3 - From Value to World

Summary

This chapter argues for a shift in perspective from Max Weber's theory of value to a theory of worldliness, one drawn from the thought of Martin Heidegger and Hannah Arendt. Worldliness points to how our involvement in the everyday world is never reducible to technical calculation. The chapter uses this idea to illuminate the relationship between democratic action and the welfare state. Technical calculation, which strives to treat subjects as objects, is mediated by a material world that constitutes a space of collective, non-technical judgments. Welfare institutions, then, are both mechanisms of technical control and worldly objects that form the potential context for political judgment and mobilization. Heidegger and Arendt's analysis of worldliness provides theoretical tools for envisioning the welfare state as a site of democratic mobilization and participation-a perspective embodied in the response of the German workers' movement to Bismarck's reforms. The chapter concludes by examining this response, reconstructing the distinctive socialist vision of social reform.