David N. Smith publishes "Capital and the Thrill of Domination," pp. 195-207 in The Routledge International Handbook of Max Weber Studies, ed. Alan Sica.
Max Weber was one of the leading spirits of a circle of social liberals who feared that capitalists in Germany would succumb to the temptations of authoritarianism – the “thrill of domination” – to such an extent that the capitalist class would fail to win legitimacy, leaving the door open to inimical alternatives. He argued this position in both academic and polemical texts, including his little-known 1890s lecture notes on “the labor question” and his anti-critical essays defending The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. Weber also argued this view in public debates with the most authoritarian representatives of German industry. The defining concept of his critique, Herrenkitzel, was an original formulation, building on the views of key co-thinkers (Brentano, Schulze-Gaevernitz) and amplifying arguments that appeared in the dissertations of his students Else Conrad and Else von Richthofen.