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Sociology is a science that studies society, the features of its development and social systems, as well as social institutions, relationships and communities. It reveals the internal mechanisms of the structure of society and the development of its structures, the patterns of social actions and mass behavior of people and, of course, the features of the interaction between society and man.

Max Weber

One of the most prominent specialists in the field of sociology, as well as one of its founders (along with Karl Marx and Emil Durkheim) is a German sociologist, political economist, historian and philosopher named Max Weber. His ideas had a strong influence on the development of sociological science, as well as a number of other social disciplines. He adhered to the methods of antipositivism and argued that the study of social action should not be purely empirical, but more interpretive and explanatory approach. The very concept of "social action" was also introduced by Max Weber. But, among other things, this person is also the founder of understanding sociology, where not only any social actions are considered, but their meaning and purpose are recognized from the position of the people involved in what is happening.

Understanding sociology

According to the ideas of Max Weber, sociology should be precisely an "understanding" science, since human behavior is meaningful. However, this understanding cannot be called psychological, because meaning does not belong to the field of the mental, which means that it cannot be considered a subject of study. This meaning is part of social action - behavior that is related to the behavior of others, oriented, corrected and regulated by it. The basis of the discipline created by Weber is the idea that the laws of nature and society are opposite to each other, which means that there are two basic types of scientific knowledge - natural science (natural sciences) and humanitarian knowledge (cultural sciences). Sociology, in turn, is a frontier science, which should combine the best of them. It turns out that the methodology of understanding and correlation with values ​​is taken from humanitarian knowledge, and the causal interpretation of the surrounding reality and adherence to accurate data are taken from natural knowledge. The essence of an understanding sociology should be the sociologist's understanding and explanation of the following:

• Through what meaningful actions do people strive to realize their aspirations, to what extent and thanks to what can they succeed or fail?
• What are the consequences of the aspirations of some people for the behavior of others?

But, if Karl Marx and Emile Durkheim considered social phenomena from the position of objectivism, and society was the main subject of analysis for them, then Max Weber proceeded from the fact that the nature of the social should be considered subjectively, and the emphasis should be placed on the behavior of an individual. In other words, the subject of sociology should be the behavior of the individual, his picture of the world, beliefs, opinions, ideas, etc. After all, it is the individual with his ideas, motives, goals, etc. makes it possible to understand what causes social interactions. And, proceeding from those assumptions that the main feature of the social is the subjective meaning accessible and subject to understanding, the sociology of Max Weber was called understanding.

social action

According to Weber, social action can be of several types, based on four types of motivation:

• Purposeful rational social action- is based on the expectation of specific behavior of other people and objects of the external world, as well as on the application of this expectation as a "means" or "conditions" for goals that are rationally directed and regulated (for example, success);
• Value-rational social action - is based on a conscious belief in the religious, aesthetic, ethical or any other unconditional value of any behavior taken as a basis, regardless of its success and effectiveness;
• Affective social action it is mainly an emotional action, which is due to affects or intense emotional states of a person;
• Traditional social action based on habitual human behavior.

ideal type

To identify cause-and-effect relationships and comprehend human behavior, Max Weber introduced the term "ideal type". This ideal type is an artificially logically constructed term that makes it possible to single out the main features of the social phenomenon under study. The ideal type is formed not by abstract theoretical constructions, but is based on manifestations that take place in real life. Moreover, the concept itself is dynamic - because society and the area of ​​interest of its researchers may change, it is necessary to form new typologies that will correspond to these changes.

Social institutions

Weber also singled out social institutions, such as the state, church, family, and others, and social associations, such as societies and groups. The scientist paid special attention to the analysis of social institutions. At the center of them is always the state, which Weber himself defined as a special organization of public power with a monopoly on legitimate violence. Religion is the most vivid representative of the meaning-forming principles in people's behavior. Interestingly, Weber was interested not so much in the essence of religion as in how a person perceives and understands it, based on his subjective experiences. Thus, in the course of his research, Max Weber even revealed the relationship between people's religious beliefs and their economic behavior.

Bureaucracy Study

The works of Max Weber also explore such phenomena as bureaucracy and the bureaucratization of society. It should be said that the attitude of sociological science to bureaucracy is neutral. Weber considered it through the prism of rationality, which, in his understanding, is bureaucracy. In understanding sociology, the effectiveness of bureaucracy is its fundamental characteristic, as a result of which this term itself acquires a positive meaning. However, Weber also noted that bureaucracy poses a potential threat to democracy and liberal-bourgeois freedoms, but despite this, no society can fully exist without a bureaucratic machine.

Influence of understanding sociology

The emergence of the understanding sociology of Max Weber and its development most seriously influenced the Western sociology of the middle and second half of the 20th century. Even at present, it is the subject of heated debate in the field of theoretical and methodological problems of sociological knowledge in general. The initial assumptions formulated by Max Weber were subsequently developed by such famous sociologists as Edward Shiels, Florian Witold Znanensky, George Herbert Mead and many others. And thanks to the activity of the American sociologist Talcott Parsons in generalizing the concepts of understanding sociology, the theory of social action served as a fundamental starting point for all behavioral science of our time.

conclusions

If we argue from the position of Max Weber, then sociology is the science of social behavior, striving for its understanding and interpretation. And social behavior reflects the subjective attitude of a person, his externally or internally manifested position, which is focused on committing an act or refusing it. This attitude can be considered behavior when in the mind of a person it is associated with a certain meaning. And behavior is considered social when, in this sense, it correlates with the behavior of other people. The main task of understanding sociology is to determine the motives that move people in certain situations.

If you are interested in the ideas of Max Weber, you can refer to the study of one (or all) of his main works - "The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism", "Economy and Society", "Basic Sociological Concepts", as well as works devoted to issues of religion - "Ancient Judaism", "Religions of India: The Sociology of Hinduism and Buddhism", and "The Religion of China: Confucianism and Taoism".

"The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism" not only brought Weber wide recognition, but also became for the author a kind of "experimental field" on which he developed his own methodology of sociological knowledge.

It is no coincidence that Weber's most significant work on methods of comprehending reality was published in 1904, almost immediately after The Protestant Ethic.

And although the entire study, called "The Objectivity of Social-Scientific and Socio-Political Consciousness", fit into one article, it can be recognized as a kind of "quintessence" of Weber's methodology.

“The fate of a cultural epoch that has “tasted” the fruit from the tree of knowledge lies in the need to understand that the meaning of the universe is not revealed by research, no matter how perfect it may be, that we ourselves are called to create this meaning, that “worldviews” can never be the product of a developing experienced knowledge and, consequently, the highest ideals ... at all times find their expression in the struggle with other ideals.

As for culture, it is just "a finite fragment of the world's infinity, devoid of meaning, which, from the point of view of man, has meaning and meaning."

To understand the meaning and meaning of this or that event or phenomenon means, according to Weber, only to interpret them clearly. At the same time, the interpreter must initially come to terms with the fact that he is unlikely to know the true causes and content of the fact he is investigating, and, therefore, not a single most profound theory can claim to know the whole. “All mental cognition of infinite reality by the finite human spirit is based on the tacit premise that in each given case only the finite part of reality can be the subject of scientific cognition.”

On the natural sciences and the humanities

So, the full and absolute knowledge of the truth is inaccessible to man.

But how, after all, should we try to comprehend reality with our very imperfect capabilities?

"intuition" is accepted as a method of the humanities, and indirect knowledge, rational, conceptual, logical - as a method of the natural sciences.

Such a “psychological” substantiation of the humanities in reality could not refute the point that knowledge obtained directly with the help of intuition, by getting used to the world of an alien soul, does not have the necessary guarantee of reliability. In this regard, the question arose of how to provide the sciences of culture with the same rigor and significance that the natural sciences have?

Weber, unlike Dilthey and the representatives of historical science who followed him, resolutely refused to be guided in the study of social life by the method of direct empathy. He insisted on the inclusion in the process of historical cognition of rational (logical) methods based on the use of various levels of abstractions.

“The very first step towards making a historical judgment,” Weber wrote, “is, therefore, the process of abstraction, which proceeds through the analysis and mental isolation of the components of the immediate given event (considered as a complex of possible causal connections) and must end with the synthesis of a “real” causal connection. Thus, the very first step transforms the given "reality", in order for it to become a "historical fact", into a mental construction - the fact itself contains ... theory "(" Objectivity of social scientific and socio-political consciousness ").

If the historian tells the reader only the logical result of his reasoning, without giving their proper justification, if he simply inspires the reader with an understanding of events, instead of pedantically reasoning about them, then, according to Weber, he creates a historical novel, not a scientific study. It will rather be a work of art, in which there is no solid basis for reducing the elements of reality to their causes.

The general meaning of Weber's methodology in the field of historical knowledge boiled down to the fact that history can claim the status of a scientific discipline only if it uses logical techniques that make it possible to make broad generalizations (generalizations) that make it possible to reduce the elements of reality to their reasons.

"To understand life in its originality"

Agreeing with his predecessors (W. Wildeband and D. Rickert) that all sciences are divided into two types - "sciences of culture" and "sciences of nature", Weber considered these types to be different in methods, but the same in methods of cognition and concept formation. In his opinion, this difference did not undermine the very unity of the principle of scientificity and did not mean a departure from scientific rationality.

Touching upon the question of the "materialistic understanding of history", Weber wrote that such an understanding of the "Communist Manifesto" in "its old ingeniously primitive sense" dominates only in the minds of the profane and dilettantes. On the whole, “reduction to economic reasons alone cannot be considered exhaustive in any area of ​​culture, including in the field of economic processes” (“Objectivity of Social-Scientific and Socio-Political Consciousness”).

Weber saw his task in the field of social sciences in understanding real life in its originality.

However, this was hindered by the cognitive principles established in the sciences of culture, which, as the final result of the study, assumed the establishment of certain patterns and causal relationships. That part of individual reality that remains after the isolation of the natural is considered, according to Weber, either as a residue not subjected to scientific analysis, or it is simply ignored as something “random”, and therefore not essential for science. Thus, the author argued that in natural science knowledge, only “regular” can be scientific (true), and “individual” can be taken into account only as an illustration of the law.

As Weber believed, knowledge of cultural processes is possible only if it proceeds from the meaning that individual reality has for a person.

However, in what sense, and in what connections this or that significance is revealed, no law can reveal, for this is decided depending on the value ideas, from the point of view of which we consider culture. In other words, being people of culture, we take a certain position in relation to the world and introduce meaning into it, which becomes the basis of our judgments about various phenomena of our coexistence.

The very concept of culture was interpreted by Weber as broadly as possible, understanding by it everything that is “done” by a person. In this regard, he wrote: “Speaking ... about the conditionality of the knowledge of culture by the ideas of value, we hope that this will not give rise to such a deep delusion that, from our point of view, cultural delusion is inherent only in value phenomena. The German thinker emphasized that prostitution is no less a cultural phenomenon than religion or money, and all of them together ... directly or indirectly affect our cultural interests; because they excite our desire for knowledge from those points of view that are derived from value ideas that give significance to the segment of reality conceivable in these concepts” (“History of Economics”).

"Ideal Types"

The development of a unified and sufficiently reliable methodology in the sciences of culture had to have a certain starting point, which for Weber was ... the economic theory of Marx. In his opinion, this theory gives an ideal picture of the processes taking place in the market in a society of commodity-money exchange, free competition and strictly rational behavior. Another thing is that in reality such a construction has the character of a utopia obtained by mentally bringing certain elements of reality to their full expression. Weber called such mental constructions "ideal types", which, in his opinion, "are heuristic in nature and are necessary for determining the value of a phenomenon."

Taking the concept of “ideal type” into service, Weber from the very beginning responsibly stated that there are no such structures, and they cannot exist in reality, and therefore he used another term in relation to them - “utopias”. Yes, ideal types, like any scientific model, are based on knowledge of empirical facts, but this is not enough to consider them a mirror reflection of reality. At the same time, the very concept of “ideal” should not be misleading, since it does not mean idealization, a perfect model or the highest goal, the state to which we aspire. Ideal is just non-existent.

The ideal type should not be confused with a hypothesis - a scientific assumption that a researcher puts forward to explain a phenomenon. The hypothesis requires verification by experience: if it is confirmed, then it becomes a theory, if not, it is rejected. However, the ideal type cannot be rejected by definition. At the same time, he does not require verification by real facts, and reality is compared with him only in order to understand how much it differs from the ideal-typical construction created by the researcher.

As Weber himself wrote: “The ideal type is not a “hypothesis”, it only indicates in which direction the formation of hypotheses should go. It does not give an image of reality, but it presents unambiguous means of expression for this.”

Ideal types are created through the one-sided strengthening of one or more points of view and the combination of individual phenomena into a single mental image. Weber emphasized that in reality this mental image never occurs. The author saw the task of historical research in establishing in each individual case how close or far the reality is from the corresponding mental image.

So, with the help of this method, as Weber believed, it is possible to create in the form of a utopia the “idea of ​​craft”, combining certain features of the crafts of various eras and peoples into one ideal image free from contradictions. The ideal type of "handicraft" can, by abstracting certain features of modern large-scale industry, be contrasted with the ideal type of capitalist economy.

Constructing his ideal types, Weber very often acted according to the scheme: what would happen if the phenomenon or process under study developed unhindered in the direction indicated by us. To do this, for example, he simulated a situation of stock market panic, after which he tried to answer the question: “What would be the behavior of players on the stock exchange if they did not succumb to strong emotions and acted absolutely in cold blood, with knowledge of the matter?”

Having drawn this “ideal” picture of what was happening, Weber got an idea of ​​how much it was distorted by irrational moments in people’s behavior, exactly how fear and despair affected the results of their activities.

In the same way, the scientist tried to approach the analysis of the results of any military or political action. At the same time, he necessarily sought to understand: what would be the behavior of the participants in the event if they fully possessed all the necessary information and successfully found the means necessary to achieve the task.

Although, as Weber himself noted, the “ideal types” (or “utopias”) constructed in this way cannot be found in reality, they “really reflect the well-known features of our culture, significant in their originality, taken from reality and united in an ideal image” ( "Objectivity of the socio-scientific and socio-political consciousness").

Drawing a line on the unbiased nature of scientific knowledge in the field of social sciences, Weber warned against the use of ideal types in the form of models that carry the character of an obligation. Ideal types should be motivated and, as far as possible, "objective" and adequate. In determining their scientific value, there can be only one criterion - “to what extent it will contribute to the knowledge of specific cultural phenomena in their interconnection, in their causality and significance” (“Objectivity of the socio-scientific and socio-political consciousness”).

Thus, in the formation of abstract ideal types, Weber saw not an end, but a means of cognition. This setting applies to almost the entire set of ideal types he uses.

"Value" according to Weber

Although the term “ideal type” itself was already used by E. Durkheim and F. Tennis, it was Weber who was the first to argue that this concept is based on quite certain value preferences of the researcher.

The scientist, according to Weber, can be interested only in those aspects of phenomena, infinite in their diversity, to which he himself ascribes cultural significance or value.

But what is "value"? For Weber, it is not "positive" and not "negative", not "relative" and not "absolute", not "objective" and not "subjective".

For the analytical scientist (as Weber himself considered himself), value is far from personal emotional experience, approval or blame. It cannot be "bad" or "good", "right" or "wrong", "moral" or "immoral". Value is also absolutely devoid of any moral, moral-ethical or aesthetic content. It must be seen as the form by which people organize their life experience.

According to Weber, value is what matters to us, what we focus on in our lives and what we take into account. It is a way of human thinking. Like the Kantian categories of "space" and "time", Weber's value gives a person the opportunity to streamline, structure the "chaos" of his thoughts, impressions and desires. This is a “purely logical method of understanding the world”, which is equally characteristic of both the scientist and the layman.

A person is the bearer of values, and he needs them to determine the goals that he sets for himself. Their place in the motivation of actions is much deeper than goals and interests, since it is to values ​​that, ultimately, the will of a person is turned.

Some modern researchers tend to equate Weber's concept of "value" and "norm", which is a big simplification.

In Weber's interpretation, a value, unlike a norm, cannot be an unambiguously understood command; she is always wishing. We definitely need someone who, accepting it for one reason or another, will embody it with his life. Moreover, the very choice of values ​​is not just a choice between “right” and “wrong”. The "correct" values ​​are generosity and thrift, mercy and justice, active struggle against evil and non-resistance to violence.

However, in each specific situation, a person has to choose one of two virtues that are difficult to combine with each other. At the same time, values ​​by themselves "do not give direction", but only make it possible to consciously choose a direction. So the alternative facing a person “makes sense only as an appeal to freedom, just as freedom in the sense of choice is possible only where there is an alternative” (“Science as a Vocation and Profession”, 1920).

Otherwise, values ​​automatically become the norms that underlie the social order.

The normative behavior of people is completely predictable and devoid of individual characteristics. But this interpretation does not suit Weber. He focuses on the dual nature of values, highlighting, in addition to the normative, another side - their necessary and inevitable refraction in the individual experience of a particular person.

This or that person always “deciphers” values ​​for himself, puts a certain meaning into them, that is, he understands them in a way that only he and no one else can understand. Human freedom is an internal state, which consists in the possibility of an independent and responsible choice of values ​​and their interpretation.

Both are equally possessed by the scientist-researcher.

"Freedom from Evaluation" and the Objectivity of the Scientist

Unlike most other people, the value choice of a scientist concerns not only himself and his inner circle, but also all those who will someday get acquainted with the works he wrote. This immediately raises the question of the responsibility of the scientist. Although one might as well raise the question of the responsibility of a politician or a writer, Weber naturally prefers to concentrate on a topic that is more personal to him.

Defending the researcher's right to his own vision, Weber writes that “the knowledge of cultural reality is always the knowledge of very specific special points of view. This analysis is inevitably "one-sided", but the subjective choice of a scientist's position is not so subjective.

It “cannot be considered arbitrary as long as it is justified by its result, that is, as long as it provides knowledge of connections that turn out to be valuable for the causal (causal) reduction of historical events to their specific causes” (“Objectivity of Social-Scientific and Socio-Political Consciousness”).

The value choice of a scientist is “subjective” not in the sense that it is significant only for one person and understandable only to him. Obviously, the researcher, defining his analytical perspective, chooses it from among those values ​​that already exist in a given culture. Value choice is “subjective” in the sense that “it is only interested in those components of reality that are in some way, even the most indirect, connected with phenomena that have cultural significance in our view” (“Objectivity of the Social-Scientific and Socio-Political Consciousness”) .

At the same time, a scientist as an individual has every right to a political and moral position, aesthetic taste, but he cannot take a positive or negative attitude towards the phenomenon or historical person he is studying. His individual attitude must remain outside his research - this is the duty of the researcher to the truth.

In general, for Weber, the topic of the scientist's duty, the problem of truth, free from subjectivism, has always been very relevant. Being a passionate politician, he himself strove to act as an impartial researcher in his works, guided only by the love of truth.

Weber's demand for freedom from evaluation in scientific research is rooted in his ideological position, according to which scientific values ​​(truth) and practical (party) values ​​are two different areas, the confusion of which leads to the substitution of theoretical arguments for political propaganda. And where the man of science comes with his own value judgment, there is no place for a full understanding of the facts.

Weber's "understanding"

Here it makes sense to introduce another fundamental concept of Weber's sociology - the category of "understanding". In his opinion, it is the need to understand the subject of one's research that distinguishes sociology from the natural sciences. However, the "understanding" of people's behavior does not yet testify to its empirical significance, since behavior that is identical in its external properties and its results can be based on different combinations of motives, and the most obvious of them is not necessarily the most significant. "Understanding" of certain connections found in people's behavior should always be controlled using the usual methods of causal explanation. At the same time, Weber does not oppose understanding to causal explanation, but, on the contrary, closely connects them with each other. Furthermore, "understanding" does not refer to psychological categories, and understanding sociology is not part of psychology.

As a starting point for sociological research, Weber considers the behavior of the individual. According to his own definition, "the purpose of our study is to prove that 'understanding' is, in essence, the reason why an understanding sociology (in our sense) regards the individual and his action as a primary unit, as an 'atom' (if this is in itself a dubious comparison)” (“Basic Sociological Concepts”, 1920).

For the same reason, for sociological research, the individual in Weber also represents the upper limit of meaningful behavior, since it is the individual who is its only carrier.

Theory of social action

However, the behavior of the individual is also studied by psychology, and in this connection the question arises: what is the difference between the psychological and sociological approaches to the study of individual behavior?

Weber answered this question at the very beginning of his final work Economy and Society. Sociology, in his opinion, is a science that wants to understand and causally explain social action in its course and manifestations.

In this case, the revolutionary nature of Weber's scientific views lies in the fact that it was he who singled out the elementary unit as the subject of sociology, which underlies all social activity of people, processes, organizations, etc.

The main characteristic of social action as the foundation of social being, according to Weber, is the meaning, and it is not just an action, but a human action, the author emphasizes. This means that the acting individual or individuals "associate a subjective meaning with it." Properly "social" action "should be called such an action, which, in accordance with the meaning inherent in it by the actor or actors, is directed at the behavior of others and is oriented in this way in its course." The way in which an action or system of actions is performed, Weber called "behavior adequate to meaning" ("Basic Sociological Concepts").

The main components of social action, according to Weber, are goals, means, norms. The social action itself, containing meaning and orientation towards others and their actions, is an ideal type. The criterion for distinguishing types of social action is rationality, or rather, its measure.

In this case, Weber used the concept of rationality in a purely methodological sense. With the help of this concept and on its basis, he built a typology of social actions. The gradation was according to the degree of real meaningfulness of the action in terms of calculating the goals and means. Weber had four such types.

1. "Purpose-rational" action contains the highest degree of rationality of action. The goal, means and norms in it are mutually optimal and correlated with each other.

The most illustrative example of "purpose-rational" action is action in the sphere of the capitalist economy.

2. “Value-rational” action is associated with increased pressure from norms, such as beliefs. The capitalist who allocates money to charity, the church, spends it on playing cards, etc., rather than investing it in production in order to achieve further success, behaves in accordance with this type of social action.

3. Traditional action Weber considers by analogy with "stupid stay" in routine circumstances. This action - according to a stencil, out of habit, according to the traditional establishment.

The comprehension of such a “stay” is possible in two cases: as a breakthrough of traditionalism and as a conscious justification for its pragmatic use.

4. An affective action also has its own goal, the understanding of which is dominated by emotions, impulses, etc. The goal and means do not correspond to each other and often come into conflict.

An example is the behavior of football fans, which is characterized by the lowest level of rationality.

The possibility of using the category of "social action" in science puts forward a clear requirement: it must be a generalizing abstraction. The formation of a typology of social action is the first step along this path. Weber defined social action as a generalized average of mass, for example, group behavior and its motives. Understanding this action is possible only on the basis of external, “objectively given situations” that affect its “flows and manifestations”. The tool of such analysis is the ideal type, because the social context is obviously included in the content of the categories "participating" in its construction.

Understanding, like social action itself, is also a generalized and averaged value and is directly related to it. In Weber's words, this is the "average and approximately considered" meaning of the action. The typology of social actions is an ideal-typical representation of "averaged" and therefore "understandable" modes of behavior, typical orientations in typical conditions.

Sociology and other social-historical sciences, operating with ideal types, provide "knowledge about certain rules known in experience, especially about the way people usually react to given situations" ("Basic Sociological Concepts").

About social relations

Taking the concept of "social action" as the basis of "sociality in general", Weber writes:

“We will call social relations the behavior of several people, correlated in their meaning with each other and guided by this,” the scientist wrote.

As a prerequisite, the author pointed out that the social relation “completely and exclusively consists in the possibility that social action will be of an accessible (meaningful) definition”, regardless of what this possibility is based on (“Basic Sociological Concepts”) .

At the same time, the signs of social relations include the widest possible range of different actions: struggle, enmity, love, friendship, respect, rivalry of an economic, erotic or political nature, belonging to one or different class, religious, national or class communities, etc.

Since social actions occur regularly enough to justify this connection, Weber introduced two more terms. By "mores" he meant the habit of acting in a certain situation one way and not another. Customs are morals that take root for a long time and are conditioned by the "purposeful-rational" orientation of the behavior of individual individuals towards the same expectations.

Social relations become more complex, he believed, when individuals begin to orient themselves towards a legitimate order that reinforces the regularity of social relations.

Weber called the content of the social relations themselves "order" only in those cases when an individual in his behavior is guided by clearly defined moral, religious, legal and other norms. In his opinion, various reasons can force people to take these norms into account, but most of them are of a purely internal nature. A particular individual can consider the existing order as legitimate: 1) affectively, that is, guided by his emotions; 2) value-rationally, believing in the absolute significance of order as an expression of the highest immutable values ​​(moral, aesthetic, etc.); 3) based on religious considerations.

On the other hand, the legitimacy of an order can be guaranteed by the expectation of specific external consequences. Weber divides these expectations into two types - "conventional" and "right".

Under law, a special group of people who exercise coercion appears in the rrli of a possible “external consequence” (the simplest example is the police). Conventionally, there is no such group, but at the same time, any deviation from “generally accepted behavior” runs into a clearly tangible censure within a certain circle of people.

social formations

From the analysis of social relations, Weber moved on to the analysis of various kinds of social formations. He proceeded from the fact that the process of integration, which takes place on the basis of social actions, leads to the emergence of two social associations that are different in their nature. Some of them the author called associations of a public type, others - community (or communal). He considered the first type to be the main one and referred to it those associations whose members in their behavior are guided by motives of interest. Community associations, according to Weber, are based on feelings of belonging to a particular community, and the motivation here is either affective or traditional.

Here Weber, in essence, only repeated the scheme proposed by F. Tennis, although he developed it at a slightly different level. Thus, he called the so-called “target union” one of the options for uniting people into a “society”, each of whose members to a certain extent relies on the fact that other members of the union will act in accordance with the established agreement and proceed from this while rationally orienting their own behavior.

As another important social association, Weber introduced the concept of "enterprise". As in the previous case, the enterprise must include a fairly constant number of members guided by "purposeful" motives. However, unlike the usual target union, the enterprise also has a certain administrative body that performs managerial functions.

At the same time, Weber noted that each individual constantly participates in the most diverse spheres of action in nature - both communal, based on consent, and public, where purely rational motives prevail.

But there are other associations, or so-called "institutions", besides the "targeted unions" based on consent. Here voluntary entry is replaced by enrollment on the basis of purely objective data, regardless of the desire and consent of the enrolled persons. One of the determining factors of behavior is the apparatus of coercion. The most striking and obvious examples, according to Weber, are the State and the Church. On the other hand, understanding the complexity of social actions leading to the emergence of associations of one type or another, he emphasized that the transition to an “institution” itself was not sufficiently defined, and there were not so many “institutions” of a pure type.

Weber classes

Fundamentally important for Weber was the concept of "struggle", which is opposed to another concept - "consent".

Here he proceeded from the fact that “the predominant part of all institutions - both institutions and unions - arose not on the basis of an agreement, but as a result of violent actions; that is, people and groups of people who, for whatever reason, are actually capable of influencing the general actions of the members of an institution or union, direct it in the direction they need, based on the “waiting for consent.”

It was the struggle, according to Weber, that turned out to be the decisive factor in many processes and phenomena. True, unlike the interpretation of K. Marx, he dispensed with any political and economic factors, explaining everything by the natural qualities of a person.

Each individual, according to Weber, seeks to impose his will on another, either through open physical influence or through what is called competition.

Nevertheless, Weber by no means ignored the economic factor. It's just that the sphere of economic action merely served for him as a kind of logical premise for expounding the so-called "theories of stratification."

Here another concept is introduced - "classes".

The existence of a class, as the scientist believed, can only be spoken of in cases where: 1) a certain set of people are united by a specific “causal component” that concerns their vital interests; 2) such component is represented solely by economic interests in the acquisition of goods or income; 3) this component is determined by the situation in the goods or labor market.

The class as a certain group of people was divided by Weber into three main types: 1) the class of owners; 2) the acquisitive class that exploits services on the market; 3) a social class consisting of a multitude of classes. statuses, between which there are changes occurring both on a personal basis and within several generations.

At the same time, Weber stated that the unity of social classes is relative, and their differentiation only on the basis of property is not the result of class struggle or class revolutions. Radical changes in the distribution of wealth, in his opinion, are more correctly called "property revolutions".

Weber paid special attention to the so-called "middle class", referring to it those who, thanks to appropriate training, own all types of property and are competitive in the labor market. Here he included independent peasants, artisans, officials employed in the public and private sectors, freelancers, as well as workers occupying an exclusively monopolistic position.

Examples of other classes he had were: - the working class as a whole, engaged in a mechanized process;

- "lower" middle classes; - engineers, commercial and other employees, as well as civil officials, that is, "intelligentsia" without independent ownership; - a class of people who occupy a privileged position due to property and education.

Exploring the class structure of society in a "dynamic way", Weber was constantly looking for points of contact and transitions both between separate groups within the same class and between the main classes. As a result, the scheme of the class structure of society proposed by him turned out to be so confusing that, based on it, it is even difficult to compile a complete list of classes.

In any case, according to the sociologist, the decisive factor determining a person's belonging to a particular class of society was his opportunities in the labor market, or, to be more precise, the pay that he could receive for his work.

Thus, if Marx's "front line" was between workers and employers, then Weber's - between the buyers of labor and its sellers.

However, based on this theory, the main factor that creates a class is economic interest, as well as the presence or absence of property.

Such an interpretation was quite close to the Marxist one (in any case, it did not logically contradict it), and then, in order to get out of the political plane, Weber gave an additional explanation: the manifestations of the class struggle are not significant in themselves, but only as an average typical reaction to economic incentives. .

Fight for status

In contrast to classes, Weber introduced another concept - "status groups". He believed that, unlike classes, which are determined by a purely economic situation, status groups are determined by "a specific social evaluation of honor." Honor in this case can mean any quality appreciated by the majority.

Moreover, the entire social order is, according to Weber, only the means by which "social honors are distributed in a community among the typical groups participating in such a distribution."

The social order associated with the legal order (political power) is largely determined by the established economic system, but at the same time is able to influence it.

The main “passions” in the world boil precisely around status honors, which Weber considered as signs of a certain lifestyle. The expectations associated with this style act for him as certain restrictions on social communication, that is, the status is a joint action of a closed type based on the agreement reached. And as the degree of closeness of the status group increases within it, the tendencies towards a legal monopoly on certain positions and privileges intensify.

The Importance of Max Weber's Methodology

A scientist in the humanities, according to Weber, needs precisely the types of action, and not the meaningful characteristics of the processes in which these actions are woven. “In sociology,” he wrote, “such concepts as ‘state’, ‘cooperative’, ‘feudalism’ and the like ... designate categories of certain types of human interaction, and its task is to reduce them to ‘understandable’ action, namely, to action participating single individuals” (“Basic Sociological Concepts”).

Weber not only nowhere considered the essential characteristics, for example, of the state, but also specifically stipulated his refusal to analyze them. Thus, in relation to religion, he emphasized: "We are not dealing with the "essence" of religion, but only with the conditions and results of one specific type of group social action" ("Theory of degrees and directions of religious rejection of the world", 1910). In the same way Weber bypassed the meaningful analysis of other important phenomena for his ideology.

The categories of “ideal type” and “social action” he uses were developed in the specific social and cultural context of Germany, in discussions, in opposition to and as a response to other, now poorly known and no longer relevant theoretical positions. Weber was looking for answers to the questions of science and politics of his time, and did not raise his ideas to the rank of a universal paradigm. Therefore, all the main categories introduced by him into sociology have quite definite historical perspectives and accents. The discussions that Weber had with Marxists, as well as national economists of the old and new economic schools, were significantly complicated by methodological and other problems that arose in specific circumstances.

It should be noted that at the beginning of the 20th century, and in addition to Weber, there were already very successful developments of the conceptual tools of the social sciences. Here one can mention the concept of normal concepts by F. Tennis, and the theory of general concepts by K. Menger, and even the Marxist concept of concepts, the failure of which has not yet been proven by anyone. The repeated and insistent use by Marx "in its pure form" (in his words) of the concepts of "capital", "value" allows us to draw a parallel between Weber's ideal types and these "pure" concepts of Marx, if we give the latter a model interpretation.

Thus, in "Capital" an idealized image of capitalism is given, and not its reality. However, this image itself is not a fiction, since it contains the essence, the internal law of motion of such a complex phenomenon as capitalism. And in this sense, ideal types and models are of great methodological importance for the analysis of specific forms of historical reality.

Today, the main Weberian categories are clearly insufficient, and need certain changes and additions, caused by the growth of scientific knowledge, its internationalization, the development of the logic and methodology of social science. The criticism voiced in the USA and Germany against Weber focuses on the impossibility of unconditional observance of the “principle of freedom of science from value judgments”, as well as the difficulty of building a holistic sociological theory based on them due to limitations and uncertainty. In France, variants of "practical" sociology arose, leaving aside and behind the theories built on the basis of Weber's provisions.

But will they work?

One way or another, with all due respect to Weber, in today's sociological science there is an ever stronger desire to go beyond the limits outlined by the key ideas of his theory.

And this is quite natural, since he himself saw the purpose of scientific ideas in being overcome.

Max Weber(1864-1920) - an outstanding sociologist of the late XIX - early XX century. When studying society, M. Weber believed, one must proceed from the fact that human behavior is conscious and requires not external description, but understanding. Therefore, human behavior should be investigated by sociology not by the method of intuitive “feeling”, but by means of a rational understanding of the meaning that acting individuals put into their actions. Therefore, a key aspect of sociology is the study of the intentions, values, beliefs, and opinions that underlie human behavior. The procedure for comprehending meaning was designated by Weber as the category of "understanding" (Verstehen). He proposed the concept of understanding as a method that precedes and makes sociological explanation possible. This method consists in the fact that the sociologist mentally tries to put himself in the place of other people and understand the rational reasons for their actions. Unlike Durkheim, Weber believes that sociologists should investigate not the forms of the collectivity, but the individual. It is the individual, and not the supra-individual "collective consciousness" that is the true subject of social action. This is not an element of a self-contained social reality, but its active creator, possessing reason and will. Therefore, to study society means to study individuals, to investigate the motives of their actions, to seek their rational explanation. It follows from this that sociology must become a strictly rational science of the meaning of social action and operate with special conceptual constructions that would allow it to single out this meaning.

The most important methodological tool in Weber's arsenal is the concept of ideal type. Ideal type - it is a theoretical construct intended to highlight the main characteristics of a social phenomenon. It is not extracted from empirical reality, but is constructed as a theoretical scheme. We can say that ideal types are research "utopias" that have no analogues in reality. The concept of ideal type makes it possible to study specific historical events and situations, acting as a measuring bar with which sociologists can evaluate actual events.

The construction of ideal types, according to Weber, should serve as a means of "value-independent" research. In his writings, Weber emphasized the need to develop a sociology free from value judgments.

Investigating social action, Weber uses the construction of the ideal type of action - goal-oriented. Considering goal-oriented action as the methodological basis of sociology, he shows that the subject of sociology should be the individual as the subject of meaningful goal-setting. However, empirical social action is not completely goal-oriented, it also contains an element of the irrational, due to the psychology of the individual.

Weber made a significant contribution to the study of religion and its place in society, explored the phenomenon of power and dates his typology of forms of domination. However, researchers note that, despite the colossal breadth of coverage of specific material and the abundance of theoretical concepts and developments in various spheres of public life, the main subject of Weber's research is capitalism, and taken not in the water dimension, but in its cultural and historical integrity, embodying all the diversity its dimensions and therefore representing not just a political and economic concept, but to a greater extent cultural and sociological.

The main work in which Weber's studies of capitalism, its essence, origin and influence on social development are reflected is The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, where Weber clearly expresses the adequacy of the spirit of capitalism and the spirit of Protestantism. The significance of this work can hardly be overestimated, since Weber's understanding of the phenomenon of Western European capitalism with its "spirit of formal rationality and individualism" became the foundation for the analysis of capitalism and the study of the development of mankind as a whole, since he was the first to record the importance of the cultural and ethical attitudes of Protestantism for the capitalist development of the West. Despite the fact that discussions around Weber's concept of capitalism continue to this day (according to some scientists, such as P. Berger, Weber underestimated the power of capitalist development in non-Protestant countries and civilizations), the scientific value of Weber's creative heritage cannot be disputed and is confirmed by many scientific developments and works that appeal to the ideas and scientific propositions put forward by this great German sociologist.

Sociology of M. Weber

Max Weber(1864-1920) - German economist, historian, leading sociologist. His most famous works are The Methodology of the Social Sciences (1949) and The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1904). He showed interest in the social and political affairs of Germany. His views were critical, liberal, anti-authoritarian, anti-positivist, which is why his sociology is called "understanding".

Weber introduces the concept of "ideal type" into sociology. The latter are fundamental social science concepts that are not a copy of social reality, but are constructed from the elements of this reality as a method of its cognition. The ideal type (definition) must meet the requirements of formal logic. The task of sociology is to develop such ideal types: social action, power, state, people, justice and others. Social reality is evaluated by these ideal types and thus is known. In particular, Weber believed that Marx's "socio-economic formation" is not a specific society, but an ideal type.

The subject of sociology according to Weber

Weber considered social activity (behavior). Thus, he opposed the study of public spheres, the state, the social organism outside the activities of people. “Social,” wrote Weber, “we call such an action that, according to the meaning assumed by the actor or actors, correlates with the action of other people and is oriented towards it.” Weber singled out the following ideal types of ideal social actions: 1) goal-oriented (carried out under the influence of a clearly defined goal), 2) value-rational (driven by some value), 3) traditional (custom-oriented), 4) affective (under the influence of feelings). ). Unlike Marxism, which focuses on the objective result of people's activities, Weber focuses on the meaning - the motive of people's activities, and typical activities.

The most important idea of ​​Weber is the steady rationalization of all social life, which is a sign of its development. This is accompanied by the strengthening of the role of scientific knowledge in all spheres of public life. The transition from an agrarian (pre-industrial) to an industrial society is associated for Weber with an increase in the rationalization of social actions (social being) based on bureaucratic-targeted rational methods of management:

• in the economy (organization of factory production by bureaucratic-rational methods);
• in politics (the decline of traditional norms of behavior and the growing role of the party bureaucracy);
• in law (replacement of an arbitrary trial by legal procedures based on universal laws), etc.

Weber also dealt with the problem of people's manageability, power and domination (political power, i.e. state power). If power - is the ability of one subject to subjugate the behavior of another subject, then domination - it is the ability of one official to give orders to another person on the basis of powers (laws) delegated to him by the state. The most important condition for domination as a relationship between the manager and the subordinate is legitimacy command, i.e., its (1) compliance with legality and (2) the belief of the subordinate that this instruction is actually legal. Weber identifies three types of legitimacy:

• legally legitimate, in which people obey orders because they seem to be consistent with their interests and existing laws in society (in a democratic society);
• charismatic, in which orders are carried out, since they come from the leader - the leader who knows better what needs to be done (for example - in the USSR - Stalin's orders);
• traditional, in which, the execution occurs due to traditions consecrated by time (for example, the change of monarchs).

Weber argues that sociology must proceed from its fundamental difference from the natural sciences. If natural science deals with unconscious phenomena, then social science deals with semantic ones. People perform their actions under the influence of some conscious impulses and focusing on others. Sociology cannot discover the objective laws of social life (which is considered the main task in Marxism). Sociology cannot make scientific predictions like those given by natural science (an eclipse of the Sun, etc.), but it can offer probabilistic scenarios for the development of societies.

The most important procedure of a sociologist is the interpretation of social activity, the results of specific sociological observations. It presupposes the presence in the mind of a sociologist of some criteria (values) and attitudes for the selection and evaluation of empirical material. Participating in the selection and evaluation of empirical material, the sociologist, in fact, constructs his own assessments, which include his attitudes. Evaluation becomes subjective, so the question arises about its objectivity, impartiality, truth. Weber believes that such values ​​(and attitudes) of a sociologist should express the interests of the era, that is, the leading goals that elites and peoples strive for. Thus, Weber abandons the positivist and Marxist approach to the analysis of social reality.

Facts of the biography of M. Weber. His professional path The sociological concept of Max Weber.
Weber's sociology briefly.

Essay on the topic: Sociology of Max Weber

Biography facts

Max Weber(1864-1920) was born in Erfurt in the family of a major capitalist. His father was a member of the Reichstag. He grew up in Berlin, considered himself a representative of the bourgeoisie. Studied in Heidelberg, Göttingen. He passed the exam for a lawyer in 1886, in 1891 he defended his thesis. Since 1893 he has been teaching in Freiburg. In 1896 he was invited to Heidelberg. In 1897, he had his first breakdown. Since 1901 he recovered, but retired from teaching. He lived on the money of his mother and wife. Died in Munich.

Professional path

Protestantism and Calvinism, organized as a sect, give rise to capitalism. In 1905 he lives in America with Ernst Troeltsch. Since 1903, together with Edgar Jaffe, he edited the Archive of Social Science and Social Policy. Studied Confucianism, Taoism, Hinduism, Buddhism and Judaism. "Where there is no Protestantism, there is no capitalism." The process of rationalization includes: industrialization, bureaucratization, intellectualization, specialization, capitalism, discipline, secularization. The views are scattered, there is no system, but the formulations and definitions have become classic. Major works: Protestant Ethics and the Spirit of Capitalism (1905), Collected Works on the Sociology of Religion (1920), Economy and Society (1921).

The sociological concept of Max Weber

The sociological concept of Max Weber often called understanding sociology ( Sociology of M. Weber). He is also credited with the authorship of the theory of social action, according to which the main task of sociology is to study the rational meaning in the actions of people. Weber singled out the following social actions:

affective;

Traditional;

Value-rational;

Purposeful.

As society develops, the proportion of rationality in the actions of people is constantly growing, therefore, in modern society, purposeful rational actions prevail.

Weber introduced the concept of an ideal type, which does not exist in reality, but is very important for its theoretical understanding. This is a kind of scale for social measurements, which helps to understand a large amount of empirical data, to correctly formulate the goals and objectives of specific sociological research.

Studying modern capitalism in the US and Western Europe, Max Weber came to the conclusion that Protestantism played an important role in its origin. The process of rationalization of society changes the religious picture of the world. The influence of science is growing. The ethics of responsibility supplants the ethics of conviction. While condemning pleasure, but not allowing renunciation of the world, Protestantism considered the task of every person to be the subjugation of the external conditions of life. From this worldview, the concept of “vocation” arose. The only way to become pleasing to God, according to Weber, is not the neglect of worldly morality from the heights of monastic asceticism, but exclusively the fulfillment of worldly duties. This attitude makes entrepreneurship a matter pleasing to God. Max Weber believed that it was religion that was the basis for the development of the economy, and not vice versa, as Karl Marx had previously believed.

Weber puts forward the thesis that Protestantism is at the heart of the development of the capitalist economy. The idea of ​​vocation plays an important role in the development of capitalism, especially the ascetic Protestantism of the Calvinist persuasion. The Calvinist religious worldview creates spiritual prerequisites for the formation of two main factors of capitalism: a rational attitude to the world and a special attitude to work, when the goal of the capitalist's efforts is to extract profit that goes not for consumption, but to create even more profit in the future.

Weber studied the problem of the relationship between religious ideas and economic relations (collection "Collected Works on the Sociology of Religion"). He finds out that the basis of the Chinese worldview is the idea of ​​the world as a strictly organized system, where everything is interconnected, subject to immutable laws and has its own measure. Rationalization here leads to the fact that a person works exactly as much as he needs to satisfy his usual, traditional needs. Nobody and nothing should overstep their limits. The basis of the Indian religion is the doctrine of the transmigration of souls. Here everyone is forever tied to a certain caste and does not have the opportunity to move to another. In both cultures, according to Weber, the development of capitalism is difficult. He was of the same opinion about the possibilities for the development of capitalism in Russia.

Depending on the main worldview that underlies religion, Weber divides them into three groups:

Adaptation to the world (Confucianism, Taoism);

Fleeing from the world (Hinduism, Buddhism);

Preaching the mastery of the world (Christianity). Each religion has its own type of rationality. The degree of rationality is inversely proportional to the magic element.

In The Economic Ethics of World Religions (1920), Weber explores Protestantism and sectarianism. As religion develops, the collective principle decreases, while the individual increases. Weber identifies the following motives for religious actions:

ritualistic-cult;

Ascetic-active;

Mystical-contemplative;

Intellectual-dogmatic.

Sectarians have high moral standards. They help each other in business, give each other interest-free loans.

Important Contribution German sociologist contributed to the sociology of politics. For Weber, politics is the desire to participate in power or to influence the distribution of power. The state is a relation of domination of people over people, associated with a monopoly on legitimate violence. He formulated the problem of the legitimacy of political domination and identified three types of legitimacy: traditional, legal and charismatic.

In an effort to improve the German democratic system, Max Weber put forward a number of practical recommendations. In particular, he suggested that in order to fight bureaucracy, the leader of the state should directly address the people. This is the summary of Weber's sociology.

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(1864-1920) - German sociologist, discovered a huge influence on modern sociology - both in terms of methodological and in terms of the accumulation of sociological knowledge. Among his major works are: "The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism" (1904-1906), "On the Category of Understanding Sociology" (1913), "History of the Economy" (1923), "City" (1923).

Unlike Auguste Comte and Emile Durkheim, Max Weber believed that the laws of society are fundamentally different from the laws of nature. And therefore it is necessary to develop two types of scientific knowledge - the science of nature (natural science) and the science of culture (humanitarian knowledge). Sociology, in his opinion

lies on the border between these two spheres and must borrow from the natural disciplines a causal explanation of reality and the observance of exact facts, and in the humanities - a method of understanding and relating to values. Understanding - the use of the inner world of individuals, understanding their thoughts and experiences. The sociologist seems to mentally put himself in the place of other people and tries to understand their thoughts and feelings. The scientist considered personality to be the basis of sociological analysis. He was convinced that such complex concepts as: the state, religion, capitalism can only be comprehended on the basis of an analysis of the behavior of individuals. But how to single out the main thing, the common thing in the individual experiences of people? Such a criterion, according to Weber, is "reference to values." Values ​​can be theoretical - truth, political - justice; moral - good; aesthetic

beauty and the like. But, if they are important for all the subjects under study, then they are above subjective, that is, they have absolute significance within the studied era.

The main tool of knowledge for Max Weber is "ideal types". These are such constructions, schemes of social reality that exist in the imagination of scientists. "Ideal" in this case means "pure", "abstract", that is, one that does not exist in real life.

That is, the ideal type should be understood not in moral and ethical terms, but in theoretical and methodological terms. By "ideal" the sociologist does not mean the type to which society should aspire, but the one that contains the most essential, typical features of social reality and can serve as a standard for comparison with social reality. Let's say, if we want to describe the ideal type of a modern Ukrainian passenger in urban transport, then, after analyzing the surrounding reality, we find that this is not at all a polite person, who always pays the fare on time and gives way to the elders, as much as we all would like. No, the ideal type in this case should include other characteristics that are inherent in modern Ukrainian urban transport passengers - this is also a person who sometimes tries to travel without a ticket, often being impolite.

Max Weber operated on such ideal types as: "capitalism", "bureaucracy", "religion", "market economy", etc.

Ideal types should be studied by sociology in the form in which they become significant for individuals, in which they are guided by them in their actions. The social actions of individuals are actions that relate (into account) with the actions of other persons and are oriented towards them (they will not be considered social actions in the sense proposed by Weber, such actions as, for example, a solitary prayer or panic actions of a crowd).

Max Weber distinguishes four types of social action: whole rational, value-rational, affective and traditional.

A whole rational action presupposes and takes into account the behavior of objects in the external world and other people (the criterion of rationality is success). “The whole is rational,” writes Weber, “one acts who orients his action in terms of ends, means, and side effects, and at the same time rationally weighs both the ratio of costs and goals, and goals by side effects.”

A value-rational action is conditioned by a conscious belief in ethical, aesthetic, religious values, according to which this action takes place, regardless of whether this action will bring success or not. “Purely value-rational,” we read in the writings of M. Weber, “one acts who, without considering the possible consequences, acts in accordance with his convictions and does what he thinks his duty requires of him, his understanding of dignity , beauty, its religious precepts, reverence or the importance of what... "deeds".

An example of value-rational action can, for example, be considered the statement of the leader of the German Reformation of the 16th century. Martin Luther, who, in response to the demand of papal Rome to repent and renounce his views, replied: “I cannot and do not want to renounce, because it is dangerous and impossible to go against my conscience. .

8. Affective action - action under the influence of affects and feelings. In the case of an affective action, just as in the case of a value-rational one, the goal of the action is the action itself, and not something else (result, success, etc.); side effects in both the first and second cases are not taken into account.

4. Traditional action is action under the influence of habit, tradition.

The real behavior of an individual, according to Weber, is determined, as a rule, by two or more types of action; there are whole rational, and value-rational, and affective, and traditional moments in it. In different types of societies, certain types of action can dominate: in traditional societies, traditional and affective types of social action predominate, in industrial societies - the whole and value-rational.

What does the whole of rational action mean for society and its growth structure? This means that the way of managing the economy and management is being rationalized. Moreover, this process concerns not only the economy, but also politics, science, culture - all spheres of public life. The way of thinking of people, their way of feeling and way of life in general is also rationalized. This is accompanied by an increase in the role of science, which, according to Weber, is the pure embodiment of the principle of rationality. The penetration of science into all spheres of life is evidence of the universal rationalization of modern society.

Compared to Karl Marx, Max Weber paid much less attention to class conflict and the impact of economics on social life. In The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (p904-p906) he explored the relationship between social organization and religious values. Faith prompted the Protestants to selfless work, frugality, personal responsibility for their life path. These qualities contributed to the development of modern capitalism. Capitalism, according to the scientist, was formed and spread in the process of development of science, modern technology, bureaucracy and rationalization of society.