Kapitalismus als Beruf

Veranstaltungsnummer: 262811 – als .ics herunterladen

Capitalism as a Vocation: “Das Kapital” and the Work Ethic
Lecture
Tuesday, 18 October 2020 – 6pm

This English-language event introduces an excerpt from Thomas M. Kemple's new book on the reception of Das Kapital by classical sociologists. In the lecture, Kemple focuses on Marx's view of the theory of modern capitalist production as it is taken up in Max Weber's writings on the modern economic order and its ascetic work ethic.
Weber developed an analytically sustained and independent reading of Marx's theory of the capitalist mode of production. In particular, he deepened Marx's discussion of machinery and large-scale industry. In doing so, Weber showed how the ethical motivation stemming from the Protestant idea of industrious labour in a "vocation" or “profession” formed the ideational basis for the "formally free labour" that Marx had declared to be the foundation of capitalism.
Weber also examined how the separation of workers from the means of production forms the pattern for similar institutional arrangements in state bureaucracies and other modern professions.
Kemple makes clear in his lecture that both Marx and Weber assume that action in the world is the precondition, if not the ultimate aim, of modern knowledge and understanding of the world. Kemple develops this similarity and overlap in the work of Marx and Weber following a perspective already inherent in the “Faust” legend.
Thomas M. Kemple is Professor of Sociology at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver. He is one of the leading experts on sociological classics and author of the acclaimed book “Reading Marx Writing” (Stanford University Press).
Robert Jungmann holds the junior professorship in sociology with a focus on the sociology of work and organisation at the University of Trier.