Weber and the Marxist world

by Johannes Weiss, Michael J. King (Translator)

In contemporary sociology, the debate between Weberian social theory and Marxist social theory has been long, fierce and inconclusive. Professor Weiss, a leading West German social theorist, argues that the Marxist reception of Weber has been superficial, and distorted by the requirements of Marxism to see him as representative of bourgeois morality. Weiss's book dissects the Marxist response to Weber, and is a particularly valuable addition to the literature on Weber in that it takes account of Soviet and German Marxist work on Weber, work which has never before been discussed in English. Comprehensive and lucid, the book covers huge ground, taking in all aspects of Weber's work and placing the reception of Weber by the Marxists in an appropriate ideological setting. It provides a substantial analysis of the arguments about the epistemology and methodology of the social sciences, and argues that the Marxists fail to get behind superficial categorisations of Weber such as 'idealist', 'neo-Kantian', 'nihilist' and so forth. Weiss shows that there is fundamentally nothing at the heart of Weber's action theory which precludes the analysis of social structures - in other words, the problem is not and Marx, but Weber and the Markists. He deals with other aspects of Weber's work, providing an authoritative overview of religion; class and status; the city; culture (science and art); rationality, authority and bureaucracy; economy, state and law. He also discusses the question of Weber as a representative of bourgeois ideology and concludes that Weber's statement of the value freedom position is still valid. --- from book's back cover

206 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1986