Max Weber's Iron Cage in The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism

[Anonymous No.19361117]

I read Max Weber's "The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism" and I had a couple of questions for anyone on lit who has read it.

Do you guys think that max weber's ideas on bureaucracy, rationalization and the iron cage are synonymous with Amazon's wagie cages they have for their workers, and how they treat their workers? Max Weber makes a lot of similar ideas to Marx, but obviously in things like class marx is very different.

I'm trying to understand if I have a firm grasp on weber's Iron Cage idea/bureaucracy/rationalization concepts, so anything you guys have to say about those subjects in general is helpful.

On the other hand, did you guys like this book?

[Anonymous No.19362532]

bump

[Anonymous No.19363062]

>>19362532
you bump my thread yet you provide no substance to it


anyways the way i made the thread was dumb, max weber's ideas on iron cage are mostly about how he feels that work ethic is kind of infringing on intimate aspects of social life, and even more so with stuff like zoom and amazon spying on its employees outside of the workspace.

its super similar to rationalization so i dunno how to differentiate between the two.

[Anonymous No.19363224]

>>19361117
Not read Max Weber, but this pandemic made me want to be a NEET. I work in a restaurant, and we were closed for 7 months while I got slightly more income from the government than I had been making working and those were hands down the best 7 months of my life. I exercised more, read more, spent more time with my significant other, just all around felt way better. I don't even mind my job, it's just the fact that I have to work so many hours just to pay all the bills. We need a UBI so NEETs can work a little if they want and those who work can manage their work life balance better.

[Anonymous No.19363236]

>>19363224
ubi is inevitable

[Anonymous No.19363240]

>>19363236
Yeah, but the mainstream political parties will delay it as long as possible

[Anonymous No.19363242]

>>19363224
I know this feel. I had a few months of neeting and these were the best months of my life. I read, found new hobbies, exercised, got more charismatic, basically changed my life.

[Anonymous No.19363298]

>>19363242
"Means testing" programs are the worst, boomer-tier mindset, garbage in existence. Let's punish poor people if they start earning money.

[Anonymous No.19363306]

>>19363242
Damn lol I literally just got drunk everyday for a year on employment insurance, although I did spend 6 years working hard manual labor right out of highschool.

[Anonymous No.19363343]

>>19363306
That's not very healthy, bro

[Anonymous No.19363415]

>>19361117
My understanding of Weber's rationalisation thesis is that it is essentially epistemological. Weber's sociological project was what he termed an interpretive sociology—one that saw the substance of social life as a product of the meaning that individuals gave to their social actions. Thus, much of Weber's world-historical interpretation of society is tied with trying to find how people's interpretation of social life manifests itself in social structures. The rationalisation hypothesis is, in this sense, the manifestation of a certain kind of epistemological legitimacy of one form social meaning over another. A Weltanschauung in it's most comprehensive sense.
A good way to understand this is his comparison between Traditional and Rational legitimacy. Under traditional relations, meaning and authority in social relations is governed by age and ceremony. The reason one would support,or adjudicate between, given social relations is on the basis of the posterity of that relation. For example, in early common law, property rights were legitimated if that property was held 'since time immemorial' by a given family. In contrast, under rational social relations, typically things are ordered instrumentally, with the privileging of any position governed by it's appropriateness to achieving some given end. Thus today property rights are decided by deliberate contract, often allocated for specific use.
As such, it can be very strange for us to look back on previous social structures and why people supported them. They can be perplexing because, according to Weber, they were essentially operating under a different logic than we do now. For example, we may marvel at the complicit submission of so vast a population such as India to the Varna system, and wonder why individuals would live under it, it would seem, completely voluntarily; why the Kshatria would submit to the Brahmin despite having the preponderance of arms and income. Looking back now, we tend to impute some kind of logic of utility: that in accordance to the Indian religion, they sought the utility in reincarnation over the this-worldly gain of rebelling against their Dharma. But what Weber wants us to think is rather that they weren't thinking in these terms at all; social truth was divined through tradition, not utility. Thus, it is as natural to us to consider the utility of something as demanding our allegiance as it was to them tradition and 'time immemorial'. The lower castes saw their position as natural due to it simply being 'as things have always been', and that alone established the truth and justification of this relation. I personally don't know enough about classical Indian society to mediate on this point, but it is a demonstration of what i think Weber meant by an interpretive sociology—all social structures and relations were governed by a prevailing epistemological authority of tradition-as-justification, which manifested itself in all social action.

[Anonymous No.19363421]

>>19363415
Thus when we turn to the rationalisation thesis, we should understand it in a similar way: of utility-as-justification. Or, the predominance of instrumental rationality in social relations and structures. For Weber, the archetypal display of these rational relations was Bureaucracy, as Bureaucracy is the organisation of people purely in relation to specific ends—both intra- in that internal departments and bureaucrats are organised functionally, and inter- in that the entire organisation is created to fulfill a specific purpose. This is distinguished from Traditional systems like feudal courts, where relations were organised around tradition and ceremony, nobles being of long families and long obligations, but not belonging much on an account of their particular proficiency or even a particular purpose. Hierarchies were complex and based on personal ritual relations, rather than the organisational hierarchies and rational procedure of Bureaucracies. Bureaucracy is just one type of rational social structure (the market is another example)
The stahlhartes Gehäuse (iron cage) represents the rational social structures that have been erected over the spread of rational legitimacy. Iron cage is the popular translation, but it could also be read as 'shell as hard as steel' or 'hard housing', which gives a broader meaning than the prison invoked: it is that the social shell of society has become cold, hard, unfeeling, rational, but as much a home as a prison. It no longer matters if there is an overt theological grounding to rational accumulation and market relations, as both in external structure and internal meaning, utility and rationality have established and reinforce themselves. That is why the material world can no longer be shrugged off 'like a light cloak', but has become an iron cage.
In regards to your posts, i think you are taking the metaphor of the iron cage too literally. The wage-cage, Amazon working conditions, and such, are aspects of the iron cage (social structures which manifest rational social meaning), but they are not identical to it. They are outcome of rationalisation, but are not identical to it. If you want to be strictly faithful to the Protestant Ethic text and ignore his broader work, The Iron Cage refers specifically the external and not the internal, and specifically to market relations. But as we have seen, such distinctions are difficult to make considering Weber's broader sociology. If you wanted to arrange them, then you would say Bureaucracy (a specific social structure) is part of the Iron Cage (the sum of rational social structures), and that the Iron Cage is part of rationalisation (the epistemological privileging of rationality in social relations).

[Anonymous No.19363425]

>>19363421
But as a bit of a denouement, much of Weber's writings are more extreme than reality due to his methodological use of the Ideal Type. So the world is not as dominated by rationality as Weber presents, Bureaucracy not as monolithic, disenchantment not as comprehensive. Just to pick on the Bureaucracy, Weber's estimation views them as far more competent and centralised than they actually tend to be. There are significant amounts of informal hierarchies and interchange within organisations, bargaining and discretion at all levels, and non-rational connections through nepotism, corruption, and bribery. Bureaucracts bend and break rules constantly, and the informational isolation is often broken by rumours and gossip. It is also important to say that the Rationality thesis doesn't mean that social action prior to the modern age was irrational. Weber makes the distinction between instrumental rationality and value-rationality, with the latter being the rational implementation according to the assumed truth of some value. As such, Traditional organisation is rational implementation of the assumed truth of tradition, if that make sense. I'm not sure how much sense this post will make if you haven't already read Economy and Society. Or how helpful the post will be in general, as it is a bit unfocused. I also don't have access to my copies of Weber at the moment so i couldn't double-check some things or provide you much quotes. I know there are some sociologists on /lit/ who could explain this better than i can, so if they happen to see this thread and post i would be happy to be corrected on some of my points.

[Anonymous No.19363480]

>>19363425
Good posts

[Anonymous No.19364385]

>>19363242
The NEET shall inherit the earth

[Anonymous No.19364397]

i dont remember shit from it ive read it when i was 13 im twice the age now

[Anonymous No.19364401]

>>19363415
>anime
you realize nobody will read your post right? anime posters are stunted

[Anonymous No.19365123]

>>19363236
Not really.

[Anonymous No.19365144]

>>19364401
shhhhh don't tell him that ffs, let them filter themselves

[Anonymous No.19365629]

>>19363425
>>19363421
>>19363415
Interesting post anon. Good job.

https://files.catbox.moe/xl0j9y.pdf

Here is the PDF if you wanted it, or wanted to pull quotes.

Isn't marx's alienation really similar to how weber describes it? They really seem to me, at least, to be very similar in their meanings.
Sure marx has differences but in my understanding the iron cage and " social shell of society has become cold, hard, unfeeling, rational, but as much a home as a prison" is very similar to what marx was trying to say when society and capitalism does this to people.

[Anonymous No.19365638]

>>19363425
>>19363421
>>19363415
thank you for this though. this really helped me.

[Anonymous No.19365679]

>>19363425
great post

[Anonymous No.19366256]

>>19363415
>>19363421
>>19363425
sounds really similar to ellul and antitech

[Anonymous No.19367522]

>>19365629
In the end they were both describing the same phenomenon (interpersonal relations in industrial capitalism). I don't think Weber disagreed much with Marx's analysis of contemporary industrial conditions, but more with the causal arguments that Marx and Marxists made. The biggest difference between the two is that Marx is a materialist while Weber is not. Not that Weber is a pure idealist, but that ideas and material factors share an 'elective affinity' and drive and develop each other. I guess you could also put it this way: Marx thought that the broader forms of civil society and government were the superstructure produced from the base of economic relations and means of production. Weber thinks that there isn't a distinction between superstructure and base, but that the forms of both are a manifestations of a broader rationalisation of social life. Being that he didn't believe that it originated from material economic factors, he didn't believe that a change in the relations of the means of production would suddenly 're-enchant the world'—communism was simply another kind of rational organisation, not an escape from it. Which is why he was fairly dour about the possibility of a communist revolution.
>Not summer’s bloom lies ahead of us, but rather a polar night of icy darkness and hardness, no matter which group may triumph externally now. Where there is nothing, not only the Kaiser but also the proletarian has lost his rights. When this night shall have slowly receded, who of those for whom spring apparently has bloomed so luxuriously will be alive?
On a technical note, i don't think it is correct to equate it to Marx's idea of alienation, as his theory of alienation (as presented in his early work anyway) centred around how capital relations exploit and distort man's nature as Homo Faber (man-the-maker). Specifically, from the product of their work, from the freedom in the process of their work, from his species-being, and from his fellow man. But all of these have to do with the antagonism from a natural kind of relation between a man and his work that capitalism produces. Which isn't really what Weber is describing. While Weber certainly wasn't thrilled by the 'disenchantment of the world' by rationalism (Weber was very sympathetic to Nietzsche) he didn't think it was 'unnatural' in any way or a departure from how things 'ought to be'. So that IN FACT the conditions that Marx describes in, for example, the alientation from the process of production (how the division of labour isolates a worker to a specific task) is similar to how Weber describes Bureaucracy (how the bureaucrat is isolated for a specific task in the organisation), it doesn't have the same significance: bureaucratic relations may be unpleasant (to Weber), but they weren't a distortion of antagonism of anything natural. If that makes sense.

[Anonymous No.19368144]

>>19367522
What do you mean by “distortion of antagonism”? I understood your post and you raise a fair point. I feel like there are some similarities and some differences. Even if the differences are larger than the similarities.

[Anonymous No.19368876]

>>19368144
It was meant to be 'distortion or antagonism', meaning a distortion of natural relations or an antagonism with a 'natural order'. In Marx it can also mean being divorced or separated from something. Alienation is to—whatever it is directed towards—become 'alien' i.e. to become foreign to or unfamiliar with. Marx has a conception that what makes Man a 'species-being' (the distinguishing essence of humanity as a species), is his labour:
>In creating an objective world by his practical activity, in working-up inorganic nature, man proves himself a conscious species being, i.e., as a being that treats the species as its own essential being, or that treats itself as a species being. Admittedly animals also produce. They build themselves nests, dwellings, like the bees, beavers, ants, etc. But an animal only produces what it immediately needs for itself or its young. It produces one-sidedly, whilst man produces universally. It produces only under the dominion of immediate physical need, whilst man produces even when he is free from physical need and only truly produces in freedom therefrom.
More specifically, his free, self-directed labour. This is the natural relation of man to labour. What makes Capitalist relations alienating, therefore, is that they distort or make antagonistic this natural relation between man and his labour. It makes the object of his labour (which is an extention of him) no longer owned by him; it makes the process of his labour no longer elective but consigned; it makes the possibility of labour free from physical need impossible; and it makes relations between workers—which should be cooperative—competitive and combative. Thus the proper relation between man and his labour does not exist under capitalist production. Further, man's labour, which is meant to set him free, is objectified into the very forces that enslave him (the product of his labour builds the capitalist economy which forces him into these relations to begin with) and as such 'confronts him as something alien'. Depending on how much you think early Marx carries on the late Marx, the alienation of the surplus value, and the reduction of wages to labour value, actually reduces and alienates a worker's very humanity—because the defining character that separates Man from animals is that he labours beyond his subsistence. This is what i meant by distortion or antagonism.
But this idea of alienation is quite different of how we conventionally use the term, which means an individual's alienation from society around him. Or, interchangeably, atomisation, the breaking down of social bonds. Which is, i think, the kind of alienation you were thinking of regarding Weber's rationalisation. But that isn't Marx's conception.
You were probably just confused by the typo and didn't want all of the above, but it still might be useful to better understand why they are different, if you didn't already know Marx's account of alienation.

[Anonymous No.19369014]

>>19368876
>Typo
Oh i see, yeah now that makes more sense.

>You were probably just confused by the typo and didn't want all of the above,

No, that's fine. I appreciate the above, it helped me understand what you were saying.

You really seem to understand Weber's ideas. It's a difficult reading (for a brainlet like me at least) so I commend you for that.

Are there any lines in particular that you felt stood out to you in the protestant ethic about weber's ideas on the above?

This one kind of stood out to me

"The idea of the obligation of man to the possessions entrusted to him, to which he subordinates himself as servant and steward or even as “moneymaking machine,” lies on life with its chill weight. "

This one on the capitalist spirit also speaks about what he was saying.

"... Today this mighty cosmos determines, with overwhelming coercion, the style of life not only of those directly involved in business but of every individual who is born into this mechanism, and may well continue to do so until the day that the last ton of fossil fuel has been consumed."

[Anonymous No.19369543]

>>19369014
Most of my first post was referring to Economy and Society. It is difficult to point to just one place or quote, as it has to be inferred by reading many of his different works. The relevant parts of Economy and Society i would recommend reading (well, i'd recommend reading all of it, but for the purely relevant parts, this edition: https://b-ok.global/book/2090518/b30d60)) Pages 1-38 (Method, types of social action), 212-254 (forms of legitimate domination: charismatic, traditional, rational), 956-1003 (bureaucracy)
In the protestant ethic, most of the stuff on rationalisation and the iron cage can be found in the Author's Introduction (which doesn't seem to be present in the edition you linked, try this edition https://b-ok.global/book/909575/3a0b3f)) and the final few pages (123-125 in the same edition). All of the Author's introduction is dealing with rationalisation, so read it in it's entirety. Difficult to find a good quote, but:
>And why did not the capitalistic interests do the same in China or India? Why did not the scientific, the artistic, the political, or the economic development there enter upon that path of rationalization which is peculiar to the Occident? For in all the above cases it is a question of the specific and peculiar rationalism of Western culture
And some from the final chapter (beyond what you've already quoted)
>Since asceticism undertook to remodel the world and to work out its ideals in the world, material goods have gained an increasing and finally an inexorable power over the lives of men as at no previous period in history. To-day the spirit of religious asceticism—whether finally, who knows?—has escaped from the cage. But victorious capitalism, since it rests on mechanical foundations, needs its support no longer. The rosy blush of its laughing heir, the Enlightenment, seems also to be irretrievably fading, and the idea of duty in one’s calling prowls about in our lives like the ghost of dead religious beliefs.
and
>No one knows who will live in this cage in the future, or whether at the end of this tremendous development entirely new prophets will arise,or there will be a great rebirth of old ideas and ideals, or, if neither, mechanized petrification, embellished with a sort of convulsive self-importance. For of the last stage of this cultural development, it might well be truly said: “Specialists without spirit, sensualists without heart; this nullity imagines that it has attained a level of civilization never before achieved.
Science as Vocation pages 12-17 also talks about rationalisation and disenchantment. (this edition https://b-ok.global/book/1317394/aa222d))
I would also recommend this (https://b-ok.global/book/3389390/344171)) which should give you a good summery of key concepts are places in his various works where they are discussed.
And finally If this is all for an essay i would say: Good luck. I do, however, resent being deceived by the show of an honest earnestness in the subject

[Anonymous No.19369889]

Based Weber enthusiasts

[Anonymous No.19369994]

>>19363224
Even ubi requires a productive class to fund it

[Anonymous No.19371270]

>>19369543
>And finally If this is all for an essay i would say: Good luck. I do, however, resent being deceived by the show of an honest earnestness in the subject

No... it's not...
I do have an actual interest for weber, otherwise I wouldn't be talking about it

If I had wanted to write an essay I would have just paid someone qualified and trustworthy to do it rather than asking an anonymous image board to write it for me. Not saying you aren't trustworthy, rather that there would be better ways to write a paper than asking lit.

[Anonymous No.19371545]

>>19363236
Look up "Speenhamland System". UBI will only serve to depress wages and beggar the entire population.

[Anonymous No.19371777]

>>19371545
My idea is that the second UBI is implemented, prices will rise so that you will not be able to pay for food and bills on UBI alone. You will still have to wageslave to live paycheck to paycheck, but your pay will be cut dramatically because you have UBI after all.

[Anonymous No.19371955]

>>19363415
>>19363421
>>19363425
based anime sociologyposter. missed you buddy

[Anonymous No.19372494]

>>19371270
Okay, i just thought it was strange that you were asking for specific quotes. In any case, i think this thread has reached it's natural conclusion. It was fun talking with you and i hope you at least came out of it with a better understanding of Weber. Threads about him are unfortunately rare on this board.

[Anonymous No.19372610]

>>19372494
Thank you for your help and I understood it way better now.

Was nice talking with you.

[Anonymous No.19372811]

>>19371777
Yes, that is what I was suggesting. Just like the Speenhamland System. It is antithetical to the development of NEETdom.