Today is the birthday of the famous German sociologist and historian, Max Weber, who was born April 21, 1864 (and who died on June 14, 1920.
Weber is, of course, most famous for his work, “The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism” (1904-1905), and his posthumously published monumental treatise, “Economy and Society” (1922).
But for members of the Austrian School of Economics, it is worth recalling the great influence that Max Weber clearly had on Ludwig von Mises. The opening chapters of “Economy and Society” lay out Weber’s conception of human “action” as meaningful conduct to which the individual actor assigns a directed purpose in mind. “Social action,” then becomes those actions in which one individual takes into account the presence and actions of another, and orients his own conduct accordingly.
This, then, leads to the idea that it is the “meaning” that each individual sees in the actions and intentions of the other that defines what type of “social orientation” exists between them.
Thus, in his earlier work, “Critique of Stammler,” Weber states most clearly the implication of methodological subjectivism: that the interaction between two individuals only can be defined and understood as an “act of exchange” in the context of how each views his own actions in relation to the other. The physical transfer of two objects between the two can only be understood in terms of the intentional mutuality.
Also, Weber’s developed the idea of the “ideal type” as an accentuated focus (and even exaggeration) of some qualities or characteristics identifiable in an individual’s, or a group’s actions for purposes of certain forms of historical analysis. It was adopted by Mises, both as a tool for historical research, but also for understanding how actors proceed to anticipate the actions of others in the future. (This theme is most strikingly developed by Mises in “Theory and History.”)
And Weber’s “ideal type” construct was the starting point for Alfred Schutz’s “Austrian-type” analysis of social actions in the present and the future.
It should be mentioned that Weber, at the same time as Mises, came to similar conclusions about the “impossibility” of socialism due to a lack of a means for economic calculation (and he referenced Mises's 1920 article in “Economy and Society” at on point in his own analysis).
Not that Mises was uncritical of Weber’s conception of “ideal types” as a method for economic theory in its pure, abstract form; but nonetheless, it can be said, as Ludwig Lachmann did in his review of Mises’ “Human Action,” that in many ways it is Weber’s work that Mises was carrying on in his own way.
One of the themes in “Economy and Society” is the idea of “charisma,” an inner calling than individual has, and which attracts “followers” due to the “power” of that individual’s personality and presence.
Many years ago I met a member of Mises’s Vienna “private seminar,” a lawyer named Adolphus Redley, while visiting Margit von Mises for afternoon tea at her apartment in New York City.
Redley explained that shortly after the First World War he moved from Vienna to Munich to study with Max Weber at the university there.
In the postwar chaos there were many aggressive student groups representing different points along the political spectrum. One day several of these groups got into a violent “battle” with each other on the quad of the University of Munich.
Max Weber stepped out of one of the buildings, Redley said he saw, and standing at the top of the stairs Weber merely stood there with a stern and angry face, arms folded across his chest, and stared out at the large crowd of fighting students below him.
He said not a word, but his presence slowly grabbed the attention of every one of the students beating each other on the quad. Their arms fell by their sides, silence broke out, and their all turned to look at Weber. Short in stature, with a large head, Weber just kept looking over the crowd. These hundreds of students began to quietly disperse, and in a matter of minutes the quad was empty.
Redley said that watching that, he had a sense of what Weber had meant by “charisma” and the power of an individual on others by his mere personality.
Also, see my article, “Max Weber on Politics as a Vocation”:
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