Economic Identities: Four Paths Out of the “Iron Cage”

Abstract

This paper discusses ways out of an approach adopted in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, which I refer to as instrumental rationalism (pl. racjonalizm instrumentalny). It was to determine, inter alia, the place occupied by humans within an organization construed as a machine in the self-proclaimed modern era. It is one in which the substance of what we refer to as “here and now” is determined by rationality, functionality, utility, usability, effectiveness and effciency. This approach was best captured by Max Weber’s metaphor of the “iron cage” (German “Stahlhartes Gehause”, translated as “iron cage” by Talcott Parsons), although Weber himself refers to “like a light cloak, which can be thrown away any moment [...] shell as hard as steel” (Weber, 1994, p. 181).