Re: Weber and rationality

We may have 'discused' it a year ago, but neither Carl nor I became any
the wiser from it, since we both still think the same as before.
agf
On Sat, 23
Jan 1999, Carl Dassbach wrote:

> Date: Sat, 23 Jan 1999 10:01:09 -0500
> From: Carl Dassbach <dassbach@mtu.edu>
> To: WORLD SYSTEMS NETWORK <wsn@csf.colorado.edu>
> Subject: Re: Weber and rationality
> 
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Ricardo Duchesne <RDUCHESN@unbsj.ca>
> To: WORLD SYSTEMS NETWORK <wsn@csf.colorado.edu>
> Date: Friday, January 22, 1999 4:18 PM
> Subject: Re: Weber and rationality
> 
> 
> >Ricardo:
> >I would add that this emphasis on innovation as conduct is true of
> >the whole Austrian school of economics; it was, in fact, Mises's key
> >point against socialist planning.
> 
> Interesting - but unfortunately, an understanding of innovation as "action"
> has largely disappeared from recent long waves discussions (for which, of
> course, innovation is, at least in the Schumpeterian traditions, the central
> force in an expansionary phase).
> 
> >One should not however reduce
> >Weber's concept of rational action to economic action per se.
> 
> Which I don't do or suggest - but I am also unsure about the exact
> relationship between "rational action" (by rational action, I mean action
> that carefully considers ends, means and unintended consequences before
> proceeding and then proceeds on the basis of these consideration) or the
> result of rational action, namely, rationalization, and capitalism.
> 
> To phrase it in a "chicken and egg" format - What came "first" -
> rationalization or capitalism. Does rationalization proceed capitalism so
> that capitalism, for Weber is merely another example of rational action,
> namely, the rational pursuit of profit or is the rationalization (and
> "demagification") of the world a consequence (an emanation) of capitalism?
> 
> Logically, (at least), the latter makes more sense to me - namely that the
> rationalization of economic conduct in turn influenced the rationalization
> of other parts of the world - in E&S Weber basically states this is the case
> of technology - modern technology (as we know it) is inseperable from the
> context of modern capitalism (BTW, this is also a fairly standard position
> in the study of technology - ex. David Noble and also underly the recently
> fashionable discussions of "embeddedness" in sociology).  BTW, I also think
> that this position is consistent with Weber's Protestant Ethic.  In other
> words, Weber explains the origins of rational economic conduct in concerns
> about salvation. From this singular point rationalization, as Weber suggest
> at the end of the PE, spreads outward to (contaminates?) other spheres of
> social life like the ripples from a stone thrown in a pond -
> 
> The other postion, rationalization has, so to speak, historical priority,
> raises the question of why should rationalization suddenly appear, ex
> nihilo, on the stage of history.
> 
> We have already debated AGF's "Re-Orient" and the issue of "euro-centrism"
> on WSN about a year ago so I won't repeat my observations other than to say
> that claiming that something historically different happended in Europe (as
> a qualitative break or disconinuity) and, this in turn, transformed the
> world - European, capitalist inspired/induced/ social strucures appear to be
> emerging all over the world - is not a  euro-centric observation.  It is
> merely the recognition that there are discontinuities in history.  These may
> be macro, the emergence of new "world-systems", meso, the emergence of new
> hegemonic powers or, micro, the emergence of new types of social relations.
> 
> 
> >Dassbach, are you saying that for W  the "otherwordly"  motives
> >guiding economic action are "irrational".
> 
> Here, I am guility of conflating the word rational (something I suspect that
> I picked up from Marcuse's observation that capitalism uses rational means
> to irrational ends).  Rational, at least as far as I can tell, is used in
> two senses.  One sense, generally the most common sense is that something is
> inherently "logical" or "reasonable" - eg Hegel phenomenology or Leibniz
> monadology as rational philsophies. Maybe, it could be said that rational is
> used in the sense of "ends" or "wert" rational. (or course, we have to ask
> what is meant by inherently and this brings us back to the issue of
> embeddness).  The other sense, but this far less common, is rational as
> being "means" or "zweck" rational.  In German, one would use this term in
> the sense of speaking about a "rationalization" of production. Americans
> however generally don't use rational in this sense - if anything they
> collapse the two sense and assume that things that are "means" rational -
> for example, mass production - are also "ends" rational (why and how rthis
> should occur is an interesting topic which can not be discussed here but
> again, it has to do with context and embeddness).
> 
> 
> What I should have said is that the original otherworldy motives that
> provided the basis for innerworldly "rational" action are "unreasonable" in
> sofar as they can not be (and can be as Kant shows us) logically proven or
> disproven..  They are matters of faith.
> 
> >One should be careful not to reduce W's extremely rich, if
> >convoluted, argument on the rise of the West to the Protestant
> >thesis, as both Landes and Gunder Frank in their own ways tend to.
> 
> 
> No, you can't reduce it to Protestantism but you can not, at least in terms
> of Weber's thinking, ignore the role of Protestant if you ask Weber's
> question - what is the origin of/source for the all prevailing
> rationalization of western life.
> 
> 


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                   ANDRE GUNDER FRANK
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