Re: Weber and rationality

-----Original Message-----
From: Ricardo Duchesne <RDUCHESN@unbsj.ca>
To: WORLD SYSTEMS NETWORK <wsn@csf.colorado.edu>
Date: Tuesday, January 26, 1999 12:53 PM
Subject: Re: Weber and rationality


>Dassbach:
>"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)."
>
>Ricardo:
>Reason it has disappeared is that macro-structures are seen as beyond
>the intentional control of any single group or individual.
>Structures are  believed to produce effects independently of
>the intentions of  any one group. But serious macro theorists know
>that structures can only be produced and reproduced through the
>intentional action of groups or individuals.

Of course, but I would say "action" and not "intentional action."  Moreover,
I wouldn't credit Giddens with pointing this out (at best he may have
formalized this problem to aid the simple minded in their search for linear
casuality).  The problem of subject and structure is one of the basic
problems in the social sciences. After all, Marx told us that human, as
agents, may make history but they do not make it under conditions chosen by
themselves.


>But world-system theory has a rather poor grasp of
>micro-rational action.

Careful here - world-system theory (with the hyphen) does not, at least in
my mind, pertain to everyone who discusses the global economy but rather to
a body of theorizing connected with and departing from the premises of
Immanuel Wallerstein. In effect, I think (but I can not speak for) AGF has
broken with W-S theory.

Gunder Frank's *Re-Orient* does recognize
>rational actors who can calculate their position within
>the world market, who can calculate, for example, that in a high-wage
>region it may be rational to reduce costs by introducing
>labor-saving technology. (Afterall, a crucial claim of  Re-Orient is
>that Asians were just as rational as Europeans in their calculation of
>economic interests). But in the end Re-Orient adopts that old
>structuralist approach which sees actors as pushed or compelled to
>act in accordance with the autonomous logic of the world system: "In
>a global economy, however, even such local and or sectoral
>microeconomic incentives anywhere were related to and indeed derived
>from competitive participation in the macroeconomic world economic
>structure" (297).


I don't think anyone would claim that the logic of the world-system is
"autonomous".  Whatever "logic" it may have is the result of,  as Engel's
writes in a latter to Bloch, "an interaction of (many) elements, ... an
endless host of accidents.. conflicts between many individual wills...
innumerable intersecting forces, an infinte series of parallelgrams of
forces which give rise to one resultant - the historical event."   It is
possible, ex post, to see this resultant as a "logic" but this is logic is
neither inhrent nor autonomous but the result of human actions occurring
under extremely complex BUT determinate conditions.

>So, in the end Sanderson cannot overcome the duality of  the micro
>and macro: "Social evolution is driven by purposive or intended
>human actions, but is to a large extent not itself a purposive or
>intended phenomenon." (13)


Other than replacing the word "evolution" with "change", I don't see this
observation as problematic." Kindly provide an alternative, and from your
point of view, `acceptable' formulation to this observation.


>In fact, Sanderson's study of  such transformations as the neolithic
>revolution completely dismisses any explanation which relies on
>human intentional action as "idealist in nature" and devoid of any
>"scientific" merit.

Again, what are your proposing instead?  Are you proposing that large scale
historical outcomes - e.g. the ascension of the US to a hegmonic position at
the end of World War II - is the result of actions that had this outcome as
their objective from the outset.

>To understand Weber's concept of rationalization one has to keep in
>mind the distinction he draws between four basic types: practical,
>substantive, theoretical, and formal rationality. Except for the
>theoretical type, each of these types carefully considers the
>relationship between ends and means. But substantive rationality
>adopts only those means which are consistent with the accepted
>values, the way the "man of principles" does. Both practical and
>formal rationality involve calculation of the  best means to a given
>end, with the difference that formal rationality is action guided
>according to "universally applied rules, laws, and regulations".


Fine but you still have not addressed my question, namely, what is it for
Weber? capitalism `produces' rationalization or rationalization `produces"
capitalism.   Or is this an irrelevant question?


You seem to insist that everyone reduces Weber's rationality to practical or
economic rationality.  I don't think that claiming an "orientation" which
has it roots in the pursuit or profit but which has later  applied to other
spheres of social life is reducing this "orientation" to economic action.
This, in my mind, is similar to reducing an oak tree to an acorn or Windows
to MS-DOS.  Certainly we see the connection between the oak and the acorn or
Windows and MS-DOS but you can't understand the oak by studying the acron or
Winodws by studying MS-DOS.

>Ricardo: Protestanism is one important step in a long world historic
>rationalization process (yes world, not just European, except for the
>last key steps) . Perhaps at some point we can examine the
>"Author's Introduction", later added to the Prostestant Ethic and the
>Spirit of Capitalism, as it is an excellent succinct analysis of this
>process. But enough said for today.


Well, now this seems to be your answer to some of my previous questions -
you speak of a long world historic rationalization process in which
Protestantism and, I would imagine, Capitalism are just small parts.  Why
and how should this occur.  What moves this process - it is the result of
some innate human drive or is it Spirit overcoming its alienation from
nature through history.  Either way, we have moved beyond the realm of
logical discourse and into the realm of belief.


Carl Dassbach