Max Weber Democracy And Democracy

Max Weber (1864-1920), a prominent theorist of social science, had already witnessed both democracy and capitalism unfold and function in both Europe and the United States when he began writing at the turn of the 20th century. He followed in the footsteps of other social scientists and scholars such as Karl Marx, Friedrich Nietzsche, Charles Darwin, and Emile Durkheim who had all produced literary works in the 19th century. In 1905, while writing The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism and pondering the effects of a “modern market economy” on the future of democracy, Weber asked, “How are freedom and democracy in the long run at all possible under the domination of highly developed capitalism?” (Gerth and Mills 1958, 71). Weber was

Both democracy and capitalism have the end goals of individual autonomy and freedom. According to Tamsin Shaw, an Associate Professor of European and Mediterranean Studies and Philosophy at New York University, Weber “viewed the democratic ideal as an ideal of freedom, where freedom is constitutional by meaningful action or action guided by substantive rationality” (Shaw 39). In essence, the goal of a democracy is to achieve greater individual autonomy and to encourage political participation in government. A modern democracy ensures its citizens freedoms such as the freedom of speech, freedom of property, the right to contract, and the right to free association. These rights and freedoms are the building blocks of capitalism and are necessary for capitalism to function effectively. Likewise, the goal of capitalism is “freedom to pursue self-interest that leads to the best outcome for society as a whole” (“Capitalism, Markets, and Morality” 1). In short, the objective of capitalism is to lead to freedom to make individual decisions based upon their

The freedom of the proletariat is at stake when this divide exists because they are often coerced to stay in their low paying jobs in unfair working conditions in order to provide for their family. For this reason, the possibility of upward mobility is slim. This is the primary reason why Adam Smith stated that government is necessary for the economic system of capitalism to function in a way that is beneficial to those which it reigns