The Age Of Bureaucracy Perspectives On The Political Sociology Of Max Weber Wolfgang J Mommsen

The historian Wolfgang Mommsen was one of the foremost experts on Max Weber as well as an insightful and accessible interpreter of his work. Mommsen’s classic book, first published in 1974 under the title The Age of Bureaucracy, not only concisely explains the basic concepts underlying Weber’s worldview, but also explores the historical, social, and intellectual contexts in which he operated, including Weber’s development as an academic, his relationship to German nationalism, and his engagement with Marxism. Supplemented with a new foreword, a bibliography that includes recent studies, and a postscript by Volker Berghahn that surveys the most important debates on Weber's work since his death, this short volume serves as an excellent resource for scholars and students alike.

Wolfgang J. Mommsen is one of the foremost Weberian scholars writing today. In this volume, a sequel to his monumental study Max Weber and German Politics , he provides succinct and incisive statements on current developments in the analysis of Weber's work. The book concentrates upon Weber's engagement with political issues and their influence over his more theoretical concepts. Mommsen offers a critical analysis of Weber's notion of democracy and provides a thorough assessment of Weber's views of socialism against the backcloth of German Social Democracy.

Max Weber and His Contemporaries provides an unrivalled tour d'horizon of European intellectual life in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and an assessment of the pivotal position within it occupied by Max Weber. Weber's many interests in and contributions to, such diverse fields as epistemology, political sociology, the sociology of religion and economic history are compared with and connected to those of his friends, pupils and antagonists and also of those contemporaries with whom he had neither a personal relationship nor any kind of scholoarly exchange. Several contributors also explore Weber's attitudes towards the most important political positions of his time (socialism, conservatism and anarchism) and his own involvement in German politics. This volume contributes not only to a better understanding of one of the most eminent modern thinkers and social scientists, but also provides an intellectual biography of a remarkable generation. This book was first published in 1987.

Preface Acknowledgements Bibliographical Note and Abbreviations Part I - Politics and Social Theory 1. Politics and Scholarship: The Two Icons in Max Weber's Life 2. The Antinomical Structure of Max Weber's Political Thought 3. Max Weber's Theory of Legitimacy Today Part II - Max Weber on Socialism and Political Radicalism 4. Capitalism and Socialism: Weber's Dialogue with Marx 5. Joining the Underdogs? Weber's Critique of the Social Democrats in Wilhelmine Germany 6. Roberto Michels and Max Weber: Moral Conviction versus the Politics of Responsibility Part III - The Development of Max Weber's Theoretical Ideas 7. Max Weber on Bureaucracy and Bureaucratization: Threat to Liberty and Instrument of Creative Action 8. Ideal Type and Pure Type: Two Variants of Max Weber's Ideal-typical Method 9. Rationalization and Myth in Weber's Thought 10. The Two Dimensions of Social Change in Max Weber's Sociological Theory Part IV - The Rediscovery of Max Weber 11. Max Weber in Modern Social Thought Notes Index.

Breiner demonstrates the tension between the subjective and objective dimensions of Weber's logic of rationality, and describes how Weber exploits this tension in judging the feasibility of social and political forms such as socialism, radical democracy, capitalism, and the nation.