Search

Max Weber's work is seldom beyond criticism, and a good deal of it is controversial. Some regard Weber's main contribution on Economy and Society as too aridly typological, even as they perhaps also concede its very considerable stature. There are those who do Weber less than justice because they are offended by a nationalism that repels them even after all qualifications, such as those suggested by Weber's political prudence and sagacity and impatience with political quackery, have been made. But Weber clearly suffers in part from the very massiveness of his achievement. No one could write so much and on so great a variety of matters as he did without making mistakes. And his nationalism, as has just been suggested in effect, did not inhibit great penetration and understanding of many political and social phenomena. In any ease, given Weber's limitations, given a variety of reservations about his performance, that performance in the end remains so outstanding that for many sociologists Weber is unequivocally the intellectual hero of their field up to the present time—the charismatic figure from the past of sociology. It is no doubt a pious thing to look back on him once again after fifty years, but the following observations are not motivated by piety, commendable as it might be if they were. They are rather motivated by a desire to take a somewhat unconventional look at the structure of Weber's sociological thought and to make some suggestions about wisdom and science in sociology today to which Weber's thought appears to give reinforcement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is in two parts. The first section describes the relationship of a number of variables to political status and their relationship to each other. The second section deals with the kind of predictions that might have been made with these data and the relative efficiency of one type of prediction compared to another. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]