Max Weber
[1864–1920]

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. Weber's extensive contributions played a significant role in the emergence of new academic fields like sociology as well as the profound reorientation of the fields of law, economics, political science, and religious studies.

As a sociologist, is Max Weber's career path significant? Follow the following article to learn more about his life.

I. Max Weber biography 

1. Who is Max Weber?

Maximilian Karl Emil Weber (1864–1920) was born into a prominent family in the Prussian city of Erfurt. His father, Max Sr., was a lawyer and National Liberal parliamentarian in Wilhelmine politics. Max Sr. came from a Westphalian family of merchants and industrialists in the textile industry. His mother Helene was descended from the Fallenstein and Souchay families, two prominent Huguenot families with a long history of producing academics and public servants. Alfred, his younger brother, was also a well-known political economist and sociologist. 

Max Weber was undoubtedly raised in a wealthy, multicultural, and refined family environment that was closely connected to the political, social, and cultural establishment of the German Bürgertum [Roth 2000]. Additionally, his parents represented the two, frequently at odds, poles of identity that their eldest son would struggle with throughout his life: ascetic scholarship and worldly statesmanship.

2. Max Weber early education and career

Max Weber received his legal education primarily at the universities of Heidelberg and Berlin. He later wrote his Habilitationsschrift on Roman law and agrarian history under August Meitzen and dissertations on medieval trading companies under Levin Goldschmidt and Rudolf von Gneist (which were both examined by Theodor Mommsen). He received a significant research commission from the Verein für Sozialpolitik, the top social science organization led by Gustav Schmoller, while considering a career in law and public service, and he produced the so-called East Elbian Report on the displacement of German agrarian workers in East Prussia by Polish migrant laborers. This early success led to his first academic appointment at Freiburg in 1894, which was followed by a prestigious professorship in political economy at Heidelberg two years later. His work was received upon publication with high praise and political controversy.

After essentially living as a private scholar for this period, he gradually resumed his involvement in a variety of academic and public activities. He assumed editorial control of the Archiv für Sozialwissenschaften und Sozialpolitik along with Edgar Jaffé and Sombart, transforming it into a preeminent social science journal of the time as well as his new institutional platform. He co-founded the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Soziologie in 1909, serving as its first treasurer, in part as a result of his growing dissatisfaction with the Verein's conservative politics and lack of methodological discipline (he would resign from it in 1912, though). The peak of his career occurred during this time, which was until the First World War broke out in 1914. He worked incredibly hard in two fields: comparative sociology of world religions and his contributions to the Grundriss der Sozialökomik (to be published posthumously as Economy and Society). These writings, along with the significant methodological essays he also produced at this time, are largely to blame for Weber's continued status as one of the fathers of modern social science.

When Germany was defeated in 1918, it discovered in Max Weber a public intellectual figurehead—possibly even a future statesman—with unblemished liberal credentials who was in a good position to shape the post-war reconstruction. He received invitations to join the Weimar Constitution draft board and the German delegation to Versaille. 

He turned to his scholarly endeavors with renewed vigor after growing frustrated with daily politics. He spent a brief period of time teaching at the universities of Munich and Vienna in 1919, where he delivered the acclaimed lectures Science as a Vocation and Politics as a Vocation, and he also collected his fragmented writings on religion into the massive three-volume Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Religionssoziologie [GARS hereafter].

3. Max Weber Philosophical Influences

It is difficult to place Max Weber within the proper philosophical tradition. Although he can claim an astonishing array of academic identities, he was undoubtedly not a philosopher, at least not in the traditional sense of the word. Our understanding of the degree to which his ideas were ingrained in the intellectual context of the time tends to be clouded by his reputation as the Solonic legislator of modern social science. In general, the deep crisis of the Enlightenment project in late 19th-century Europe, which was characterized by an intellectual revolt against positivist reason, a celebration of subjective will and intuition, and a neo-Romantic yearning for spiritual wholesomeness, informed Weber's philosophical worldview, if not coherent philosophy [Hughes 1977]. 

4. Knowledge: Neo-Kantianism

The language of German Historicism served as a primary filter through which Max Weber encountered the pan-European cultural crisis of his time (Beiser 2011). In his early legal education, he had been exposed to the stark conflict between the dominant Labandian legal positivism and the historical jurisprudence promoted by Otto von Gierke, one of his Berlin teachers. In his later life as a political economist, he was intensely interested in the fiery "strife over methods" (Methodenstreit) between the positivist economic methodology of Carl Menger and the historical economics of Schmoller (his mentor during the early days). However, it can be argued that Max Weber did not discover a rich conceptual framework suitable for the more precise elaboration of his own epistemological position until he became familiar with the Baden or Southwestern School of Neo-Kantians.

Briefly, Neo-Kantians shared the Kantian opposition between reality and concept, in contrast to a Hegelian emanationism epistemology. Reality is illogical and incomprehensible, not an eminent derivative of concepts as Hegel proposed; a concept is merely an abstract mental construct. Furthermore, the idea is not dependent on one's will, intuition, or subjective consciousness as Wilhelm Dilthey suggested. One of the first Neo-Kantians, Hermann Cohen, claimed that conceptualization is fundamentally a cognitive process that must be rational in accordance with Kant's philosophy. Only a reality that we can understand in the form of knowledge is rational if our cognition is logical and all reality exists within it; as a result, metaphysics is reduced to epistemology and Being to logic. 

5. Ethics: Kant and Nietzsche

Another long-lasting influence on Max Weber that can be seen in his ethical worldview rather than his epistemological position is German Idealism. This was the strand of Idealist discourse in which a broadly Kantian ethic and its Nietzschean interlocution figure prominently.

In conclusion, it could be said that Max Weber and Kant had similar interests. The difference between the two was that one was a philosopher and the other a sociologist [Gellner 1974, 184]. But Weber's adherence to a Kantian ethic of duty in regards to the existence of a general law of reason also comes to an end. Max Weber was well aware that the Kantian connection between developing self-awareness, the potential for universal law, and principled and consequently free action had been irreparably severed. By claiming such a connection, Kant was able to uphold Weber's belief that it was impossible to maintain non-arbitrary action and subjective freedom in his purportedly Nietzschean age.

II. Max Weber Theory

1. Rationalization as a Thematic Unity

Weber’s main contribution as such, nonetheless, lies neither in epistemology nor in ethics. His main focus was elsewhere, despite the fact that they profoundly informed his thoughts to a degree that is still underappreciated. After all, he served as one of the pioneers of contemporary social science. Beyond the realization that Max Weber is not simply the best sociologist, as Talcott Parsons's quasi-Durkheimian interpretation made him out to be, the question of whether his varied work contains an idée maîtresse has been debated since his own time and is still far from being resolved. 

Even after its recent reissue under the banner of Max Weber, Economy and Society, his allegedly magnum opus, was published posthumously under his widow's editorship and its thematic architecture is unlikely to be completely reconstructed.

2. Calculability, Predictability, and World-Mastery

Roughly speaking, rationalization refers to a historical movement toward a world in which "one can, in principle, master all things by calculation" [Max Weber 1919/1946, 139]. It occurs in all spheres of human life, including religion, law, music, and architecture. For instance, because it relies on a calculable production process, modern capitalism is a rational system of economic organization. Underpinning such institutional innovations as monetary accounting (especially double-entry bookkeeping), centralization of production control, worker separation from the means of production, availability of formally free labor, disciplined control on the factory floor, and other characteristics that qualitatively distinguish modern capitalism from all other systems of organizing economic life are the search for exact calculability.

 The increased calculability in non-economic fields like law and administration also supports the production process's increased calculability. Legal formalism, which introduces formal equality of citizenship, rule-bound legislation of legal norms, an independent judiciary, and a depoliticized professional bureaucracy, reinforces the elements of predictability in the sociopolitical environment that stifles industrial capitalism.

3. Knowledge, Impersonality, and Control

On a higher analytical plateau, all these disparate rationalization processes can be interpreted as representing an increase in knowledge, a rise in impersonality, and an improvement in control [Brubaker 1991, 32–35]. First, knowledge. In a very broad sense, rational action assumes knowledge. Since rational action is based on conscious reflection about the likely effects of action, it necessitates some knowledge of the ideational and material circumstances in which our action is embedded. As a result, causal knowledge that supports rational action is conceptualized in terms of means-ends relationships and strives to form a systematic, logically connected whole. The culmination of this process of intellectualization, which Max Weber described, during which the earliest sources of human knowledge, such as religion, theology, and metaphysics, were gradually relegated to the realm of the superstitious, mystical, or merely irrational, is modern scientific and technological knowledge. According to Max Weber, the radical culmination of this gradual process of disenchantment (Entzauberung) can only be found in contemporary Western civilization.

Second, impersonality. According to Max Weber, rationalization involves objectification (Versachlichung). Industrial capitalism, for example, completely frees workers from the constraints of tradition and non-economic considerations and reduces them to nothing more than numbers in an accounting book. This is also true of the market relationship between buyers and sellers. For another, modern law and administration rule strictly in accordance with the systematic formal codes and sine ira et studio, which is Latin for "without wrath or passion," having abandoned the principle of Khadi justice (i.e., customized ad hoc adjudication). Ironically, according to Max Weber, it was during the Reformation when we completely lost any inherent value as humans and became objectified in relation to God that modern inward subjectivity was born. Modern people are simultaneously objectified and objectified.

Third, control. The growing control in social and material life is pervasive in Weber's theory of rationalization. Through bureaucratic management, legal formalism, and industrial capitalism, scientific and technical rationalization has significantly increased human capacity for a mastery over nature as well as institutionalized discipline. Again, the Puritan ethic of strict self-discipline and self-control, or what Max Weber called "inner worldly asceticism (innerweltliche Askese)," was unintended and led to calculable, disciplined control over people. Again, Max Weber recognized the irony in the fact that the rational, disciplined ethos that was progressively permeating every sphere of social life gave rise to the modern individual citizen endowed with unalienable rights.

III. Max Weber Modernity

1. The “Iron Cage” and Value-fragmentation

When viewed in this light, rationalization, as Max Weber theorized, is anything but a clear-cut historical phenomenon. 

• First, as was already mentioned, Max Weber saw it as a process occurring in various spheres of human existence with its own logic and varying directions; "each of these fields may be rationalized in terms of very different ultimate values and ends, and what is rational from one point of view may well be irrational from another." 
• Second, and perhaps more significantly, its ethical implications for Max Weber are highly ambiguous. According to his own dichotomy, Western rationalization tends toward a formal-procedural rationality (Zweckrationalität), which is not always compatible with a substantive-value rationality. 
• Third, Max Weber sees a chaotic, even atrophic, inundation of subjective values as the future of rationalization, in addition to "mechanized petrification" and other similar terms. We modern humans have unexpectedly found ourselves living "as did the ancients when their world was not yet disenchanted of its gods and demons" at the pinnacle of rationalization.

2. Reenchantment via Disenchantment

In fact, when we approach Weber's rationalization thesis as, for lack of a better term, a dialectics of disenchantment and reenchantment rather than as a one-sided, unilinear secularization process, it can be understood with richer nuance. In the West, monotheistic religions had emerged as a result of disenchantment. In reality, this means that ad hoc rules for living gradually gave way to a single, comprehensive system of meaning and value, which historically reached its zenith in the Puritan ethic of vocation. Ironically, disenchantment was a constant process in this situation. Monotheistic religion was marginalized as being irrational during the second stage of disenchantment, eliminating it as a unifying worldview in the contemporary secular world.

Max Weber is not imagining a peaceful breakdown of the grand metanarratives of monotheistic religion and universal science into a collection of local narratives and the ensuing modern pluralist culture where various cultural practices each follow their own immanent logic. His idea of polytheistic reenchantment is more like an incommensurable value-fragmentation into a variety of competing metanarratives, each of which asserts to have the answers to the same metaphysical queries that both religion and science have attempted to address in their own unique ways. The return of gods and demons, who "strive to gain power over our lives and again... resume their eternal struggle with one another," is the pinnacle of God's slow death.

3. Modernity contra Modernization

Max Weber asserted that once things were different. A highly methodical and disciplined way of living one's daily life, or simply living one's life as a duty, once resulted from an unwavering sense of conviction that depended solely on one's innermost personality. This archetypal modern subjectivity, which emerged from the Reformation, derived all of its power from within, meaning that one's principle of action was determined by one's own psychological need for self-affirmation. Additionally, the practice of this intensely introspective subjectivity, or self-mastery, required a highly logical and radically methodical attitude toward one's inner self and the outside, objective world. Subjective value and objective rationality once formed "one unbroken whole," transforming the self into an integrated personality and controlling the world with unwavering energy.

In conclusion, the growing conflict between modernity and modernization was what motivated Weber's ironic explanation of rationalization. Weber's issue with modernity stems from the fact that it required a historically distinct constellation of cultural values and social institutions, but modernization has successfully undermined the cultural foundation for modern individualism and its disciplinary society's role as its nascent environment. The modern project has failed due to its own success, putting moral agency and individual freedom in danger. 

IV. Max Weber Knowledge

An understanding of Weber's main issue, which is the issue of contemporary individual freedom, may help clarify some of the contentious features of Weber's methodology. It is important to keep in mind when evaluating Weber's methodological assertions that he had no interest in penning a systematic epistemological treatise to settle the "strife over methods" (Methodenstreit) that existed at the time between historicism and positivism.

1. Understanding (Verstehen)

Thus, Weber's contribution to methodology focused primarily on the issue of objectivity and the part that subjective values play in the formation of historical and cultural concepts, building on the Neo-Kantian nominalism described above. On the one hand, he agreed with Windelband in asserting that knowledge of the past and culture is categorically different from knowledge of the natural world. Any social scientific investigation of action must distinguish it from mere behavior. It is possible to establish positivistic regularities, and even laws, of collective behavior by accounting for behavior without reference to inner motives and reducing behavior to merely aggregate numbers, but an action can only be interpreted because it is based on a radically subjective attribution of meaning and values to what one does.

But from Max Weber point of view, the issue Rickert's formulation brought up was the objectivity of the end that is assumed to be the direction of an action. According to Max Weber, Rickert's final reliance on a specific transhistorical, transcultural criterion to explain the motivation behind an action cannot be justified, as was noted [2.1 above]. Instead, the ends themselves must be thought of as being just as subjective for the Neo-Kantian assumptions to hold true. The researcher's thematization of a particular subject matter out of "an infinite multiplicity of successively and coexistently emerging and disappearing events" is subject to the researcher's subjective value judgment, which makes imputing an end to an action of a fictional nature.

The level of objectivity that historical and cultural sciences can ultimately achieve is precariously constrained. Only at the level of means, not ends, can an action be understood objectively. An end, even a "self-evident" one, is irreducibly subjective, resisting an objective understanding; instead, it can only be conceptually reconstructed based on the equally subjective values of the researcher. Therefore, objectivity in the historical and social sciences is an ideal that must be pursued without the assurance of ultimate fulfillment rather than a purpose that can be attained with the aid of an appropriate methodology. In this way, one could say that Max Weber's so-called "value-freedom" (Wertfreiheit) is both an ethical virtue and a methodological principle.

2. Ideal Type

Another example of Max Weber's broad ethical intent is the methodology of the "ideal type" (Idealtypus). A methodological "utopia [that] cannot be found empirically anywhere in reality," according to Max Weber, "an ideal type is formed by the one-sided accentuation of one or more points of view" (Gedankenbild), according to which "concrete individual phenomena... are arranged into a unified analytical construct" . The ideal type, conscious of its fiction, never attempts to establish its legitimacy as a replication or correspondence with reality. Only in terms of adequacy, which positivists all too conveniently ignore, can its validity be determined.

Max Weber contends that a clear value commitment, however arbitrary, is both inevitable and essential. It cannot be avoided because without it, no worthwhile knowledge can be acquired. Additionally, it is essential because without it, the value position of a researcher would not be highlighted clearly and acknowledged as such. both to the researcher and to the readers of the research outcome. In other words, Max Weber's emphasis on "one-sidedness" (Einseitigkeit) both affirms the subjectivity of scientific knowledge and necessitates the researcher's own subjectivity. The ideal type is created with this in mind because only through the lens of an ideal type can the subjective value that "unlucky child of misery of our science” be given an unambiguous meaning."

V. Max Weber Politics and Ethics

Weber's political project reveals his steadfast obsession with the willful revival of particular character traits in contemporary society, which is even more explicitly ethical than his methodology. The fact that Max Weber was a deeply liberal political thinker initially seems indisputable, especially in the context of Germany, a country not particularly known for political liberalism. Max Weber's approach was to deal with the issue of classical liberalism's characterology, which, in his opinion, was being steadily undermined by the indiscriminate bureaucratization of contemporary society.

1. Domination and Legitimacy

Even in Max Weber's stark realism, which permeates his political sociology, or sociology of dominance, this ethical undercurrent is discernible. For instance, it is defined far too broadly as "a human community that claims the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force within a given territory," which is utterly devoid of any moral qualities that many of his contemporaries attributed to the state. In other words, it must be a form of dominance that is mediated through justification and interpretation, where the subject's obedience is motivated by the ruler's claim to authority rather than by the mere threat of force or promise of rewards.

Max Weber's additional conception of democracy, which focused on charismatic legitimacy, overlapped but was still distinct. The Puritan sect is the best example, where authority is only recognized on the basis of a voluntary, consensual order established by devout believers who each have a certain amount of charismatic legitimacy. Puritan sects could and did "insist upon 'direct democratic administration' by the congregation" as a result of this political corollary to the Protestant doctrine of universal priesthood, eliminating the hierarchical distinction between those ruling and those ruled.

2. Democracy, Partisanship, and Compromise

Overall, it's clear there is irony. One of the most important political theorists of the twentieth century seems unable to grasp the zeitgeist of that era, which saw democracy in all of its manifestations emerge as the only acceptable foundation for political legitimacy. In his support of "leadership democracy" (Führerdemokratie) during the constitutional politics of post-World War I Germany, Weber's awkwardness is nowhere more compelling.

According to his pragmatic view of democracy, there is only one option between leaderless and leadership democracy if true popular self-rule is impossible. Max Weber therefore envisioned democracy in Germany as a political marketplace where strong charismatic leaders can be identified and elected by winning votes in a free competition, even battle, among themselves. This is how he argued for a comprehensive democratization of defeated Germany. Because only through a vibrant electoral process can national leadership strong enough to control the otherwise omnipotent bureaucracy be made, it is crucial to preserve and strengthen this element of struggle in politics. 

Together with their unwavering commitments to higher causes (which set them apart from mere bureaucratic careerists), political leaders and the general populace are required by Max Weber's ethics to maintain a sober realism that no political claim, including their own, can fully represent the truth (which makes them different from moral purists and political romantics). This syncretic ethic is the defining characteristic of politicians with a sense of purpose who fight for their beliefs with tenacity and determination, but not without a "sense of pragmatic judgment" (Augenmaß) that a compromise between incompatible value positions is inevitable. In the end, all they can do is accept full responsibility for the results, whether intended or unintended, of what they believed to be a principled compromise.

VI. Max Weber Death and Legacy

1. Where was Max Weber buried?

The Heidelberg Friedhof is the resting place of Max Weber, who is credited with giving capitalism its name (literally, peace-field). Max Weber's grave, which is marked by a tall stone stele, is located in the middle of the Heidelberg cemetery in a wooded area. It is located close to the Friedhof's Jewish section, which primarily contains the graves of Heidelberg's Jews who passed away before the rise of the Nazis. There are several people who are resting there with the surname Marx.

Max and his wife Marianne's names are on the front of Weber's gravestone. There are two short epitaphs on either side of the stone. Alles Vergängliche ist nur ein Gleichnis, which translates to "all that is transitory is only a metaphor," is written on the left side of the sign. We will never find another like him, says the right side, which is written in German. 

Max Weber life is subtly complicated by these two epitaphs. The great theorist, whose like will never be found, is on the one hand, and the undermining claim that all reality is, well, theoretical, is on the other.

2. Max Weber Legacy

Weber’s significance during his lifetime was considerable among German social scientists, many of whom were his friends in Heidelberg or Berlin; but because so little of his work was published in book form during his lifetime, and because most of the journals in which he published had restricted audiences of scholarly specialists, his major impact was not felt until after his death. The only exceptions were his 1895 definition of "liberal imperialism," his widely debated thesis on Protestantism and capitalism, and his extensive critique of German foreign and domestic policies during World War I in the Frankfurter Zeitung, which stoked liberal opposition to the government's war objectives and led General Erich Ludendorff to regard Max Weber as a traitor. 

In general, Max Weber greatest contribution to thought was that he brought the social sciences in Germany, which were previously primarily focused on domestic issues, into direct critical conflict with the international giants of 19th-century European thought—Marx and Nietzsche. Through this conflict, Max Weber assisted in the development of a methodology and body of literature addressing the sociology of religion, political parties, and the economy, as well as studies of formal organizations. His work is still inspiring new scholarship.

V. Max Weber Books

Max Weber writing helped form the basis of modern sociology. His impact can be felt in sociology, politics, religion, and economics, among other fields. His writings are numerous, but among the more well-known ones that have been translated into English are The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, The City, and The Sociology of Religion.

1. The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism

The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism by Max Weber explores the connection between ascetic Protestantism's ethical principles and the emergence of modern capitalism. According to Max Weber, the religious beliefs of groups like the Calvinists contributed to the development of the capitalistic spirit. In order to investigate religion as a potential factor in the current economic situation, Max Weber first notices a connection between being a Protestant and having a business. He contends that the modern spirit of capitalism views pursuing profit as virtue and views it as an end in itself. Understanding the origin of this spirit is what Max Weber aims for. He looks to Protestantism as a possible justification. Protestantism offers the idea of a "calling" in the world and gives secular endeavors a religious bent.

2. The City

When he contrasted "Occidental" and "Oriental" urbanism in The City (1921), Max Weber offered another definition of the city that was similar to Pirenne's. According to Max Weber, an urban community must have five characteristics in order to be considered urban: (1) a fortification; (2) a market; (3) its own legal system and court system; (4) an association of urban citizens fostering a sense of municipal corporateness; and (5) enough political autonomy to allow urban residents to elect the city's leaders. Due to residents' strong familial, tribal, or religious ties, Max Weber believed that Oriental cities rarely attained these fundamental qualities and were therefore incapable of resisting centralized government. Even in terms of the Occident, almost all pre modern cities would fall outside of Weber's definition because the urban autonomy he demanded was unique to northern Europe and Italy at the end of the Middle Ages, and even then, it only persisted for very brief periods of time. The end result was an excessively constrained understanding of urban cultures, which made it very challenging to develop a valid understanding across cultures.

3. The Sociology of Religion

Max Weber examines the significant role religion has played in social change throughout history in The Sociology of Religion, which was first published in the United States in 1963. The book, which was a foundational work for the emerging field of sociology, has since come to be regarded as a classic in the social sciences.

VI. Max Weber Quotes

1. Power is the chance to impose your will within a social context, even when opposed and regardless of the integrity of that chance.
2. All knowledge of cultural reality, as may be seen, is always knowledge from particular points of view.
3. 'Culture' is a finite segment of the meaningless infinity of the world process, a segment on which human beings confer meaning and significance.
4. Precision, speed, unambiguity, knowledge of files, continuity, discretion, unity, strict subordination, reduction of friction and of material and personal costs. these are raised to the optimum point in the strictly bureaucratic administration.
5. The fate of our times is characterized by rationalization and intellectualization and, above all, by the disenchantment of the world.
6. Homelessness is the fundamental idea of salvation in Jainism. It means the breaking off of all earthly relations, and therefore, above all, indifference to general impressions and avoidance of all worldly motives, the ceasing to act, to hope, to desire.

VI. Max Weber Bureaucracy

Max Weber predicted that legal justifications for authority would increase in popularity. Despite the sporadic appearance of charismatic leaders, states tend to become logical and bureaucratic.

According to Max Weber, the growth of bureaucracy was closely related to the growth of legal authority (at least in the West). Max Weber studied the growth of businesses as a result of his emphasis on law and reason. 

Using bureaucracy, such enterprises can be organized rationally. Max Weber argued that bureaucracy was the most effective, efficient, and rational way to organize human activity, despite the fact that it is frequently used negatively in everyday language. 

He believed that the rise of bureaucratic organization was the distinctive characteristic of contemporary societies. He listed the following characteristics of an idealized bureaucracy:

• Hierarchy of authority;
• Impersonality;
• Written rules of conduct;
• Promotion based on achievement;
• A specialized division of labor;
• Efficiency.

Remember that this is the ideal: detractors frequently contend that Max Weber is incorrect about bureaucracies because they rarely uphold his ideals. However, Max Weber idealized bureaucracy in order to better understand its growth and influence in contemporary society. 

The central idea behind Weber's analysis of bureaucracies is that they are founded on rational principles to more effectively accomplish objectives. Understanding their development and the increase in their power is therefore essential to Weber's social theories because the bureaucratic organization of human activity has emerged as the key indicator of contemporary society.

WHAT IS YOUR IQ?

This IQ Test will help you test your IQ accurately

TEST NOW