Max Weber: Beyond Capitalism and Calvinsim

Black Swan

One of our members posted in our "Books and links" thread a list of The Great Philosophers series hosted by Philosopher's Mail wherein Max Weber had been discussed. Although an interesting read, I found it to be very limited, narrowly focused, and primarily concerned with only one aspect of Weber's early philosophy: The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1905).

The Protestant Ethic was an early Weber work, and not representative his later growth and development of philosophical, political, and economic thinking (e.g., see Economy and Society, 1922). The major Weberian rationalisation thesis was largely absent in Philosopher's Mail, as were the Iron Cage and Shell of Bondage. The Weberian change mechanism of evolving authority structures (traditional, charismatic, rational-legal) was only briefly mentioned, while the Calvinist theme dominated the emergence of capitalism discussion in Philosopher's Mail, a view I find to be misleading and sometimes distorted.

What are your thoughts about Max Weber or the Philosopher's Mail discussion?

Manach

Given how off base he was on the origins of capital (based on reading of serveral texts on medieval history), ignoring its wide and deep seated base in Europe centuries before the Calvinism was hatched, the answer being I try not to think about him at all.

KomradeBishop

While some of views on describing/classifying different kinds of power/leadership, as well as bureaucratic organization, are interesting, I think many of his economic views consist of well debunked concepts - though many of which are still prevalent.

John Kenneth Galbraith's concept of a 'Technostructure', outlining/mapping the power structure of an organization, seems to be a much more well developed idea, similar to (possibly inspired by) Weber's writing on bureaucracies.

On economic things though, Weber seemed to follow the idea of Methodological Individualism - though in fairness, mainstream economists still do in one form or another, unfortunately - which is not really a solid base for building any kind of microeconomic theory, as it inherently requires making assumptions about peoples behaviour, where exceptions will easily be found. Similar issues with his support of Marginalism.

ezra_pound

Manach wrote: »

Given how off base he was on the origins of capital (based on reading of serveral texts on medieval history), ignoring its wide and deep seated base in Europe centuries before the Calvinism was hatched, the answer being I try not to think about him at all.

He further explores the early development of capitalism in feudalist society, particularly the Jewish role in finance, in the book Economy and Society.

Black Swan

I have yet to review a philosophy that did not have its flaws and limitations. This can be said of Weber, especially the Philosopher's Mail version referenced earlier. Then again when constructing a conceptual framework to guide a research inquiry, we often borrow concepts from various philosophical orientations, not tossing them completely out given some flaws.

For example, I was involved in responding to an RFP (Request For Proposal) last year wherein we cited Weber's change mechanism from traditional, to charismatic, to rational legal to suggest the transition from tribal to nation founding to 2030 strategic plan of the United Arab Emirates. In addition to Weber, we cited other theoretical perspectives and empirical studies to build intersubjective support for this transitional framework. The transition was not the main thrust of the proposed study, but did aid the framework in terms of suggesting environmental context for the larger phenomenon to be researched; i.e., labour force emiratisation. In our proposal we noted limitations, including those pertaining to Weber. In any case, we received the approval and grant monies to conduct the study, so it would appear that the Weber transitional mechanism may have been useful, and certainly didn't result in proposal failure.

KomradeBishop

Ya Webers Tripartite Classifcation you mention there is one of his more useful ideas, which I don't think has any real problems with it - on looking at it closer, I think Galbraith's 'Technostructure' idea isn't really as broad as Webers here.

The main area of problems with Webers views, would be his economic ones, such as marginalism; and funny enough, a lot of those flawed ideas are still in place in mainstream economics today, as mainstream i.e. neoclassical economics is pretty much marginalist.

It's a core part of is wrong with economics actually - good takedown of part of it here (that blog is an excellent resource, on problems in all sorts of economic theory):
http://socialdemocracy21stcentury.blogspot.ie/2014/04/the-marginalist-pricing-controversy.html

Black Swan

Missing in Philosopher's Mail was the dynamic relationship between rational-legal and value rationality. Where rational-legal objectively focused on implementing the most efficient and effective means to an end, subjective values may be in agreement, neutral, or in opposition to these means or ends. Since no one was value-free, according to Weber, the objectivity of rational-legal could become confounded by values and problematic at times.