The Stock Exchange (book)
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The Stock Exchange (in German: Die Börse) is a book written by Maximilian Weber, a German economist and sociologist in 1896. Note that the original edition was in German and the title can be translated as "The Stock Exchange".
During the 1890s the stock exchange in Germany had become the symbol of capitalism. During 1894-1896 Weber wrote a series of technical essays and a tract for layman about stock exchange basics, to oppose the common view that the stock exchange was a sort of league among conspirators engaged in fraud and deception at the expense of the honest working people and hence had best be abolished.
Weber in his research on the stock exchanged concentrated on two subjects.
First, he showed that commercialization could help create or destroy cultural values, sometimes doing both at the same time - it had destroyed the values of patriarchalism, but created the opportunities for farm workers. The stock exchange has aided the expansion of trade and calculability of business transactions, but at the same time it created new ways for speculative abuse.
Second, Weber showed that economic conduct was merged with ideas used in pursuing economic interests, and those ideas have to be viewed separately.
