L’ordinamento giuridico alla prova della guerra. La lettura weberiana

The article addresses the relationship between World War I and Weber’s plea for a parliamentary system elected by universal suffrage. Some articles and speeches on political matters, written and delivered between March and November 1918, are read in the light of some central arguments of Economy and Society. State and market are, in Weber’s opinion, the two fundamental communities of the contemporary age. They must be preserved together in the political and legal framework undermined by the war, paving the way for radical and revolutionary perspectives. With his strong critique of any proposal for a corporate state, Weber suggests that there is only one way to keep a society grounded on the constitutive plot and the friction between state and capitalism: a democracy based on a parliamentary system. And yet the friction cannot be composed once and for all. Also problematic is Weber’s idea that the masses returning from the war would further cement the society with their new nationalistic attitude.