MAX WEBER

THE SOCIOLOGIST OF EMPIRE: MAX WEBER

Max Weber described himself as “A class conscious burgeois” in a letter to his friend and fellow sociologist Robert Michels. After his childhood period he leaned towards the lifestyle of his father who was a descendant of Westphalian linen merchants and rose from being a salaried city magistrate to becoming a deputy of the National Liberal Party in the Prussian and Imperial parliament. His research on the ‘social question’ brought him into the orbit of organizations that offered an alternative to the growing influence of the Marxist Social Democracy Party (SDP). One of these was the Evangelical Social Congress which Weber came into contact with Friedrich Naumann, who was at the time a chaplin and known as the ‘poor people’s pastor’. He sought to develop a social Christian party that would offer an alternative to the SDP. Naumann became Weber’s closest political collaborator as they both shared a strong conviction in remedying the defects of capitalism from within and winning the workers movement to liberal imperialism. The other organization that Weber joined in 1893 was the Pan German League, which one writer has described as ‘the voice of Germany’s most vicious nationalism, well endowed with money and media influence. Weber’s attitude to the SDP and its particular brand of Marxism played a decisive influence on his sociology. He had no sympathy with the SPD’s goal of socialism and saw the advocacy of an equal society as utopian. He believed that workers would always be submissive to demagogic leaders and so real decision-making rested with a small number of people.

Weber linked an imperialist foreign policy with the need to promote industry above agriculture. He countered that the capitalist development of Germany was ‘unavoidable and it is only possible to economically influence the course which it takes’. Any attempt to restrict industrial expansion would lead to a stagnant form of capitalism based on ‘lazy rentiers and a dull traditional mass’. He acknowledged that a pro-industry policy was more risky as it depended on export markets. However, he argued that ‘we are not pursuing a policy of national comfort but rather one of greatness, hence we must take this burden upon our shoulders if we wish to have a national existence other than that of Switzerland, for example’. However, promoting industry did not mean that Weber ignored developments in agriculture.

References:

metu library books

MAX WEBER:a critical introduction by kıeran allen

Max weber by bendix.r.