This week’s column discussed Max Weber’s theory outlining the strengthens of bureaucratic administration (in both the public and private sectors) and also mentioned the much more negative tract Bureaucracy by Ludwig von Mises of the Austrian school of economics. (As mentioned previously, the Austrians were particularly sceptical of the efficacy of state action.)
But I didn’t have space to explore the links between the two men. This is from Wikipedia:
[Weber's] “action sociology”, as they called it, was a frequent topic in the “Mises Circle”, an influential group headed by Ludwig von Mises, a key figure in the Austrian School . . . [Austrian school co-founder Freidrich von] Hayek also frequently attended these discussions, and the subjective method advanced in his The Counter-Revolution of Science: Studies in the Abuse of Reason (1952) reflects these influences. Ludwig Lachmann, a later member of the Austrian School, made explicit the Austrian School’s indebtedness to the Weberian method.
Interestingly, given their methodological and sociological differences, Weber and Mises were not only acquainted, they shared an admiration for each other’s work. Mises considered Weber a “great genius” and his death a blow to Germany. Likewise, Weber comments that Mises’s Theory of Money and Credit is the monetary theory most acceptable to him[66]. Weber accepted Ludwig von Mises’s criticism of socialist economic planning and added his own argument. He believed that under socialism workers would still work in a hierarchy, but that now the hierarchy would be fused with government. Instead of dictatorship of the worker, he foresaw dictatorship of the official.
