I have a profound distaste for text exegesis, which has its roots in my previous life as a philosophy major (Dismal Science 2). Hence trying to figure out what the author meant to say seems to me like a pretty boring and rather useless exercise. Mine is the approach of an ant to a dead philosopher - take what you can eat or carry away, leave the rest of it to rot.
Max Weber, like any other human being, including even the Bearded One Himself, was a product of his times. Applying today's standards of political correctness to the works seem to me like literary masturbation. I'd rather prefer to extract what I find useful to understand the world around me, and fuck the rest.
One of such useful hints is the concept of institutionalize knowledge - it may start as an unorthodox idea that has elective affinity to economic interests of a social class or a group, but once adopted - it becomes institutionalized and exerts a powerful influence on social life. To be sure, the Bearded One a expressed similar idea (18th brummaire), but Weber carries that idea much further.
Another Weber's trope that I find quite useful is his historical contingentims - i.e. viewing things as products of particular historical circumstances and contingencies rathwer than trans-material logic. Again the Bearded One expressed very similar ideas, but he was too much inculcated with Hegel.
My point, however, was not to deliberate the virtues of a dead philosopher but to reflect on a more contemporary issue - the poverty of the US left. It is painfully obvious to me that the US left does not have much to offer, esp. along the lines what Marxism was able to offer in the past. Consequently, it retreated to three tactics:
1. Reaction to social changes brough by captains of industry, defence of the past (welfare state, New Deal, "democracy," etc.), opposition government policies, etc.
2. Retereat from the real world to the world of ideas and text exegesis; diverting energies from sction to discourse. This is a sign of impotence - switching back from changing the world to interpreting it differently, or what is often the case, mere bitching about it.
3. Espousing Robin-Hoodism, identity politics, noble-savage mythology in lieu of critical science. This strategy heavily relies on grievance manufacturing, uncritical embracing of social groups labeled as "oppressed minorities," and claiming to represent their interest. At best, it is a niche-seeking behavior to market intellectual commodity, at worst - it is a signs of the last stage of intellectual degeneration.
PS. What does "racialized" mean?
wojtek