-------- Original Message -------- Subject: Re: Marx/Weber on capitalism
Date: Wed, 10 Apr 2002 21:09:27 -0400
From: Steve Rosenthal <steve-rosenthal at cox.net>
To: 'psn' <psn at csf.colorado.edu>
George Snedeker asked:
"Who has written about how Weber's conception of capitalism differs from that of Marx? I am looking for something brief and clear on this.Thanks.
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Below is an excerpt from a paper I gave at ASA a few years ago critically analyzing how classical sociological theory is generally taught. Against the common view that Marx and Weber are similar to or complement each other, I argue that they are fundamentally different. Against the view that Marx and Weber had similar views of capitalism, I argue that they had profoundly different conceptions of capitalism, and therefore, profoundly different explanations of how capitalism came into existence. I illustrate these differences by quoting briefly from Marx on "primitive accumulation" and from Weber's introduction to The Protestant Ethic.
Why did Weber support German imperialism before and during World War I? Why did he call for the expulsion of Polish agricultural workers from Germany? Why did he denounce the Russian Revolution? Why did he regard non-Europeans and especially blacks as inferior races? Why did he maintain that the solution to Germany's defeat in World War I might depend on the emergence of a charismatic leader? In short, if there was little difference between Weber and Marx and their analyses of capitalism, why was Weber essentially a precursor of Nazism?
I have long thought that progressive sociologists who have a soft spot for Max Weber do not know the real Weber. As Mort Wenger used to say, they know the Americanized, sanitized, Parsonized Weber who was reinvented for Cold War purposes as an alternative to Marx. They fail to see the profound Euro-centrism and racism that is at the core of Weber's sociology. Perhaps that is also why those who see Weber as a sort of comrade-in-arms of Marx also tend to support some of the imperialist wars fought by the "Enlightenment West" against elements of the "culturally backward Orient." Thus, clarification of the differences between Marx and Weber is connected to the contemporary struggle against imperialist war.
Steve Rosenthal
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THE RISE OF CAPITALISM: EUROPEAN ACHIEVEMENT OR EUROPEAN CRIME?
Marx: "The discovery of gold and silver in America, the extirpation, enslavement and entombment in mines of the aboriginal population, the beginning of the conquest and looting of the East Indies, the turning of Africa into a warren for the commercial hunting of black-skins, signalised the rosy dawn of the era of capitalist production. These idyllic proceedings are the chief momenta of primitive accumulation...These methods depend in part on brute force, e.g., the colonial system...Force is the midwife of every old society pregnant with a new one...If money, according to Augier, 'comes into the world with a congenital blood-stain on one cheek,' capital comes dripping from head to foot, from every pore, with blood and dirt."
Weber: "...in Western civilization only, cultural phenomena have appeared which...lie in a line of development having universal significance and value. Only in the West does science exist at a stage of development which we recognize today as valid...Above all is this true of the trained official, the pillar of both the modern State and of the economic life of the West...the world has known no rational organization of labour outside the modern Occident...We are dealing with the connection of the spirit of modern economic life with the rational ethics of ascetic Protestantism....When we find again and again that, even in departments of life apparently mutually independent, certain types of rationalization have developed in the Occident, and only there, it would be natural to suspect that the most important reason lay in differences of heredity. The author admits that he is inclined to think the importance of biological heredity very great...when comparative racial neurology and psychology shall have progressed beyond their present and in many ways very promising beginnings, can we hope for even the probability of a satisfactory answer to that problem."
The contrast between Marx's condemnation and Weber's celebration of Western capitalism could hardly be more vivid. Weber, of course, was aware of the "blood and dirt" of which Marx wrote, but Weber analyzed them as phenomena common throughout history that had no intrinsic relationship to the spirit and nature of capitalism. Weber's repeated invocation of the uniquely rational character of Western culture is ethnocentric, Eurocentric, and historically inaccurate.
Theory textbooks misrepresent the differences between Marx and Weber when they claim that Weber rounded out Marx's one-sided economic determinist interpretation of the rise of capitalism by giving more attention to the role of ideas in historical change. Both Marx and Weber clearly recognized that ideas or culture played an important role in the transformation from feudalism to capitalism. Analysis of the Protestant Reformation figured prominently in both Marx's and Weber's interpretations of the rise of European capitalism. Weber identified "rational organization" as the decisive unique characteristic of Western capitalist civilization, and he suspected that this cultural phenomenon would prove to be biologically determined. Weber argued that there was an "elective affinity" between the Protestant Ethic and the "spirit of capitalism;" thus the Protestant Reformation instilled in early capitalists an ascetic work ethic that compelled them to acquire wealth through the rational organization of production.
Marx interpreted the Protestant Reformation as an aspect of the struggle of the rising bourgeoisie against the feudal ruling class. He saw the Protestant ethic as an ideological weapon used by capitalists to convince workers that hard work and obedience to their bosses was demanded by god. The Protestant ethic was meant to control the behavior of the working class, not the behavior of the bourgeoisie, who never led the ascetic life Weber described. Thus, British historian E. P. Thompson (1963) verified Marx's analysis by describing the "ideological terror" unleashed by capitalists against workers during the industrial revolution in England. U.S. historian Gabriel Kolko (1961), showed that Benjamin Franklin, portrayed by Weber as an ideal typical embodiment of the spirit of capitalism, was no ascetic; he was fond of food, drink, and mistresses.
Marx and Weber thus analyzed the role of ideas and the nature of capitalism very differently. Marx was a dialectical materialist who insisted that ideologies arise out of material conditions and serve the interests of contending social classes. Weber was an idealist who insisted that ideologies have an independent or autonomous existence, and that there may be an "elective affinity" between ideologies and class interests. Marx said that early capitalists got their wealth through genocide and slavery, while Weber says that they got their wealth through ascetic living and rational organization of production. Marx and Weber had very different views of how capitalists extract profits and of how European hegemony was established. Marx said that profits come from exploitation; Weber said that profits are derived from rational organization. Marx said that European global hegemony resulted from military conquest and economic plunder. Weber said that European global hegemony resulted from the unique cultural values of Western Civilization. Marx saw capitalism as an exploitative and alienating system that should be condemned and overthrown, while Weber celebrated it as a unique Western invention.