ABSTRACT
As we have seen in the previous chapter, Weber’s sociological writings were developed in the context of an ongoing intellectual debate in the German social sciences and history concerning the proper conduct of social-scientific enquiry. This debate was tied up with a more substantive set of enquiries into the origins of capitalism, partly influenced by the work of Marx, but affected also by the phase of rapid industrialization in Germany in the latter half of the nineteenth century. Weber entered this debate in 1904 with the publication of his essay, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, drawing attention to an affinity between certain religous beliefs which had flourished since the Reformation and a rationalistic economic ethic which embodied the ‘spirit’ of capitalism. Weber was not the first scholar to point to such a possible connection-and he was by no means the last. Indeed ‘the Weber thesis’, as it is sometimes rather misleadingly called, is at the centre of one of the greatest and certainly longest-running intellectual debates of the twentieth century, still going strong over ninety years after its inception. (The best commentary on this debate is Marshall 1982; but see also Green 1972; Marshall 1980.)
Weber’s thesis is often presented as a direct refutation of Marx’s analysis of the origins of capitalism, offering an idealistic theory in opposition to Marx’s materialistic account (see, for example, Weber 1948). This is a gross over-simplification. Weber was not trying to ‘refute’ Marx. He viewed Marx’s theory as an ideal-type rather than as a fully causal analysis, but he wished to add to this ideal-type rather than refute it. As Weber put it,
It is not our aim to substitute for a one-sided materialistic interpretation an equally one-sided spiritualistic causal interpretation of culture and of history. (Weber 1968, p. 91)
Weber was simply trying to treat ‘only one side of the causal chain’ in a manner analogous to Marx. Marx had run the causal sequence in one direction-from economic to ideological factors —whereas Weber wished to run it in the opposite direction in a manner complementary to Marx’s analysis. As we pointed out in the previous chapter, Weber believed that all explanations in the social sciences were partial ones. Although historical reality could not be fully understood without replicating it, nevertheless it was possible to approach this reality by combining a number of alternative causal sequences of the kind that both he and Marx were elaborating. Thus, as Weber remarked, both his and Marx’s analysis were ‘equally possible’.
