ABSTRACT
One of the functions of social thought is to fortify people in their moral beliefs and to eliminate value conflicts. The modern social sciences do not perform this function openly but only implicitly and unconsciously. The fact that the normative element in economics has been often overlooked may also be due to what could be called the ‘pro-conscious bias’ of modern science. With the exception of certain schools of psychology, the social sciences have confined themselves to an examination of conscious thought and behaviour. In his famous essay The Protestant Ethics and the Spirit of Capitalism, Max Weber has described what may be called ‘the economic value complex’. Both attitudes—the religious Christian, anti-chrematistic attitude, on the one hand, and the new economic value complex on the other—became internalized value systems of Western middle-class man. This was especially true during the periods of transition from precapitalist to capitalist times.
