Understanding Weber

Weber before Weberian sociology, revisited 27
or intended means of satisfaction of perceived human needs. These
therefore are subjective and vary and (i) the need has to be perceived,
and (ii) the usefulness has to be recognized and believed in.
What is decisive is the standpoint of human beings. ‘Nationaleconomy
is a science not of nature and its properties but of human
beings (‘Menschen’) and their needs’.
Weber’s opening definition reflects the emphasis placed on subjective
utility by the science of economics at the time. Economics is an activity
of purposeful activity directed to the satisfaction of subjectively perceived
needs. But Weber immediately flags up that those needs can be material,
as in commodities, or they can be ideal. In his own lecture notes, Weber
indicates just what can count as ideal needs. The building of pyramids is a
spectacular example of an economy organized around the politico-religious
significance of the preservation of corpses. ‘The organisation of the satisfaction
of human needs is influenced by the totality of cultural phenomena and
conditions, by climate, race, law, other material needs, religious needs, too:
pyramids. Here religious creeds are more important than anything else it
breeds entirely different human beings, money economy, capitalism, slave
labour.’ 42 In his commentary on this, Wolfgang Mommsen notes: ‘This passage
indicates that Weber saw economics as part of a cultural science, or, as
he puts it occasionally, a science about the living-together of human beings
– social science (eine “W[issenschaft] vom Zusammenleben der Menschen
– Sozialwissenschaft”) . . .’. 43
The subjectively perceived needs are bracketed by the type of society in
which an individual or community lives. People make economic choices and
plans, and estimate their own advantage, but they do this within a framework
of cultural values, which to a large extent are pregiven – individuals are
born into a particular society and culture. While economic activity is mostly
concerned with the meeting of present and future material needs, these
needs turn out to be qualitatively limitless, depending on what a culture can
conceive of consuming. Economics, says Weber, is not a science of nature
but of the needs of human beings, although as a science it has as its object a
constructed ‘ideal figure’ – an entity not to be confused with actual human
beings (‘Menschen’) with culturally determined material needs.
Weber’s thinking as a national-economist, therefore, can be seen as forming
a framework for a religion-based explanation of the rise of modern capitalism,
of most of whose aspects – in theory and in history – he already had
a sophisticated knowledge. As §2 shows, he was also already thinking about
the role of modern occidental culture in the determination of economic
needs. In addition, as the layout of §2 demonstrates, Weber was quite able
to deal with the subject of economics (not yet a discipline) in a systematic
manner. His lecture notes are set out like a legal treatise with main headings,
main sections and with three or more descending subsections.
This is the basis for asserting a continuity between Weber’s work as a