Talk:Weber Thesis

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Weber's thesis, from my understanding, is economic rather than social. It has much to do with the founding of the idea of capitalism. Am I wrong? What is this page? It is misleading to me.

This page was apparently merged from Monopoly on the legitimate use of physical force, a name which had the virtue of being precise. Since Weber had more than one thesis, it's not clear on what basis the current article name ("Weber's Thesis") was chosen. Rd232 12:32, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Requested move

The article is misnamed. Weber's thesis is his assertion that Protestantism was a principal cause of capitalism, not his theory of the state. There is already an article on "The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism" summarizing his thesis. So the Weber's Thesis article needs to be moved to "Weber's theory of the state", but the redirect from Weber's Thesis should go not to "Weber's theory of the state" but to the existing article about "The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism"

[edit] Moved article content

This is to indicate that on November 17 I redirected this article to the article on "The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism" and created a new article, "Weber's theory of the state", containing the prior content of this article. Jeremy J. Shapiro 14:03, 17 November 2005 (UTC)

I've undone those changes because (a) a copy-paste move loses the page history, which we need to keep; and (b) it's not clear that "Weber's theory of the state" is the right title for the article. Once it's agreed what this article be called, it should be moved using the Move button, which moves the page history to the new location. The move will turn Weber's Thesis into a redirect with no history, which can then be edited as appropriate. Rd232 talk 14:24, 17 November 2005 (UTC)
I suggest "monopoly on the legitimate use of physical force", whilst inelegant, is more accurate than "Weber's theory of the state": the article isn't that much about Weber's work specifically, and it's not just his theory either. As for Weber's Thesis, Weber had a number of theses, and whilst the Protestant Ethic one may be the most well-known, a disambiguation page may be appropriate. Rd232 talk 14:24, 17 November 2005 (UTC)
Sorry if I've confused things. I had so much anxiety about "Weber's thesis" appearing in public on the Internet as the name of his idea that the state is the monopoly of the use of force/violence in a particular territory that I thought I could solve the problem in the way I did, and moved the current contents of the relevant articles around without paying attention to the histories. I certainly agree that in the "Weber's theory of the state" article there is a lot more stuff than about Weber specifically, although it is fundamentally about his idea, so it didn't seem inappropriate to me to put it there. In any case, I believe that the only current usage for the phrase "the Weber thesis" (and I've never even seen any reference to "Weber's thesis", just to "the Weber thesis") is to his idea about Protestantis and capitalism, because it's part of a controversy with more Marxian theories about the origin of capitalism, and there is a controversy about this involving R. H. Tawney and various other social and economic historians.. Yes, Weber had ideas about many subjects, but I don't think you'll ever find references to them as "Weber's thesis" or "Weber's theses", but are usually referred to by such terms as "Weber's theory of authority", "Weber's theory of bureaucracy", "Weber's definition of bureacracy", and so on. If you even do a Google search on "Weber thesis", you will see that "the Weber thesis" is what comes up, and it's always in the context of Protestantism and capitalism. Anyway, I see that I should have left my original request in the hands of administrators to make the appropriate move. Jeremy J. Shapiro 15:34, 17 November 2005 (UTC)
Well perhaps a redirect of Weber's Thesis to Protestant Ethic is right; but where should the current material be moved to? It was previously at "monopoly on the legitimate use of physical force", so why not move it back? I don't really mind, though - Weber's theory of the state is oK; anyone else have an opinion? Rd232 talk 23:53, 17 November 2005 (UTC)
Weber had various thesis. monopoly on the legitimate use of physical force is lot better because lot more precise, and beside, the expression has entered common use, at least in political philosophy, and can therefore be applied to other works than Weber (for example, Hobbes's social contract). Santa Sangre 16:11, 3 February 2006 (UTC)