Introduction

Abstract

There is currently a resurgence of interest in the work of Max Weber, and this is, I believe, for three main reasons.¹ First, the collapse of communism in the late 1980s and early 1990s effectively marked the decline of Marxism as a dominant paradigm of social theory.² This sharp collapse of the Marxist orthodoxy vindicated Weber’s analysis of modernity, and, in particular, his critique of Marx. Here, one may recall Weber’s critique of historical materialism (Weber, 1949, 68), his critique of historical ‘progress’ (Weber, 1970, 134–56), his argument for the force of beliefs and ideas — or, more generally, culture-in shaping history (Weber, 1992), his thesis that socialism could not escape the progressive bureaucratization of the world (Weber, 1994, 272–302), and his perceptive critique of the political means employed by revolutionary movements (Weber, 1970, 115–28).³ Each of these lines of criticism has to some extent proved justified, and, because of this, Weber’s intellectual status has risen in the post-Marxist world.

European and American social and economic life is ‘rationalized’ in a specific way and in a specific sense. The explanation of this rationalization and the analysis of related phenomena is one of the chief tasks of our disciplines.

Weber (1949, 34).