Abstract
Talcott Parsons is one of the most famous American sociologists, yet he was trained as an economist. During the nineteen twenties and into the thirties, Parsons concentrated on the concept of modern capitalism and he wrote extensively on the works of Werner Sombart and Max Weber. Unfortunately, Parsons’ early writings on modern capitalism have not received the scrutiny they deserve because they reveal that Parsons was a competent economist and could have been regarded as an heir to Weber’s economic sociology. However, his increasing interest in society may have prompted his move from economics to the developing discipline of sociology. This essay is an exploration of Parsons’ early writings on modern capitalism and it focuses on his Heidelberg dissertation, his two articles derived from that dissertation as well as a number of other shorter works. This essay reveals his conception of modern capitalism through his analyses of Sombart and Weber and shows that the young Parsons had a promising future as an economist.
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Notes
There is only a handful of exceptions: Bruce Wearne along with, Günter Stummvoll, Uta Gerhardt, Charles Camic, and Mariano Longo.
Frank Knight had translated the Hellmann and Palyi 1923 edition of Weber’s Wirtschafts-geschichte and it was published in 1927 as General Economic History. Weber 1927. However, Weber’s later Munich lectures did not have the same impact that Parsons’ translation of the Protestantische Ethik und der Geist des Kapitalismus had in 1930. For Knight’s and Parsons’ efforts to introduce Weber’s thinking to American scholars and students, see Scaff 2011: 198–199. Longo maintains that Parsons’ two articles helped introduce both Sombart and Weber to scholars in the U.S. Longo 2015: 148, 151. Uta Gerhardt maintains that Parsons brought Weber’s thinking to the United States where it found a long-term home. And, it was Parsons who helped reintroduce Weber to Germans at the 1964 Deutsche Gesellschaft für Soziologie which was dedicated to Max Weber. Gerhardt also wrote of an encounter in New York in 2005 with an editorial assistant who insisted that “Weber had not been German”, but was an “American theorist.” It took much convincing that Weber was indeed a German. Gerhardt 2019: 107; Gerhardt 2016: 11.
There are other works which Parsons published in the 1930s which are integral for understanding Parson’s general sociological thinking, but are beyond the specific focus of this essay.
The first edition was published in 1923 and was 44 pages. Salin 1923. Salin would publish a second edition in 1929 that at 110 pages was more than double the original edition. A third edition followed more than a decade later and was also enlarged. Although economic history would remain one of Salin’s interest, he also wrote on Plato and Augustine as well as on Friedrich Nietzsche and Stefan George. He was also the editor of a later “Festschrift” for his former Heidelberg colleague Alfred Weber.
In an important article Grundmann and Stehr reminded us that during his lifetime, Werner Sombart was more famous than Max Weber. While now most students know what is meant by the “Weber thesis”, very few know that there is also the “Sombart thesis.” Grundmann and Stehr 2001: 258.
One of the disagreements between Gerhardt and Stummvoll and Wearne revolves around Parsons’ competency in German. Gerhardt maintains that Parsons “barely” (“kaum”) spoke German when he arrived in Heidelberg in 1925. Parsons 2019: 6; Gerhardt 2019: 108. In contrast, Wearne maintained that Parsons learned German while a student at the Horace Mann School for Boys and then became more proficient while studying Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason with Otto Manthey-Zorn at Amherst during his senior year (1923–1924). As a result, the three-month language course that Parsons took in Vienna during the summer of 1925 “should be seen as a refresher course.” And, Wearne insisted that “It would also seem highly unlikely that his Amherst professor and correspondent, Otto Manthey-Zorn, would have encouraged the young student to study in the German language in Heidelberg if he had little facility in doing so.” Parsons 2018: 13, 21, 24.
It is noteworthy that Passow insisted that Sombart followed Marx in the first edition of Der moderne Kapitalismus but did not change much of his view in the second edition. Even more noteworthy is the fact that Marx is referenced the most times at 14 and Sombart is a close second at 11. In contrast Böhm-Bawerk has 3, von Wieser 3, and Menger 7. Brentano has 5, Schmoller 8, and Knies 6. Max Weber has 4.
Sombart had written in Die Bourgeois that “Der vorkapitalistische Mensch: das ist der natürliche Mensch. Der Mensch, wie ihn Gott geschaffen hat.” Sombart 1913: 11.
Parsons not only continued to rely on von Schelting, but he enthusiastically promoted his work. In 1934 von Schelting published Max Webers Wissenschaftslehre and Parsons reviewed it in the American Sociological Review. Parsons regarded it as a secondary work of “the first rank” and that it is “an important contribution in its own right.” Parsons regarded it highly because von Schelting not only tells us what Weber said, but what he should have said—he “has brought Weber’s position up to date”. That is problematic in itself, but Parsons followed von Schelting in insisting that Weber was a “neo-Kantian” and that he followed Rickert. And, Parsons followed von Schelting’s claim that Weber used his ideal type in a “generalizing” and “individualizing” manner and that von Schelting corrected him in the “Rickert-Weber-Schelting” position. Parsons 1936: 675–678.
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Adair-Toteff, C. Parsons as Economist: His Early Writings on Modern Capitalism. Am Soc 52, 19–37 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12108-021-09476-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12108-021-09476-2