Marx and Weber and the logic of historical explanation: The rise of machine capitalism

Abstract

In Marx’s characterization of the first stage of manufacture, economic production is constituted by the formal subsumption of labor under capital and thus the retention of precapitalist processes of production. In consequence, increases in production occur with constant returns to scale, competitive constraints are incompletely developed (per unit costs are not reduced), cooperation is simple, and this economic structure is consistent with various traditional as well as with rationalizing values. The objective, coercive, competitive constraints found in machine capitalism (the “iron cage”) are absent, and if capital accumulation occurs within this first stage of manufacture, it must be motivated subjectively. While Weber provides an explanation of the nature of this subjective motivation, an explanation of the capacity of the Protestant ethic and the spirit of capitalism to motivate capital accumulation systematically presumes a characterization of the logic of economic production that is developed incompletely in Weber’s analysis. The Protestant ethic becomes the spirit of capitalism, and methodically motivates capital accumulation, only when it interpenetrates the first stage of manufacture. Thus, neither Marx nor Weber alone provides an adequate explanation for the emergence of machine capitalism. Marx slights the necessity for the autonomous, subjective motivation of capital accumulation within the first stage of manufacture, while Weber provides an inadequate analysis of the nature of manufacture, the structure of economic production that is rationalized subjectively by the spirit of capitalism. However, their arguments are complementary and, if integrated, provide the foundation for a satisfactory explanation of this developmental process. Through my characterization of their analyses of capital accumulation in the first stage of manufacture, I construct an argument about Marx and Weber’s understanding of the role of value-commitments in the analysis of economic/social structures and about the common logic of historical explanation found in their theories.