Some Remarks on "The Theory of Social and Economic Organization"

Abstract

AN appreciation of Max Weber'S work mast be equally directed towards (i) his moving concern with the great dramatic problem of the nature, conditions and destiny of modern capitalistic society; and (z) his simultaneous effort to achieve the methodological and theoretical clarilfication necessary to the solution of that problem. As a liberal, devoted to the value of rational self-determination and hypersensitively aware of the numerous restrictions ancd threats under which rational self-determinatilon existed, he sought to discover the nature of the system in which it was embodid, and the condit'ions under which it came into existence and on which it depended for its survival. In its concrete form, this problem lay at the base of Max Weber's whole life-work. His great methodological writings-the crtique of hstorici sn in Roscher and Knies, the clarification of the criteria of problem-selection, the analysis of the meaning and possibility of objectivity in the social sciences, the analysis of historical explanation-were all intimately related to his quest for the answer to this problem. They were efforts to state the logical conditions and implications of an answer. His incomparable work of universal erudition and analytical profundity-the essays inl the sociology of religionwere a part of the search for the particular concrete answer to the question: what were the conditions in Westeni civilisati:on which accounted for the growth of the peculiar kind of capitalistic economy which has arisen only there and what institutional and attitud'inal variables in China, in India and ancient Israel prevented its emergence in those cultures . H'is political writings-Iargely polemics concerned with the vicissitudes of the r6gime of freedom from 1893 to 1920 -were strenuous efforts, written with remarkable passion and eloquence, to point the tactical path for a stable democratic, liberal, (i.e., non-socialist) order in Germany. The ponderous definitions and the complicated classifications of the first four chapters of Wirtscbaft und Gesellsc5aft, which Talcott Parsons, with his thorough understanding of Max Weber?s ideas and of sociological theory, has painstakingly translated and edited as The Theory of Social and Economic Organization, were the parts of Weber's work i;n which he sought to pass from the analysis of the concrete phenomenon in the context of universal