Max Weber as an Economist and as a Sociologist: Towards a Fuller Understanding of Weber's View of Economics - Critical Essay

American Journal of Economics and Sociology, The, Oct, 1999 by Richard Swedberg

The Outline consists of two texts that Weber printed up and privately distributed to his students in the introductory economics course. [3] The first is a list of 23 pages which cites literature for each of the twenty sections into which the course was divided ("The Tasks and Methods of Theoretical Economics," "The Economy and Its Elementary Phenomena," and so on). It seems likely that the list is for the course in introductory economics that Weber gave during the summer term of 1898 in Heidelberg. The second writing is 34 pages long and summarizes Weber's lectures on two of the course's twenty sections. What we can learn from the first text are primarily two things: what economic literature Weber saw as relevant for his students of economics, and the overall structure of his course. From the second text we get to know Weber's exact reasoning in a small part of the course. Put together, the two texts provide a unique picture of how Weber viewed economics and how he wanted to communicate its essence to his students.

A few words about the literature that Weber cites in the first of these two texts--some 600 works in all--are in order. Weber, as we would expect, cites various writings from the German Historical School, which at the time totally dominated economic discourse in his native country. The overwhelming number of works are furthermore-again as one would expect--in German. But Weber also refers the student to the works of the opponents of the German Historical School, such as Carl Menger and Friedrich von Wieser. Since the Austrians wrote in German, it is perhaps not so surprising that Weber would include them among his references. That Weber had a good overview of contemporary economics, going well beyond the German contributions, is however also clear; and he cites, for example, the works of Walras, Marshall and Jevons. What a quick look at Weber's literature lists makes the reader suspect--and this is a point I shall soon return to--is that Weber was not a wholehearted proponent of the German Historical School, but in reality quite positive to analytical economics of the British and Austrian type.

The literature list not only states what works Weber wanted his students to be aware of; it also gives us a bird's-eye view of how Weber looked at the field of economics: what topics economics should include and, to some extent, how economists should go about their business. It could perhaps be argued that what Weber taught in his introductory course was just the standard version of economics in those days, and that his reading list tells us little about Weber's own view of the field. To settle this question for good one would probably have to compare Weber's course outline with those of other economists in Germany at the time. Such a comparison would no doubt increase our capacity to evaluate Weber's course. It is however doubtful that the result of such a comparison would show that Weber simply followed some kind of general model of how introductory economics was taught at the time. For one thing, German professors of economics liked very much to present their own view of things; and for another, Weber was far too independent a scholar to simply do what others did.