People
Max Weber
Max Weber is remembered for saying that Protestantism made capitalism. He called that thesis foolish in the essay itself, and one row of the school statistics the essay opens with adds up to 109 per cent. The tests of the past two decades find Protestants a little keener on work than Catholics, and no sign that they saved more or that their cities grew faster. What he told three hundred Austrian officers in Vienna in June 1918 has lasted better: that when the state takes over the economy, the officials rule, not the workers. He thought the trained official unbeatable at running things, and feared him for it.
On 13 June 1918 a German professor stood up in Vienna before some three hundred officers of the Austro-Hungarian army and talked for an hour and a half about socialism. He had not taught a course for more than eighteen years and had …
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