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Max Weber Iron Cage Essay

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“IRON CAGE”
In the fast moving times of the modern world, human beings have become very calculating, manipulative and running after the material pursuit in which they are eventually getting trapped into the invisible prison from which escape is almost impossible. This is what Max Weber meant by the metaphor "Iron Cage". Max Weber, a great thinker and a well known German Sociologist coined the term "An Iron Cage" in his works in early 1900’s. According to him the modern era human beings, especially in the western capitalist society are increasingly being caught in the process of Rationalism and the factors related to it such as, Bureaucracy, Disenchantment and Individualism. Through this essay we intent to agree with Weber about how he thought that Modern Capitalism in which people are rational is literally inescapable process in which they are getting locked into, and this ultimately gives rise to bureaucracy. We will give some evidences proving Weber ideas on how the protestant ethics contributed to the rise of capitalism and also show how there are no solid alternatives to this problem of bureaucracy.

In his book "Protestantism and the Spirit of Capitalism", Weber told us the Protestants who started off with an Ascetic life to whom their work was there "calling" i.e. their only purpose in life was to work all day and not get pleasure from the fruits of their labour as self consumption was considered morally wrong because they were not to enjoy the money they earn on themselves. But later on with the emergence of the modern capitalism, the Protestants eventually ended up in focussing more on the pursuit of money. They started applying rational and scientific methods in the ways of making...

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