A neo-Weberian analysis of capitalism and anti-Muslim racism
March 2025, Article written by Lou Hildebrandt
Contemporary international events suggest that racism is not only the product of extremist ideologies, but rather a structural element firmly embedded in the frameworks of political domination of Western Europe and the US and international capitalism. This has been further highlighted by the return of Donald Trump, the newly re-elected president of the United States, whose rhetoric and policy initiatives—from his relentless targeting of migrants to his support for the ethnic cleansing of (Harb, 2025) —illustrate the role of racism as a means of legitimation for state violence. At the same time, individuals such as Elon Musk represent the intersection of technological dominance and reactionary political movements, leveraging corporate influence and digital platforms to legitimize white nationalist discourses in the name of “free speech.” However, these occurrences are not anomalous; rather, they are indicative of a larger system in which racial hierarchies are perpetually instantiated through economic structures (Fanon, 1961). Not only does neoliberal capitalism translate social injustices into sustained economic realities, it also invests them with moral significance, placing work as both an economic necessity and a barometer of human value (Weber, Die protestantische Ethik und der Geist des Kapitalismus, 1904). This reading is particularly evident in the discourse surrounding racialized Muslims, whose social standing is incessantly reconstituted through their involvement in the labor market (Rana, 2007)—demonized as parasitic when unemployed, a menace to be managed when working, and grudgingly tolerated only when their labor is economically expedient. This adverse cycle is neither coincidental nor random but rather is systematically recreated by bureaucratic social closure processes that keep racialized groups locked in an exclusionary system designed to reproduce their marginalization. To this extent, Neo-Weberian approaches can be an effective analytical framework. Within progressive left circles, the discussion is mostly framed by Marxist theory and historical materialism; however, it must be stipulated that Weberian analyses have useful contributions to make by describing the influence of a pervasive, historically continuous Protestant work ethic and incorporating this into systemic frameworks.
Social closure and urban spaces
Neo-Weberian approaches have not yet seen their considerable potential as a theoretical tool for the analysis of racial and ethnic processes realized, remaining mostly untapped in the study of racism. One of the only writers to apply these notions was Frank Parkin in the late 1970s and early 1980s when he employed concepts of communal forms of social conflict and social closure (Weber, 1921) to explain the way that ethnic groups organize as they fight for economic justice (Parkin, 1979). His methodology highlighted how the mechanisms of social closure confine or expand economic resource availability, determining the range of possibilities encountered by different racial and ethnic categories. The application of a Neo-Weberian lens, however, is more far-reaching than ethnic group organizational dynamics alone; it equally sheds meaningful light on the structure of the city. Urban areas, as currently the settings of economic exchange and social differentiation, are not simply passive arenas for ethnic mobilization but also actively shape patterns of inclusion and exclusion. Inclusion in jobs, housing, and public services is consistently regulated through formal and informal apparatuses of closure that work to reproduce hierarchies of racialized difference (Mackert, 2004). By revisiting Neo-Weberian analysis within racist scholarship, scholars can gain a better understanding of how economic hardship, and the spatial forces of cities merge to sustain racial and ethnic hierarchies.
It is not just economic and spatial resources that enable and manifest social closure, but bureaucracies, legislation, and norms as well, actively promoting the latter. These institutional mechanisms are gatekeeping devices that regulate access to opportunities and resources, often in ways that preserve racial and ethnic hierarchies. The phrase “machinery of government” (Lynn, 2008) is particularly useful here, as it specifies the role of administrative systems in preserving and reproducing exclusionary patterns. Power relations embedded within bureaucratic institutions, and the instrumental rationality typical of modern governance, are embedded within the larger social closure system. In the guise of neutrality and efficiency, administrative procedures legitimate and perpetuate unequal access to economic and social mobility and thus reinforce dominant systems of privilege and disadvantage. Hence, when people use analyses in a Weberian sense to advocate for administrative reforms and social transition, they center their arguments around the individual rather than adherence to rules and not doing something wrong in the bureaucratic system (Saks, 2020). This perspective can be applied to an anti-racist struggle for liberation, too.
Protestant work ethic and meritocracy
In Western capitalism, faith in meritocracy has its roots in the so-called Protestant work ethic (Weber, 1904). This performance-oriented culture has taken root in society, shaping notions of individual accomplishment and social worth. Not only is it presented as required for the functioning of society, but it is also spoken of as a desirable trait of a Western-construction self, used to perpetuate Orientalist dualisms between the “disciplined” West and the supposedly “less disciplined” Other (Said, 1978). This dynamic is demonstrated in the way racist social narratives are routinely constructed within labor market discourse, as conceptions of work ethic and productivity are coded vehicles of hierarchy and white supremacy.
The labor market regime employs seemingly neutral requirements, such as time management, as instruments of discipline, and the reinforcement of the notion that work is a moral duty. Work is not only being offered as an economic necessity but as an indicator of “civilization” itself (Weber, 1904). It is all part of a wider shift in government, from inward-looking policymaking to bureaucratic rule to outward-looking policymaking to meeting the needs and expectations of citizens. Above all, this is achieved not through market forces but through the emergence of a professional administrative culture rooted in quality and service. Here is the new Weberian schema, wherein the bureaucrat, rather than merely being a lawyer and a jurist, has evolved into a professional manager whose chief role is to meet the needs of citizens and clients in the best possible way (Saks, 2020).
Racist work ethos is exposed here in the very way public discussion of racialized Muslims is always pulled into the paradigms of the labor market. When Muslims utilize social welfare, they are stereotyped as the classic “lazy foreigners” who exploit the welfare system. When they compete in the labor market, they are viewed as a threat and accused of job stealing. Even when talk about Muslims is seemingly positive—such as when social democrats attempt to fight racist discourses— they do so within the same labor market language. Arguments that stress more participation in the labor market or the necessity of Muslim workers to sustain the pension scheme still characterize them by their economic utility. This essentialization of Muslim labor indirectly works to perpetuate the same framework of exclusion and instrumentalization such arguments claim to counter.
Besides, right-wing populism increasingly discriminates against Muslims and uses the labor market as a vehicle. For instance, Alice Weidel, the chief of the fascist German party Alternative für Deutschland, approximately said in a speech in the German parliament that “Burqas, scarf-girls, and alimented men with knives, and other useless people are not going to endanger our wealth.” (ZDF, 2018). With this speech, she not only engaged in the for right-wing rhethorics typical securitization of migration, but at the same time suggested that with regards to the labor market it is not useful to welcome many people from Syria, Somalia and Afghanistan. This added another layer of discrimination that touches upon Max Weber’s concept of the Protestant work ethics that are inherent in Western societies and minds (Weber, Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft, 1921).
This self-perpetuating pattern finds supporting policies of discipline, such as the prohibition of work for Muslim refugees in Germany. These kinds of restrictions have a dual function: they institutionalize top-down social closure, and, by the same token, construct Muslims as “immoral” by the moralizing work ethic. By legally excluding access to the labor market, they provide for economic exclusion, which further generates racist accounts of welfare dependency. At the same time, this failure to work is framed as a personal failure of the worker, supporting the notion of work not as an economic necessity but a reflection of one's character. This configuration of social closure and Protestant work ethics ensures that whether excluded or included within the labor market, racialized Muslims are trapped within a system maintaining their outsider status.
Bibliography :
Fanon, F. (1961). The Wretched of the Earth.
Harb, A. (2025). Trump suggests he wants ethnic cleansing in Gaza. Is it feasible? Al-Jazeera.
Lynn, L. (2008). What Is a Neo-Weberian State? Reflections on a Concept and Its Implications.
Mackert, J. (2004). Die Theorie sozialer Schließung. Das analytische Potenzial einer Theorie mittlerer Reichweite. In Die Theorie sozialer Schließung (pp. 9-24).
Parkin, F. (1979). Marxism and class theory: a bourgeois critique. Rana, J. (2007). The Story of Islamophobia. Souls, 148-161.
Said, E. (1978). Orientalism.
Saks, M. (2020). Neo-Weberianism and the Professions.
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ZDF. (2018). "Kopftuchmädchen und Taugenichtse": https://www.zdf.de/nachrichten/heute-sendungen/videos/alice-weidel-ordnungsruf-100.html
