Conflicting Interpretations of the Rise of Capitalism: Marx and Weber

Abstract

tT>HE POST-WAR years have wltnessed a considerable growth of interest | in Max Weber among sociologists in England and the U.S. 2 This paper s is an attempt to recall some of the polemical ongins of a major theme in Weber's work: the function of ideology as an independent vanable in social development. Weber struck upon this theme in the course of inquiry into the emergence of capitalism in western societyan inquiry that focused on England. A companson of Weber's explanation of this phenomenon with that of Marx, whose histoncal matenalism it so drastically challenged, is at once a venture in sociological analysis, and a study in intellectual history. 3 Less than half a century separated Weber from Marx. Perhaps the fullest presentation of the latter's views on the genesis of capitalism in the west appeared in the famous twenty-fourth chapter of Capital, published in I867.4 Weber's views crystallized as early as I904, when he first published The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism.5 This was the first of a senes of studies Weber undertook on the relationship of religious ideology to social