ABSTRACT
The Post-War years have witnessed a considerable growth of interest in Max Weber among sociologists in England and the US Weber struck upon this theme in the course of inquiry into the emergence of capitalism in western society-an inquiry that focused on England. The phenomenon both Marx and Weber wished to explain was the development, unique in world historical perspective, of an economic system in western Europe in which the following attributes were combined. Weber emphasized the distinction between traditional and rational social values in depicting the sharp contrast between feudalism and capitalism. By inserting an ideological and a psychological variable (the latter, to be sure, more implicitly) in historical analysis, Weber showed that the explication of variables relatively implicit in Marxist analysis may alter the conclusions that analysis reached, without essentially altering the facts it considered. The immediate occasion for this development, however, was Weber's concern with the facts of Marx's central empirical case: the rise of capitalism.
