NOTES – DO NOT QUOTE AND DISTRIBUTE PUBLICLY
Lecture : Grappling with modernity – Weber/Gramsci
Why Weber and Gramsci? One might say, hm, one is German, one Italian - they’ve
never met although they lived roughly at the same time (Weber dies 1920’;
Gramsci 1937), Weber is clearly not a Marxist but liberal - -Gramsci clearly is
and he goes to prison for his convictions in fascist Italy, as we shall hear in
moment. They both lived and wrote in rather different world, political,
economically and socially.
But there is something that unites them – despites all these difference and which
also links them to the man we discussed in week 5, Karl Marx. Now what is that?
In their writings they both tried to come to terms with capitalism but a
capitalism that was different from Marx who tended to focus on England. Weber
and Gramsci lived in countries that were hit by industrial capitalism much later
than England who was going through it since the 18th century (industrial
revolution);
For German’s felt its consequence of industrial capitalism -- on the environment
and society -- really only in the late third of the 19th century – it virtually
exploded and men like Weber saw the world they grew up in crumbling around
them. Gramsci’s Italy was even more behind and remained largely agrarian.
Now both men, we claim here today, were engaging with Marx’s materialism –
who was very big at their time – and were trying to adjust it his ideas to these
different situation.
Let me summarise in my introduction here some of the central themes of Marx.
Aditya will accuse me of vulgar Marxism but never mind – I just want to remind
you of the basics.
Marx material conception of history
We remember that Marx set out to contradict Hegel; he wished to
overthrow the Hegelian notion that ideas, in the form of "spirit", were the
essential factors in history, and instead depicted ideas as dependent, in their
genesis and functioning on material factors. These factors are found primarily
in a society's economic institutions
Marx as we remember divided society into three parts:
Productive forces: Machinery, raw materials and skills, land etc.
Give rise to ‘relations of production’: relations between people/and or people
and things – these relations constitute the ‘economic structure of society, and it
in turn gives rise to the ‘superstructure or the political, legal, cultural institutions
in which member of that society conceive themselves and their relations.
Every society, according o the sociology of Marx, has a set of economic
institutions, a social relationship system allocating roles in the production,
distribution and utilization of goods. This system is organized around a
society's production technology, and is acutely responsive to changes in
technological complexity and efficiency. Roles in the economic system
determine roles in the status system: broad strata of the population group
together in terms of economic similarities. Taken together, these two systems
constitute a class system, and the members of a given class share common
interests, values and a style of life. The allocations dictated by the economic
system determine not only difference in status, for they include difference in
political power as well. Thus the way to understand the functioning of a
total society is to treat its economic institutions as the key variable.
We say that history changes when the forces of production change, which then
trigger a change in the relations of production and so. All societies re in a
continual
process of change. Changes in material factors determine the direction of
historical change for the society as a whole. Indeed, major processes of
historical change are inconceivable without a material basis in the sense of
a change in economic institution.
What Marx is not interested in that much – and even less so his followers –are
the individual and explaining motivations, the relationship between individual
motivation and general concensus in a society.
2. Concepts of motivation for Marx: emphasizes the role of purely external
pressures on individuals: physical force, fraud and compulsion
He is aware however that there is a consensus which is achieved by people doing
things without being forced into it and explains it in the following way: Position
in a class endows an individual with a set of interests, a stake in certain present
aspects of the society, or a potential for gain should the society undergo changes.
For Marx these interests are, it seems to us now, more or less intuitively or
rationally understood by the members of a class or their political leaders. But, in
perhaps the more common case, class interests determine action indirectly, and
are effective through the medium of an ideology, an elaborated rationalization
of a set of class interests. This ideology, in Marxist terms, comprises values as
well as belief-systems imperatives as well as world-image.
PROBLEM: Although this theory may account for uniformities in the
motivation of members of a single class, it had yet to account for
consensual phenomena of an inter-class sort.
To meet this difficulty, Marx advanced the proposition that the class which
control the means of production could and did impose its ideology on the rest of
society. The failure of the members, leaders or ideologists of a class to
comprehend their real interests leads them to accept the ideology of another,
opposed, stratum and so underlies this imposition.
At this point Engel, Marx collaborator, introduces the notion of ‘false
consciousness’ which he defined as a process by which men incorrectly assess
the sources of their beliefs attributing these to the history of thought, for
instance, rather than to their real roots in the system of production
In sum: Marx, if you like failed to specify the mechanisms by which common
values are produced – and that became a problem for later generations of
scholars engaging with his views.
Now this is where we get to Weber and Gramsci.
Christos and I will claim that they both are trying to account for this lack. And
they are trying to account for it by using new ideas about individual and
collective motivation – unknown to Marx at the time. Both of them in different
ways use what becomes rather big at their time and we now call ‘psychology’.
They are using these ideas to account for how one might want to explain achieve
‘common values’ and how people from different classes – who ought to be
engaged in class struggle – agree.
Let me know turn to Weber:
(history of story of Weber)
What are these new ideas of the individual and the collective which are flowing
around?



We see the rise of experimental psychology (in Germany by physicians
like Wundt); experimentally understanding human behaviour
We also have the huge interest, coming from France in Crowd physicolgy
– a man called Gustave le Bon (the Crowd and the study of the popular
mind, 1895 – very much discussed in Germany.
We have the rise of the theories of Sigmund Freud, his idea that there is
not only a consciousness but a ‘unconciousness’. People are driven by
their repressed feeling, thoughts and emotions.
It has been argued that these ideas about the human mind and collective action
are also inspired by capitalism and I think this is probably correct. Important for
us to remember is that these ideas are around at the time Weber and Gramsci
write and they shape their thinking about individual and collective action and
motivation.
For Weber important is also the rise of a particular way of thinking about
knowledge: Positivms –the idea that all knowledge is gained strictly by observing
and collecting facts – ideas of objectivity and neutrality etc.
Now, how is Weber approaching the topic in his proestant ethic?
1. Focus on individual
Weber is adamant that the fundamental unit of investigation must always
be the individual. He thus focuses upon the individual and not on groups
or collectives; only the individual he believes is capable of ‘meaningful’
social action. As far as the ‘subjective interepretation of action’ is
concerned, ‘collectives must be treated as soleley the resultants and
modes of organisation of the particular acts of individual persons:
(slide here)
‘for sociological purposes there is no such thing as a collective
personality, which ‘acts’. When reference is made in a sociological
context to a state, a nation, a corporation, a family or army corps,
or to similar collectives, what it means is … only a certain kind of
development of actual or possible social action of individual
persons.’ (Weber, economy and Society, 1968, p. 13)
Collectives cannot feel, cannot think, perceive, only individual people can. To
assume otherwise, Weber argues is to impute a spurious reality to what are in
effect conceptual abstractions. Furthermore he argues that the task of the
socioligst -- a scholar who is interested in understanding the ‘togetherness’
of people – to penetrate the subjective understandings of the individual, to get at
the motives for social action.
1. Verstehenssoziologie
(slide)
‘…the science which attempts the interpretative understanding (deutend
verstehen) of social action in order thereby to arrive at a casual explanation
of its course and effects’ (Weber, Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft, 1980, p.1)
According to Weber sociology attempts to ‘understand’ (verstehen) human
action not only the past but also in the present – (being a historicist he of course
believed that one needed to understand the past to get at the present…)
Distinction to the natural sciences which ‘explain’ (erklaeren) nature. He
therefore calls his way of doing socioloty ‘Verstehensoziologie’ (and you find him
often therefore labelled as an ‘antipositivist’ – which is not totally correct as we
shall see…)
What is meant by this is the attempt to comprehend social action through a kind
of empathetic liaison with the actor on the part of the observer. The strategy is
for the investigator to try to identify with the actor and his or her motives
and to view the course of conduct through the actor’s eyes rather than his
own.
Protestant ethics and the problem of rationalisation
The ‘Protestent ethics’ was to the frist study of a much broader and truly global
enterprise, an investigation into the relationship between economics and
religion. (he writes other works on China, buddism. In English in 1930.
To reduce his book to the simple formula – Calvinism was the principal cause of
capitalims is far too simplistic. In fact the case he present is replete with
ambiguities, inconcistencies and other intellectul curiosity, which he does not
solve or wipe out to state his thesis. He leaves these problems in the text and it is
therefore a difficult text to understand and fertile ground for misinderpretation –
or I should say productive misinterpretations.
The text deals with religion but at its core it deals with a problem that
fastinated Weber all his life, the problem of ‘rationalisation’ in modern
culture. Just remember what I’ve said at the beginning of his time. The rise of
industrialisation and its rationalisation of labour; also the ‘rationalisation’ of
nature through the natural sciences..they believe that they grasp nature by
reason and mathematics;
(slide)
By rationalisation, Weber referred to a ‘set of interrelated social processes by
which the modern world had been systematically transformed’. Or to phrase it
otherwise, rationalisation refers to a process in which an increasing number of
social actions become based on considerations of teleoigical efficiency or rational
calculation rather than rather than on motivations derived from morality,
custom or tradition.
Okay back to the PE itself.
Weber starts off the book by explaining tendencies in the society of his time that
appear typical and universal.
 He observed a general resistance to personal subservience, reflecting a
decline in kinship solidarity
 And that economic conduct seemed to possess an ethical content of its
own.
 Weber argues that the idea of hard work as a duty that carries its own
intrinsic reward is a typical attribute of man in modern capitalist world. A
man should work well in his gainful occupation, not merely because he
had to but because he wanted to; it was a sign of his virtue and a source of
personal satisfaction. ‘it is an obligation which the individual is supposed to
feel and does feel towards the content of his occupational activity, no matter
in what is consists’, Weber argues. Hard work is a virtue and hence a moral
obligation. It is these ideas and habits that favor a rational pursuit of
economic gain, in fact, it stands at the basis of what Weber comes to call
‘rational capitalism’.

There are other forms of capitalism all over the world and he lables them as
you remember in his book: The ‘booty capitalism of robber barons, the pariah
capitalism of general commercial activity encouraged by usury; the traditional
capitalism of large-scale undertakings. But only the form of ‘rational capitalism’,
characterised by a systematic pursuit of profit through the employment of free
labour, and the combination of a disciplined labour force, and the regular
investment of capital is a Western phenomenon. Only in the West argues Weber
can we find the accumulation of capital for its own sake.
Now, how do we come to this ‘rational capitalism’? Th accumulsyion of capital
for its own sake.
Now, for Weber it had to do with the development of a certain moral attitude,
which considered ‘work as a moral obligation’. This maxim represents the
‘modern spirit of capitalism’ for him. Of course, he said, in its modern form
this spirit of capitalism is devoid of all higher transcendental purpose.
Orginally, however, he reminds us, this spirit had profound religious
significance. It has religiously grounded. It was to this religious past of the
‘capitalistic spirit’ that Weber turned his attention to in the book you’ve read.
And he looked for its origin in the religious ideas of the Reformation.
Weber sets out to solve what he saw as a paradox. He wanted to show how
certain types of Protestantism became a fountainhead of incentives that
favoured the rational pursuit of economic gain. Worldly activities had been given
positive spiritual and moral meaning during the Reformation. Strangely however
at recisely a time in which economic gain was officially desposed by all religious
leaders. In order to understand this paradox Weber believed it necessary to
analyse certain theological doctrines of the Reformation.
Now, none of the great Reformers had any thought of ‘promoting the spirit of
capitalism’ of course but Weber aimed to show that their doctrines nevertheless
contained incentives in this direction. And he particular was interested in
Calvinism and its doctrine of predestination, according to which each
individual’s state of grace was determined by God’s inexorable choice, from the
creation of the world and for all times. It as impossible for the individual to
whom it had been granted to lose God’s grace as it was for the individual to
whom it had been denied to attain it. John Calvin who figure that out, claimed
that we can only know that some men are safed and the rest are damned.
However, we can never know who the chosen person is! That is the trick.
Weber believed now that this ‘message’ that the ordinary man was bound to feel
profoundly troubled by a doctrine that did not permit any outward sign of his
state of grace and that imparted to the image of God such terrifying majesty that
He transcended all human entreaty and comprehension. Before his God, man
stood alone. The priest could not help because the elect could understand the
work of God only in their own hearts. Sacraments could not help because their
strict observance was not a means of attaining grace. Calvin had taught that one
must find solace solely on the basis of the true faith. Each man was duty-bound
to consider himself chosen and to reject all doubt as a temptation of the devil. A
lack of self-confidence was interpreted as a sigh of insufficient faith. To attain
that self-confidence, unceasing work in a calling was recommended. By his
unceasing activity in the service of God, the believer strengthened hs selfconfidence as the active tool of the divine will.
This idea implied a tremendous tension: Calvinism had eliminated all magical
means of attaining salvation. In the absense of such means the believer could not
hope to atone for hours of weakness or of thoughtlessnesss by increased good
will at other times…There was no place for the very human Catholic cycle of sin,
repentance, atonement, release, followed by renewed sin …The moral conduct of
the average man was thus deprived of its planless and unsystematic character
…Only a life guided by constant ‘thought’ could achieve conquest over the state
of human sinful nature. It was this rationalisation, which gave the Reformed
Calvinist faith its peculiar ascetic tendency …(ciritque: W inferred a psychological
condition – the feeling of religious anxiety – from an analysis of doctrines and
institutions.)
And it was this ascetic tendency that explained for Weber the affinity
between Calvinism and the ‘spirit of capitalism’.
He demonstrated how Calvinism doctrines provided effective incentives for the
layman by examining pastoral writings of Puritan divines such as the English
Richard Baxter or the works of Benjamin Franklin. They praise work as a defense
against all such temptations as religious doubt, the sense of unworthiness, or
sexual desires. In this negative sense the praise of work gave rise to a detailed code
of conduct. To waste time is a deadly sin, for the span of life is too short and
prescious and man must use his every minute to serve the greater glory of God
and make sure of his ‘election’. What developed was an ethic of unremitting
commitment to a worldly calling/duty/task (the workd and role one was
called by God to fulfil). Economic productivity was higher in Protestant
communicities than it was in Catholics, even in modern times, because it was the
practical result of such old ethical beliefs and practices, Weber said. The most
rapid possible accumulation of capital was the sign of the elect.
In his Protestant ethic Weber did not go substantially beyond the analysis of
theological doctrines and pastoral writings. He aimed to show that the inherent
logic of these doctrines and of the advice based upon them both directly and
indicrectly encouraged planning and self-denial in the pursiuit of economic gain.
He stated that he investigated specifically:
(image) ….whether and at what points certain ‘elective affinities’ are
discernible between particular types of religious beliefs and the ethics of
work-a-day life. By virtue of such affinities the religious movements have
influenced the development of material culture, and (an analysis of these
affinities) will clarify as far as possible the manner and the general
direction (of that influence)…We are interested in ascertaining those
psychological impulses which originated in religious belief and the
practice of religion, gave direction to the individual’s everyday way of life
and prompted to adhere to it’.
It is important to point out that all this was the unintional consequence of
claims that dedication to a calling (Beruf) was a path to God’s favour and
grace, as was thriftiness in consumption. Over the centuries the religious aspect
of this ethical ‘calllig’ got lost but it continues to shaped people’s behaviors. The
bourgois classes, Weber claimed, in the West have accumilated tremendous
wealth, due to this specific ascetic attitude to life. Webers famously coins the
saying that it had become our ‘iron cage’, from which we can never escape and
which keeps us going on like a hamster in its wheel.
(slide) of his deep trouble.
Weber saw this process going on in all areas of his contemporary life; he
perceived what he described a ‘disenchantment of modern life’. For example
he saw the rise of capitalist society as an illustration of this general pattern of
rationalisation. As a social process, rationalisation includes the systematic
application of scientific reason to the everyday world and the intellectualisation
of routine activities through the application of systematic knowledge to practice.
Rationalisation. more generally, in everyday life was also associated with the
disenchantment of reality, that is the secularisation of values and attitudes. In
institutional terms, this process involved the decline of the authority of the
Church, and the erosion of the status of the clergy. In religious terms,
rationalisation involved the development of the intellectual stratum of
theologians who produced religious thought as a systematic statement about
reality. Within the political sphere, it was associated, with the decline and
disappearance of traditional norms of legitimicay, such as the dependence upon
charismatic leadership of kings for example. In social terms, generally,
rationalisation was constituted by the spread of bueurocratic control, the
establishment of modern systems of surveillance, the dependence on the nationstate as a controlling agency and the rise of new forms of administration.
Rationalisation as a master theme in Weber’s work has therefore often been
compared with the themes of ‘alienation’ and ‘estrangement’ in the work of
Marx, the other great German thinker on capitalism. (I’ll come back to this
relationship at the end of my talk.)
The question of ‘rationalisation’ is key in his Protestant ethics.