Economy and Society: A New Translation by Max Weber Keith Tribe (review)

Abstract

Book Reviews 275© Max Weber Studies 2019. the use of which can therefore serve as a basis for asserting intellectual dependence. Wagner’s approach is decidedly original; but many readers will not, I fear, find in the introduction and other editorial material sufficient treatment of what they will, quite reasonably, be looking for. This book virtually closes the majestic procession of volumes that constitutes the Max Weber Gesamtausgabe. We should be deeply thankful for the Gesamtausgabe, and properly mindful of the immense efforts which have gone into it over many years. And however one may feel about Wagner’s approach in the book under review, it is a timely reminder that we can never take our classics for given, even when they come in definitive editions. Hans Henrik Bruun University of Copenhagen Max Weber, Economy and Society: A New Translation, ed. and trans. Keith Tribe (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2019), xi + 504pp. (pbk). ISBN 978-0-67491-654-8. $24.95. Marianne Weber has a lot to answer for. After her husband’s death in 1920, she created Max’s magnum opus, Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft, by combining his recently completed work on sociological categories with manuscripts from before 1914 into a single book, first published in 1922 and then in an expanded two-volume version in 1925. With mixed feelings, this reviewer recalls taking the university library copy of one of those editions, in large format with oddly small type, home one summer, and mistakenly reading it by beginning at the beginning, then turning the pages. Weber’s assurance that he had revised a previously published article (‘Ueber einige Kategorien der verstehenden Soziologie’ [1913]) to make it as easy to understand as possible only enhanced the intimidating effect, but the experience told a naïve undergraduate that if this was sociology, surely it was a very serious field. After the 1920s, the work had a complicated publication history: Johannes Winckelmann edited new post-war versions in slightly different formats, and Talcott Parsons and others produced partial English translations, later assembled and revised by Guenther Roth and Claus Wittich as Economy and Society (ES), still sitting halfread on many office bookshelves. A book Max Weber did not complete became his major claim to international scholarly fame. That fame helped to justify the remarkable Max Weber Gesamtausgabe—whose 276 Max Weber Studies© Max Weber Studies 2019. editors decided ruthlessly to undo Marianne’s effort by decomposing the ‘book’ into six constituent parts. Keith Tribe has now retranslated one of those parts, the Erster Teil of the 1920s editions, which Weber himself had been preparing for separate publication. As the core of Weber’s ‘sociology’—scare quotes used advisedly— it has long drawn special attention. Here, Weber proposes his definitions of social action and sociology, his approach to understanding and explanation, his categories of economic action, his types of Herrschaft, and his distinction between class and Stand. In several ways, this new translation is a major contribution to scholarship. For one thing, Tribe offers much more than a translation. In his introduction, he nicely untangles the tangled history of the work (with a nod to MWG editor Edith Hanke), recounting Friedrich Hayek’s role in the background of the first translation and concluding with a list of German and English versions that by itself covers nearly two pages. Drawing on his expertise in German economic discourse, he masterfully places Weber’s preoccupations in historical context; if you had neglected to follow up on Weber’s references to Friedrich Gottl in the Preamble or G.F. Knapp in chapter 2, Tribe will tell you what you missed. An experienced translator, he explains in exemplary fashion his overall approach and his specific choices, in his introduction, a series of footnotes, and a substantial appendix on key terms. As an additional aid to readers, Tribe introduces each chapter with an overview of its content and finishes the volume as a whole with another appendix containing just the definitional paragraphs of chapter 1. That appendix also supports one of Tribe’s main points by illustrating the coherence of Weber’s text that, he claims, previous English translations had obscured. Tribe conveys that ‘systematic didactic structure’ (8...