Understanding Weber

Weber before Weberian sociology, revisited 25
this in my footnote) shows he had read Carl Menger’s Principles of Economics,
which was published in 1871, and then elaborated by von Wieser and
Bohm-Bäwerk. 39 All these three economists were Viennese, hence the name
‘the Austrian School’. To the extent that Weber had embraced marginalism,
he could be called simply an economist. His pronounced interest in history,
politics and culture make him more than an economic historian. His concern
with the interaction of economic interests and politics and issues of income
distribution (rent, interest and wages) point to the English tradition of classical
political economy. Against this, though, he knew that Bohm-Bäwerk had
destroyed the economic theoretical grounds for attributing the distribution
of income to the three main classes of modern society (landowners, capitalists
and wage labourers). 40 In the modern era, Weber’s point of reference is
the economy of a country or nation (‘Volkswirtschaft’). These considerations
give no firm guidance, so it is probably best to keep with the term then current:
a national-economist. This is a ‘satisficing’ solution and by no means
perfect. It contains an important ambiguity. Weber, in his personal political
views, was highly national in his economic policy recommendations, yet the
study of national-economy was rather the study of the economy as it had
developed within the boundaries of the modern nation state, i.e. the national-economy
could be studied in a value-free way. 41
Weber prepared and printed lecture notes of §2 and §3 of his lectures,
and I will outline the first four subsections of §2 to show the basis of how
he thought about the economy in relation to history, society and culture.
(These passages are not yet translated and my own translation here is slightly
paraphrased.)
§2 The conceptual foundations of modern economic
doctrine (‘Volkswirtschaftslehre’)
1 Concept of the ‘Wirtschaft’. This is a specific form of striving for an
external goal, that is consciously planned behaviour in relation to nature
and to man (‘Mensch’) that is occasioned through those needs that require
external means for their satisfaction, whether they are of a ‘material’
or ‘ideal’ nature, and includes provision for the future. ‘Wirtschaft’ is
the complex of measures that is occasioned by the economic activity
of the individual (‘Wirtschaften eines Individuums’) or of the human
community.
2 Presuppositions of the abstract theory of the economy. Economic activity
(‘Das Wirtschaften’) is instilled into man through a thousand-year process
of adaptation. The bulk of the planned economic activity in the modern
sense was and is very differently developed (and then not completely)
according to race and (within the modern occidental culture) according
to occupation (‘Beruf ’), education, intellect and character of individuals;
correspondingly, the scope that is given for purely economic motives
within the determining drives of the action of individuals is historically