ABSTRACT
One of the most influential visions of capitalism in the twentieth century was derived from the theory of rationalization. The theory was coined by the sociologist Max Weber early in the century. Weber was sensitive to the changing historical dynamic of capitalism. Modern societies, he understood, had come to equate reason with rationalization, rationalization with development, and development with growth. Weber observed that this complex equation had buried within it an ethic. This ethic was a re-statement of the Protestant ethic. It rested on a paradox: that less is more. By being austere, trimming waste, cutting slack, reducing expenditure, a company and an economy could grow. Accordingly, austere or ascetic behavior led to riches. The Weberian capitalist in other words was an ascetic in order (paradoxically) to produce wealth, a contrary non-ascetic condition. Many critics of rationalization today criticize riches in the name of an equally austere view of the world. They respond to Protestant asceticism with their own brand of authoritarian and moralizing asceticism. Romantic anti-capitalists criticize the wealth produced by industrial development and capitalist growth on the basis that it offends their ascetic sensibility, an outlook they impute to society as a whole. Less, in their eyes, ought to produce not more but less. Only the ascetic elite should enjoy more, in virtue of their virtue.
