Abstract
Among the canonic genres of the modern social-philosophical and social-scientific thought, in German sociology and social theory of the 20th century, there is a special type of research called “the diagnosis of the era” (Zeitdiagnose), i.e. the analysis of a specific historical situation. Max Weber’s articles, publications and speeches in the last years of the war and first post-war years are an excellent example of such an application of the social-theoretical knowledge for the diagnosis of the modernity. The article considers Weber’s political and social diagnosis of the time in his articles of 1917-1919 on the post-war reorganization of Germany on democratic principles. The author focuses on Weber’s assessment of the ways of the political and social development of Germany after the defeat in the World War I and the November Revolution of 1918. The article also analyzes Weber’s proposals on the reform of the political and electoral system of the German Empire and considers Weber’s views on the prospects for a socialist revolution in Central Europe after the end of World War I on the model of the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 in Russia. The final part of the article provides a generalized assessment of the theoretical scheme that Weber applied in the analysis of the events and processes of the November Revolution of 1918 in Germany, and identifies its significance for understanding the historical fate of the modern world.
Highlights
Among the canonic genres of modern social-philosophical and social-scientific thought in German sociology and social theory of the 20th century, there is a special type of research called “the diagnosis of the era” (Zeitdiagnose), i.e., the analysis of a specific historical situation
Max Weber’s articles, publications, and speeches in the last years of World War I and the first post-war years are an excellent example of such an application of social-theoretical knowledge for the diagnosis and forecast of current trends of modern development
In 1906, when warning Russian liberals of the groundless belief in the inevitable triumph of the political and cultural ideals of liberalism in Russia with the establishment and development of capitalism, Weber emphasized that “‘democracy’ and ‘individualism’ would stand little chance today if we were to rely for their ‘development’ on the ‘automatic’ effect of material interests
Summary
Candidate of Philosophical Sciences, Associate Professor, Faculty of Humanities, National Research University — Higher School of Economics. Weber gradually realized that in order to prevent the left or right radicalization of the revolution, the moderate Majority Social Democrats had to cooperate with the forces of the bourgeois order Such an understanding was determined by Weber’s participation in the work of the Heidelberg Council of Workers and Soldiers’ Deputies when he had the opportunity to see “the responsibility and honesty of the rightwing socialists, who tried to prevent the revolution they did not want but the Bolsheviks strived for” (Weber, 1984 [1926]: 644). For Weber, the reform of the electoral system of Prussia and of the political system of Germany did have an internal political significance He argued that the rapid restoration of Germany’s position on the world stage after the war was only possible provided political unity and social consolidation within the country were achieved, which required both the extension of civil rights of the broad masses and the democratization of the political system. The ‘party of businessmen’ (an expression of the Russian philosopher Fedor Stepun, who studied in Germany on the eve of World War I and knew the social-political situation in the country quite well), consisting of moderate social democrats and centrist bourgeois circles, quickly won over both the left-wing and right-wing radicals
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