THE EVERYTHING® PHILOSOPHY BOOK by James Mannion;

Author:James Mannion;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: epub, ebook
Publisher: F+W Publications, Inc.
Published: 2002-07-15T00:00:00+00:00

Max Weber

Another influential sociologist of the era was Max Weber (1864–1920). He was a German thinker who also took a jaundiced view of capitalism and sought to understand its emergence in the Western world rather than in another culture in another part of the world. He linked the rise of capitalism with the Protestant Work Ethic.

The Protestant sect called Calvinism (named for its founder, theologian John Calvin) championed the theory of predestination. In essence, predestination is a belief that God has already decided who goes to heaven and who goes to hell, and nothing you do in this life, for good or evil, will impact this divine decision. Yet rather than indulge their darkest impulses, since the die was cast long before they were born, Calvinists opted to try to please God in their lifetime. They decided that this entailed embracing the values of good old-fashioned hard work and the accumulation of money. Not, however, for the things they can provide or the good works that these attributes can accomplish for the benefits of their fellow man, but hard work and frugality for its own sake.

Whereas Marx believed that economics motivated human thought, Weber believed the opposite, that human ideas brought about particular economic systems. And while Marx spoke of class struggles and ultimately class warfare, the word Weber used to describe the division of societies was stratification.

In Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, Dr. McCoy said, “The bureaucratic mentality is the only constant in the universe.” He believed this was bad. Sociologist Max Weber would agree with this assessment by the good doctor, but would laud it as a good thing. He loved bureaucracies.

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