ABSTRACT
Even before his breakdown, Weber had shown the in fluence of Marx's ideas when he juxtaposed, in a style re miniscent of the Communist Manifesto, the personal domina tion of the precapitalist social order to the impersonal class rule of the modern bourgeois.2 But this use of Marx was almost casual. Both Sombart and Tonnies showed a far greater interest in Marx before the end of the century. After his breakdown, however, much of Weber's work, from the Protestant Ethic to the wartime political analyses, was based on a critical examination of Marx's historical materialism.3
