Not the Protestant Ethic ? Max Weber at St. Louis
2005; Routledge; Volume: 31; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1016/j.histeuroideas.2005.02.002
ISSN1873-541X
Autores Tópico(s)Religion and Society Interactions
ResumoClick to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes ☆ Abbreviations and conventions: PE for Protestant Ethic; AfSS for Archiv für Sozialwissenschaft und Sozialpolitik; GASWg for Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Sozial- und Wirtschaftsgeschichte (Tübingen, 1924) ed. Marianne Weber; GARS for Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Religionssoziologie (Tübingen, 1920) vol.i; WL for Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Wissenschaftslehre (Tübingen, 1968) ed. J. Winckelmann; WuG for Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft (Tübingen, 1972) ed. J. Winckelmann; MWG for Max Weber Gesamtausgabe ed. Horst Baier et al. (Tübingen, 1984-). Letters printed in the latter edition are cited as Briefe; unpublished letters from the Geheimes Staatsarchiv, Berlin-Dahlem, Rep.92, Nachlaß Max Weber are cited as ‘Weber Nachlaß’. The St. Louis address is cited by page references (primarily in the text) in []: this refers to the text in MWG I/8.212-43. The PE is cited in the notes in [] according to volume and page number in the Archiv für Sozialwissenschaft in 1904-5: eg. [XX.1]. — All translations from German are my own. No disrespect for current English language translations of the PE is intended thereby; but in my opinion none of these is framed according to sufficiently historical principles — on which point see my comment ‘Translation as a conceptual act’, Max Weber Studies 2 (2001), 59–63. 1 Peter Ghosh, St Anne's College, Oxford, UK, OX2 6HS. 2 Marianne Weber, Max Weber: Ein Lebensbild (Tübingen, 1926), c.IX. 3 The editor (Prof. Schluchter) was of course well aware of the textual problem, but took it for granted that one must reproduce the Urtext (although even so, he has not resisted the temptation to make occasional corrections): MWG I/8.211. The text also stands in limbo within the structure of the Gesamtausgabe. It has major links to Weber's writings on agrarian capitalism in the 1890s (vols. I/3-4); to the Protestant Ethic (vol. I/9); and to the article ‘Der Streit um den Charakter der altgermanischen Sozialverfassung’, originally conceived as the opening of the St. Louis text (vol. I/6). However, it languishes within a separate miscellany (vol. I/8) entitled ‘Economy, State, Social Policy’. There are good reasons for the underlying editorial decisions; but the text remains a casualty nonetheless. 4 His invented title ran, in full, ‘Capitalism and Rural Society in Germany’. However, the text is by no means confined to Germany and Gerth may have recognised the point: when he translated the text back into German he did so under the title, “Kapitalismus und Agrarverfassung”, Zeitschrift für die gesamte Staatswissenschaft 108 (1952), 431-52. I suggest that the only usable and yet textually authentic short title is ‘The Rural Community’: see below, n.a. 5 Amongst many examples: he omits the opening two sentences of the text; he loses patience with Weber's distinction between Bauer and Farmer [218]; he will substitute ‘feudal’ for ‘gentlemanly’ [233]; and he persistently deletes of ‘constitution’ when it appears as ‘agrarian constitution’ or ‘social constitution’, replacing it by ‘structure’ (though by a curious irony Prof. Schluchter agrees with him on this: MWG I/8.211). The more general point is that he did not work as a historian but re-worked terms in accordance with what he took to be their “self-evident” meaning. By contrast the rude literalism of the original translation, though defective at so many points, is a real virtue. 6 We know that Weber was dictating his work to a typist at this date: see eg. to Alfred Weber, 8 Mar. 1905, Weber Nachlaß. Hugo Münsterberg, the academic organizer of the Congress, also speaks of the depositing of ‘typescripts’ by speakers after the event: Congress of Arts and Science ed. Howard J. Rogers (Boston & New York, 1905-7) 8 volumes, i.130. [Hereafter, ‘Congress’]. 7 Eg. Karl Lamprecht, What is History? (New York, 1905), Lecture I cf. Preface, VII-VIII; Preface to Deutsche Geschichte vol.vi (Berlin, 1904); Ernst Troeltsch, Psychologie und Erkenntnistheorie in der Religionswissenschaft (Tübingen, 1905). In Troeltsch's case this meant that the American visit was opportunistic. The German text was three times as long as his Congress address (‘Psychology and theory of knowledge in the science of religion’, Congress, i.275-88) and much more substantial, so that ‘parallel’ publication is not in fact accurate; only the German version was of real interest to him. Hence his remark to Wilhelm Bousset that ‘I have accepted the request of the American committee [to speak], as otherwise I shall hardly get around to finding out about the great modern wonderland’: 8 March [1904], pr. ‘Briefe aus der Heidelberger Zeit’ ed. E. Dinkler-von Schubert, Heidelberger Jahrbücher XX (1976), 41. (The letter is dated 1902 here, but this is an obvious mistake.) 8 18 March 1904, pr. MWG I/8.204. This was a typical minor Weberian inaccuracy: the allotted time – communicated to speakers in advance – was actually 45 minutes: Congress, i.50. 9 Weber to Schmoller, 14 Dec. 1904, ibid., 205 cf. 205-6. 150 invitations to foreign speakers were issued; 117 were accepted; and 96 (?98) actually came: opening address of President Harper, University of Chicago, Congress i.32. 10 Guenther Roth, Max Webers deutsch-englische Familengeschichte 1800–1950 (Tübingen, 2001), 486. At the then exchange rate the St. Louis honorarium came to 2000 Marks. This may be compared to ‘about three or four thousand marks’ which Weber estimated as the cost of his planned tour in 1893 (loc. cit.), or the figure of $1700 or 8500 M which was Weber's estimate of the total cost for himself and Marianne in 1904: to Helene Weber, 19 Nov. 1904, Weber Nachlaß. 11 Europe was divided into three for this purpose: apart from Münsterberg, Simon Newcomb took France; and Albion Small England, Russia, Italy and non-Germanic Austria. They sailed respectively on 30 May, 6 May and 6 June: Congress i.17. 12 Jellinek to Münsterberg 27 [June] 1903: ‘Max Weber returned here a few days ago and has very much regretted not meeting you again. To my great joy, and probably yours as well, he is once more able to work and in the best of moods. It would, I think, benefit his state of health a great deal, if he too was invited to lecture in St. Louis. His wife told me that he would certainly accept, and could deliver one lecture with great ease.’ The letter was found and published by Friedrich Wilhelm Graf with the date 27 July 1903: ‘Die kompetentesten Gespächspartner?’, in Religionssoziologie um 1900 (Würzburg, 1995) ed. V. Krech & H. Tyrell, 220 n.15. — I suggest the July date must be a mistake since (a) Weber was not recently returned from anywhere then, whereas he had come back from the Netherlands c.16-17 June; (b) Münsterberg's official invitation to Weber to attend had already been delivered on or around 23 July: MWG I/8.204; (c) Weber had himself written to Münsterberg on 21 June (though not directly to beg for an invitation) and then to Jellinek in the wake of this letter: ibid., 205–6, nn.38, 45–7. The point of Jellinek's letter was (I suggest) more to reassure Münsterberg that Weber would accept, despite raising worries about the fee, rather than to persuade him to admit Weber to the list of speakers in the first place. 13 The evidence for this dating is as follows: (i) at many points the St. Louis address borrows from the substance of the essay on the ‘Fideikommißfrage in Preußen’, MWG I/8.92-188 and renders it into popular form; the overwhelming probability is that the more technical presentation came first: see n.21 below. (ii) The only letters which clearly show Weber at work on the St. Louis address are those of 17, 19 July to von Below: Weber Nachlaß. (iii) The second letter also shows that Weber's article, ‘Der Streit um den Charakter der altgermanischen Sozialverfassung’, originally intended as an opening to the St. Louis address, was written in July: Jahrbücher für Nationalökonomie und Statistik III. Folge, 28 (1904), 433-470, repr. GASWg, 508–56, here 518 n.1; see n.22 below. Against all this there is only Weber's remark of the previous autumn that he would begin preparing his talk in the winter. Not only is this vague and prospective, but his idea of preparation was to go through his materials on Calvinism – evidently suggesting a primary focus on the PE – though he claimed that these might also be useful for St. Louis. The link here to actual work on the Congress address is nebulous at best: Weber to Brentano 10 Oct. 1903, Nachlaß Brentano, Bundesarchiv Koblenz. I am indebted to Prof. Hartmut Lehmann for a transcript of this letter. 14 The PE was plainly designed with the Archiv für Sozialwissenschaft in mind. But for this publishing forum it would not exist in anything like the form we know; and perhaps (like so many of Weber's draft projects) not at all. However, this is a subject of its own. 15 Respectively MWG I/4.850; I/8.385 cf. 383. 16 To Helene Weber, 27 Sept. 1904, pr. MWG I/8.208. The academic nature of the audience is confirmed by Münsterberg's report, ‘The Scientific Plan of the Congress’, Congress i.131. Weber's own comments on the Congress as a whole are scrupulous and far from dismissive: eg. to Jellinek, 24 Sept., to Münsterberg 14 Nov. 1904, cit. MWG ad loc. 17 Conrad was a principal editor of the Handwörterbuch der Staatswissenschaften, where Weber published an important entry on ‘Agrarverhältnisse im Altertum’ in 1897 (revised in 1898); he was a political ally in the sharp debate over Fideikommisse; and he was the journal editor to whom Weber had sent what was in effect “Part I” of the St. Louis address or ‘Rural Society in late antiquity’ under the title ‘Der Streit um den Charakter der altgermanischen Sozialverfassung’: see the next paragraph. Lastly, he was the father-in-law of Pastor Hans Haupt of North Tonawanda, and it was through him that Weber and Troeltsch came to visit the latter: see below on the 10th page of this paper & n.35. Von Philippovich was an Austrian political economist who would later be an important collaborator on the Grundriss der Sozialökonomik. American speakers at the Congress with a connection to Weber who might also have attended include Edwin Seligman, Jacob Hollander and Jane Addams. Two speakers who could not have attended (whether they wished to or not) were Ernst Troeltsch and Karl Lamprecht, since they were due to speak at precisely the same hour as Weber: 3 p.m., September 21, 1904. 18 See the document ‘Purpose and Plan of the Congress’, which most probably dates from January 1903, when the conference arrangements were finalised, and which – as we see from Weber's letter of 18 March 1904, pr. MWG I/8.204 – was circulated to participants in advance: Congress i.50-1, here 50. Weber's text (10,000 words or over 20 pages in translation) was roughly 50% longer than that of the other Germans known to him (15 pages was about average), though the prize, if that is the word, goes to the Japanese speaker whose ardour to expound the new Japanese Civil Code caused him to run to 50 pages: Congress ii.367–416. 19 He did not however neglect it entirely, and wrote to Münsterberg that he hoped ‘definitely to receive the proofs of the Congress lecture’: 2 Dec. 1905, pr. MWG I/8.210. 20 Compare for example the lack of self-reference in Economy and Society – where there are just two references to Weber's own works throughout (WuG 4, 96) – with another magnum opus by a closely associated author: Ernst Troeltsch's Die Soziallehren der christlichen Kirchen und Gruppen (Tübingen, 1912). The density of Troeltsch's cross-references, so that his entire oeuvre becomes not merely an implicit but an explicit network and dialogue, is well brought out by Friedrich Wilhelm Graf in his introduction to Ernst Troeltsch, Rezensionen und Kritiken (1901-1914) (Berlin, 2004), Kritische Gesamtausgabe 4.6. 21 ‘Agrarstatistische und sozialpolitische Betrachtungen zur Fideikommißfrage in Preußen’, originally in AfSS 19 (1904), 503–74; and now in MWG I/8.92-188. [Hereafter ‘Fideikommißfrage’.] For links between the texts see egg. nn.28, 90, 111, 131, 157; ‘The Rural Community’, nn.aw, ba, hz, jb, jt. 22 To von Below, 19 July 1904 (Weber Nachlaß). This does not explicitly mention the title, but an itemised list of authors, who feature in the text and are engaged in an intellectual controversy going back to the time of Caesar, leaves us in no doubt: compare GASWg, 509–15. 23 ‘Der Streit um den Charakter der altgermanischen Sozialverfassung in der deutschen Literatur des letzten Jahrzehnts’, III. Folge, vol.28 (1904), 433-70, 433 n.1 (also GASWg 508 n.1). Weber's piece appears in the October number, which was actually issued on 4 November 1904. 24 See esp. MWG I/4.259-71 [1893]; 912-3 [1894]; 599-601, 748-90, 803-9 [1896]; 814-8, 821-3, 830-41, 855, 902-3 [1897]. Plainly the “nationalist” turn taken by Weber in 1895 is an adjacent (and yet distinct) theme. — There is thus no truth in the suggestion mooted by Prof. Schluchter that Weber was ‘narrowly confined’ by the inter-disciplinary grid which was the organizational basis of the Congress: MWG I/8.209. The most that was required of Weber was a broad, synthetic handling of the subject of ‘rural community’: synthesis came easily to him; the subject was well-known to him – as Münsterberg (an old colleague) knew when he asked Weber to contribute – and he was in any case able to reinterpret the theme to his own satisfaction [212]. 25 Compare ‘Antikritisches Schlusswort zum “Geist des Kapitalismus”’, AfSS 31 (1910), 554–99, with the uncertain evidence cited at MWG I/8.87-8. Here I enter a caution regarding Prof. Schluchter's reference to Weber's ‘planned larger study of agrarian capitalism’ at this time (87). If it was really Weber's intention to produce such a study, this would be a major finding. However, what he actually says in 1904 is that ‘years ago’ (that is, in 1893 or 1895-6 cf. MWG I/4.264-70, 646-50) he had collected statistical materials ‘for the purpose of a larger agrarian-statistical work on rural capitalism’, to which he might or might not come back later: ibid., 93 n.2. — His last major utterance on the theme of agrarian politics was ‘Zur Lage der bürgerlichen Demokratie in Rußland’ in 1905, though here too the origins of his interest plainly lie in the immense significance he attached to the German-Russian (German-Polish) frontier division in the 1890s: MWG I/10.86-279, see esp. 188-269. The idea that writing about Russia was a wholly new departure for Weber in 1905, though well entrenched, is an exaggeration. Hence references to the Russian obrok in 1898 and the mir in 1904: ‘Agrarverhältnisse im Altertum’ in ed. J. Conrad et al., Handwörterbuch der Staatswissenschaften (Jena, 18982), i.64a; ‘Altgermanische Sozialverfassung’, GASWg 547. 26 Werner Sombart, ‘The Industrial Group’, pr. Congress vii.791-9. Not only was the piece just a third the length of Weber's, but Sombart used it in effect as a trailer to advertise his Socialism and the Social Movement: 799 cf. Friedrich Lenger, Werner Sombart 1863-1941 (Munich, 1994), 145. On Troeltsch: n.7 above. 27 PE [XXI.88n.40]; ‘“Kirchen” und “Sekten in Nordamerika’, Die Christliche Welt 20 (1906) c.558; cf. ‘Zur Lage der bürgerlichen Demokratie in Rußland’, MWG I/10.272. ‘Europeanization’ is a precursor to the wider theme of ‘Occidental rationalization’: hence it largely disappears after 1906. 28 This is an obvious instance of the importance of the 1903 Prussian proposal to promote landed “entails” [Fideikommisse] to Weber's thinking; cf. ‘Fideikommißfrage’, MWG I/8.92-199. 29 PE [XXI.108], my emphasis. 30 Amongst innumerable examples of the importance of Natur alongside Kultur, note (first) in his 1898 lectures on ‘“theoretical” economics in general’, the predictable placement of ‘The natural foundations of the economy’ (Book II) before ‘the social foundations’ (Book III): Grundriss zu den Vorlesungen über Allgemeine (“theoretische”) Nationalökonomie [1898], repr. Tübingen, 1990. [Hereafter Grundriss.] Again, whilst Weber was a ruthless critic of all racist thinking unsubstantiated by empirical proof—which meant in practice the vehement dismissal of every racist claim he ever heard – his acceptance of a natural realm meant that he could never in principle exclude the possibility that racial or (as we might say) genetic variation might have a significant impact on social behaviour: compare eg. MWG I/8.722, 724 [1895]; GARS i.15–16 [1920]. Yet as the St. Louis text makes plain [234], his starting point was never with race, but with observed empirical and historical phenomena. 31 PE [XXI.109; GARS i.204]. 32 MWG I/8.851. 33 Respectively ‘Zur Lage der bürgerlichen Demokratie’ [1906], MWG I/10.269; ‘Wahlrecht und Demokratie in Deutschland’ [1917], MWG I/15.351; ‘Politics as a Vocation’ [1919], MWG I/17.251. Note too the prediction of ‘an iron age’ should the Russian Revolution of 1905 be successful: ‘Rußlands Übergang zum Scheinkonstitutionalismus’ [1906], MWG I/10.502 n.184. 34 “Nonetheless!” is the literal translation, but this hardly captures the note of Promethean defiance: ‘Politics as a Vocation’, MWG I/17.252. Cf. ‘Science as a Vocation’ [1917/19], ibid., 110-1 on Judaic and other forms of prophecy. 35 W. Pauck, Harnack and Troeltsch (New York, 1968), 72: first cited by F.W. Graf, ‘Friendship between Experts’, in ed. W. Mommsen & J. Osterhammel, Max Weber and his Contemporaries (London, 1987), 218. 36 §.3, MWG I/4.261-3. The one book on America that Weber highlights here is Max Sering, Die landwirtschaftliche Konkurrenz Nordamerikas in Gegenwart und Zukunft (Leipzig, 1887), but there is no evidence that he derived anything other than statistical data from it. Sering was a bête noire to Weber: see n.44. 37 Ibid., §.5, 265–70. America is once mentioned here (266), but only to give the percentage of the population employed in agriculture. Likewise in Weber's 1896 public lectures on ‘Agrarian politics’, the comparative frame of reference is between England, France and Germany; there is no mention of the US: ibid., 599–601. The one place where England and America are grouped together, is in the constitution of their stock exchanges: eg. Die Börse I. [1894], MWG I/5.162-6. This is undeniably significant for the construction of the PE, but not for the St. Louis address. 38 ‘Argentinische Kolonistenwirtschaften’ [1894], MWG I/4.286-303; cf. ibid., 128–9, ‘Die Erhebung des Vereins für Sozialpolitik’ [1893]. In discussing of a possible ‘Homestead law’ in 1897, where the term at least was borrowed from the US, Weber pays no attention to American circumstances, unlike other discussants: ibid., 645–66. 39 [XX.12–14] cf. Guenther Roth, Max Webers deutsch-englische Familengeschichte 1800–1950 (Tübingen, 2001), esp. 478–89. Kapp cannot be directly equated with the subject of Der Amerika-Müde, since, in Weber's view at least, the novel was based on the Austrian poet Nicolaus Lenau [XX.14 n.3]. Even so, Kapp was in some sense Amerika-müde, tired of America, and he – like Lenau – had returned home to Europe. His view of America was nothing like as hostile as Kürnberger-Lenau's, but it remained detached and freely critical all the same. 40 ‘Argentinische Kolonistenwirtschaften’ [1894], MWG I/4.296-9. 41 ‘Die Ergebnisse der deutschen Börsenenquete. I’ [1894], MWG I/5.220. 42 PE [XX.14], citing Kürnberger, Der Amerika-Müde (Frankfurt a.M., 1855), 21. 43 PE [XXI.104]. For a previous glorification of the American farmer which may well have contributed to the shaping of Weber's views: Friedrich Kapp, Die amerikanische Weizenproduktion (Berlin, 1880), deriving from an American trip made in 1879 after his “return” to Germany. For a striking measure of what was “stereotypical” in Weber's views, see W.J. Ashley, ‘The Economic Atmosphere of America: “The American Spirit”’ [1899], pr. Surveys Historic and Economic (London, 1900). At this date Ashley was the first ever English-speaking Professor of Economic History (at Harvard), whilst the book as a whole was dedicated to Schmoller. 44 The one set of farmers Weber met was in Mt. Airy, North Carolina. However, this was not a grain-exporting area (far from it); he went there to meet his Fallenstein relatives, and his major experience there was all to do with religion: ‘“Kirchen” und “Sekten” in Nordamerika’, Die Christliche Welt 20 (1906), cc.560-1. The obvious contrast here was with Max Sering (cf. nn.36, 157) who visited America in 1883 on behalf of the Prussian government (and Junker landlord interest) and was concerned with American economic competition in strictly economic sense. Thus his itinerary revolved exclusively around grain-producing areas, including Canada — a sharp contrast to the Weber's route in 1904, which was driven by German and family contacts; an interest in American universities and colleges; and in questions of race and immigration — all issues of Kultur. Cf. Sering, Die landwirtschaftliche Konkurrenz Nordamerikas (Leipzig, 1887) and his itinerary , pp.VIII–XII. 45 ‘Gutachten des Herrn Professor Max Weber… über die Frage: Empfielht sich die Einführung eines Heimstättenrechtes, insbesondere zum Schutz des kleinen Grundbesitzes gegen Zwangsvollstrckung?’ [c.1896], MWG I/4.645-666; the East/West comparison occupies 658–666. 46 Note however, that at St. Louis Weber is almost certainly alluding to the more limited category of conduct which is rationell – technically and economically rational – rather than rational – the quality of universal reason, which is the true centrepiece of Western European liberalism. See below on the 35th and 36th pages of this paper & n.144. 47 The nearest comparison to the St. Louis address in this respect lies in the Weber's lectures on ‘Agrarpolitik’ at Frankfurt in early 1896. However, (i) we have only summary newspaper reports rather than Weber's own text; (ii) the focus remains narrower and more technical. These are lectures on German agrarian politics for an informed German audience; there are occasional comparisons by way of illustration, but no international and comparative framework: MWG I/4.748-90. 48 GARS i.1; for Weber's phobia about lecturing see eg. Jellinek to Münsterberg 27 [June] 1903, cit. n.12 above. The wartime writings form an obvious exception to this retreat from writing about Germany: the most obvious example would be ‘Parliament and Government in a re-ordered Germany’. However, the limits on discussion here – above all, the focus on Article 9 of the 1871 Constitution – are in some ways as strict and rigorous as those of Weber's earlier academic writings; conversely, when the perspective expands – as it does in its remarks on bureaucracy and parliamentarism – these articles invoke and reflect a universal and “sociological” perspective, rather than a strictly national one. 49 eg. Freiburg Inaugural [1895], MWG I/4.556. 50 eg. ‘Deutschlands weltpolitische Lage’ [1916], MWG I/15.160. There is almost no domestic (as opposed to foreign policy) analysis from the Wilhelmine era which does not stress Germany's divisions; but few were quite as sharply or critically formulated as Weber's. For a blander division of German rural society into three, coming from a source that Weber would have treated with great respect, see G.F. Knapp, ‘Landarbeiter und innere Kolonisation’ [1893], in Grundherrschaft und Rittergut (Leipzig, 1897), 5–25. 51 ‘Agrarpolitik’ [1896] delivered in Frankfurt am Main, MWG I/4.752. Weber's emphasis. 52 This charge is still routinely made and has then to be retracted in regard to the later Weber: eg. Fritz Ringer, Max Weber. An Intellectual Biography (Chicago, 2004), 48-9; cf. n.30. 53 The tradition of assimilating Weber to Marx, as simply adding a more or less ornamental idealist component to an already established class analysis, is a long and influential one. For this kind of blandness, see eg. Karl Kautsky, Die materialistische Geschichtsauffassung (Berlin, 1927) vol.ii, Ab. VII, cc.1-7 passim. For a more sophisticated “Webero-Marxism” – though one which still tended to a similar ultimate result – the tradition runs through Lukács’ History and Class Consciousness [1922], Karl Löwith, the Frankfurt School, and Habermas. Until the 1960s this remained a more powerful strand of Weberian reception than the reading of Weber in his own right. 54 Early and prominent usages of the term ‘capitalism’ in books which derive from these associated types of thinking include: Albert Schäffle, Kapitalismus und Sozialismus mit besonderer Rücksicht auf Geschäfts- und Vermögensformen (Tübingen, 1870), J.A. Hobson, The Evolution of Modern Capitalism. A Study of Machine Production (London, 1894) and V.P. Vorontsov, The Fate of Capitalism in Russia [Sud’by Kapitalizma v Rossii] (St. Petersburg, 1882). As the subtitles of the first two make plain, ‘capitalism’ here meant no more than ‘capitalist mode of production’. Again, the early Russian appropriation of ‘capitalism’ as a shorthand term for a foreign import is paralleled by their appropriation and elevation of the term ‘Marxism’, which was far in excess and in advance of German language discourse. For all their innovative quality, Sombart's Moderner Kapitalismus (1902) and Weber's ‘Protestant ethic and the “spirit” of capitalism’ (1904-5) undoubtedly continue the tradition in “bourgeois” German Nationalökonomie which was close to socialism but not of it, of which Schäffle, Rodbertus and even Dühring were early examples. See also Richard Passow, „Kapitalismus.” Eine begrifflich-terminologische Studie (Göttingen, 19272); Marie-Elisabeth Hilger, ‘Kapitalismus’, in ed. W. Conze et al., Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe (Stuttgart, 1972-97), iii.442-51. 55 Weber to Rickert, 2 April 1905, referring to the PE (Weber Nachlaß). 56 The section entitled ‘Genesis of the capitalist spirit’ occupies just twenty pages in a text of almost 1300 pages: Der moderne Kapitalismus (Leipzig, 1902), i.378–397. 57 See eg. ‘Parlament und Regierung im neugeordneten Deutschland’ [1917/18]: ‘today capitalism and bureaucracy have found each other and belong intimately together’: MWG I/.15.454 n.1. More generally: ‘Bureaukratie’ [c.1913-14] in WuG 1, c.III.VI. 58 GARS i.10, Weber's emphasis. I cite Talcott Parsons’ translation of ‘Vorbemerkung’ because, though questionable, it is familiar: The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (London, 1930), 13. It should also be understood that, as of today and despite serious deficiencies, Parsons’ remains by far the best English translation of the complete text of the PE. 59 Ibid., i.4. The crucial word here is ‘modern’: Occidental capitalism was a distinctive yet chronologically limited feature of the ‘modern’, post-17th century period, when compared to the longer-term processes of bourgeois, legal and political rationalization. However, in an introductory statement designed to advertise a partially obsolete text on capitalism – the PE – it made sense to make the most of this. 60 For an indicator of the current focus of German research consider the Heidelberg centenary conference on the PE, Die protestantische Ethik und der “Geist” des Kapitalismus. 100 Jahre darnach, 24–26 March 2004, where the primary focus was on religion, and Weber's relations with Troeltsch and the Heidelberg milieu. The word and (above all) the idea of ‘capitalism’ hardly surfaced at all. Consider alternatively Wilhelm Hennis, a non-conformist who does confront the theme of capitalism. Having started by reading Weber as the humanist expositor of a “science of man” (in the wake of Karl Jaspers), he belatedly characterised Max Weber's problematic (Fragestellung) as centring on capitalism: see esp. ‘Die »Protestantische Ethik« — ein »überdeterminierter« Text ?’ [1995], pr. Max Weber und Thukydides (Tübingen, 2003), 120-9. How these two perspectives are to be reconciled is unclear, especially given the insistence when discussing ‘Die »Culturprobleme des Kapitalismus«’ (also written in 1995) that the humanistically deficient ‘conduct of life’ (Lebensführung) under modern capitalism is not the same as a consideration of capitalism as a whole: Max Webers Wissenschaft vom Menschen (Tübingen, 1996), 216 cf. 188. But in any case, this attempt to construe capitalism as intellectually central, though most praiseworthy, amounts only to the assertion that Weber's concerns with capitalism and with rationalization are two sides of the same coin: Max Weber und Thukydides, 120. There is no perceived historical development on Weber's part – an assumption which goes back (at least) to textual study of the PE c.1980 (Max Webers Fragestellung, Tübingen, 1987, 12 n.20) – and so no historical inquiry by Prof. Hennis. — The late Wolfgang Mommsen might have offered an exception to these strictures had he been able to develop his editorial work for MWG Abt.III on Weber's economics lecture MSS. from the 1890s. Note his paper ‘From theoretical economics to the “Protestant Ethic and modern capitalism”’ given at the conference ‘Max Weber and the Spirit of Modern Capitalism — 100 years later’ at Toynbee Hall 11-12 June 2004 (Max Weber Studies forthcoming). This is only a brief, synoptic piece, but its emphasis on the continuity of Weber's concerns as between the 1890s and the early 1900s is consistent with my own. 61 See however [XXI.28] on Oriental monasticism. — The ‘Occident’, the geographical lynch-pin of “late” Weberian comparison, is established in texts of a much earlier date: eg. PE [XXI.28, 62 n.123]; GASWg [1904], 514; Grundriss [1898], 1/29. There is no logic whatsoever in the belief that Weber's intellectual vision changed in focus after 1905, or that the cast of mind which later issued into Weberian sociology – or transhistorical typology – was absent earlier on. A precursor for the latter is supplied by the idea of transhistorical ‘analogies’. Hence (for example) the perception of analogous qualities in the early Germanic peasantr
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