist distant second. His most valued contributions to the field of economics is his famous work, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. This is a seminal essay on the differences between religions and the relative wealth of their followers. Weber's work is parallel to Sombart's treatise of the same phenomenon, which however located the rise of Capitalism in Judaism. Weber's other main contribution to economics (as well as to social sciences in general) is his work on methodology: his theories of "Verstehen" (known as understanding or Interpretative Sociology) and of antipositivism (known as humanistic sociology).
- Social class is based on economically determined relationship to the market (owner, renter, employee etc.).
- Status is based on non-economical qualities like honour, prestige and religion.
- Party refers to affiliations in the political domain.
All three dimensions have consequences for what Weber called "life chances". In Milan, Venice, and Florence the small City-state governments lead to the development of the earliest forms of capitalism. In the 16th century Antwerp was a commercial center of Europe. It was also noted that the predominantly Calvinist country of Scotland didn't enjoy the same economic growth as Holland, England, and New England. In addition, it has been pointed out that Holland, which was heavily Calvinist, industrialized much later in the 19th century than predominantly Catholic Belgium, which was one of the centres of the Industrial Revolution on the European mainland.
Emil Kauder expanded Schumpeter's argument by arguing the hypothesis that Calvinism hurt the development of capitalism by leading to the development of the labor theory of value. Kauder writes "Any social philosopher or economist exposed to Calvinism will be tempted to give labor an exalted position in his social or economic treatise, and no better way of extolling labor can be found than by combining work with value theory, traditionally the very basis of an economic system." In contrast, Catholic areas that were influenced by the late scholastics were more likely to adhere to the subjective theory of value.
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