Parsons as Translator of Max Weber

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History of European Ideas 33 (2007) 212–233

Talcott Parsons as translator of Max Weber’s basicsociological categories$

Keith Tribe

Driftway, The Norrest, Leigh Sinton, Malvern, Worcs. WR13 5EH, UK

Available online 26 January 2007

Abstract

The first four chapters of Max Weber’s Economy and Society presented by Talcott Parsons in 1947

as Theory of Social and Economic Organization present a coherent and complete analysis of social,

economic and political structures based upon a consistent theory of social action and its

understanding. Parsons did not see them this way. His lengthy introduction sought to insert them

into his own ‘‘action frame of reference’’, and his rearrangement of the text made it difficult for a

reader to understand why it was constructed the way that it is. This essay describes how Parsons came

to be principal translator and editor of the text, examines the changes that he made to it, and links his

editorial practice to the analytical procedures that he followed in his Structure of Social Action.

r 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Weber; Talcott Parsons; Structure of social action; Economy and Society

I

Twenty-five years ago, closing the first of a series of major essays on Max Weber,Wilhelm Hennis drew attention to the unreliability of English translations of Max Weber’swriting.1 Citing the passage from the 1913 essay on value-freedom where Weber argues

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www.elsevier.com/locate/histeuroideas

0191-6599/$ - see front matter r 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

doi:10.1016/j.histeuroideas.2006.11.001

$This essay is developed from a paper originally presented in June 2005 at a conference on Max Weber’s Basic

Sociological Concepts at ZiF, Bielefeld University; an earlier version of the present paper was published as

‘‘Talcott Parsons als Ubersetzer der ‘Soziologischen Grundbegriffe’ Max Webers’’. Max Webers ‘Grundbegriffe’.

Kategorien der kultur- und sozialwissenschaftlichen Forschung. Ed. Klaus Lichtblau. (Wiesbaden: Verlag fur

Sozialwissenschaften, 2006) 337–366.

E-mail address: [email protected] Hennis. ‘‘Max Weber’s ‘Central Question’.’’ Max Weber’s Central Question, 2nd edition. (Newbury:

Threshold Press, 2000) 49–50.

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that one should assess every order of social relations in terms of its anthropologicalconsequences,2 Hennis suggests that a student could do worse than write this passage downon a piece of paper and refer to it whenever Weber referred to social structures orinstitutions. However, he went on, it was important that the passage be written downcorrectly. If one read this passage in the existing English translation a rather different ideacame across: which human type has the best chance of entering leading positions.The anthropological perspective upon social relations gives way to an analysis ofsocial mobility.3

Since the early 1980s the central importance of Max Weber in shaping the social sciencesof the twentieth century has become increasingly accepted; but this has also beenaccompanied by a growing acknowledgement that the Max Weber known to Englishreaders around the world bears only a passing resemblance to the original. This is partly todo with the way in which individual works have been translated, as Hennis so strikinglyemphasised. But the selectivity with which Weber’s writings have been made available hasalso had important consequences. During the later 1940s three major selections werepublished: Gerth and Mills’ From Max Weber in 1946; Parsons’s Theory of Social and

Economic Organization in 1947; and Shils and Finch’s Methodology of the Social Sciences

in 1949. The first consisted mainly of selections from Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft Part III4

and the first volume of the Religionssoziologie, plus the lectures on science and on politics5;the second was a translation of the first four chapters of Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft; andthe third consisted of three essays from the Wissenschaftslehre. All three publications wereconceived by their editors as templates for the postwar development of the social sciences6;Max Weber became in this way the theoretical touchstone for a new American sociologythat flourished with the international expansion of university teaching in the 1950s and1960s.7 The ‘‘sociological theory’’ with which I was first acquainted in the late 1960s wascertainly American in origin; but this went beyond the English-speaking world, forpostwar German sociology drew on the same sources.8 This is not then merely a parochialstory of Anglophones being ‘‘lost in translation’’: Fritz Ringer in his recent ‘‘intellectualbiography’’ consistently references Weber in the original German, but adheres to the viewthat Weber ‘‘changed direction’’ in 1902 and proceeds to construct an account of Weber’swork entirely consistent with the broad stream of postwar American sociology.9

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2Max Weber. ‘‘Der Sinn der ‘Wertfreiheit’ der soziologischen und okonomischen Wissenschaften’’. Gesammelte

Aufsatze zur Wissenschaftslehre, 5th edition. (Tubingen: J.C.B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck), 1982) 517.3The translation is that of Edward Shils and Henry A. Finch. ‘‘The Meaning of ‘Ethical Neutrality’ in Sociology

and Economics.’’ Max Weber on the Methodology of the Social Sciences. (New York: Free Press, 1949) 27.4From the 1922 Tubingen edition.5It also included the 1904 St. Louis address, a text whose importance has long been overlooked, even though it

was the only part of Weber’s work actually published in English during his lifetime. See Peter Ghosh’s important

reassessment and ‘‘retranslation’’ of the Address, ‘‘Not the Protestant Ethic? Max Weber at St. Louis.’’ History of

European Ideas 31 (2005) 367–407; and ‘‘MaxWeber on ‘The Rural Community’: A Critical Edition of the English

Text.’’ History of European Ideas 31 (2005) 327–366.6Although of course Gerth and Mills did not share the perspective of Parsons and Shils.7See Arthur J. Vidich’s essay on the creation and diffusion of sociology as systems theory—‘‘The Department of

Social Relations and ‘Systems Theory’ at Harvard: 1948–50.’’ International Journal of Politics, Culture and Society

13:4 (2000) 607–648.8And when as a student I saw Jurgen Habermas lecture in Cambridge in 1969, his presentation was entirely

consistent with American systems theory, to my great dismay.9Fritz Ringer. Max Weber. An Intellectual Biography. (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2004). Although he

scrupulously cites where possible from the Gesamtausgabe, his arguments are broadly American in origin.

K. Tribe / History of European Ideas 33 (2007) 212–233 213

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The view that Weber ‘‘changed direction’’ when recovering from his breakdown is notsimply a methodological belief adhered to with some obstinacy; it is a view underwritten bythe history of Weber translation into English. Max Weber died in June 1920, leaving abody of published work, a substantial correspondence, and some unpublished writings,chiefly drafts for his contribution to the Grundriss der Sozialokonomik of which he waseditor. His last complete course of lectures was delivered during the Winter Semester of1919 at the University of Munich under the title ‘‘AbriX der universalen Sozial- undWirtschaftsgeschichte’’. The lectures were reconstructed from student notes by Hellmann,Professor of History in Munich, with the assistance of Melchior Palyi, and published in1923 as Wirtschaftsgeschichte von Max Weber. AbriX der universalen Sozial- und

Wirtschaftsgeschichte.10 Frank Knight, Professor of Economics at Chicago, translatedthis book and published it as General Economic History in 1927,11 omitting however the‘‘Begriffliche Vorbemerkung’’12 since he believed this section to have been written by theeditors as a summary of relevant points from Economy and Society Chapter 2.Since Knight also did away with most of the footnotes his version of the Wirtschafts-

geschichte resembles one of many such general introductory histories, and its linkage toWeber’s other writings has, to my knowledge, never been systematically explored inthe literature.In June 1925 Talcott Parsons went to study in Heidelberg, more or less coincidentally

since the German–American student exchange scheme13 that provided him with hisscholarship was based there. Here he encountered the work of Max Weber for the firsttime, met Marianne Weber and Else von Richthofen, and first became acquaintedwith Weber’s Protestant Ethic. During 1925–1926 he worked on a thesis under Edgar Salin,then returned to Amherst where he became a tutor in freshman economics and taught hisown senior course, ‘‘Recent European Social Developments and Social Theories’’.He returned to Heidelberg to finish his degree requirements, and was approved for adoctorate in July 1927, awarded in 1929 following publication of his essay on Weber inthe Journal of Political Economy.14 In the autumn of 1927 he had moved from Amherstto an appointment in the Harvard Department of Economics, and during the 1930splayed an increasingly important part in developing the teaching of sociology atHarvard.15

In 1930 Parsons published his translation of the Protestant Ethic, now Weber’s mostfamous work, but a book that did not at first gain widespread recognition in the English-speaking world.16 If we note that by the mid-1930s Weber was represented in English bythe 1904 St. Louis address, the General Economic History and the Protestant Ethic, itwould seem obvious today that it was the last of these translations that formed the turning

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10Duncker und Humblot, Munich, 1923.11Greenberg Publishers, New York, 1927.12Wirtschaftsgeschichte, 1–16.13The forerunner of the Deutsche Akademische Austauschdienst.14‘‘‘Capitalism’ in Recent German Literature: Sombart and Weber’’. Journal of Political Economy 36 (1928)

641–661 (on Sombart); 37 (1929) 31–51 (on Weber).15C. Camic. ‘‘Introduction: Talcott Parsons before The Structure of Social Action.’’ Talcott Parsons. The Early

Essays. Ed. Camic. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991) xix–xxiii.16M. Weber. The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. Trans. T. Parsons. (London: Allen and Unwin,

1930). Sales barely reached 1000 by the end of 1933—see G. Oakes and A.J. Vidich. Collaboration, Reputation, and

Ethics in American Academic Life. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1999) fn. 10 p. 157.

K. Tribe / History of European Ideas 33 (2007) 212–233214

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point in the reception.17 However, the opening sentences of Parsons’ ‘‘Introduction’’ toTheory of Social and Economic Organization note that these last two works ‘‘y form awholly inadequate basis on which to understand the general character of his contributionsto social science’’, suggest that Weber ‘‘never completed a systematic work’’, that there are‘‘exceedingly important systematic elements in his thought’’ and that this new work‘‘contains the nearest approach to a comprehensive statement of these elements of all hispublished works.18 The reader might infer from this that Parsons conceived this translationproject so that Weber’s significance might finally be fully appreciated; but as we shall see,two separate translation projects predate his own involvement with these four chaptersfrom Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft.

It is however true that publication of the General Economic History and the Protestant

Ethic had not made a very great impact on the contemporary social sciences by the mid-1930s. Oakes and Vidich note that before 1934 Max Weber was barely mentioned inAmerican sociological literature, none of his works having been reviewed in the American

Journal of Sociology despite the fact that reviews of foreign-language works were thencommon in English and American social science journals. It was instead the publication ofParsons’ Structure of Social Action in 1937 that would become an important initialfoundation for wider acquaintance with Max Weber, and which we can also here use toilluminate some of the choices Parsons made in translating Weber.19 Furthermore,Structure of Social Action belongs to the period immediately preceding Parsons’involvement in the translation of Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft Chapters 1–4, such that itschoices and emphases can be taken as those that Parsons would make when confrontedonce more with the task of translating Weber. Parsons had no plan to follow up theStructure of Social Action with a new translation of Weber. The initiative came instead froma British publisher that had already commissioned a translation of the first two chapters ofWirtschaft und Gesellschaft, and sought Parsons’ advice on the quality of the drafts.

II

Talcott Parsons’ edition of Weber’s The Theory of Social and Economic Organization

was published in 1947. The title page of the Free Press edition, the version with which themajority of readers are most likely familiar, states that the translation is by A.M.Henderson and Talcott Parsons, edited and introduced by Parsons. Parsons writes in his‘‘Preface’’ that the project dated from the later 1930s, when he was commissioned by theEdinburgh publisher William Hodge to revise and edit a translation of Chapters 1 and 2 ofWirtschaft und Gesellschaft made by A.M. Henderson.20 He refers to the published versionof these chapters as ‘‘a rather free revision’’ of Henderson’s draft, noting also that warservice had prevented Henderson from submitting the planned translations of Chapters 3

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17Two further articles have also recently been discovered in The Americana. A Universal Reference Library Vol.

7 which have been republished in the Kolner Zeitschrift fur Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie Bd. 57/1, (March

2005).18T. Parsons. ‘‘‘‘Introduction’’ to Max Weber.’’ The Theory of Social and Economic Organization. (New York:

Free Press, 1964) 3.19We should however not overlook the impact of the arrival of a number of German social scientists in the

United States—among them Hans Gerth, Emil Lederer, Albert Salomon, and Hans Speier—familiar with Weber’s

writings.20Talcott Parsons. ‘‘Preface’’ to Theory of Social and Economic Organization [TSEO] v.


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and 4, these being Parsons’ work entirely. Parsons also acknowledges that he was givensight of a draft translation of Chapter 1 Section 1 by Alexander von Schelting and EdwardShils, so that the version of Chapter 1 Section 1 published in 1947 represents Parsons’ finaldecision after his review of two pre-existing versions. His translation was later used in Rothand Wittich’s full edition of Economy and Society, without significant revision to the text,but omitting some of Parsons’ explanatory notes. Importantly, Roth and Wittich did notrestore the changes that Parsons had made to the layout and format, discussed below. Theversion of the translation appearing in Roth and Wittich’s edition is thereforesubstantively much the same as Parsons’ original,21 but less useful in that it does noteven have all the footnotes in which Parsons explained his choices as translator. Thereference text for the first four chapters of Economy and Society is therefore the 1947version, and not that printed in Roth and Wittich’s edition of Economy and Society. Butthere is some ambiguity in referring to the ‘‘1947 version’’, since there are in fact twoseparate 1947 editions.Parsons acknowledged the ‘‘persistence of the English publishers’’ in overcoming the

problems created by the war, and noted that the American edition ‘‘has been reprintedfrom the page proofs of the English’’,22 suggesting that the American edition simplyreproduces the English. This is however inaccurate. The English edition from WilliamHodge has an entirely different page layout, is of a different page size, and uses a differentfont. The American edition was evidently entirely reset from the English page proofs.However, the only evident substantial difference between the two texts is the Americanomission of the original German running page numbers in the margin of the Englishedition. Given the delays to publication and the problems of communication betweenParsons in Harvard and the editorial office in London, we should note that the resetting ofthe entire text in the United States would have given Parsons the opportunity of revisingboth his lengthy introduction and the text itself. Cursory examination of the two versionsreveals no textual discrepancies, which suggests that he did not make use of thisopportunity. Nonetheless, the American version with which most readers are familiarremains a second edition, and not the original.There is nothing in the Parsons correspondence that would directly explain this seven-

year delay in publication, from late 1939 to the spring of 1947, and the differences betweenthe English and American editions. Parsons’ comment that the American edition wasreprinted from the English page proofs does suggest that the English version came first;and if we assume that Parsons moved on to write his introduction soon after completingthe translation, then it would have been possible for the book to have been set in Englandin early 1940. The layout and format were dictated by the Hodge publication series ofwhich it was a part; but 1940 was hardly the best time and place for a work of this sort tobe printed, let alone published. If the text was set in London, it is quite possible thatprogress was disrupted by the Blitz, and in any case paper became subject to rationing,allocations being made directly to publishers. Consequently it is possible that progress washalted, and that when page proofs were eventually available, the American publisher,

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21Roth and Wittich indicate that all the translations included in their edition of Economy and Society have been

systematically reviewed and revised where necessary (G. Roth. ‘‘Introduction’’ to M. Weber.’’ Economy and

Society. An Outline of Interpretive Sociology. (New York: Bedminster Press, 1968) xxv–xxvi), but for about the

first half of Chapter 1 they follow Parsons even in his inaccuracies. From Section 6. onwards they begin to make

changes to Parsons, oddly enough for the worse, since at this point Parsons’ text improves in clarity and accuracy.22Parsons. ‘‘Preface.’’ (TSEO ) v.


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Oxford University Press, found the page size unsuitable for their market, and started allover again for this reason only. The New York branch of Oxford University Presspublished Gerth and Mills’ From Max Weber in 1946, so why it took another year for thisbook to be put together and published remains uncertain.

Parsons does make clear in his ‘‘Preface’’ that he was not the originator of the project,but was at first responding to an approach from William Hodge regarding a drafttranslation prepared by Henderson. The actual sequence of events can be reconstructedfrom his side of the correspondence with the publishers,23 and casts a considerable amountof light on the problems of translating Weber into English.

William Hodge and Company was formally a London publisher, but it had begun inGlasgow during the 1880s and also had an office in Edinburgh, where William Hodge lived(Parsons corresponded with James Hodge in London). William Hodge had studied musicin Leipzig, but, unable to pursue a career as a professional musician, he had become headof the family publishing firm.24 In the later 1930s he became friendly with Ragnar Nurkse,who, with Friedrich Hayek’s support, persuaded William Hodge to embark on a series oftranslations of German and Austrian economic texts.25 One of Hayek’s proposals was thatHodge bring out a translation of the first two chapters of Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft, to befollowed with further chapters in a second volume. The same letter in which this initialintention is clarified also clearly states that Henderson had entered the project on the directrecommendation of Hayek, who had at some point previously met Henderson in Viennaand seen some of his work.26 Parsons’ involvement was initially indirect. Fritz Machlup,then at the Department of Economics, University of Buffalo, wrote to Parsons in February1938 to let him know that the translation of the ‘‘first part’’ of Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft

was almost complete, and that its translator, Alexander Henderson, was grateful thatParsons had agreed to look at the manuscript.27 Since neither Henderson nor the publisherhad Parsons’ precise address the manuscript was sent to Machlup in the autumn of 1938,and he then took it with him on a visit to Cambridge in November, leaving it there with acolleague who then took it to Parsons.28 By the time that Parsons became involved,therefore, the proposal to publish the first two chapters of Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft in

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23The papers and correspondence of William Hodge & Co. have been destroyed—information from Sir Alan

Peacock, phone conversation 19 April 2005.24See my interview with Sir Alan Peacock in Ed. Keith Tribe. Economic Careers. Economics and Economists in

Britain 1930– 1970. (London: Routledge, 1997) 199.25Among other William Hodge titles during this period are: Gottfried von Haberler. The Theory of International

Trade (1936) translated by Alfred Stonier and Frederic Benham; Oskar Morgenstern, The Limits of Economics

(1937) translated by Vera Smith; Fritz Machlup, The Stock Market, Credit and Capital Formation (1940)

translated by Vera Smith; Ludwig von Mises, Bureaucracy (1945), and Human Action (1949); Walter Eucken, The

Foundations of Economics (1950) translated by Terence Hutchison. Hayek’s fingerprints are all over this selection

of authors and translators; that Weber appeared in this company casts a completely fresh light on how his work

would have been received in Britain during the later 1940s and early 1950s, as opposed to the United States.26Letter from James H. Hodge to Talcott Parsons, 14 March 1939, Parsons Papers, Pusey Library, Harvard

University HUG(FP) 15.2 Box 13. I wish to thank Robin Carlaw and the Harvard University Archives for this

information, as well as Larry Scaff for his great generosity in giving me a full set of this correspondence.27Machlup signs off with greetings to Parsons’ family, suggesting that Parsons’ offer was a verbal one—

Machlup and Parsons had been corresponding since 1936 but there is no mention of the translation project until

this point. Fritz Machlup to Talcott Parsons, 16 February 1938, Machlup Papers, Hoover Institution Archives

Box 44 Folder 13. My thanks to Ronald M. Bulatoff and the Hoover Institution for making this material

available to me.28Parsons to Machlup, 27 November 1938; Machlup Papers, Hoover Institution Archives Box 44 Folder 13.


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English had been made, accepted, Henderson commissioned as translator, and drafttranslations completed for the envisaged two-chapter book. This must push the originalsuggestion by Hayek back into mid-1937, or even earlier, since the draft translation wassaid to be almost finished in early February 1938. Most likely, therefore, Henderson metHayek shortly after he had graduated from Cambridge in June 1936, the month of histwenty-second birthday.29 This is significant because it reversed the relationship that hadprevailed with the translation of Protestant Ethic between Parsons and Tawney, where theyoung Parsons had had to accede to Tawney’s editorial judgement.30 Henderson hadentirely sensible ideas about the problems of translating Weber into English, as we shallsee; but this time the roles were reversed and Parsons was quickly able to impose his ownwill on the existing project.Parsons received Henderson’s draft translations from Fritz Machlup in November 1938,

and his first letter to James Hodge comments at length, negatively, on their quality.31

Parsons explained that there were major technical problems in translating Chapter 1 fromGerman into English, using concepts and making arguments familiar to a German reader,but with no direct equivalents in the English language. He argued that if a translation wereto be attempted it would require careful editing and be provided with an

yextensive introduction which would provide a setting and prepare the reader forthe many difficulties of the work, and with quite full explanatory notes wherevermisinterpretation seemed at all likely.32

Simply presenting Weber’s chapters in a bald translation, by a non-specialist, would be,Parsons argued, ‘‘entirely inadequate’’. And his brief examination of Henderson’s drafttranslations showed that they required ‘‘thorough and extensive revision from start tofinish.’’ After making some points about English style and the meaning of Weber’s keyconcepts,33 Parsons

ystrongly advise[d] against publication of the translation in anything like its presentform. I would much rather see the work remain untranslated than have availableonly the present translation.34

Parsons had also heard directly from Henderson, who was under the impressionthat Parsons was prepared to revise the entire draft translation. This is of coursewhat he eventually did, but at this stage Parsons maintained that he could not, in theabsence of a ‘‘specific arrangement’’ with William Hodge & Company, take on such a task.He closed the letter by noting that he had seen the von Schelting and Shils translationof Chapter 1 Section 1, which seemed to be ‘‘a much better piece of work than

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29There is no correspondence in Hayek’s papers (held at the Hoover Institution) between Friedrich Hayek and

Alexander Henderson, nor any correspondence between Hayek and William Hodge and Company.30This contractual relationship between Parsons and Tawney has been brought to light by Larry Scaff’s article

in Max Weber Studies 5 (2) (2005) 205–228, ‘‘The Creation of the Sacred Text: Talcott Parsons Translates ‘The

Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism’.’’ The consequences of this relationship are discussed in the

following section.31Letter from Parsons to James Hodge, 26 January 1939, Parsons Papers, HUG(FP) 15.2 Box 13.32Parsons to Hodge, 26 January 1939.33The substance of these remarks, and Henderson’s response, is outlined below.34Parsons to Hodge, 26 January 1939.


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Mr. Henderson’s.’’35 He also suggested that the proposed volume should include ChapterIII, ‘‘Typen der Herrschaft’’.36

James Hodge forwarded these comments to Alexander Henderson and thenreplied to Parsons in mid-March, after he had received Henderson’s own observations.Hodge recognised the force of Parsons’ arguments, but his description of Henderson’sown response suggests that Henderson already understood the general pointsconcerning the problems of translating Max Weber’s prose into English.37 Thisrather suggests that Henderson’s drafts were not as randomly inaccurate and unin-formed as Parsons implied. James Hodge was reluctant to abandon the existingtranslation, in part for purely commercial considerations but also perhaps becauseHenderson had been recommended as a translator of Max Weber by Friedrich Hayek.He therefore proposed that Parsons formally assume an editorial role, and asked him toname a fee.

Parsons agreed to this proposal, and in response he argued that the planned volumeshould also include Chapters III and IV, the first four chapters forming, he wrote, ‘‘anatural unit’’, being ‘‘the outline of the conceptual framework into which the moreextended empirical material of the work was to be fitted.’’38 If this proposalwere acceptable, Parsons went on, Henderson could be asked to make the initialtranslation—lending further support to the view that Henderson’s translations were not sopoor that any editor would do better to simply start afresh.39 Henderson, according toHodge, immediately started work on Chapters III and IV,40 and by mid-May Parsonsaccepted the financial terms offered by William Hodge.41 In mid-June 1939, Parsonssent Henderson a sample translation of Chapter III Section 1, at the same time notingthat Henderson had given his drafts the working title ‘‘Economy and Society’’. Aswe have seen, Parsons had already argued that the first four chapters of Wirtschaft

und Gesellschaft formed a theoretical introduction to the later chapters—andhe accordingly suggested a different title: ‘‘The Theory of Social and EconomicOrganization.’’42

Parsons heard nothing from Henderson after sending the sample translation fromChapter III. Instead, he went ahead that summer and completed the translation on hisown, reporting in late September that the translated text was now complete.43 He had triedto use Henderson’s existing drafts where possible, but

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35Hence this draft dates, at the latest, from the autumn of 1938. No copy of this typescript is now in Parsons’

papers. Larry Scaff found a copy in Frank Knight’s papers which he has kindly made available to me. The closing

section of this paper includes a discussion of the von Schelting/Shils translation.36That is, Parsons proposed a substantial extension to the project as contracted with Henderson by Hodge,

which had envisaged the translation of Chapters 1 and 2 only.37Hodge to Parsons, 14 March 1939. The substantive points raised by Henderson are discussed in the final

section of this paper.38Letter from Parsons to James Hodge, 13 April 1939, Parsons Papers, HUG(FP) 15.2 Box 13.39Which was, for example, my experience with the Shils and Finch translation of Weber’s essay on objectivity.40Letter from Hodge to Parsons, 4 May 1939, Parsons Papers HUG(FP) 15.2 Box 13.41Letter from Parsons to James Hodge, 17 May 1939, Parsons Papers HUG(FP) 15.2 Box 13.42Letter from Parsons to James Hodge, 28 June 1939, Parsons Papers HUG(FP) 15.2 Box 13. In the same letter

he notes that no arrangements had been made for publication in the United States, and suggested that it would be

worthwhile arranging for an American edition bound from sheets supplied by Hodge.43Letter from Parsons to James Hodge, 25 September 1939, Parsons Papers HUG(FP) 15.2 Box 13.


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y I think the translation is really more mine than hisyA number of qualifiedpersons have sampled both texts and assure me that, apart from the technical matterof accuracy as such, I have succeeded in making it quite reasonably readable.44

Britain’s declaration of war on Germany in early September delayed furtherdevelopment of the project, and we can only guess when Parsons completed hisintroduction and added notes to the translation. The ‘‘Preface’’ to the American edition ofthe book is signed off ‘‘24 March 1947’’, suggesting that Parsons simply placed the projectto one side and waited for the British publisher to make plans for the book’s publicationonce the war had ended. Henderson had no further involvement. He joined the RoyalTank Regiment in the early months of the war45 and moved to a lectureship in Manchesteron demobilisation.46 He had gained a double first in Economics from Cambridge in 1936,and was appointed in 1937 to a lectureship in Edinburgh as successor to KennethBoulding.47 By 1949 he was Professor of Economic Theory at Manchester University—asignificant title in an important department—moving to the Carnegie Institute, Pittsburghin 1950, a very unusual move for a British economist in the early postwar years.48

Henderson’s draft translation does not appear to have survived,49 and so we cannotdirectly evaluate the degree to which Parsons drew on it. Nonetheless, the technicalrevisions Parsons made to the presentation of Weber’s chapters are of some significance,betraying his assumptions regarding the work of Max Weber. I turn now to these aspectsof the final text, before dealing more directly with Parsons’ translation practice.

III

Weber saw Chapters 1–4 through the press; we should assume that he wished it to be laidout as it was for a particular reason. Parsons discusses this at some length,50 and in sodoing demonstrates that he has failed to understand the structure and purpose of the textas a whole. He begins by stating that Weber’s text is organised ‘‘in a somewhat unusualmanner. He lays down certain fundamental definitions and then proceeds to commentupon them.’’ Chapters 1–4 do have a strongly logical structure akin to the alternation of

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44Parsons to Hodge, 25 September 1939.45That is, he joined the army after Parsons had already completed the translation, and not before, as Parsons

implies in his ‘‘Preface’’.46My thanks to Patricia McGuire, archivist at King’s College, Cambridge, for confirming personal details of

Alexander Henderson.47Henderson’s first names were Alexander Morell, the ‘‘A.R. Henderson’’ given on the titlepage of the William

Hodge edition is a typographical error. The Bodleian Library cataloguing information gives his first names

correctly and records his year of birth as 1914, information which presumably originated with the publishers.48There is some correspondence with Fritz Machlup during 1948–1950 concerning Henderson’s interest in a

Visiting Professorship in the United States—Machlup Papers, Hoover Institution Archives, Box 57 Folder 17. By

dying in January 1954 of a heart attack in the United States Henderson unwittingly contributed to his lasting

obscurity in Britain. But he is remembered in an annual prize at the Tepper School of Business, Carnegie Mellon,

and as co-author of the first textbook on linear programming (Charnes, Cooper and Henderson. An Introduction

to Linear Programming. John Wiley & Sons, 1953). Why such an innovative economic theorist should have taken

an early interest in Chapters I and II of Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft will, unfortunately, remain a mystery.49I would like to thank Ryan Walter for his help in an initial survey of the Parsons manuscripts, and Larry Scaff

for examining page size and typing variations in detail to determine whether any of the existing papers stem from

Henderson, rather than Parsons.50In TSEO fn. 4 p. 89.


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systematic, cumulative definition and elucidation one finds most commonly in legal texts.That Parsons should find this ‘‘unusual’’ in someone with Weber’s legal background ispuzzling. The ‘‘second part’’ of Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft in the Winckelmann edition,about which there is of course much argument, is not structured in this way, alternatingnumbered headings with continuous text. Since it is only the section of Wirtschaft und

Gesellschaft that Weber directly prepared for the press that has this strictly expository formit is reasonable to assume that this is integral to the purpose of the text.

Parsons notes that Weber printed the definitions in large type, and the exposition in asmaller typeface. But Parsons does away with this typographical distinction, as also withthe numerous emphases in the text, so typical of Weber’s writing and which assist thereader in following an argument through pages of long sentences and paragraphs.51

Parsons also collapses Weber’s lists into continuous prose, as in Section 7, to whichParsons gives the title ‘‘The Bases of Legitimacy of an Order’’.52

Weber’s text opens with a preamble, followed by Section 1., followed by two sub-sections of Section 1: ‘‘I. Methodische Grundlagen’’, which runs through eleven numberedsub-sections, not all of which are simply one paragraph; and ‘‘II. Begriff des sozialenHandelns’’, which in turn runs through four numbered sections. The main numbered large-font paragraphs Sections 1–17 of WuG are given separate headings by Parsons. Section 1.becomes ‘‘1: The Definitions of Sociology and of Social Action’’. Weber’s section heading‘‘I. Methodische Grundlagen’’ is rendered as ‘‘(a) The Methodological Foundations ofSociology’’. ‘‘II. Begriff des sozialen Handelns’’ becomes his ‘‘(b) The Concept of SocialAction’’, followed by four numbered sub-sections before we arrive at Section 2., whichParsons entitles ‘‘2: The Types of Social Action’’. While Parsons retains numbering for theparagraph headings he inserts, the paragraphs are themselves unnumbered, appearingtherefore as merely the first, unnumbered, paragraph of a new section, succeeded by aseries of numbered expository paragraphs—for Parsons does retain the original numberingfor the exposition. These changes make Parsons’ own headings appear to be the principalorganisational device for the line of discussion, rather than the first paragraph ofeach section.

The confusion that these changes introduce, and the error of ‘‘cleaning up’’ Weber’stypography, is evident if we consider the two subsections of Section 1. In that paragraphWeber emphasises Sinn at the close of the second sentence, and then opens Section 1paragraph 1. with ‘‘Sinn’’. Clearly this section elaborates on the second sentence of Section1. Likewise, Section 2 ‘‘Begriff des sozialen Handelns’’ opens with the words ‘‘SozialesHandelny’’ echoing the opening of the third sentence of Section 1., ‘‘‘Soziales’Handelny’’. This linkage is suppressed in the Parsons translation since the emphasesand quotation marks are removed and the reader is not thereby led to understand the two

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51In his draft translation of The Protestant Ethic Parsons had adhered to Weber’s emphases, liberal use of

quotation marks (as in the title of the work), together with sentence and paragraph structure. But his contract

assigned the final word on the translation to Tawney—in the late 1920s Parsons was merely a young American

post-doc student who had the support of Marianne Weber, and whose role as translator was owed to this

connection. Tawney by contrast was a senior professor, and English. He was of the opinion that slavish adherence

to Weber’s style and emphases was undesirable; Parsons’ draft translation was therefore heavily modified,

omitting these characteristic features. See Larry Scaff’s (2005) essay on the ‘‘Sacred Text’’ cited above. Certainly

the changes made to PE were forced upon Parsons; but why over a decade later he voluntarily followed a similar

practice is unclear.52WuG, p. 19, TSEO, p. 130.


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sections as pointing to different parts of the initial paragraph (which in any case is notclearly signalled as the initial statement elaborated by the following paragraphs).Moreover, Parsons has created four sentences from Weber’s three in Section 1, furtherobscuring the linkage of the following passages directly as exposition of an initialdefinition.Apart from these modifications to the page layout, Parsons also suggests that the text is

‘‘relatively fragmentary’’ in its development, concluding that ‘‘Weber apparently did notintend this material to be ‘read’ in the ordinary sense, but rather to serve as a referencework for the clarification and systematization of theoretical concepts and theirimplicationsyWeber wrote what is essentially a methodological essay.’’ Especiallystriking however, on careful reading of Chapter 1, is the ‘‘brick by brick’’ way in whichWeber develops his argument, beginning with human action and proceeding onwards tocorporate groups, introducing basic concepts one by one and cumulatively building hisargument upon them. Parsons’ introduction of his own headings, rearrangement of thehierarchy, abolition of typographic distinctions and suppression of emphases makes thetext look much more like a continuous narrative than the original. On the other hand, hesuggests that it is a text that should be read in disconnected parts, although Parsons hasremoved the visual cues which would actually facilitate such a reading.All of the above gives us a better idea of how the book came to be published in 1947 in

the form that it took, but does not resolve the issue with which this essay began: how doesParsons read and translate Weber into English? Initially we need to consider the indicatorspresent in Structure of Social Action, before turning to Parsons’ own comments in thelengthy introduction he wrote for the new book.

IV

For the past forty years ad hoc criticism of Talcott Parsons’ aspirations for sociologicalinquiry has been routine. However, since these criticisms have been made by sociologistslargely unfamiliar with the history of political thought, of economic thought, of the historyof the book, or of translation theory, the context and ‘‘structure’’ of the Structure of Social

Action has gone largely unexamined. In that book Parsons puts forward an agenda for therenewal of the social sciences, and it is this agenda that has attracted most attention.53 Buthe also offers readings of the work of Locke, Hobbes, and Hume besides Pareto, Marshalland Weber; the subtitle is after all ‘‘with Special Reference to a Group of Recent European

Writers’’. In the Preface to the Second Edition he seeks to deflect criticism of thesereadings:

The Structure of Social Action was intended to be primarily a contribution tosystematic social science and not to history, that is the history of social thought. Thejustification of its critical orientation to the work of other writers thus lay in the factthat this was a convenient vehicle for the clarification of problems and concepts, ofimplications and interrelations.54

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53Although the manner in which Parsons is in fact proposing a reconstruction of the social sciences independent

of economics and politics has largely gone unrecognised; even though it is this feature that was implicit in much of

the criticism.54T. Parsons. The Structure of Social Action. A Study in Social Theory with Special Reference to a Group of

Recent European Writers, Second Edition. (New York: Free Press, 1949) A–B.


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If Parsons is claiming the right to use past writers for the ‘‘clarification of problems andconcepts’’, rather than seek to understand them in terms of the problems and concepts oftheir time, then this instrumental and utilitarian approach will have consequences for histreatment of Weber. More generally, we could say that criticism of Structure of Social

Action has turned on the Parsons–Weber axis without noticing that this is a genericproblem for the work as a whole. There is therefore nothing personal about Parsons’reading of Weber—he applied the same dubious techniques to all of his ‘‘classical’’ sources.

Parsons’ Structure of Social Action draws heavily upon Weber’s work, but inflects itidiosyncratically and then reads it back into his translation practice. His ‘‘action frame ofreference’’, dealing with phenomena and events as they appear to the agent, has clearconnections with Weber’s interpretive sociology as presented in Chapter 1 of Wirtschaft

und Gesellschaft. Parsons argues that all empirical science is concerned with theunderstanding of the phenomena of the external world; hence for the scientists the factsof an action are facts of the external world—‘‘y in this sense, objective facts’’.

But in this particular case, unlike that of the physical sciences, the phenomena beingstudied have a scientifically relevant subjective aspect. That is, while the socialscientist is not concerned with studying the content of his own mind, he is very muchconcerned with that of the minds of the persons whose action he studies. Thisnecessitates the distinction of the objective and subjective points of view. Thedistinction and the relation of the two to each other are of great importance. By‘‘objective’’ in this context will always be meant ‘‘from the point of view of thescientific observer of the action’’ and by ‘‘subjective’’, ‘‘from the point of the view ofthe actor’’.55

And so ‘‘objectivity’’ is for Parsons a special perspective related to the sciences, ratherthan a construction amenable to validation of one kind or another. Parsons’ translationpractice consistently interpolates ‘‘subjective’’ where Weber writes sinnhaft, ‘‘meaningful’’becoming (redundantly) ‘‘subjectively meaningful’’. Parsons’ interpolation consistentlyimplies that a domain of ‘‘objective meaningfulness’’ exists capable of evaluating lower-order ‘‘subjective meaningfulness’’, a conception which short-circuits much of Weber’sexposition in Chapter 1.

This is also evident in Parsons’ account of rational action. Most simply, this is thepursuit of feasible ends with the most suitable means available to the actor. But in Parsons’words this becomes:

Action is rational in so far as it pursues ends possible within the conditions of thesituation, and by the means which, among those available to the actor, areintrinsically best adapted to the end for reasons understandable and verifiable bypositive empirical science.56

Hence Parsons creates a domain of ‘‘scientific objectivity’’ which independently auditsthe ‘‘rationality’’ of choices made by an actor, likewise short-circuiting the manner inwhich Weber develops his account of rationality in terms of ideal-types and deviationsfrom them. Not only does this create a problem for his appreciation of Weber’s account, italso fails to reflect the fact that, by the later 1930s, modern economics implicitly followed

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55Parsons. Structure of Social Action. [SSA], 46.56SSA, p. 58.


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Weber’s ideal-typical methodology in accounting for the relation between ‘‘abstraction’’and ‘‘concrete action’’. Despite the fact that Parsons had studied for a year at the LSE, andworked in the Department of Economics at Harvard, his knowledge of contemporaryeconomics was rudimentary.57 This can be demonstrated in a third example which alsohighlights the defects in his historical method. We acquire greater insight into how Parsonsread Weber if we place Weber to one side for the moment, and instead see what he makesof Alfred Marshall.Chapter IV of The Structure of Social Action is a revised and extended version of his

1931 article on Alfred Marshall.58. In Fn. 2 p. 130 he notes that all references to Marshall’sPrinciples of Economics are to the eighth edition. This is a major problem given thatMarshall altered his text considerably from the first edition of 1890,59 and especially sincethat edition was followed in 1891 by Neville Keynes’ Scope and Method of Political

Economy, the original ‘‘methodology of economics’’ text. If we are going to read Marshallseriously we need to start out with the first edition, since we need to place the text preciselywith respect to a range of other texts that chronologically precede and succeed it. This doesnot amount of course to reading it as an early reader would have done, but since we arecertain of its dating we should not be led astray by later accretions and revisions. Parsons’approach to Marshall demonstrates his lack of sensitivity to the importance of historicalmethod in any assessment of the ‘‘classics’’ of social science.Parsons follows Neville Keynes in suggesting that Marshall was an independent

discoverer of the principle of marginal utility, for which there is however no evidence.60 Hethen introduces the concept of consumer’s surplus, without explanation, as an ‘‘importantresult’’ of marginal utility. The concept of opportunity cost is thrown in a few lines furtheron, again without explanation. Parsons provides a relatively dense, but low level, accountof the assumptions underpinning Alfred Marshall’s thought which is said, significantly, toform ‘‘a single coherent whole’’. The coherency of this ‘‘whole’’ arises out of the‘‘assumptions’’ that, Parsons suggests, Marshall made. The general approach can bejudged from this passage:

It is not to be imagined that this element [rational action] of Marshall’s thought is tobe found in his writings worked out as a complete logical system apart from the restof his ideas and recognized by him as such. His empiricist bent precluded that. Nor ishe always explicit in making the assumptions brought out above. On the contrary,the elements of this system are closely interwoven with other strands of thought. Thisis a natural result of Marshall’s refusal to work out his more abstract ideas to theirlogical conclusions, on the plea of the fruitlessness of ‘‘long chains of deductivereasoning.’’ It has been necessary to sketch the outlines of this implicit, logical system

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57As Howard Brick has noted, and as Vidich’s account of Harvard in the late 1940s confirms, Parsons’ new

systems theory excluded political and economic theory in favour of anthropology and social psychology—this was

a ‘‘new science’’ that deliberately broke with the classical foundations of ‘‘social theory’’ reaching back to the

eighteenth century and beyond. See Brick. ‘‘Talcott Parsons’s ‘‘Shift Away from Economics.’’ 1937–1946. Journal

of American History 87 (2000) 490–514.58‘‘Wants and Activities in Marshall.’’ Quarterly Journal of Economics 46 (1931) 101–140.59See John Whitaker. ‘‘Editing Alfred Marshall.’’ Editing Modern Economists. Ed. Donald Moggridge. (New

York: AMS Press, 1988) 60ff. for a discussion of Marshall’s practices in revision. Altogether Marshall revised and

recast Principles seven times, with many significant changes being made in new printings of ostensibly the same

edition.60SSA, p. 131.


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in order by contrast to get a clear view of the other aspect of his doctrine which is ofinterest here.61

Hence these ‘‘assumptions’’ which in turn render Marshall’s economic principles acoherent whole are not ones that Marshall himself explicitly articulated. The ‘‘coherency’’of Marshall’s work ‘‘as a whole’’ is constructed out of assumptions imputed to him byParsons. By considering in this way Parsons’ approach to Marshall, the defects shared incommon with his approach to Weber become more starkly apparent. The deficiencies inParsons’ reading of Weber are deficiencies shared with his treatment of Marshall andPareto: they arise out of the way in which he ‘‘read into’’ certain classic authors his ownconcerns, and then summarised their work in such a way that they seemed to address hisown conception of the social sciences.

What of Parsons’ own understanding of the economic theory of the later nineteenthcentury? This is again a problem that will come back to influence his reading of Weber,since Weber was in the habit of referring to contemporary economics as ‘‘our science’’. Afew pages further on he discusses Marshall’s work in relation to that of Jevons:

It is, of course, possible that personal jealousy of Jevons, who published the marginalutility before Marshall, but who probably did not anticipate Marshall in itsdiscovery, played a part.62

In fact, Jevons published the basic outlines of his ‘‘mathematical theory’’ in 1862following their presentation to the annual meeting of the British Association inCambridge. At this time Marshall was between his first and second years as anundergraduate in Cambridge, graduating in the Maths Tripos in 1865 and notcommencing serious study of political economy until the later 1860s. Jevons’ Theory of

Political Economy was published in 1871, the second edition of 1879 being prefaced by adiscussion of recent developments in the mathematical approach to economics, in thecourse of which Jevons refers to his 1862 paper. He later notes that his histogram ofdiminishing marginal utility had been used in college lectures for fifteen years, that is, sincehe started in Manchester in 1863.63 The second edition of Jevons’ Theory of Political

Economy is an important text for an understanding of the rate of development of economictheory in the later nineteenth century, but there is no evidence that Parsons ever looked atit.

This was not how Parsons worked. He did not seek to establish, through systematicreading of contemporary sources, the conceptual field within which a particular text couldbe placed—the most basic requirement of any historical method. He believed, by contrast,that a close reading of one book would reveal the underlying ‘‘assumptions’’ which createdits ‘‘logic’’. There is no guarantee of course that wider reading in contemporary literaturewould necessarily have deflected him from the imputations that he made. But such readingis of great importance for an assessment of the novelty and significance of the text inquestion: does it merely repeat received opinion? Is it better or worse at so doing? Does itfail to make the grade of even contemporary received opinion? Might it in fact begenuinely novel? What did its contemporaries think about it, and given the answers to thepreceding questions, how do these responses measure up to our present-day assessments?

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61SSA, p. 133.62SSA, Fn. 5 p. 137.63W.S. Jevons. The Theory of Political Economy, 2nd edition. (London: Macmillan, 1879) 50.


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In Parsons’ discussion of utility, wants and economic activity he proceeds as if thestructure of the argument that Marshall creates is sui generis, failing to consider whethercertain features which are perforce attributed to Marshall are commonplace, or taken overfrom another source, or are indeed original to Marshall.Failure to make these elementary distinctions muddles his argument considerably, since

in his version Marshall seems merely (from our point of view) to be reinventing the wheel.Parsons’ failure to comprehend the elementary chronology of the development of marginalutility theory, by the later 1930s no mystery, testifies to wider failings. Furthermore, theedition of Marshall’s Principles that he refers to is one that had travelled a long way fromthe original edition of 1890, with many additions and a complete reordering of sections.That this does not seem to matter to Parsons can be linked to the manner in which hedirects his attention to ‘‘general assumptions’’ underlying the text, rather than to thelanguage of the text and its structure. These ‘‘assumptions’’ tend to be those of Parsons,rather than Marshall. In this domain the standard was first set by Edwin Cannan’s History

of the Theories of Production and Distribution in English Political Economy from 1776 to

1848, first published in 1893 and whose ‘‘Preface’’ succinctly sets out the basic rules for thestudy of older texts in the literature of political economy.64 Cannan was Professor ofPolitical Economy at the London School of Economics until 1926; Parsons was at the LSEduring the academic year 1924–1925.This lacuna could of course be linked to Howard Brick’s argument, that Parson’s ‘‘new

social sciences’’ shifted away from the classical foundations provided by politics andeconomics towards sociology, cultural anthropology, and social psychology. By the 1930scommentary upon the literature of politics and economics was relatively sophisticated bypresent-day standards, whereas of course the literature of cultural anthropology andsocial psychology was by contrast very new. These new fields were linked togetherafter 1946 in Harvard’s Department of Social Relations, fracturing the foundation for thesocial sciences hitherto provided by political and economic theory. As Brick suggests,this implicitly reconfigured a conception of civil society articulated in terms of marketsand power; in its place Parsons created a social, non-economic conception of society.65

The result is a radical disconnection between Weber as a writer and Parsons as areader, one that goes beyond the more obvious differences such as culture, place andcircumstance.That Parsons’ reading of Weber was problematic has long been recognised, the main

features having been itemised some thirty years ago.66 Parsons was firstly argued to assignimportance to parts of Weber’s writing that did not have the same importance forWeber, while those aspects that did not fit with Parsons’ own project were eitherdiscounted or ignored. Secondly, unsubstantiated assertions were made concerning ‘‘whatWeber meant’’ which in some cases contradict what can be found in Weber. To whatextent is that already apparent in Parsons’ ‘‘Introduction’’ to the Theory of Social and

Economic Organization?

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64Edwin Cannan. ‘‘Preface to the First Edition.’’ History of the Theories of Production and Distribution in

English Political Economy from 1776 to 1848, 3rd edition. (London: P.S. King and Son, 1924) x–xi.65Brick. ‘‘Talcott Parsons’s ‘Shift Away from Economics’.’’ 491–492.66J. Cohen, L.E. Hazelrigg and W. Pope. ‘‘De-Parsonizing Weber: A Critique of Parsons’ Interpretation of

Weber’s Sociology.’’ American Sociological Review 40 (1975) 229–241.


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V

Parsons’ ‘‘Introduction’’ is divided into five sections. The first provides a brief outline ofWeber’s life and career; the second, third and fourth sections are directed respectively toChapters I–III; while the final section sketches Weber’s importance as ‘‘an interpreter ofthe course of modern Western society’’.67 The second section carries the title ‘‘Weber’sMethodology of Social Science’’: this is therefore what Parsons believes Chapter I is chieflyabout. My comments here will be limited to this second section of the ‘‘Introduction’’.

As noted above, Weber divided Chapter 1 Section 1 into two sections, ‘‘I. MethodischeGrundlagen’’ and ‘‘II. Begriff des sozialen Handelns’’. This strongly suggests that Weberconceived only this first paragraph as presenting, firstly, some remarks on principles andmethod, before proceeding to a brief exposition of social action which is then elaborated inthe rest of the chapter. The introductory comments Parsons directed at Chapter 1 dohowever clearly suggest that the entire chapter is ‘‘methodological’’, in the strong sense of adiscussion of methods and procedures. This is however mistaken. There are of coursemethodological aspects of Chapter 1, where Weber contrasts his own line of reasoning withthose of others; but his strict focus is the development of a theory of social forms groundedin the basic elements of human action and understanding.

Nonetheless, Parsons proceeds to identify the dual context for Weber’s ‘‘newmethodology’’: first, German historicism; and secondly, a distinction between ‘‘natural’’and ‘‘socio-cultural’’ sciences, a distinction linked by Parsons to Kant.68 While thisdistinction is naturally fundamental to Weber’s basic sociological concepts, Parsons goeson to suggest that his true, though incomplete, innovation was to make possible ‘‘y thetreatment of social material in a systematic scientific manner rather than as an art.’’69

Implicit here is Parsons’ own belief in the unity of scientific method, especially with respectto causal relationship and logical scheme of proof. Weber, he says, laid great emphasis onthe unity of these last in his earlier methodological work—referring however not to this‘‘earlier work’’ directly, but instead to Structure of Social Action Chapter XVI. Parsonsattributes to Weber the aspiration of creating a unitary methodology, which aspiration wasultimately unfulfilled, but whose completion is a possibility.

Following on from this account of scientific method, Parsons next considers the status ofthe ideal type in Weber. There is no doubt, he suggests, ‘‘y that the rational ideal type isan authentic generalized theoretical concept, and on one level adequately met therequirements of his methodological problems.’’ But Weber did fail ‘‘to place it adequatelyin relation to certain other possibilitiesy’’.70 Again this discussion is not referenceddirectly to texts by Weber, but to Structure of Social Action and the work of Alexander vonSchelting. Weber, Parsons writes, begins his process of ‘‘systematic conceptualisation’’with a classification of four types of action, but he ‘‘neglected to inquire systematically on acomparable level into the structure of total social systems of action.’’71 This, he goes on,would be a logically necessary prerequisite of a complete typological classification. HenceParsons regards Weber’s text as incomplete: an unfinished methodology incapable of

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67Parsons, TSEO Introduction, 84.68Parsons, TSEO Introduction, 8–9.69Parsons, TSEO Introduction, 10–11.70Parsons, TSEO Introduction, 13.71Parsons, TSEO Introduction, 14.


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generating an analysis of the ‘‘total social systems of action.’’ Both of these are of courseParsons’ problems, not Weber’s.Weber’s typology of social relationships is also held to be incomplete:

In each case the question is not raised of how this particular type, and the conceptualelements which make it up, fit into the conception of a total functioning social systemof action or of relationships, as the case may be.72

Further, Parsons suggests, the tendency associated with the use of the ideal type tooveremphasise extreme factors leads to a lack of emphasis upon self-equilibriating,integrative forces provided by linkages between one type and another. Parsons follows thispoint with a discussion of rationality and irrationality, before reiterating that the basicproblem lies in ‘‘Weber’s failure to carry through a systematic functional analysis of ageneralized social system of action.’’73 Parsons leaves Weber here, and devotes theremainder of the section to an account of the elements of structural functional analysis.Nowhere in this account of Weber’s ‘‘Basic Sociological Categories’’ does Parsons

mention their most obvious feature: that he builds out of the elements of human action andits interpretation an understanding of social action within different types of institution.Most simply, this is not ‘‘methodology’’; but that is how Parsons reads and presents it. Inhis very first paragraph Weber refers to the 1913 Logos essay in explaining histerminological choices. Parsons however never refers to this or any similar text in seekingto expose ‘‘what Weber really meant’’ since, as indicated, the only direct references are tovon Schelting and to the Structure of Social Action. The ‘‘Introduction’’ to Theory of Social

and Economic Organization says very much more about Parsons than it does about Weber;and his insistence on treating the ‘‘Basic Sociological Categories’’ as a methodological texthas certainly contributed to its neglect as a systematic exposition of social theory.Parsons was not alone in this approach to Max Weber. Edward Shils reviewed The

Theory of Social and Economic Organization74 in 1948, and his account of Weber revealswith some clarity the kind of interpretive protocols that are here at issue. Shils primarilysummarised the text without specific comment on the selection or the translation, but madesome revealing asides. For instance, he notes that

Although Weber has no explicit theory of personality—it is the greatest deficiency inhis whole conception of the dynamics of social structurey75

and

Although his methodology as formulated in the first decade of the century required atheory to answer concrete historical questions such as he posed, he did not supply uswith such a theory. The chapters of Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft which we arediscussing have contributed greatly to our understanding of the modern world, theyhelp us to order our historical knowledge by giving us the names of things, bydesignating precisely the classes into which they fall, and by showing wherein theydiffer from each other. They do not constitute a theory in the sense of logically

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72Parsons, TSEO Introduction, 15.73Parsons, TSEO Introduction, 18.74The book reviewed was the English edition from William Hodge & Co.75E.A. Shils. ‘‘Some Remarks on ‘The Theory of Social and Economic Organization’.’’ Economica N.S. 15

(1948) 44.


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coherent, empirically established or establishable, universal propositions referring torelationships of causal interdependence among several series of events—they are onlythe beginning of a theory in this sense.76

and

We know what Weber was aiming at—the establishment of universal causalpropositions—because so much of that subsequent part of Wirtschaft und

Gesellschaft which was written earlier than the four chapters here translated, thoughless rigorous and more discursive than the present object of our consideration, isfilled with the most striking and ingenious causal hypotheses.77

Shils therefore largely shared Parsons’ position and viewed Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft

K. I–IV as an unfinished structure, inadequate to a comprehensive sociology of socialstructure; moreover he imputes this perspective to Weber, to whom is attributed theambition of establishing ‘‘universal causal propositions’’. Shils was of course wrong onboth counts. But Shils approaches Weber’s writings in the same spirit as Parsons: seekingout ‘‘what Weber really meant’’, assuming that a modern sociology would be a theoreticalscience of human action and social structure founded upon a consistent method. If Parsonstranslated Weber in this spirit, and Shils as a contemporary read Weber in this way, thenthis helps to clarify the relative neglect of Weber’s ‘‘last words’’ on the understanding ofsocial action.

VI

But it was not simply Parsons’ own project for a modern sociology that interfered withhis translation of the ‘‘Basic Sociological Concepts’’ and got in the way of itsunderstanding. His translation strategy sought clarification of meaning by elaboratingupon Weber’s dense prose, the English text being around one-third longer than the originalGerman. It is arguable that this translation strategy renders the text less, rather than more,precise, quite apart from the assumptions regarding Weber’s meaning that Parsonsbrought to the text. Some general remarks on translating Weber into clear English can bemade in closing.

Hans Gerth and C. Wright Mills presented a brief but lucid account of this problem intheir ‘‘Preface’’ to From Max Weber. They distinguished two distinct traditions in theGerman language. The first corresponds ‘‘to the drift of English towards brief andgrammatically lucid sentences.’’78 This is addressed to the ‘‘inner ear’’, echoing therhythms of everyday speech. The second is however foreign to it, addressing ‘‘the eye’’,unsuited to being read aloud—each ‘‘has to read for himself.’’ The distinction made here isa very real one, but there is a more general point that can be made—scholarly German veryrarely makes use of a spoken idiom, whereas scholarly English can, and does. The distancebetween the written and the spoken is considerably less in English than it is in German. A‘‘faithful’’ stylistic rendering of Weber into English would be more or less unreadable forthe average student reader today—its register would be like that of the legal English in

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76Shils. ‘‘Some Remarks.’’ 45.77Shils. ‘‘Some Remarks.’’ 47.78Hans H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills. ‘‘Preface.’’ From Max Weber. (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul,

1948) v.


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statutes where punctuation, save for the full stop, is avoided. This serves a purpose, but itis meant to be read with a particular eye. Elsewhere I have drawn attention to the mannerin which the written German of a close contemporary of Weber’s—Sigmund Freud—hasgone the other way in translation, from a plain colloquial German to a ‘‘scientific’’English.79

Gerth and Mills cite examples of the first tradition, carrying ‘‘transparent trains ofthought in which first things stand first’’: Nietzsche, Lichtenberg and Kafka. The last ofthese is the nearest to Weber, and not only chronologically—in 1906 Max’s brother Alfredwas the chief assessor for Franz Kafka’s doctorate in law.80 Kafka developed his ‘‘succinct,cool, distanced, sparing, logically-constructed language’’ in response to the florid andrepetitive style of his Prague contemporaries.81 Weber’s style is not of course florid orrepetitive, but the idea that he could, if he had so wished, have written like Kafka is not atall anachronistic. In one sense of a ‘‘true’’ translation this choice needs to be preserved, butwhat if the cost is a loss of original clarity? George Orwell, a model of English plain style,deliberately and self-consciously evolved a sparing and succinct English style from the late1920s to the early 1930s—so self-consciously in fact that two family friends described hisearly efforts as ‘‘unusually ineptyWe used to laugh till we cried at some of the bits heshowed us.’’ His biographer summarises Orwell’s achievement very neatly: ‘‘It seems hethen regarded his journalistic style as merely workmanlike and still strove to achieve a‘literary style’. It took him some years to discover that he already possessed somethingmuch finer than what he thought he was still seeking.’’82

There is therefore an (open) question concerning the register one chooses in translatingfrom one language into another, given that the available range of written and spokenidiom, and their interconnection, will diverge. But beyond this there is a further issue, onethat we could associate with rhythm and emphasis in word and sentence. Germangrammatical forms facilitate the composition of sentences after the manner of Russiandolls, punctuation being used to assist the grammar. English sentences make use ofpunctuation to clarify meaning, it is not primarily a grammatical device, it mimics theemphases of speech. By contrast, German speech is relatively unstressed (and makesrelatively little use of gesture or facial expression compared to other languages), since thegrammar does the work. All of this is of course highly arguable, but what would remainafter lengthy discussion is the fact that speech rhythms are a large part of what makesspoken, and written, English readily intelligible (or not). This is not true of the Germanlanguage, and so the idea that an English translation should be faithful to the style of aGerman original, or preserve the ease of the original text—two of the three translation

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79See my ‘‘Translator’s Appendix’’ to Wilhelm Hennis. Max Weber’s Science of Man. (Newbury: Threshold

Press, 2000) 206.80Klaus Wagenbach. Franz Kafka. Eine Biografie seiner Jugend 1883– 1912. (Berlin: Francke Verlag, 1958)

129ff.81Wagenbach, p. 83. But not all contemporaries—Robert Walser’s first book, Fritz Kochers Aufsatze was first

published in 1904. As a set of school essays they deliberately set out to limit vocabulary and expression, certainly

for parodic effect—but compare the style of his letter of 6 January 1902 to his publisher, employing a

conventionally formal written German—‘‘Nachwort’’ to Fritz Kochers Aufsatze. (Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp

Verlag, 1979) 140.82Bernard Crick. George Orwell. A Life, new edition. (London: Penguin Books, 1992) 179, 192. See also in this

context Christopher Hitchens. ‘‘Deconstructing the Post-modernists: Orwell and Transparency.’’ Orwell’s Victory.

(London: Penguin Books, 2002) Chapter 9, especially 141ff.


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principles with which Gerth and Mills open their discussion—are, as they themselvesemphasise, ‘‘quite debatabley in the case of Max Weber.’’83

Unlike German, or French, English is an ‘‘unregulated’’ language. Usage is the decidingfactor with respect to meaning, not the authority of Academy or Rechtschreibungsvors-

chriften. It is for instance sometime alleged that there is no such thing as ‘‘Englishgrammar’’, that this is a construct based upon Latin with very limited purchase on actuallinguistic expression. What is certainly true is that there is no official manual of style.Instead, we have Fowler’s Modern English Usage and Michael Dummett’s excellentGrammar and Style.84 These works make their points by examples, not rules—and in sodoing constantly emphasise that good written English should be clear, precise and readilyintelligible. If we adopt these as our watchwords in approaching the translation of MaxWeber into English it might be possible to appreciate quite what is wrong with Parsons’own efforts in this direction.

Parsons was not unfamiliar with some of the above arguments. After he had firstread through Alexander Henderson’s draft translations of the first two chapters ofWirtschaft und Gesellschaft he summarised his thoughts on style. First of all, onehad to recognise that, where an idea or concept was well-established in one language butnot another, finding an entirely satisfactory single translation was difficult, if notimpossible.

I feel that it is often much better to bring out the author’s meaning as accurately aspossible than to attempt word-for-word translation. I do not feel that Mr. Hendersontakes advantage of this possibility sufficiently in the difficult places.85

So Henderson seems to have consistently translated Verein with ‘‘club’’ and sinnvoll with‘‘significant’’—certainly appropriate in some lexical contexts, but not necessarily in Weber.Parsons also questioned whether Zweckrational and Vergemeinschaftung could or shouldbe translated at all; and suggested that Henderson had in places omitted qualifying clauses,in others committed downright error.

As noted above, these comments were passed on to Henderson and his response was inpart cited verbatim in James Hodge’s response of 14 March 1939. Henderson wrote:

As between coining and literal translation I have used both but more oftenthe latter—translating a German word when used in a technical sense by theEnglish word corresponding to its everyday meaning. This follows the samelines as the development of a special sociological terminology in German andof the English economic and philosophical jargon, though I recognize that theabsence of a recognized tradition in the English-speaking countries constitutes aserious disadvantage—but a disadvantage which would be diminished by the factthat all such words were precisely defined by Weber himself and that it is intended toprovide a glossary giving an explanation of Weber’s use of the words. In thecase of words coined in the German I had to produce what Professor Parsonsterms ‘forced neologisms’. On the whole I still believe that this choice wasright, though following a hint of Professor Hayek’s, I might have done well to coin

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83Gerth and Mills. ‘‘Preface.’’ v.84H.W. Fowler. A Dictionary of Modern English Usage, 2nd Edition. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1965);

Michael Dummett. Grammar and Style for Examination Candidates and Others. (London: Duckworth, 1993).85Letter of Parsons to James H. Hodge, 26 January 1939.


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rather more. I was however expecting some suggestions for alternative translationsof important words and I included a list for that purpose. But all this is ofsubsidiary importance; Weber makes his reader think in terms of concepts which arenew to the English reader and if the concepts are to be used a new terminology mustcome too, and it does not greatly matter whether new technical meanings are given toordinary words or whether new words are coined, but there is no escape from thealternative.86

All of which gives the impression that Henderson, still not 25, had a sophisticated graspof the problems presented by Chapters I and II, and could express himself clearly on thematter. This makes the apparent loss of his draft manuscript all the greater, for without itthere is no direct way of going behind Parsons’ translation to examine the choices that hecontemplated, and made.But we do have the von Schelting and Shils version of Chapter One, Section 1, and we

can close this discussion of the problems inherent in translating the chapter on basicsociological concepts with a direct contrast of this with Parsons’ and my own of Weber’sSection 1.

Section 1. Sociology, that ambiguously defined word, means, in the sense in which it isused here, a science which attempts to understand social actions through interpretationand thus to explain them causally in the course and effects. ‘‘Action’’ refers to all humanconduct when and in so far as the acting individual ‘‘attaches’’ a subjective meaningto his conduct. Action may be either outward on inward; and it may consist in ‘‘doing’’ orin ‘‘refraining from doing’’ or tolerating. Action is ‘‘social’’ when, through the meaningattached by the behaving individual (or individuals), it is related to the conduct of others,and is therewith oriented in its course with reference to the conduct of others.87 (114 words)Section 1. Sociology (in the sense in which this highly ambiguous word is used here) is ascience which interprets the interpretive understanding of social action in order therebyto arrive at a causal explanation of its course and effects. In ‘action’ is included allhuman behaviour when and in so far as the acting individual attaches a subjectivemeaning to it. Action in this sense may be either overt or purely inward or subjective; itmay consist of positive intervention in a situation, or of deliberately refraining fromsuch intervention or passively acquiescing in the situation. Action is social in so far as,by virtue of the subjective meaning attached to it by the acting individual (orindividuals), it takes account of the behaviour of others and is thereby oriented in itscourse.88 (132 words)Section 1. Sociology, a word often used in quite diverse ways, shall mean here: a sciencethat seeks interpretative understanding of social action, and hence causal explanation ofthe course and effects of such action. By ‘‘action’’ is meant human behaviour linked to asubjective meaning on the part of the actor or actors concerned; such behaviour may beovert or occur inwardly—whether by positive action, or by refraining from such action,or by acquiescence to some situation. Such behaviour is ‘‘social’’ action where the

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86Alexander Henderson cited in letter of James Hodge to Parsons, 14 March 1939.87Alexander von Schelting, Edward Shils. Typescript of translation of Max Weber ‘‘The Methodological

Foundations of Sociology’’, p. 2, University of Chicago Library Archives, Frank H. Knight papers, Box 53,

Folder 1. My thanks to Larry Scaff for locating this copy.88Parsons, TSEO, 88.


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meaning intended by actor or actors is related to the behaviour of others, and conductso oriented.89 (101 words)

All three of these versions of the same passage in Weber say more or less ‘‘the samething’’. But they say it in different ways, and this has nothing to do with mid-twentiethcentury usage as compared with modern English usage. Parsons rated the von Scheltingand Shils version above that of Henderson; but the lucidity and intelligence of Henderson’sresponse to Parsons’ comments rather casts doubt on that judgement. What separatesthese three passages is ‘‘style’’. Parsons’ belief that in expanding upon Weber one makeshis prose more lucid to an English reader contrasts with my own view, that by seeking acompressed, concise expression the meaning is more easily conveyed. It cannot be said thatParsons’ translation of Weber systematically distorts the original sense through the serialsubstitution of concepts and terms. Rather, his introduction directs the reader to think ofthe text as a methodological statement linked to Parsons’ own conceptions of the socialsciences, while his presentation and translation of the text itself obscures the structure thatWeber gave it, making it easier for the text to be thought about in the way Parsons, notWeber, intended. Von Schelting and Shils could well be closest to Weber’s own feelings onstyle—that it did not matter, and that when in doubt, readability should always give wayto conceptual precision.

For myself, I believe this to be a false dichotomy. Orwell expressed this idea mostsuccinctly in his ‘‘Politics and the English Language’’:

A man may take to drink because he feels a failure, and then fail all the morecompletely because he drinks. It is rather the same thing that is happening to theEnglish language. It becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish,but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts.90

Precision of expression was the purpose of Orwell’s ‘‘plain style’’. Precision does notrequire the qualifications and circumlocutions with which Parsons freighted histranslations of Weber. Nor is it best served by the accurate, yet inaccessible, prose ofvon Schelting and Shils. Weber’s prose is certainly often difficult to appreciate fully on afirst reading, but it is always very precise once one has got the point. Translation ofWeber’s prose into modern idiomatic English is difficult because of the complex characterof his expression, not because the meaning is itself obscure. But the act of translation isitself an intervention in the text that can renew its meaning. For the translation of a textfrom an older idiom of one language into the modern idiom of another always opens anopportunity to revise our understanding of a text—this is one of the reasons why someworks have been the subject of multiple translations.91 And in a more limited manner thesame process is now taking place in the writings of Max Weber.

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89My own translation.90George Orwell. ‘‘Politics and the English Language’’ (1946). Collected Essays. (London: Secker and Warburg,

1961) 353.91I am not proposing that this process of revision is necessarily a progressive one, merely that judicious

updating is a possibility when the relation of written to spoken idiom has changed. There have been 87 new

translations of the New Testament into English since 1945, but many of these are simply unreadable in

comparison with the 1611 King James version, which is largely based on William Tyndale’s originals of 1526 and

1534. See David Daniell, ‘‘Translating the Bible; Why Tyndale is Still Vital.’’ The Tyndale Society Journal No. 27

(July 2004) 32–33.


Parsons as Translator of Max Weber

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Transcript of Parsons as Translator of Max Weber