![]() Through economic restructuring and social policy, especially education policy, Vitalpolitik aimed to improve the vitality and autonomy of the worker, enabling them to pursue self-interested goals that also ensured the social well-being of the community.Max Weber, who is regarded as the greatest social theorist of the 20th century, along with Karl Marx and Emil Durkheim, is recognized as one of the founders of modern social science. They also sought to revitalise the disillusioned capitalist worker stuck in the ‘steel hard casing’ of modernity with their Vitalpolitik, or ‘vital policy’. They thus sought a ‘Third Way’, a term first used by Röpke in 1942, that envisioned a consciously shaped market that was guided by regulation rather than blind adherence to the market mechanism and the invisible hand or central planning. They were equally as critical of socialism and central planning using arguments akin to Weber’s of the inability of a socialist system to provide rational and efficient social and economic results. The ordoliberals were thus just as disillusioned as Weber was a few decades earlier with the modern manifestation of capitalism. Röpke similarly engaged with genealogical studies in a Weberian framework, recognising that ‘Max Weber has drawn attention to the especial influence of Calvinism on the growth of the business spirit’. Röpke explored how the Reformation resulted in collective societal alienation since the post-Reformation Christian ‘ must turn his thoughts more devoutly inward to his own soul and its salvation’ which increased the disconnect between the individual and society. Rüstow mentioned Weber frequently in a lecture published in 1943 in which he traced the modern drive for incessant profit making to the rationalisation of ‘inner worldly’ asceticism as a consequence of the Reformation, stating that ‘this work stands with gratitude and admiration on the shoulders of Max Weber’. Eucken himself was a student of Alfred Weber, Max Weber’s younger brother with whom, intellectually, Alfred shared much in common. Ordoliberal thinkers echoed these debates in their own writings, at times even using similar language and directly engaging with Weber’s work. Like Mises, Weber could not imagine a scenario in which a socialist economic system was able to function rationally and provide optimal results. ![]() Weber came to the same conclusion as Ludwig von Mises (1881-1973) in the socialist calculation debate pertaining to the economic feasibility of a planned economy. In a centrally planned system the socialist individual, just as the modern capitalist, would lose their personal autonomy to the bureaucratic machine. Though Weber saw modern capitalism pushing society into a stahlhartes Gehäuse, or ‘steel hard casing’, of bureaucracy, Weber considered central planning, particularly socialism, as a mere extension of this bureaucratisation and rationalisation. Grant Wood's 'American Gothic '(1930) is said to embody the Protestant work ethic in visual form.Įqually important to the debates of the early twentieth century were Weber’s reflections on central planning and his contribution to the socialist calculation debate. This guided post-war economic restructuring in Germany and established the foundation for the ‘Social Market Economy’, which is still considered to be the model for German economic decision making today. This school of economic thought, as well as individuals such as Alexander Rüstow (1885-1963) Wilhelm Röpke (1899-1966), and Alfred Müller-Armack (1901-1978) contributed to the German variant of liberalism, or ‘ordoliberalism’. Taking this statement as a starting point, I recently published an article examining the ideational parallels between, and engagement of, the Freiburg School of Economics with Max Weber. Max Weber’s problem, and the problem he introduced into German sociological, economic, and political reflection at the same time.is the problem of the irrational rationality of capitalist society.And we can say roughly that the Frankfurt School as well as the Freiburg School, Horkheimer as well as Eucken, have simply taken up this problem. Michel Foucault hinted at this connection in his lectures at the Collège de France in 1978-9 in stating that: Though his legacy in the field of economics has also been acknowledged, Weber’s direct and indirect influence on German economic thought has largely been overlooked. Max Weber (1864-1920) is primarily remembered for his contributions to sociology, history and politics and is widely recognised as one of the founding fathers of the discipline of sociology itself.
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