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with extinction by the inexorable expansion of calculation, manipulation,
and instumental rationality.
Many interpreters take this depiction as Weber's actual characterization
of our times. He is then portrayed as a dour and haunted figure, as fatalis–
tic and despairing, yet also as an heroic, stoical, and brooding giant who
carried the bleak burdens of the twentieth century upon his broad shoul–
ders.
It must be acknowledged that Weber's view of modernity was far from
that of fin de siecle Anglo-Saxon theorists, who hailed the coming of the
industrial age as "progress," a new advance of civilization, and a further
stage in the triumphant evolution of mankind. He also parted ways with
all "theorists of democracy" who discovered in the industrialized world a
broad civic realm of open participation, public ideals and ethics, and per–
sonal liberties. Moreover, had he still been wri ting in the 1950s, he would
have sharply disagreed wi th the "modernization" theorists, all of whom
asserted (in one way or another) that industrialization itself calls forth
democracy and that democracy's advance proceeds apace with industrial–
Ism.
Nonetheless, Weber's complex view of the twentieth century cannot be
encapsulated by the iron cage metaphor. Rather than a reali ty or short-term
scenario, the iron cage was Weber's nightmare that
might
be on our horizon.
Moreover, Weber in many ways welcomed the modern world, in particular
the freedoms and rights it bestowed upon individuals and the very notion
of the autonomous individual. He scorned the past, as well as the naive
romanticism of most of his colleagues: "Mter all, it is a gross deception to
believe that wi thout the achievements of the age of the Rights of Man any
one of us, including the most conservative, can go on living his life." He
spoke and wrote on behalf of strong and contending political parties, of the
constitutional division of powers, of an "ethic of responsibility" for politi–
cians, constitutional guarantees of civil liberties, and the extension of
suffrage. He argued vehemently that democracy would be possible only
where strong parliaments existed, which he saw as training grounds for
political leaders of the "plebiscitory leadership democracy" he advocated.
And he sought to erect mechanisms that would sustain pluralistic, compet–
ing interest groupings in order to check the power of bureaucracies, for "we
... partisans of 'democratic' institutions ... are swimming 'against the tide'
of material constellations." Rather than the fatalism and despair so promi–
nent among his contemporaries in Germany, particularly Nietzsche and
Georg Simmel, he mixed skepticism with appreciation.
In
fact, the common
portrayal of Weber as perceiving the twentieth century as an iron cage is
derived largely from his political and social-philosophical essays rather than
from his sociology. Weber's comparative-historical sociology is far more dif–
ferentiated. There his posture regarding modern industrial and urban
