“methodological individualism” of the rational choice theory, and its level-
ing of all forms of reason and praxis to a strategic “cost-benefit” formula.
According to this notion, people act rationally through weighing the costs
and benefits of their potential and possible actions, and then choosing the
action that maximizes their benefit at the least cost to themselves.In this the-
ory, there is no sociological or humanistic recognition of the resulting increased
cost, burden, sacrifice or suffering that others have to bear due to such a self-
centered, “bargain” approach to life, reason, society and history.
As acknowledged by its own proponents, this formalistic reduction of rea-
son and human behavior to individual choice is rooted in and expressive of
the microeconomics of the capitalist production system, with its homo eco-
nomicus(economic man, i.e., the bourgeois) serving as the model of rational
action. Although the purported focus of this theory is on the rational action
of the individual subject, in critical, sociological terms, it is the capitalist class
that is privileged to be the so-called “rational” subject of this theory and its
social system, who accrues to itself the massive benefits produced by the
existing social totality while the other social classes, particularly the work-
ing class, bear the crushing weight of the resulting social and personal costs.
The truth of this statement is born out everyday as the antagonistic divide
between the capitalist class and the rest of the social class continues to widen.
This class antagonism, which the Rational Choice Theory in general and its
theory of religion in particular expresses, was graphically depicted in an arti-
cle entitled“Gesellschaft der Eigentümer? Wohlstandsverteilung in den USA (2001)”
[“Society of Owners? Wealth Distribution in the USA (2001)”] (Fischermann
2004). This graph, which was produced by Edward N. Wolff of the Levy
Economics Institute, reveals that the top 1% of the US population possessed
33% of the society’s wealth in 2001, and that the next 4% owned 36% of the
socially produced wealth. Sixty-nine percent of the society’s wealth was owned
and controlled by 5% of the population, which make up the capitalist class.
At the same time, however, there were 18% of the US population who pos-
sessed nothing of this wealth whatsoever.
124 • Michael R. Ott
University of California Press, 1968, p. 13f. This notion of methodological individu-
alism became a fundamental principle of free market capitalism developed by the
Austrian School of Economics and Friedrich August von Hayek, whose writings are
appealed to as foundational in the development of contemporary neo-liberalism. See,
Friedrich August von Hayek ‘Scientism and the study of society’, Economica9, 267–291
& 10, 34–63 & 11, 27–39; (1942/44). Reproduced in The Counter-Revolution of Science,
The Free Press, 1952.