Capitalism, Weber and Democracy

Weber’s occasional interventions in political debates, particularly towards the end of and just after the First World War, throw an interesting light upon his socio-logical thought and tell us much about his attitude towards modern society. In particular, if one gives due weight to the late political commentaries there are grounds for doubting the increasingly popular view of him as an ambivalent or pessimistic theorist of modernity. Against such a view, the political essays suggest that his support for political, cultural and economic modernization is clear, though highly instrumental. He sees in rational capitalism and in representative democ-racy a means to a modernizing revolution in which barriers to economic and polit-ical development can be overcome. The article concludes with the suggestion that America provides the implicit model of modernization