This is a revised version of a paper presented to the annual convention of the American Political Science Association, September 1970. I wish to thank my colleague, E. Victor Wolfenstein, for his helpful comments and suggestions, and Ursula Schmidt-Brummer for her assistance in translation.

¹ Weber, Max, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1958) p. 24.Google Scholar That ‘historicotheoretical problem-capitalism’. Parsons, Talcott, The Structure of Social Action (New York: Free Press, 1949) p. 488.Google Scholar

² Protestant Ethic, p. 17.Google Scholar

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⁴ Capital, III, pp. 390–1Google Scholar; Selected Correspondence, p. 41Google Scholar; Pre-Capitalist Economic Formations, pp. 104–13.Google ScholarFor Weber's, prerequisites, see his General Economic History (London: Allen & Unwin, Ltd., n.d.) pp. 276–311Google Scholar; Theory of Social and Economic Organization, pp. 220–1.Google Scholar

⁵ Capital, III, p. 384 (italics given)Google Scholar; Selected Correspondence, p. 129.Google Scholar

⁶ Capital, III, pp. 383, 385, 390–1Google Scholar; Pre-Capitalist Economic Formations, p. 112.Google Scholar The increase of trade, Weber, observed, was ‘very antagonistic’ to the feudal structure. Economy and Society, 3 vols. (New York: Bedminster Press, 1968), III, p. 1093.Google Scholar

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¹¹ Ibid. Capitalism in its early stage needed an ideology which ‘educated the masses to labor’. Once in power, it could ‘force people to labor without transcendental sanctions’. Protestant Ethic, p. 282.Google Scholar

¹² Capital, I. p. 150.Google ScholarCapitalism required ‘the ascetic but productive slave’. Marx, , The Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844 (New York: International Publishers, 1964) p. 150 (italics given)Google Scholar; cf. p. 152; also, Weber, , Protestant Ethic, pp. 163, 169, 177.Google Scholar It was the ‘aristocracy’ who ‘put the gospel of worldly enjoyment in the place of enjoyment of the gospel’. But ‘the sober bourgeois first of all devoted themselves to work and very cunningly left the aristocracy to the enjoyment’ of its conspicuous consumption. German Ideology, p. 237.Google Scholar

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¹⁴ Critique of Political Economy, p. 173.Google Scholar‘The Puritan could demonstrate his religious merit precisely in his economic activity’. Weber, , The Sociology of Religion (Boston: Beacon Press, 1963), p. 252.Google Scholar

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²⁷ Law in Economy and Society, pp. 346–7Google Scholar; General Economic History, p. 343.Google Scholar The ‘traditional forms of enterprise’ no longer offered opportunities for the greatest gains and expansion of the city's economy because the latter had shifted towards ‘politically-oriented commercial and industrial capital undertakings’, i.e., state-sponsored monopolies. The City (New York: Free Press, 1966), p. 189Google Scholar; Economy and Society, I, p. 351Google Scholar; General Economic History, pp. 284–5Google Scholar

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³¹ Marx, , Theories of Surplus Value, pp. 53–4.Google Scholar On the alliance of the ‘new landed aristocracy‘ with the ‘new bankocracy’ and ‘the large manufacturers’ in the Glorious Revolution, see Capital, I, p. 795Google Scholar; cf. Weber, , Economy and Society, III, p. 1101.Google Scholar ‘The two great interests into which the bourgeoisie is split—landed property and capital’. Eighteenth Brumaire, pp. 48, 96–7 (italics given).Google Scholar

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³³ ‘In an age and in a country where royal power, aristocracy, and bourgeoisie are contending for mastery and where, therefore, mastery is shared, the doctrine of the separation of powers proves to be the dominant idea’. German Ideology, pp. 60–1.Google Scholar Because of the financial dependence of monarchs on certain economic groups (see note 32 above), the political theory of the separation of powers won acceptance. But this was, in practice, ‘a specifically unstable structure’. Weber, , Theory of Social and Economic Organization, p. 405.Google Scholar

³⁴ Engels, , ‘On Historical Materialism’, in Basic Writings, p. 61Google Scholar; Capital, , III, p. 385 n.Google Scholar

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³⁶ Critique of Political Economy, p. 11.Google Scholar

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³⁸ Theories of Surplus Value, pp. 202–3Google Scholar; Critique of Political Economy, p. 305.Google Scholar

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⁴⁰ Ibid.; Law in Economy and Society, pp. 35–6.Google Scholar; cf. p. 28; The City, p. 107Google Scholar; Economy and Society, I, p. 341.Google Scholar

⁴¹ Theory of Social and Economic Organization, p. 224.Google Scholar

⁴² Ibid., pp. 158 ff.

⁴³ Protestant Ethic, p. 26.Google Scholar

⁴⁴ Weber's methodology contains ‘a distinctively polemical element’. Parsons, Talcott, Structure of Social Action, p. 579; cf. p. 510Google Scholar; Theory of Social and Economic Organization, p. 216 n.Google Scholar; Essays, introduction, p. 34Google Scholar; Lowith, Karl, ‘Max Weber und Karl Marx’, Archivfür Sozialwissenschaft und Sozialpolitik, 67 (03, 1932) (1), pp. 53–99Google Scholar, and (April, 1932) (11), pp. 175–214; II, pp. 270–8; Bendix, Reinhard, Max Weber (New York: Anchor, 1962), p. 46.Google Scholar On the other hand, Marx's methodology was no less polemically inspired. As Engels wrote: ‘Marx and I are ourselves partly to blame for the fact that the younger people sometimes lay more stress on the economic side than is due to it. We had to emphasize the main principle vis-à-vis our adversaries, who denied it, and we had not always the time, the place or the opportunity to give their due to the other elements involved in the interaction’. Engels, to J. Bloch, September 22, 1890, Selected Correspondence, p. 500; cf. p. 541.Google Scholar

⁴⁵ Weber, , Methodology of the Social Sciences (Glencoe, Illinois: Free Press, 1949) p. 71 (italics given)Google Scholar; cf. Law in Economy and Society, p. 304.Google Scholar

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⁴⁷ Engels, to Franz Mehring, July 14, 1893, Selected Correspondence, p. 542.Google Scholar Other forces in society, e.g., the state, may have a ‘relative independence’ although ‘in the main’ they have to ‘follow the movement of production’. What is involved ‘is the interaction of two unequal forces: on the one hand, the economic movement, on the other, the new political power, which strives for as much independence as possible, and which, having once been established, is endowed with a movement of its own. On the whole, the economic movement gets its way, but it has also to suffer reactions from the political movement’. Engels to C. Schmidt, October 27, 1890, ibid., pp. 503, 507, 549. In short, the issue is one of ‘unequal’ forces and their interaction, not an either/or conception of causality where all forces are tacitly assumed to be equal. It is precisely the function of a theory to give unequal weight to certain factors, as we shall have reason to emphasize again and again in this essay (see note 141 below).

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⁴⁹ Essays, pp. 269–70Google Scholar; Sociology in Religion, p. 132.Google Scholar ‘The more naive historical materialism’ which believes that ‘ideas originate as a reflection or superstructure of economic situations.’ Protestant Ethic, p. 55; cf. pp. 266, 277.Google Scholar

⁵⁰ Essays, pp. 269–70, 457.Google Scholar See Weber's, reference to ‘the intrinsic character of Christianity’, p. 290; Protestant Ethic, p. 40.Google Scholar

⁵¹ It is to Hegel, Engels wrote, that one owes the conception of the world not as a collection of things, ‘but as a complex of processes’. Feuerbach in Basic Writings, p. 226Google Scholar (italics given). For his application of this point to the notion of causality, see note 47 above, and note 141 below. Also, see the discussion in Avineri, , op. cit., pp. 75–7.Google Scholar That Weber held a much more linear view of causality which he read into Marxism may be inferred from his assertion that ‘if we look at the causal lines, we see them run, at one time, from technical to economic and political matters, at another from political to religious and economic ones, etc. There is no resting point. In my opinion, the view of historical materialism frequently espoused that the economic is in some sense the ultimate point in the chain of causes is completely finished as a scientific proposition’. Cited in the introduction, Economy and Society, I, p. lxiv (my italics).Google Scholar For other references by Weber to the ‘chain’ of causality, see Protestant Ethic, p. 27Google Scholar; Law in Economy and Society, p. 328.Google Scholar ‘Ideas’, according to Weber, , were ‘like switchmen, determining the tracks along which action has been pushed by the dynamic of interest’. Essays, p. 280 (my italics).Google Scholar

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⁵³ Theses on Feuerbach, (11), in Basic Writings, p. 243.

⁵⁴ With respect to the precepts of religion or philosophy, ‘it would surely be pedantic to try and find economic causes for all this primitive nonsense’. Engels, to C. Schmidt, October 27, 1890, Selected Correspondence, p. 505.Google Scholar

⁵⁵ Methodology, p. 65.Google Scholar

⁵⁶ Ibid., p. 68; Protestant Ethic, pp. 91, 277–8.

⁵⁷ German Ideology, p. 37.Google Scholar Ideology ‘puts all empirical relations upside down’ (ibid., p. 387); cf. pp. 191, 461, 657; Selected Correspondence, pp. 503–5Google Scholar; Capital, III, p. 369Google Scholar; Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right, in Karl Marx: Early Writings, Bottomore, T. B., ed. (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1963) p. 43.Google Scholar

⁵⁸ German Ideology, pp. 36–7. ’From a scientific standpoint, all definitions are of little value’. Their meaning can only be grasped through the active empirical investigation of reality. Anti-Duhring, pp. 117,420.Google ScholarFor Weber's, similarly phrased conception of social science, see Methodology, p. 72.Google Scholar

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⁶⁰ Anti-Duhring, p. 41 (my italics). "The materialist conception of history starts from the proposition that the production (of the means to support human life) and, next to production, the exchange of things produced, is the basis of all social structure’Google Scholar (ibid., p. 367, my italics). It is only from this starting point that the system as a whole ‘can be explained’. Engels, , preface, Communist Manifesto, in Basic Writings, p. 4Google Scholar; cf. Selected Correspondence, pp. 493, 496–7.Google Scholar

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⁶² Anti-Duhring, p. 204Google Scholar (italics given). ‘All history must be studied afresh, the conditions of existence of the different formations of society must be examined individually before the attempt is made to deduce from them the political, civil law, aesthetic, philosophic, religious, etc., views corresponding to them’. Selected Correspondence, pp. 496–7Google Scholar. Engels, it is true, uses the term ‘deduce’ in this letter, but the context makes it clear that this process, following as it does the empirical research, is that of ‘working out’ the relationships on the basis of the information gathered rather than ‘deduction’ in the strict sense of that term. The ‘peculiarities’ of a particular country's social structure ‘must be ascertained by careful analysis’. Capital, III, p. 919.Google Scholar

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⁶⁴ Ibid., pp. 76, 78, 80, 152.

⁶⁵ Since ‘class’ was not merely a sociological but also an historical concept for Marx, and one, moreover, closely associated with some form of private property, one is not likely to learn a great deal about its effects, causal or otherwise, from a study of ancient China or India, where, it is evident, Marx believed that entirely different conditions determined the social life of individuals from those which had gained world-historical importance in the West. Although the point cannot be developed here, Weber's methodological strategy rested from the outset, it seems to me, on a fundamental misunderstanding of what Marx had attempted (see note 9 above).

⁶⁶ German Ideology, p. 482; cf. pp. 93, 265, 391, 480.Google Scholar

⁶⁷ Capital, III. p. 369.Google Scholar

⁶⁸ Communist Manifesto, in Basic Writings, p. 7.Google Scholar

⁶⁹ Capital, III, p. 52. Each new ruling class represents its ideas and interests ‘as the common interest of all the members of society’ and its ideas therefore take on a universal form.Google ScholarGerman Ideology, p. 62; cf. pp. 60, 313, 461Google Scholar; Communist Manifesto, in Basic Writings, p. 26.Google Scholar

⁷⁰ For a general discussion of this problem, relative to the Marxist position, see Mannheim, Karl, Ideology and Utopia (New York: Harcourt, Brace & Co., 1936).Google Scholar

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⁷³ Capital, III, p. 1031.Google Scholar One of the better attempts to find an answer to this question within the Marxist framework is Ossowski, Stanislaw, Class Structure in the Social Consciousness (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1963), esp. pp. 69–88.Google Scholar

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⁷⁵ Ibid., pp. 182–3. ‘One must therefore distinguish between “propertied classes” and primarily market-determined “income classes”. Present day society is predominantly stratified in classes, and to an especially high degree in income classes’ (ibid., p. 301); cf. Economy and Society, I, pp. 302–3.Google Scholar

⁷⁶ Ibid., p. 190; cf. Theory of Social and Economic Organization, p. 180Google Scholar; Law in Economy and Society, pp. 39–40.Google Scholar

⁷⁷ ‘In a market economy the striving for income is necessarily the ultimate driving force for all economic activity’. Economy and Society, I, p. 203 (italics given); cf. note 75 abve.Google Scholar

⁷⁸ Capital, III, p. 1032. ‘At first glance it might seem that the identity of their revenues and their sources of revenue’ place individuals in the same class (my italics).Google Scholar

⁷⁹ Essays, p. 181; cf. pp. 186–7, 300, 354, 405.Google Scholar

⁸⁰ Class is defined ‘exclusively by economic interests’ (ibid., pp. 181, 183,194); cf. Economy and Society, I, p. 305; II, p. 932.Google Scholar

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⁸² Ibid., p. 190; cf. Economy and Society, II, p. 639.Google Scholar

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⁸⁵ Essays, p. 301Google Scholar; Bendix, , Max Weber, pp. 260, 393.Google Scholar

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⁸⁷ Weber's general relationship with Hegelian philosophy is a complex and insufficiently treated subject. Bendix, , however, does give the matter some consideration (op. cit., pp. 387–8, 492 if.).Google Scholar For Engels’ criticism of those who use ‘Kantian’ approaches to the study of social reality, see Selected Correspondence, pp. 562–5.Google Scholar Georg Lukacs was one of the first to point out the social-historical basis for Weber's ontological dualism. Lowith, , op. cit., I, p. 74 n.Google Scholar For the importance of Hegelian ‘distortion’ to Marx's thought, see Avineri, op. cit., though I do not agree with his exaggerated assessment of Engels‘ ’mechanically-minded‘ thinking.

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⁹⁵ German Ideology, p. 508. For an excellent historical account of this developmentGoogle Scholar, see Thompson, E. P., The Making of the English Working Class (Baltimore: Penguin, 1968).Google Scholar

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¹⁰⁰ ‘Class interests have come to diverge more sharply from one another than ever before’. Law in Economy and Society, pp. 39–40.Google Scholar

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¹⁰² ‘It is politics which happens to be the only link through which contemporary philosophy can become true’. Cited in Avineri, , op. cit., p. 10; cf. p. 13Google Scholar; cf. Early Writings, p. 29Google Scholar; Easton, Lloyd and Guddat, Kurt, eds., Writings of the Young Marx on Philosophy and Society (New York: Anchor Books, 1967,) pp. 213–14.Google Scholar Referring to the first volume of Capital, Marx noted that he had omitted any treatment of ‘the relations of different state forms to different economic structures of society’, but he added that this ‘could be easily accomplished by others on the basis thus provided’. Marx, to Dr. Kugelmann, December 28, 1862, Letters to Dr. Kugelmann (New York: International Publishers, 1934), p. 23.Google Scholar

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¹⁰⁶ Law in Economy and Society, p. 324.Google Scholar

¹⁰⁷ Ibid., p. 323. The considerable power of those who control the means of economic production is simply a ‘most elemental economic fact’. Essays, p. 181.

¹⁰⁸ Methodology, p. 47Google Scholar; Bendix, , Max Weber, pp. 485, 487.Google Scholar

¹⁰⁹ Essays, p. 334; cf. pp. 35, 43.Google Scholar The ‘vital interests’ of the state dictate the objectives of political policy. Economy and Society, III, p. 1383Google Scholar; Mayer, J. P., Max Weber and German Politics (London: Faber and Faber, Ltd., 1955) p. 41.Google Scholar

¹¹⁰ The essence of politics is a struggle for power. Economy and Society, III, p. 1414Google Scholar; Bendix, , Max Weber, pp. 7,263Google Scholar; Mayer, op. cit., passim. Several Weberians have felt the need to offer an apologia for Weber's ‘political realism’, largely on the grounds that it was the only position that could claim ‘public effectiveness’, given the conditions of Imperial Germany. Roth, Guenther, ‘Political Critiques of Max Weber: Some Implications for Political Sociology’, American Sociological Review, 30, (04 1965), pp. 213–23CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Lowenstein, Karl, Max Weber's Political Ideas in the Perspective of our Time (University of Massachusetts Press, 1966). See note 174 below.Google Scholar

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¹²⁴ Methodology, pp. 72, 76–8.Google Scholar

¹²⁵ Cited in Bendix, , Max Weber, p. 262 n.Google Scholar Weber recognized that not all aspects of a social structure were of equal importance. Protestant Ethic, p. 25.Google Scholar But, unless this insight is translated into a theoretical arrangement of variables, it is empirically true but theoretically worthless. Weber ‘does not develop social theory explicitly in the direction of setting up a system of inter-dependent variables, but confines it to the ideal type level’. Parsons, Talcott, Theory of Social and Economic Organization, p. 108 n.; cf. p. 9Google Scholar; Structure of Social Action, pp. 533, 541 n., 631Google Scholar; Bendix, , Max Weber, p. 46.Google Scholar

¹²⁶ Despite accolades to his ‘sociological theory’, or his ‘systematic framework for an interpretation of the political development of Western Europe’, none of Weber's heirs has been able to present that theory on the basis of what Weber wrote. Thus, on the one hand, we are told that Weber has a ‘theory’, and at the same time, we are reminded that ‘Weber refused to simplify the world in order to make it comprehensible’. What else, one might ask, is a theory for? The fact that ‘Weber is not famous for his elaboration of a key idea’ is only an occasion for pointing out that his ideas cannot be ‘vulgarized’ as easily as those of Marx. Roth, , introduction, Economy and Society, I, p. xxixGoogle Scholar; Bendix, , Max Weber, pp. 469–70, 472. Such statements, which fill the literature of political sociology are reflections of (1) a misunderstanding of the nature and role of theory, and (2) an academic form of ideological polemic with the Marxist position. Parsons has formulated his own approach to the social system, but he of course does not put it forward as Weber’s theory (see note 157 below).Google Scholar

¹²⁷ Cited in the introduction, Essays, p. 55Google Scholar; Theory of Social and Economic Organization, p. 102Google Scholar; Bendix, Reinhard, ‘Max Weber’s Interpretation of Conduct and History‘, American Journal of Sociology, 51 (05 1946) 518–26.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed Compare this with Engels’ statement that what the historian looks for are not ‘the motives of single individuals’, but ‘those motives which set in motion great masses, whole peoples’. And, amongst these kinds of ‘actions’, he proposes to ‘explain’ not those which are transient or momentary, but some ‘lasting action resulting in a great historical transformation’. Feuerbach, in Basic Writings, p. 232.Google Scholar It is this notion of structural change, I would suggest, which supplies the meaning for the references to ‘in the last resort’ with respect to the importance of economic factors to Marxism.

¹²⁸ Economy and Society, I, p. 18.Google Scholar

¹²⁹ Thus Marx distinguishes between ‘vulgar’ ideologists such as Burke, , Bentham, , AND Malthus, (Capital, I, pp. 580 n., 833)Google Scholar, and those who, like Adam Smith, are able to express in ‘scientific’ fashion their ideas about the socioeconomic system (Theories of Surplus Value, pp. 202–3Google Scholar; Holy Family, p. 77).Google Scholar They are no less ‘bourgeois’, only more sophisticated. J. S. Mill seems to be somewhere between these two positions, according to Marx, (Capital, I, pp. 19, 669 n.).Google Scholar ‘It is precisely characteristic of vulgar economy that it repeats things which were new, original, deep, and justified during a certain outgrown stage of development, at a time when they have become platitudinous, stale, false’. Capital, III, pp. 913, 951, 967, 983 n.Google Scholar

¹³⁰ Methodology, pp. 11, 33, 58, 98, 123.Google Scholar

¹³¹ In ‘the main logical outline of Weber's analysis, the prominence of the pattern of dichotomization is striking’. Parsons, Talcott, introduction, Sociology of Religion, p. xxix and note.Google Scholar On Weber's ‘rationalistic’ bias, see p. xlii; Bendix, , ‘Max Weber's Interpretation’, p. 519.Google Scholar Moreover, Weber's dichotomization of rational/irrational was itself the product of a specific view of rationality, one which was tied to and which provided the rationale for a particular socioeconomic system, namely capitalism. Lowith, , op. cit., I, p. 78 n.Google Scholar Weber ‘used ideal types to “atomize” his material into rigid units which could only be combined and recombined in a “mechanistic” way.… His own theoretical method suffers to some extent from the “trait atomism” of the intellectual tradition from which he came… ‘ Parsons, , Sociology of Religion, p. lxiiiGoogle Scholar, Lowith, , op. cit., I, pp. 76 n.Google Scholar, 82–3, 89 n. ‘He even reifies the famous “profit motive”, though less so than has been common in the utilitarian tradition of analysis’. And in accounting for the ‘transition’ between ideal types, ‘there seems to be a certain ad hocness’ to his approach, in the sense that ‘theoretical deficiencies are covered over’ with a display of empirical information. Parsons, , op. cit., p. lxv.Google Scholar On ‘voluntarism’ and the liberal tradition, see the introduction, Essays, p. 70. On Weber’s propensity to ‘decompose’ phenomena, see Bendix, , Max Weber, p. 286Google Scholar; Lowith, , op. cit., I, p. 67 n.Google Scholar On Weber's debt to the liberal tradition and his own statement of liberal values, cf. Bendix, , Max Weber, pp. xxiv, 44.Google Scholar And for the relationship between Weber's methodology and his political position in Imperial Germany, see Bendix, , ‘Max Weber's Interpretation’, p. 525.Google Scholar

¹³² Parsons, , Structure of Social Action, p. 607Google Scholar; introduction, Theory of Social and Economic Organization, pp. 3, 7, 14 ff., 18Google Scholar; Bendix, ‘Max Weber's Interpretation’. As Lowith notes, Weber's fragmented presentation of his thought was governed by his projected self-conceptions, viz., as a social scientist, a university academic, a political actor, etc. Thus, Weber's methodological commitment to compartmentalization was a reflection of his life-activity as he himself viewed it. Lowith, , op. cit., I, p. 96.Google Scholar

¹³³ Bendix, , Max Weber, p. 261; cf. p. 271 n.Google Scholar ‘Even the assertion that social structures and the economy are “functionally“ related is a biased view, which cannot be justified as an historical generalization’. Economy and Society, I, p. 341.Google Scholar

¹³⁴ Lowith, , op. cit., p. 75.Google Scholar For the ‘generational’ factors which spawned this methodological approach, see Hughes, H. Stuart, Consciousness and Society (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1958), especially pp. 278–335.Google Scholar

¹³⁵ Capital, III, p. 921.Google Scholar ‘In all ideological domains tradition forms a great conservative force’. Engels, , Feuerbach, in Basic Writings, p. 240Google Scholarcf. German Ideology, p. 508Google Scholar; Eighteenth Brumaire, p. 15Google Scholar; Anti-Duhring, p. 463.Google Scholar

¹³⁶ Capital,III, p. 921.Google Scholar ‘The conditions of existence of the ruling class … which are ideally expressed in law, morality, etc., are more or less consciously transformed by the ideologists of that class into something that in history exists independently, and which can be conceived in the consciousness of the separate individuals of that class as a vocation, etc.; and which are set up as a standard of life in opposition to the individuals of the oppressed class, partly as an embellishment or realization of this domination, partly as a moral means for this domination’. German Ideology p. 461; cf. pp. 61, 396.Google Scholar

¹³⁷ German Ideology, pp. 316–17; cf. pp. 37, 43.Google Scholar In all forms of society, ‘the basis of evolution is the reproduction of relations between individual and community assumed as given’. But this evolution is ‘from the outset limited’, and, ‘once the limits are transcended, decay and disintegration ensue’ Thus, ‘reproduction is at the same time necessarily new production and the destruction of the old form.… The act of reproduction itself changes not only the objective conditions—e.g., transforming village into town, the wilderness into agricultural clearings, etc.—but the producers change with it, by the emergence of new qualities, by transforming and developing themselves in production, forming new powers and new conceptions, new modes of intercourse, new needs, and new speech’. Pre-Capitalist Economic Formations, pp. 83, 92–3 (italics given)Google Scholar; cf. Avineri, , op. cit., p. 74. For this development as it manifests itself in the ideas of specific ‘ideologists’ who may be ‘vulgar’ or ‘scientific’ in their methodological and theoretical treatment of them, see note 129 above.Google Scholar

¹³⁸ Eighteenth Brumaire, pp. 15, 17.Google Scholar

¹³⁹ Ibid., p. 25; cf. preface, p. 14.

¹⁴⁰ German Ideology, pp. 88–9.Google Scholar

¹⁴¹ The best description of Marx's approach to empirical material is set forth in a long passage in the Critique of Political Economy. In considering a particular country, he writes, it might be thought best to begin with a ‘concrete’, such as its ‘population’, which we could then subdivide into ‘classes’ or geographical areas, towns, villages, or occupations, etc. Then we might study the country's exports and imports, annual production, or other ‘concretes’. But, ‘on closer consideration’, this approach ‘proves to be wrong’. For population is itself an ‘abstraction’, if we leave out ‘classes’, and the same applies to that term if we don’t specify the characteristics of each class, etc. Thus, beginning with an ‘imaginary concrete’, such as population, and ‘with a chaotic conception of the whole’, we proceed ‘by closer analysis’ until we ‘gradually arrive at simpler ideas’, i.e., ‘less complex abstractions’. Then we return to population ‘not as a chaotic notion of an integral whole, but as a rich aggregate of many conceptions and relations (pp. 292–3, 305). ‘In other words, the unity of concept and phenomenon manifests itself as an essentially infinite process’. Engels to C. Schmidt, March 12, 1895, Selected Correspondence, p. 565 (my italics). See the statement about Hegel cited in note 51 above. Just as one cannot proceed by holding one abstraction constant while examining others, or by isolating ‘imaginary concretes’, so in accounting for social change, one cannot assume a model of causality which holds that ‘the economic situation is cause, solely active, while everything else is only passive effect’. Rather, one must assume an ‘interaction’ of ‘unequal’ forces (ibid., p. 549, italics given). Addressing himself to his neo-Kantian critics, Engels declares: ‘What these gentlemen all lack is dialectics. They always see only here cause, there effect. That this is a hollow abstraction, that such metaphysical polar opposites exist in the real world only during crises, while the whole vast process goes on in the form of interaction … that here everything is relative and nothing absolute-this they never begin to see. As far as they are concerned, Hegel never existed’. Engels to C. Schmidt, October 27, 1890, ibid., p. 507.

¹⁴² On the effects of the lack of a ‘tradition’ in the United States, see Eighteenth Brumaire, p. 25Google Scholar; German Ideology, p. 89Google Scholar; Selected Correspondence, pp. 534–6.Google Scholar

¹⁴³ Protestant Ethic, p. 90.Google Scholar

¹⁴⁴ Cited in the introduction, Essays, p. 19; cf. Protestant Ethic, p. 55.Google Scholar

¹⁴⁵ Protestant Ethic, p. 27.Google Scholar ’No economic ethic has ever been determined solely by religion … the religious determination of life-conduct … (is) one—note this—only one, of the determinants of the economic ethic’. Essays, p. 268.Google Scholar Yet, since he was seeking ‘an historical explanation’ in The Protestant Ethic (pp. 46–7) the essential feature of which is the establishment of causal relationships (see notes 119 and 120 above), this ambiguous statement is not very satisfactory in his own terms. Bendix goes much too far in asserting that Weber was only ‘incidentally’ interested in the problem of causality in the Protestant Ethic. Max Weber, pp. 64, 280.Google Scholar

¹⁴⁶ Protestant Ethic, p. 183.Google Scholar

¹⁴⁷ Ibid., p. 91 (my italics).

¹⁴⁹ Sociology of Religion, p. 261; cf., pp. 93, 205, 270.Google Scholar

¹⁴⁹ A ‘final position’ on the whole argument of the Protestant Ethic, i.e., its causal connection with capitalism, could ‘only be taken up at the end of the investigation’; that is, after a comprehensive study of the sociology of religions. Protestant Ethic, p. 193.Google Scholar On the ‘Protestant ethic’, as an ‘ideal type’, see ibid., p. 98. (An ideal type, of course, is not in itself a hypothesis, but only a part of one. Methodology, p. 90.)Google Scholar

¹⁵⁰ Ibid., pp. 47–8; Methodology, p. 95.Google Scholar

¹⁵¹ Basic Concepts, pp. 36–7, 39–40Google Scholar; Economy and Society, I, p. 341Google Scholar; cf. Theory of Social and Economic Organization, p. 317.Google Scholar

¹⁵² Theory of Social and Economic Organization, p. 97.Google Scholar Nevertheless, Weber maintained that the purpose of a comparison between two phenomena (and hence the purpose of sociology) ‘must be the causal explanation of the difference’ between them. Cited in the introduction, Economy and Society, I, p. xxxi (italics given).Google Scholar

¹⁵³ Sociology of Religion, p. 208Google Scholar; Economy and Society, I, p. 341.Google Scholar

¹⁵⁴ Essays, p. 268.Google Scholar ‘The vast chaotic stream of events, which flows away through time’. Methodology, p. 111.Google Scholar Moreover, there is ‘an infinite multiplicity of “evaluative” attitudes’ which might be assumed toward a particular historical object (ibid., p. 144; cf. pp. 78, 96). As Bendix shows in his perceptive critique, the conclusion that historical phenomena are chaotic in the sense in which Weber is using that term follows from his sociological premise that ‘individual’ conduct is the determinative framework for social science. Tied to both of these propositions is Weber's conclusion that ‘general rules’ cannot constitute part of a causal explanation, except in a purely analytic (i.e., heuristic) sense. In short, Bendix argues that only a theory can unite sociology and history, as Weber had defined them. ‘Max Weber's Interpretation’, pp. 520–3.

¹⁵⁵ Law in Economy and Society, p. 297.Google Scholar Parsons restates and seems to accept Weber's characterization of the alternatives. Structure of Social Action, p. 621.Google Scholar

¹⁵⁶ Methodology, p. 68; cf. p. 103.Google Scholar

¹⁵⁷ Virtually all of his translators and editors have remarked on Weber's extraordinary influence on American sociology. More than that, we are told repeatedly that his ‘sociological perspective is broader than the reductionist economic focus of Marx's’. Weber is hailed as the ‘main architect of what is perhaps the most important alternative to the strict or loose Marxist type of emphasis’. And, despite the fact that he is himself critical of Weber for not having formulated a systematic theoretical position (see notes 125 and 131 above), this factor apparently recedes into the background when Weber is being compared with Marx, for Parsons asserts that the former developed a ‘framework of a more general theoretical analysis of the structure and functioning of social systems’ than that offered by Marx, , cf. introduction, Basic Concepts, pp. 22–3Google Scholar; the translator's preface to Sociology of Religion, and Talcott Parsons’ introduction to the same work, pp. xiii, xix; preface (Parsons) to Protestant Ethic, p. xv; Roth, ‘Political Critiques’; and for an anglicized version of this ‘polemical’ debate, see Runciman, W. G., Social Science and Political Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1963). I hope it is clear that while my remarks are meant to include those who have overtly identified themselves ideologically with Weber's liberalism, they are by no means limited to that group. Many—perhaps most—of those who follow Weber are attracted by his canons of methodology. In that regard, I have argued that since even these assumptions are tied to Weber's ideological position, the popularity of his methodology should not be surprising in the context of American social science.Google Scholar

¹⁵⁸ Lichtheim, George, The Concept of Ideology (New York: Vintage, 1967) p. 33.Google Scholar Weber is the leading spokesman for ‘bourgeois sociology’. Lowith, , op. cit., I, p. 53.Google Scholar

¹⁵⁹ Anti-Duhring, pp. 56–7Google Scholar; introduction, Class Struggles in France, pp. 9–10Google Scholar; Cf. Selected Correspondence, p. 499.Google Scholar

¹⁶⁰ German Ideology, p. 38Google Scholar; Anti-Duhring, p. 464.Google Scholar

¹⁶¹ Selected Correspondence, pp. 378–9.Google Scholar ‘ What we are interested in’, Marx stated, ‘is not the place which economic relations occupy in the historical succession of different forms of society. Still less are we interested in the order of their succession ”in idea” which is but a hazy conception of the course of history. We are interested in their organic connection within modern bourgeois society’. Critique of Political Economy, p. 304 (my italics).Google Scholar

¹⁶² Marx, to Vera Zasulich, March 8, 1881, Selected Correspondence, p. 412 (italics given).Google Scholar

¹⁶³ Methodology, pp. 75–6, 79, 187.Google Scholar Marx's view has been cited in the text above. Not a choice between ‘general laws’ of history and ‘various stages’ or types of society, but the necessity of their combination is the foundation of Marx's position. To put it another way, Marx's sociology is premised on the logic of the Hegelian ‘process of synthesis’, which makes an initial assumption both a starting point and a result of empirical investigation. Critique of Political Economy, p. 272Google Scholar; cf. Anti-Duhring, p. 464Google Scholar; Selected Correspondence, pp. 493, 496–7, and notes 60 and 62 above. Also, see Engels's discussion of the use of Boyle's Law as an illustration of ‘scientific’ procedure. Anti-Duhring, p. 127.Google Scholar

¹⁶⁴ Selected Correspondence, pp. 378–9. The example Marx uses to illustrate the point is that of Rome which, despite the presence of certain preconditions of capitalism, did not develop in that direction. In Capital, he speaks of ‘the transition from the feudal mode of production’ to capitalism as one which could follow ‘two roads’ in its development. Which ‘road’ was most likely in any given case, therefore, could be determined only after a careful study of the country’s history (III, pp. 393 ff., 720).Google Scholar

¹⁶⁵ Selected Correspondence, p. 496 (italics given). Marx had made his and Engels's reading of history the important difference between them and the ‘bourgeois economists’ or the ‘true socialists’.Google ScholarGerman Ideology, p. 267Google Scholar; Anti-Duhring, pp. 42–3.Google Scholar

¹⁶⁶ Selected Correspondence, p. 498 (italics given).Google Scholar

¹⁶⁷ Methodology, p. 179 n. (italics given).Google Scholar

¹⁶⁸ Ibid., p. 98; cf. pp. 11, 33, 58, 123. Weber maintained this position on the basis of an assumption that (1) the ‘interests’ of all social scientists were identified with the ‘analytical ordering of empirical reality’ as an end in itself (pp. 54, 63); (2) that the canons of ‘scientific procedure’ were uniformly agreed upon. Neither proposition is tenable as an operative description of social science.Google Scholar Weber's methodology, in other words, was itself an'ideal type’. Its defect was that of all of Weber's ideal types; he never explained how they were in fact related to empirical reality.This point is far more important than the space we can grant to it here; suffice it to say that it is tied to Weber's underestimation of control as a feature of social science (cf. Parsons, , Structure of Social Action, pp. 592–5).Google Scholar

¹⁶⁹ Methodology, p. 173. On the level of ‘abstraction’, Weber recognized that ‘theory’ was involved in the ‘fact’. But ‘theory’ is more than ‘abstraction’ in general; it is a particular ordering of abstractions. It is this point that Weber’s methodology either failed to take account of or attempted to deny. Cf. pp. 102–3, 107; Bendix, ‘Max Weber's Interpretation’. The consequence of this ‘separation’, even more pronounced in the literature of American political sociology than in Weber’s writings, reminds one of Engels's comment on Feuerbach's ‘abstract empiricism’: ‘[It] is designed to suit all periods, all peoples, and all conditions, and precisely for that reason it is never and nowhere applicable. It remains, as regards the real world, as powerless as Kant's categorical imperative’.Google ScholarFeuerbach, in Basic Writings, p. 223.Google Scholar

¹⁷⁰ Parsons, , Structure of Social Action, p. 625. Moreover, as Bendix argues, it is not merely the initial selection of the subject to be investigated which is value-conditioned, as Weber maintained, but any choice in the delineation of causal factors in the carrying out of that investigation. ‘Max Weber's Interpretation’, p. 521.Google Scholar

¹⁷¹ Methodology, p. 61 (italics given).Google Scholar

¹⁷² For a ‘post-Weberian’ discussion of this point, see Mannheim, op. cit.

¹⁷³ As Lichtheim remarks, in practice, Weber, like Hegel, was obliged to treat his own values as absolutes in spite of his methodological pronouncements (op. cit., p. 25). ‘The bourgeois Max Weber’ or ‘this great spokesman of the German bourgeoisie’, as Mayer, J. P. refers to him (op. cit., pp. 119–20)Google Scholar; cf. Bendix, , ‘Max Weber's Interpretation’, p. 525Google Scholar; Lowith, , op. cit., I, pp. 57, 66.Google Scholar

¹⁷⁴ Essays, p. 145.Google Scholar

¹⁷⁵ Lowith, , op. cit., I, p. 66. 116Google Scholar

¹⁷⁶ Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts, pp. 141–2 (italics given)Google Scholar; Early Writings, pp. 50–2, 59. ‘All forms and products of consciousness cannot be dissolved by mental criticism … but only by the practical overthrow of the actual social relations which gave rise to this idealistic humbug’.Google ScholarGerman Ideology, p. 50.Google Scholarcf. the Theses on Feuerbach, in Basic Writings, pp. 243–4Google Scholar; Avineri, , op. cit., pp. 136–49.Google Scholar

¹⁷⁷ See Engels's introduction to the German Ideology in which he recalls that at the time of its writing he and Marx were ‘deeply involved in the political movement’, while at the same time they ‘possessed a certain following in the educated world’. ‘It was our duty to provide a scientific foundation for our view, but it was equally important for us to win over the European and in the first place the German proletariat to our conviction’ (p. 11).

¹⁷⁸ Communist Manifesto, in Basic Writings, p. 5.Google Scholar

¹⁷⁹ Engels, to Vera Zasulich, April 23, 1885, Selected Correspondence, p. 459 (italics given).Google Scholar