ABSTRACT
This chapter begins with a summary of the life and works of Karl Marx and Max Weber. Then these two thinkers are examined in comparative perspective, and finally, their influence upon comparative politics is traced and their thought and ideas are looked at in relation to theories of state and system, culture, development, class, and political economy. The philosophical foundations of Marx's thought are rooted in the traditional German preoccupation with idealism and history. The concept of alienation is of considerable significance in Marx's writings. In 1864 Marx finished the first volume of Capital and participated in the founding of the First International. The chapter briefly reviews the life and thought of two precursors whose theoretical contributions have influenced contemporary comparative politics. It identifies their major works and ideas, and attempts to demonstrate the relationship of their thinking to the four subfields around which the comparative politics literature tends to cluster: state, culture, development, and class cluster.
