The reality is that there is no major radical or Marxist intellectual current in the twentieth century that does not owe a significant theoretical debt to both Marx and Weber. Every interesting major figure in the Marxist tradition -- Lukacs, Gramsci, the Frankfurters, Habermas -- and many radical thinkers outside of or on the edges of that tradition -- such as Satre, Fanon, Foucault -- are heavily indebted to Weber. Hell, the only major and serious 20th century Marxist intellectual who comes to mind as not indebted to Weber is Althusser, and that is as much a function of his narrowly philosophical focus as anything, given the way other figures in his school such as Poulantzas and Balibar use Weber.
Is there a major intellectual figure of Europe before the 20th century who was not Eurocentric? Yoshie has acquired Zizek's fondness for Hegel, but there is nothing in Weber that even comes close to the overt racism of the Philosophy of History.
The only way to avoid Weber is to retreat to the decidely uninteresting and dogmatic precincts of sectarian Marxism-Leninism, the world where the main task is to defend the one, true [Leninist, Trotskyist, Stalinist] body of thought against contamination.
Leo Casey United Federation of Teachers 260 Park Avenue South New York, New York 10010 212-598-6869
===== Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never has and it never will. If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom and yet deprecate agitation are men who eant crops without plowing the ground. They want run without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its waters. -- Frederick Douglass
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