The Iron Cage
“The capitalistic economy of the present day is an immense cosmos into which the individual is born, and which presents itself to him... It forces the individual, insofar as he is involved in the system of market relationships, to conform to capitalistic rules of action. The manufacturer who in the long run acts counter to these norms, will just as inevitably be eliminated from the economic scene as the worker who cannot or will not adapt himself to them will be thrown into the streets without a job…”
These prophetic words are taken from the essay “The Protestant Ethics and the Spirit of Capitalism” written in 1904 by the German Sociologist Max Weber (1864-1920). Weber is considered one of the founders of the field of sociology and a huge influence on the field of the social sciences as a whole. His main work focused on the implications of modernity on the development of society.
The words above describe a part of his critique of our rational strive for efficiency which will always leave groups of people behind…. This observation might seem obvious, but should be taken with the utmost seriousness nowadays on the brink of the artificial intelligence revolution.
Our Torah portion this week, Beshalach, made me think of Weber, as it illustrates in a poetic way this notion that we should all pay attention to.
After the final three plagues, the Israelites finally embark on their journey out of Egypt and come across what would be the Pharaoh's last obstacle. As they reach the shores of the Red Sea, the Egyptian army closes in from behind. The famous miracle of the splitting of the Red Sea is in this portion, and it is followed by a song of praise offered by Moses and his sister Mirian known as Shirat Hayam, or The Song of the Sea.
Here is the first verse of the song:
אָ֣ז יָשִֽׁיר־מֹשֶׁה֩ וּבְנֵ֨י יִשְׂרָאֵ֜ל אֶת־הַשִּׁירָ֤ה הַזֹּאת֙ לַֽיהֹוָ֔ה וַיֹּאמְר֖וּ לֵאמֹ֑ר אָשִׁ֤ירָה לַֽיהֹוָה֙ כִּֽי־גָאֹ֣ה גָּאָ֔ה ס֥וּס וְרֹכְב֖וֹ רָמָ֥ה בַיָּֽם׃
Then Moses and the Israelites sang this song to the Lord. They said:
I will sing to the Lord, for he has triumphed gloriously; the horse and his rider he has thrown into the sea.
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And here is a beautiful commentary by the Natziv of Volozin from Haamek Davar:
“A horse and its rider are on a level sea. This is the essence of the poetry, of course, from the poetry of women. And the matter is that in the meaning of a horse and its rider, everything is included. Just as a horse prepared for war obeys its rider, so is a man of valor like a horse to his masters, walking through fire and water. And the greatest of them is like a horse to the commander of thousands. And the commander of thousands is the head of the commanders of armies, up to Pharaoh himself. And this also includes the supreme commander who rides on Pharaoh's supreme army. And for that supreme commander, the entire army is considered a horse. And all these are like the sea level. And that is it. Because he was elevated with pride. Pride above all, proud.”
In this thought-provoking commentary, the Natziv suggests that the entire essence of the song is encapsulated in the image of the horse and its rider drowning. He suggests that what drowned in the Red Sea was not just men and horses but the idea of mastery itself, the idea of a hierarchical order practiced by the Egyptians where one human was the other’s slave.
When I read the Natziv’s commentary, it made me think of a different type of mastery, that mastery which Max Weber put at the core of his theory, the mastery which is so directly illustrated by the image in our verse of the “Horse, and its Rider” סוס ורכבו and that is the rational mastery of man over nature.
In a 1917 lecture in Munich, Weber famously said: “The fate of our times is characterized by rationalization and intellectualization and, above all, by the disenchantment of the world.”
The exponential developments in technology, coupled with the capitalist economic structure, keep prioritizing efficiency, order and profit. In turn, what is lost in the process is everything else which is deemed superfluous. Weber coined the term “The Iron Cage” to explain how the structures which have come around us attempting to understand our world and organize it better, ended up trapping us inside it.
Other Torah commentators, such as the Maharal of Prague, suggested a fusion between the rider and the horse. “שניהם קשורים זה בזה.”
The Maharal explains that it could have been written that all the riders drowned, but yet the Torah mentions that they drowned with their horses.
In Weberian terms, it is exactly that fusion, or that dependency, if you will, which we have created towards our tools of efficiency (i.e. technology) which entrap us in an iron cage. The Torah’s image, however, goes one crucial step beyond Weber. It is not just entrapment, it is demise.
In our verse, right before the image of the horse and its rider, there is another important pair of words to pay attention to: אָשִׁ֤ירָה לַֽיהֹוָה֙ כִּֽי־גָאֹ֣ה גָּאָ֔ה ס֥וּס וְרֹכְב֖וֹ רָמָ֥ה בַיָּֽם׃ - Gaoh Gaah, which above is translated to “triumphed gloriously” is actually a double enhancement of the word “proud.” The Natziv mentioned it in his commentary: “Because he was elevated with pride. Pride above all, proud.”
The Natziv says here that God has not only drowned the Egyptian societal structure which was based on hierarchy, but also the arrogance of it.
This arrogance, with which we speed forward, has now pushed us to the brink of a great unknown. Our Torah portion puts limits on this arrogance, in the face of the sea, the natural strength which finally drowns mastery.
If you’d like a theological reading of this, it could clearly be found in the Mechilta (Midrash for Exodus) saying: “the words כי גאה גאה are a reminder that anyone who dares act arrogantly in the knowledge that there is a G’d who is superior to him will be punished.”
Weber, who wrote his essay at the turn of the 20th century, could not have imagined what relevance his words would still have 120 years later. As the Torah’s lessons are forever relevant, it seems that so too are Weber's words:
“No one knows who will live in this cage in the future, or whether at the end of this tremendous development entirely new prophets will arise, or there will be a great rebirth of old ideas and ideals, or, if neither, mechanized petrification, embellished with a sort of convulsive self-importance. For the last stage of this cultural development, it might well be truly said: “Specialists without spirit, sensualists without heart; this nullity imagines that it has attained a level of civilization never before achieved.”
Watch the video in Hebrew below:
