Max Weber, Critical Theory,

and the Administered World

HARVEY C. GREISMAN
Department of Sociology
West Chester State College
and
GEORGE RITZER
Department of Sociology
University of Maryland
ABSTRACT
The sociological perspectives of Max Weber and the "Frankfurt School"
have been viewed as polarities in much of the recent literature. The
Frankfurt sociologists were advocates of a neo-Marxism that stressed dialec-
tical reasoning and rejected the notion of value-neutrality. Weber adhered
to the canons of causal logic and cultivated the ideal of objectivity in social
research. Notwithstanding these theoretical and methodological differ-
ences, Weber and the advocates of critical theory arrived at surprisingly
similar conclusions about the "fate" of the modern world. Weber saw the
advent of a bureaucratic "iron cage" which would effectively negate the
role of the individual, while the Frankfurt sociologists posited the onset of
an "administered world" in which human activity would be smothered in an
ever-expanding network of management and control Given these common-
alities, a revision of the standard evaluation of Weber and critical theory is
suggested.

INTRODUCTION

T h e w o r k s of M a x W e b e r have p l a y e d a central role in

sociology, e s p e c i a l l y since Parsons i n t r o d u c e d W e b e r to a
general s o c i o l o g i c a l audience. W e b e r was a t t r a c t i v e f o r a
n u m b e r of reasons: his supposed v a l u e - n e u t r a l i t y , his causal

Requests for reprints should be sent to Harvey C. Greisman, Department of

Sociology, West Chester State College, West Chester, PA 19380.

34
Qualitative Sociology, Vol, 4(1), Spring 1981
0162~436/81/'1300-0034500.95 © 1981Human Sciences Press
 MAX WEBER 35

logic, his empiricism linked to a theoretical orientation, and

his liberal-to-conservative political stance. On the other hand,
Karl Marx and his adherents have played a minimal role in the
development of academic sociology in North America, at
least until recent years. Many American sociologists were put
off by Marx and the neo-Marxians because they seemed to
stand for positions that were antithetical to those taken by
Weber; fact and value were inextricably linked, they substi-
tuted dialectical for causal logic, their empiricism was clearly
subordinated to their theoretical orientation, and they
espoused a revolutionary ideology. Because of these early
characterizations, sociologists have been typically blind to
the linkages between Weberian and Marxian theory. In line
with the recent reevaluation of the importance of Marxian
theory, sociologists have begun to see some of these similari-
ties. Our goal in this paper is to call attention to the signifi-
cance of a particular variety of neo-Marxian theory, critical
theory, which, despite growing importance in Europe as well
as on the fringes of the discipline in North America, has not
been accepted as a sociological paradigm. We hope to make
the case that critical theory's image of modern society is re-
markably similar to the Weberian perspective despite the fact
that it operates from often antithetical theoretical orienta-
tions.
The argument that follows will try to show that both Weber
and the Critical School concluded that bureaucratization, ra-
tionalization, and "disenchantment" were turning society
into a completely functional and antiseptic place where the
mystical and irrational aspects of life had no role save enter-
tainment. Despite differences in politics, method, and ethics,
the two sociological approaches .move toward the same con-
clusion: the social world is being rationalized and adminis-
tered to the point where human beings emerge as virtual
prisoners in an "iron cage" of bureaucratic controls.

WEBER AND RATIONALITY

Weber was focally concerned with the rationalization of

the world and the role played by bureaucracy in that
rationalization. For Weber, the bureaucracy was both the
paradigm of the rationalization process as well as the
"housing" within which much of that rationalization took
36 QUALITATIVE SOCIOLOGY

place. Weber was highly ambivalent about bureaucracy, and

rationalization in general:

No machinery in the world functions so precisely as this apparatus of

men and, moreover so cheaply...rational calculation...reduces
every worker to a cog in this bureaucratic machine and, seeing
himself in this light, he will merely ask how to transform himself into a
somewhat bigger cog...The passion for bureaucratization.., drives
us to despair (1968:1ii).

Thus while Weber's conservative sympathies led him to

applaud the efficiency of the bureaucracy, he recoiled at its
dehumanizing effects. Weber had a similar orientation
toward every other aspect of the rational society. While he
lauded the efficiency of the market system, he also held that

The 'free' market, that is, the market which is not bound by ethical
norms, with its exploitation of constellations of interests and
monopoly positions and its dickering, is an abomination to every
system of fraternal ethics (1968a:637).

Although rationality occupies the central position in

Weber's sociology, it does so in a rather ambiguous way.
Sometimes it is presented as a methodological tool for
understanding social action: as such, it " . . . certainly does not
involve a belief in the actual predominance of rational
elements in human life." Yet throughout his work, Weber
makes it clear that he sees life, particularly in the West,
coming increasingly under the influence of rationality. Weber
uses two separable concepts when he speaks of rationality.
One of these is zweckrational, or formal rationality. This
emphasizes the social actor's planned and calculated choices
in a means-ends schema. The other concept is wertrational, or
substantive rationality, in which action is chosen within an
overall context of values, such as socialism or communism.
For Weber, the signal achievement of the West is the
systematic development of zweckrational as it gradually
overcame wertrational and other forms of less rational action.
Weber traced the development of this formal rationality
through several channels of Western social and cultural life.
Paramount among these are bureaucracy, capitalism, Calvin-
ism, a professional priesthood, and the parallel diminution of
 MAX WEBER 37

aesthetic values, mystical faiths, and tradition in general.

Hence, the distinctive and unique attributes of the West
became directly identified with the progressive onset of for-
mal rationality.
Although Weber was appalled by the effects of rationaliza-
tion, he saw no way out. In various places throughout his
work he viewed bureaucracy, his paradigm of rationality, as
"escape proof," "practically unshatterable," and among the
most difficult institutions to destroy once it has been created.
Similarly, he felt that the individual bureaucrat could not
"squirm out" of the bureaucracy once he was "harnessed in
it." On most occasions, Weber equivocated on the issue of
escaping bureaucracy. He usually prefaced terms like
"unshatterable" with qualifiers like "practically." Yet he did
say that "the future belongs to bureaucratization"
(1968a:1401). We can only judge from the totality of Weber's
work what he really saw as the chances of escaping bureau-
cratization, and more generally, rationalization.

CONTROL AND OPPOSITION

In a variety of public lectures to politicians, scientists, and

others, Weber urged his audience to adopt personal charisma,
to be innovative, independent, and creative. In so doing, he
was urging them to take a position outside of, and opposed
to, the bureaucracy and its controls. He felt that the onty
hope for society was at least a few personally independent
people who were capable of opposing the bureaucracy. One
of his favorite themes was that "Politicians must be the
countervailing force against bureaucratic domination"
(1968a:1417). There is something pathetic in these feeble
efforts to drum up some sort of opposition to the bureau-
cracy, and to rationalization in general. These harangues
really fly in the face of his entire work. Furthermore, they
contradict a basic strand in his work which sees both profes-
sionalization and bureaucratization as rationalizing forces
(Ritzer, 1975:627-634). Since the professional politician and
the professional scientist were both products of the rational
society, it is difficult to see how they could come to represent
meaningful opposition to their brethren in the rationalizing
process--the bureaucrats.
38 QUALITATIVE SOCIOLOGY

In the end, it is Weber's focus on rationalization and his

theoretical orientation toward that process that dooms him,
and everyone else, to the iron cage. Mitzman has pointed out
that Weber may be seen as engaged in a sociology of reifica-
tion, a process whereby "a value developed by men expressly
to satisfy a psychological need leads them unwittingly to cre-
ate new institutions which then impose their value on their
successors" (1970:172). This is related to Weber's interest in
the sociology of unanticipated consequences. Courses em-
barked on for one reason often lead to developments unfore-
seen by the initiators. More importantly, they lead to the crea-
tion of unanticipated structures and institutions that come to
enslave their creators. This applies to many aspects of
Weber's work, but is nowhere more evident than in his ideas
on how Calvinism led to a totally unanticipated structure,
rational capitalism, that encapsulated the heirs of Calvinism
in a system that was opposed to their religious beliefs. Weber
makes this quite clear in The Protestant Ethic:

In Baxter's view the care for external goods should only lie on the
shoulders of the saint like 'a light cloak, which can be thrown aside at
any moment.' But fate decreed that the cloak should become a
housing hard as steel (1958:181).

The hope of meaningful opposition to the bureaucracy was

for Weber only a public hope. It is hard to believe that in the
quiet of his study that Weber really believed in a Messiah, but
this hope for escape through charisma was the only possibility
for freedom that he held out for the thoroughly rationalized,
bureaucratized, adminstered world.

CRITICAL THEORY AND TOTAL ADMINISTRATION

Critical theory accepts the Marxian premise that all forms

of domination issue from society's production-based sub-
structure, but stresses the fact that in the current stage of
social development, the consumption of culture as a com-
modity assumes critical importance. Culture as a commodity
becomes an agent of administration. When culture, which
previously assigned the negative, ironic, and ecstatic aspects
of social life to a protected realm, itself becomes adminis-
tered, then the world is close to being totally controlled. The
 MAX WEBER 39

ominous and sinister world of total administration is a major

concern for critical theory, and it is viewed through the spe-
cial cluster of concepts that critical theory has come to
denote.
As distinct from standard sociological practice, critical the-
ory does not focus on discrete portions of the social process.
For critical theory, "society" itself is the concept that de-
serves and receives extended treatment. A polemical justifica-
tion for this involves a critique of "mainstream" sociology
which allegedly supports the status quo by describing it in
hypnotic detail:

A sociology which allows itself to be diverted, and which sacrifices

the central category, that of society itself, for the sake of the idol of
controllable data...would regress and would join ranks with that
spiritual regression which must be counted among the most threat-
ening symptoms of total sociation (Frankfurt Institute for Socia~
Research, 1973:33).

"Total sociation"--the behavioral counterpart of the

administered world--sums up critical theory's appraisal of
the most recent phase of bourgeois society. The society's
economic base engenders rationalization and standardiza-
tion, it aims to bring all factors under control, its goal is total
administration. These tendencies are abetted by technology,
transport, communication, information retrieval, and the
overall decentralization of industry which spreads late capit-
alism all over the map to the point where " . . . t h a t which still
appears to be 'outside' owes its extraterritoriality more to
toleration or to intentional planning, rather than that some-
thing 'exotic' still exists" (Frankfurt Institute for Social
Research, 1972:31; Adorno, 1974:83).

ADMINISTERED SOCIETY AND ITS CULTURE

Whereas Horkheimer and Adorno concentrated on the

historical antecedents of total administration, Marcuse
stresses its more concrete behavioral and cultural aspects.
These are elaborated in his One-Dimensional Man, the book
that earned him the epithet, 'theoretician of the New Left' and
first brought critical theory to some prominence outside
Eu rope.
40 QUALITATIVE SOCIOLOGY

Marcuse's work is premised from the outset on the concept

of total administration; he does not develop or justify the
idea, it is taken as a fait accompli and his analysis of ad-
vanced industrial society is built on it. The critical theorist
confronts a

state of unfreedom because its total administration is systematic

restriction of (a) 'technically' available free time; (b) the quantity and
quality of goods and services 'technically' available for vital
individual needs;(c) the intelligence(conscious and unconscious)ca-
pable of comprehending and realizing the possibilities of self-deter-
mination (1964:49).

Marcuse is quick to note that this administered world is quite

capable of satisfying its population's needs in a genuine and
emancipated way, but it prefers to manipulate minds and
bodies with a panoply of synthetic, false needs. Since, once
created, these false needs can only be satisfied by the
quixotically irrational system that invented them, masses of
people develop a harmful and enslaving dependency on the
very administration that dominates them.
Within the parameters of critical theory, culture is viewed
from a materialist position. In German social science,
divisions between "culture" (Kultur) and civilization had
become popular. Culture was thought of as something
transcendental in Oscar Wilde's sense, extramundane,
separate from society's give-and-take and originating in
another dimension. Critical theory, following Marx, brought
culture down to the level of commodity exchange. In doing
so, it departs radically from Weber's position as articulated in
The Protestant Ethic in which he rejected the hypothesis that
culture is determined by the means of production. As the
economic sub-structure of society becomes less individual-
istic, less anarchic, less predicated on laissez-faire, and more
centralized, administered, and governable, culture follows
suit. Culture, too, became the object of administration. Its
rough spots were smoothed out, distinctions between "mass"
and "high" culture were obliterated, and it was marketed in
the same fashion as other consumer goods.
Culture is an integral part of society, yet at times critical
theory tends to break it out of the analysis of society as a
whole. This is done because Marcuse and the other critical
theorists saw culture as one of the last possible hiding places
 MAX WEBER 41

of non-rationalized, non-adminstered values and behavior. It

follows from their dialectical approach that leftovers of past
centuries, which might hold symbolic qualities of freedom,
could still exist in transmuted form in the culture of late
capitalism. Hence, culture assumes a special significance
since with its administration the society of total control
comes perilously close to fulfillment. Culture plays a role in
the Critical School's work similar, but not identical, to that of
charisma in Weber's. That is, both of them are last bastions
against the assault of total administration, but they too must
ultimately fall. The reason for the demise of the unadminis-
tered culture lies in mass production. The sheer bulk of mass
produced items makes a world of its own, a quality of exis-
tence that emerges from the enormous quantity of its arti-
facts. In summing up this problem, Marcuse writes that:

the productive apparatus and the goods and services it produces 'sell'
or impose the social system as a whole.., the irresistible output of the
entertainment and information industry carry with them prescribed
attitudes and habits which bind the consumers more or less pleasantly
to the producers and, through the latter, to the whole.., the products
indoctrinate and manipulate; they promote a false consciousness
which is immune against its falsehood (1964:12).

Critical theory's critique of mass culture describes a new

pathology which arises under these conditions; and "media
poisoning" becomes a legitimate problem as human existence
is modulated by the mass-produced melodies of the entertain-
ment industry. New styles in music, "stars," fashions, art
pummel the brain in rapid succession, then simply vanish. The
production of culture is too fast for the circuitry of the human
brain to process and evaluate; standards crumble, individual
aesthetic judgment disintegrates under the bombardment,
and shattered minds assume a "consumer" stance. People
become passive receptors of commercial phenomena. They
"clamour for what they are destined to get" and become
immune to genuine variation and craftsmanship. As a result
of total administration, the senses become constricted and
attenuated. Affective and libidinal drives atrophy as
experience becomes pre-digested. Chronic boredom sets in as
the culture industry, pushed toward an infinity-vector, begins
to recycle and repeat its programmed output. Hence,
"nostalgia" becomes marketable as the line between past and
present fades.
42 QUALITATIVE SOCIOLOGY

TOTAL ADMINISTRATION AND THE INDIVIDUAL

Like Weber, critical theorists view the individual as

potentially significant, but in the current stage of capitalism,
the individual per se ceases to exist. Bourgeois society is
predicated on free labor and on the distinction between the
individual and social realms. As the difference vanishes under
the total administration of monopoly capital, ideological
affirmations of individualism increase in their vehemence.
Adorno saw the real individual as mythical in the current
stage of societal development. So, "the illusory importance
and autonomy of private life drags on only as an appendage
of the social process." In the "open-air prisons" constructed
by total administration, the basic tendency of the human
species toward variation is eliminated and "it is no longer
important to know what depends on what, such is the extent
to which everything is one" (1967:30,34).
In an ironic way, the idea of the individual has gone
through an historical cycle. It was once the cornerstone of
humanism, and became the doctrine that accompanied the
bourgeoisie in its ascendency. Today, the myth of being
different from the next person forestalls a collective nervous
breakdown and preserves the commodity-character of human
relationships. In his essay, "The Latest Attack on Metaphy-
sics," Horkheimer sees the "dreams of metaphysics" as a last
refuge for neurotics seeking escape from total administration.
"In these dreams the isolated, insignificant individual can
likely identify himself with super-human forces, with omnipo-
tent nature, with the stream of life, or an inexhaustible world-
ground" (1972:138). These are just dreams however, and the
individual falls back on reality, desperately advertising his/her
uniqueness through idiosyncracy, exhibitionism, and megalo-
mania. Cultivation of the "inner life" with its attendant isola-
tion becomes crucial; on it depends " . . . t h e power to with-
stand the plastic surgery of the prevailing economic system
which carves all men into one pattern" (1972:273).
Much like Weber, the critical theorists stressed the role of
rationality in this process. However unlike Weber, critical
theory does not distinguish between weft- and zweck-rational.
Rather, rationality is tied to the concept of enlightenment, in
which legend, fantasy, superstition, and animism were to be
replaced by a world view predicated on the primacy of
human reason. This process of rationalization which, along
 MAX WEBER 43

with Weber, the critical theorists refer to as "disenchant-

ment," is traced to ancient sources by Horkheimer and
Adorno in their Dialectic of Enlightenment wherein they
elaborate a kind of global analysis of the phenomenon as
rigid and as false as the "unscientific" beliefs it claims to dis-
place. Indeed, the bourgeois concept of rationality is more re-
plete with repressive capacities than the old mythical cosmol-
ogy. The discipline, sensory denial, and appeals to reason are,
it is argued, merely new and sinister forms of myth which in
the hands of an international corporate elite and the immense
organizations at their disposal, move society toward the goal
of a total and rationalized state of administration. Just as in
Weber, the works of the Critical School reflect a certain
philosophy of world history in which rationalization is seen as
a "master phenomena" that ultimately brings about the
bourgeois goal of a managed society.
As bourgeois society moves ahead, its basic contradictions
are exacerbated. In trying to erase or hide these antagonisms,
the structure of falsification becomes shakier, and it is on
these fundamental contradictions that capitalism will ultim-
ately founder. For example, the rapid-fire attempts of world
administrators to achieve global control--a Kafkaesque ver-
sion of Wendell Wilkie's "One World"--brings forth a bi-
polar military situation. And, "it is hardly an exaggeration to
say that the development toward the total society is irrevoca-
bly accompanied by the danger of the total destruction of
mankind" (Frankfurt Institute for Social Research, 1972:31).
Even with this apocalyptic warning, the critical approach of
Adorno, Horkheimer, Marcuse, and their colleagues should
not be interpreted as pessimism. They have held that only
critical reason can break through the encrusted mystifications
of a total society" where everything hardens into ideology.
Critical theory aims toward emancipation. In Mannheim's
sense, it is fundamentally utopian (Remmling, 1975:64-79).

DE-RATIONALIZATION OF THE WORLD

An overriding concern with the phenomena of seculariza-

tion, rationalization, bureaucratization, and the so-called
"disenchantment of the world" was unique to neither Weber
nor the Critical School. The major German philosopher of the
nineteenth century, Hegel, voiced a similar anxiety that ra-
44 QUALITATIVE SOCIOLOGY

tionalization, when carried to what a romantic temperament

would judge extreme limits, could denude the world of spirit-
ual qualities and so create its own nemesis:

It will yet be seen whetherenlightenment can continue in its state of

satisfaction; that longing of the troubled, beshadowedspirit, mourn-
ing over the loss of its spiritual world, lies in the background. Enlight-
enment has on it this stain of unsatisfied longing. (1967:589).

Although he clearly anticipated reaction to "disenchant-

ment," Hegel may have been surprised at the forms it
assumed during the mid-twentieth century.
The myths which animated the pre-industrial world were
cruel and even sadistic in their repression of the individual. If
mortals defied the gods, they were made to suffer exquisite
torture. And the gods, who were models of human frailty,
dispensed justice with whimsy and spite. Judeo-Christian
myths quake with the fury of a jealous and vengeful god who
controls everything by himself. Twentieth century m y t h - - o f
which bureaucratized science is part and parcel--deperson-
alizes cosmic power in the form of a method of thought that
was created by humans, but which now stands above them as
a supreme criterion of realit% The essence of the new myth is
neither jealous nor whimsical. It is rational and hence
superior to the human race for which pure reason can never
be realized Institutions, groups, and individuals are modeled
on what is taken to be both efficient and sacred. So the form,
if not the content, of human relationships is altered.
There are a series of ongoing contemporary events that
might seem to cast doubt on the images of the modern world
portrayed by both Weber and the Critical School. Since both
view the world as increasingly rationalized, bureaucratized,
and controlled by total administration, how can the openly
irrational and mystical character of so many modern
doctrines and social movements be explained? Is this not a
move away from oppressive rationality and its control? It has
been held that the newer forms of irrationalist enthusiasm
herald a genuine liberation and "re-enchantment of the
world" (Greisman, 1976:497-506). Jack Douglas (1971) has
noted the "growth in mysticism, astrology, Buddhism, Yoga,
and other forms of the new 'secret religion'...millions of
people are involved in this underground movement and many
 MAX WEBER 45

of them are the educated young who have supposedly been

'brainwashed' for years by the 'scientific' educators."
Some members of the current generation turn away from
science and seek "answers" instead from mystical faith.
People like the teenage Perfect Master Guru Maharahji, and
the Maharishi who heads the Transcendental Meditation
movement attract huge audiences. They offer explanations of
life that are predicated on discovering an inner light or
harnessing cosmic energy. They offer ecstatic communion
with The All. In a more gothic vein is Satanism whose appeal
is ironic and materialistic. The resurgence of Satanism in the
United States, Britain, and Germany has caused alarm among
clergymen as its adherents daily increase in number. The
counterculture of the 1960"s similarly called for a rebirth of
spiritual and sensual values in an age of materialism and
discipline: psychedelic drugs were advertised as an aid in this
process. Divination, the I Ching, the Tarot, and astrology have
taken their places as competitors to the "disenchanted" ways
of explaining phenomena (Baum, 1970:153-202).
The millennial and apocalyptic fantasies of past years have
also been cited as "evidence" of the de-rationalization of
social life. In June, 1968, hundreds of hippies camped out on a
mountain near Boulder, Colorado: they were convinced that
the comet Icarus was going to smash into the earth, and that
only those on high elevations would be saved. The next year a
young suburban housewife--Elizabeth Steen of Richmond,
California--predicted that at 5:10 AM, April 14, 1969, the
world would end. Newspaper accounts noted that crowds
assembled in downtown Los Angeles at the appointed hour so
that they could witness the end of the great city. To these
could be added the violence of the Manson "family," itself
built on a media-inspired image of the Apocalypse, and the
melancholy "revolutionary suicide" of seven hundred
members of the People's Temple in Jonestown, Guyana. The
quaking hysteria of masses pursuing the millennium could be
interpreted as support for the assertion that administration is
breaking down, rationality is losing adherents, and the bars of
the iron cage are melting down under the white heat of
mystical intensity (Greisman, 1974:511-524; Scimecca,
1975:180-196; New York Times, June 15, 1968:38; White,
1970:17).
If we accept these episodes as legitimate indicators of
social consciousness without question, then it may be true
46 QUALITATIVE SOCIOLOGY

that the trend toward administration is being slowed if not

reversed. What, however, is the source of such beliefs and
movements? Does not the Maharishi employ a massive cadre
of managers, administrators, and computer-technicians to
administer the various enterprises of his TM kingdom? Have
not Satanism and Astrology become immense commercial
enterprises run by rational, profit-oriented business persons?
Have not evangelical churches also become a part of the
managed society? Even the counter-culture of the 1960's,
which was a kind of "spontaneous" response to the dominant
culture, became administered and marketed as exotica: its
styles have been integrated into fashions and diets without
too much difficulty. These are questions that must be asked if
we are to determine the extent of "derationalization" and
breakdown of the iron cage. Of all the modern entrepreneurs
of escape, Walt Disney must rank among the greatest. His
Disneyland epitomizes the bureaucratization of myth in a
place where fairytales are animated by the spirit of rational
organization. Today, most forms of escape are themselves
administered with an efficiency that Hegel, Weber, or even
the Frankfurt sociologists would find upsetting (Roof, 1978).

WEBER AND THE CRITICAL SCHOOL

Despite the predictive similarities between the two

perspectives, there is some truth to the stereotypes that led
earlier sociologists to see these perspectives as oppositional.
For one, they are concerned with different theoretical issues.
Marx himself was primarily concerned with an intensive
analysis of capitalism, while for Weber the issue was
rationalization which he viewed as a "master" phenomenon
encompassing a variety of specific phenomena including
capitalism. For another, Weber was primarily an empiricist
who often found his data far more interesting than the
theoretical and practical conclusions he could derive from
them. The Critical School also used data, particularly on
capitalism and social psychology, but these were subordin-
ated to theoretical conclusions. This difference may stem
from the divergence between the two on the issue of the rela-
tionship between fact and value. For Weber, it was possible,
at least to some extent, to separate the two. Although Weber
never took the naive "value free" perspective adopted by
 MAX WEBER 47

some of his modern "disciples," he did believe that one could

keep one's values in check in at least some aspects of the re-
search process. It might be noted parenthetically that Weber
was never quite successful in doing this and his own data
analyses are liberally studded with value-laden statements.
On the other hand, the Frankfurt (critical) sociologists
operating dialectically never believed that fact and value
should, or could, be separated. Thus, data presentations are
often indistinguishable from value statements.
A particularly important difference between Weber and the
neo-Marxians is their attitudes toward the future. Marx
himself viewed an ideal communist state as a dialectical
necessity. This is not to say that he felt that the proletariat
and its supporters could sit back and wait for the capitalist
system to destroy itself. He certainly believed that the actions
of people were the central factor, and as those actions
culminated the ideal communist society would emerge.
Critical theorists, given their allegiance to the dialectic, tend
to share Marx's optimism, although as we will see, their
bourgeois mentality leads them to be more ambivalent about
the future than Marx. Weber, of course, was the "pessimist."
He felt disdain for those vulgar Marxists who promised a
future utopia: "We must not and cannot promise a fool's
paradise and an easy road to it, neither in thought nor in
action" (1968a:223-224). Similarly, at the founding of the
German Sociological Association in 1909 he said: "The
Association rejects, in principle and definitely, all propa-
ganda for action-oriented ideas from its midst." Instead, he
urged the members to study "what is, why something is the
way it is, for what historical and social reasons" (1968a:liv). It
is this sort of position that made Weber's empiricism far more
attractive to most sociologists than Marx's far more action-
oriented position.
Weber also felt that Marxism was a counterfeit faith, a
secular theory of salvation, which was above all unscientific.
Weber's work is studded with his affirmations of a theory of
"pluralist causality" that throws out the Marxian position that
social and cultural forms issue from the production based
substructure of human organization. In an essay on method,
Weber stated his case succinctly, " . . . the historian's problem
of causality also is oriented towards the correlation of
concrete effects with concrete causes, and not towards the
establishment of abstract 'uniformities' " (1968b:186). This
48 QUALITATIVE SOCIOLOGY

throws down the gauntlet at the heirs of the dialectical,

Hegelian tradition which tended to conceive of human
society in developmental terms and sees each epoch as
symbolic of the incremental perfection of the world spirit.
Similarly rejected is the Marxian tenet that history was
propelled by the ubiquity of class conflict, and that only a
dialectical approach to world-historical events could capture
the pattern and meaning of history which, according to Marx,
was the triumph of the proletariat (Mommsen, 1965:26, Kolko,
1959:21).
On a more specific level, Weber was opposed on
theoretical grounds to those who were urging the need for a
socialist revolution. It was his view that a massive, modern
society, no matter how it was run politically, could not
operate without bureaucracies. If a socialist state wanted to
operate without bureaucracies, it would have to revert to a
small-scale society. Since reversion to such a society was not
advocated by most socialists, and more importantly since it
would contradict his view that the world was moving toward
ever greater rationalization, Weber felt that this was neither
likely nor possible. This meant that socialism, like capitalism,
would be bureaucratized.
Weber went even further however, and argued that
socialism would create an even more bureaucratized society
than the capitalist world. "Indeed, if in the latter case
[socialism] a comparable level of technical efficiency were to
be achieved, it would mean a tremendous increase in the
importance of professional bureaucrats" (1968a:223-224). In
addition to being even more bureaucratized, the socialized
state would also bring with it a number of other negative
consequences. In capitalism, at least the leaders of industry,
the state, and other bureaucracies are, themselves, not
bureaucrats. They offer the possibility of a countervailing
power to the rule of the bureaucrat. Though even this
possibility would be eliminated in socialism where the top
management of the rationalized or socialized enterprises
would become bureaucratic (1968a:1402). Weber also
believed that in capitalism there was at least some balance of
power between state bureaucracies and private capitalistic
bureaucracies. This balance served to prevent the state
bureaucracy from gaining total hegemony. In socialism, with
the private sector virtually eliminated, the state bureaucracy
would rule alone. And this rule would be even more
 MAX WEBER 49

rationalized, and more oppressive, than the situation in

capitalist society.
The ideal of a world united by commerce, government,
reason, and common interest has been frequently advocated
by humanists. In these designs for a better global life, the
nastiness and isolation of nationalisms, the prejudice of race
and religion, and the backwardness of competition and
scarcity is replaced by a streamlined world community in
which boundaries vaporize before the principle of rationality.
Both Weber and the Critical School were uncomfortable with
this ideal. They viewed its realization as a moment of
domination over the human race. The dreams and hopes for
world unity which for centuries have advanced against the
most stupendous odds would end, from their point of view, in
the iron cage of total control.
Neither Weber nor the Critical School point toward a way
out of total administration in the measurable future. Weber
wondered aloud just how many people would be alive when
the iron cage at last falls to pieces. If and when it does
happen, it will be at a future time whose distance stretches
the vectors of human time-consciousness, while Adorno,
Horkheimer, Marcuse, and the other critical theorists limit
their hopes for emancipation to a "perhaps" and a
"someday." The frozen and ossified world to which these
sociologists point remains in its ultimate possibilities a source
of mystery and terror (Burroughs, 1966:21).
Weber and the critical theorists began their investigations
from disparate, if not actually opposing premises. Weber
argued for value-neutrality and causal logic, opposed
socialism, and supported the German Machtstatt. The critical
theorists opposed the bifurcation of fact and value, were neo-
Marxist dialecticians, and regarded nationalism as a cruel and
unfortunate ideology. The idea of revolution, theoreticall~/
central to the concerns of the "Frankfurt School," was ana-
thema to Weber: As Marcuse notes, Weber "...demanded
that political opponents from the radical left be sent to the
madhouse, the zoo, or the firing squad" (1972:138). Yet these
polar varieties of sociological thought arrived at quite similar
conclusions about a world of total administration. This leads
one to hypothesize that the labels popularly applied to Weber
and the Critical School may be, in part, incorrect.
Weber has been cast as a "classical liberal," and at times
he could become a sabre-rattling nationalist who
50 QUALITATIVE SOCIOLOGY

romanticized war, called for German domination of Europe,

and clamoured for bigger and better armies (cf. Mayer,
1974:74; Mommsen, 1965:27; Weber, n.d.). In the end however,
his critique of rationality contains radical elements, and his
gloomy picture of a "polar night of icy darkness and
hardness" (Gerth and Mills, 1958:128) portrays the
administered world in a way that resonates well with the
polemics of the early Marx. Elsewhere, Weber says that
bureaucratic organization is a "lifeless machine" which:

•.. is at work erecting the prison-house of that future bondage, into

which men in their impotence will probably be forced.., if they find
that a rational official administration which is good purely from a
technical point of view is the final and sole value determining the
direction of their affairs (Marcuse, 1972:149).

So the characterization of Weber as an "aristocratic liberal"

and a nationalist has to be tempered with the fact that he was
painfully aware of the dehumanization of the social world
under a developing bureaucratic imperium.
Critical theory, by contrast, took pains to advertise its
proletarian sympathies. But it is possible that this intent
became increasingly unimportant as the sociologists of the
"Frankfurt School" began to impact academic social science.
It will be noted that upon Horkheimer's assumption of the
directorship of the famous Institute for Social Research, its
journal's name was changed from "Archive for the History of
Socialism and the Labour Movement" to "Journal for Social
Research" (Jay, 1975:10-21; Buck-Morss, 1977). To be sure,
most of the Critical School's output was addressed to middle
class intellectuals, not factory workers or peasants, and it is
significant that Adorno, Horkheimer, Marcuse, and many
other members of the Institute emigrated to New York and Los
Angeles when the Nazis took power, while Lukacs and other
diehard, orthodox Marxists fled to Moscow.
The Critical School was composed of professed Marxists
who eschewed politics, came from secure bourgeois
backgrounds, and exhibited a firm preference for theory over
practice. Perhaps for these reasons, the despair that they
voiced at the prospect of an administered world bears more
of a resemblance to the writings of Henry Adams and Ortega
y Gasset than to those of Marx. The critical theorists were
 MAX WEBER 51

cultivated intellectuals, patrons of the arts, and highly

civilized inhabitants of the world created by the German-
Jewish symbiosis. Their depiction of the administered world
indicates a personal loss at the disappearance of bourgeois
high culture, and is reminiscent of Minister Talleyrand's
remark that "he who has not lived before the Revolution [of
1789] cannot know the sweetness of life." This life was
doubtless pleasant for a small caste of hereditary nobles, and
exceedingly distasteful for their countless subjects. In this
sense, the onset of a "totally administered world" as depicted
by the Critical School may be interpreted in an elitist sense
insofar as Horkheimer, Adorno, Marcuse, and their colleagues
experienced the passing of unrestrained capitalism as
accompanying the degeneration of culture, and saw in its
successor the signs of a "new barbarism." Just what real
difference exists between Weber's image of slow death by
suffocation in the iron cage of bureaucracy and critical
theory's "open air prison of a totally administered world"
remains to be seen.
The most telling of the differences between Weber and the
Critical School involved the rift between causal and
d i a l e c t i c a l approaches (Weinstein and Weinstein,
1972:173-189). Weber was a causal thinker in the classical
liberal tradition. He viewed cause-effect relationships as
discrete entities, and saw social phenomena as finite and
measurable parts of the empirical universe. Critical theory
took a dialectical approach, and posited no linear causal
chain between happenings. Rather, the relationships between
phenomena were not seen as linear: as one form of social life
superseded another, it bore something of that prior form
within it, as well as future potentialities which were
aufgehoben in the dialectical process. For Weber, the
complexity of this metaphysic precluded science, and for the
Critical School, Weber's multi-causal liberalism was blind to
the interrelationships between phenomena and the goal of
history.
This difference can be traced to the philosophical roots of
the two approaches. Weber's logical orientation was directly
influenced by the causal approach advocated by Kant. Within
this optic, the world is a buzzing confusion of happenings
which must be ordered by the establishment of a
sophisticated conceptual schema. And Weber's use of ideal
types is a spin-off of this effort to develop such a conceptuaB
52 QUALITATIVE SOCIOLOGY

arsenal. The deployment of such concepts is not, however,

the goal of Weber's sociology, but simply a means to the end
of analyzing causal probabilities within the "real world." This
led Weber to look at causal relationships between the world's
great religions, the phenomenon of capitalism, and the idea
of rationality in general. Although he was aware of the ability
of different factors to influence one another reciprocally, he
tended toward an approach that was dominated by a one-way
causal logic. Thus, he looked to Calvinism as the prime
"cause" of capitalism, but largely ignored the impact of
capitalism on Calvinism. Had Weber utilized a more
dialectical approach, he might well have analyzed the
feedback relationship between these two factors.
Hegel's dialectical approach outweighed the Kantian
influence on the critical theorists. The dialectic gives the work
of the Critical School a number of distinguishing features
missing in Weber, including a sensitivity to the feedback
relationship between factors, awareness of the inevitability of
internal contradictions, and the need to look beyond
appearances to essences. Although Marx himself came to
focus on economic factors, and the Critical School on
cultural ones, the dialectic led both to an awareness of the
reciprocal impact of other dimensions of social reality.
Ultimately, the dialectic leads toward consciousness of a
"way out" of contemporary evils and inequities since internal
contradictions create the conditions for the radical overhaul
of society as it is. By contrast, Weber's one-way causal logic
leads down a dead-end street of despair.

SUMMARY

Weber's acceptance of a "sociology of despair" leads him

to foresee the onset of a completely bureaucratized world as
inevitable and, more to the point, he envisions no end to this
grim state of affairs. Weber wrote, "When this night shall
have slowly receded, who of those for whom spring
apparently has bloomed so luxuriously will be alive?" (Gerth
and Mills, 1958:128).Critical theory's exponents permit the lux-
ury of a more tangible hope in that the Marxist projection of a
just and human society emerging from the wreckage of bour-
geois civilization is taken seriously. The utopian strain in criti-
cal theory is strong, and can be found in Marcuse's concept of
 MAX WEBER 53

"positive freedom," a convergence of particular and general

interests, that will replace the false freedom of the market-
place that exists in the administered world (Jay, 1975:59-60).
That the Critical School does not see this transformation oc-
curing very soon was made evident by the attacks on Adorno
by the German SDS in 1968: the student rebels were impatient
for revolution, and critical theory replied to this demand with
a stern admonition to wait and let the evil system self-destruct
(Der Spiegel, 1968: 116-124). This was to happen at some
future time, and not [n the immediacy of ado[escent hopes.
As dialecticians, the exponents of critical theory viewed the
administered world as just a moment in the historical process,
and until it passes, they counsel an attitude that comes close
to Weber's "sublime resignation" in which the individual
leads a disciplined life "one day at a time," and in this way
attempts to preserve some possibilities for freedom.
Weber, however, rejected dialectical reasoning. For him,
the administered world bore no elements of past or future
emancipation. The iron cage was not something that was part
of larger future developments; it was a brutal fait accompli
that settled down on human society and froze it solid. Thus,
while in agreement about the current state of unfreedom,
Weber and critical theory are at odds over the future. His one-
way causality moves Weber to despair, while the dialectical
logic of critical theory retains some ground for emancipation.
Agreement on the contemporary world is combined with dif-
ferences of opinion on the future. The differences notwith-
standing, Weber and the Critical School did start from
different positions to arrive at similar theories of modern soci-
ety. And this irony did not escape Adorno, when, in speaking
of Weber in 1964, he observed t h a t " . . , it has taken the more
than forty years since Weber's death to appreciate the deadli-
est and most suffocating implication of bureaucratic author-
i t y - t h e administered world" (1965:100).

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 MAX WEBER 55

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