ABSTRACT
The tragedy of European civilization does not begin with the successful 1789 revolution, as reactionaries believe, but with the failed 1848 revolution. The unification of Germany might have proceeded on a democratic rather than a military basis, and Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels would have played a significant role. Max Weber's two speeches "Science as Vocation" and "Politics as Vocation" stand as an epitome of his whole sociological work, for in them he drew from the insights he had gained from his multifarious theoretical pursuits. Weber is the equal of Marx as a master of social theory. For political reasons the two have been opposed to each other, as when Weber was derisively referred to on the left as "the bourgeois Marx". The tragedy of European civilization is but an instance on the highest level and greatest import of this ineradicable aspect of human life.
