Chapter 1: The Coil About Us: Capitalism and Dehumanization via Schooling

At the end of The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, Max Weber portrays a human experience ineluctably ensnared within the “iron cage” of capitalism. Lives, according to Weber, have become bound by birth to the technical and economic conditions of machine-age production. Weber’s scant portrayal of life inside this “iron cage” is coupled with only a brief foretelling of what life might be like inside here in the future.

One hundred and fourteen years have passed since the publication of Weber’s text, and we now stand witness to much of the mechanized deadness in experience that he anticipated. It seems that the tenets of the Enlightenment which promised to free humankind from despotic rulers, dogmatic priests, and binding traditions have become the material out of which a more insidious set of fetters has emerged to shackle human life. The idea that individuals morally should be free and equal in the pursuit of happiness as each sees fit as long as this pursuit somehow contributes to the well-being of others has become bastardized to mean each individual’s right and responsibility to pursue happiness defined solely in terms of material goods.² Buying goods has become the everyday expression of selfrealization and the primary mode of social interaction. Bodies have been disciplined, routinized, and organized into a regime of profit production. Souls have been habituated, ruled and regulated, administered and measured according to the high principle of wealth accumulation. Desires, wants, drives for personal fulfillment and happiness are concocted, marketed, and satisfied through the consumption of goods. And the moral ideal of citizenship is one based upon a shared commitment to producing the greatest range of stuff for the greatest number of people. It is not surprising, then, that character and individual well-being often are measured in terms of material accumulated, brands, and personal net worth. “Social excellence” now signifies higher standards of living and levels of consumption quantitatively noted. We exist confidently in the belief that our intelligence, wit, and effort will force nature to yield up her secrets (universal law) such that we may construct tools and instruments to induce her further to yield up yet more secrets for our profit. The machinery, gadgets, and instruments that seem to give value to our experience serve as evidence to confirm how right we are in our faith and to mitigate against the ill effects of fallible human judgment, particularly the irrationality and irresponsibility of thinking that there is life outside of this cage. Furthermore, we are secure in the idea that our technology, as the embodiment of nature’s laws, can discipline out all that is erratic and uncertain in human behavior³ and thus align it to be more efficient and exact in the grand production of the trademarked “Good Life.”