METHODOLOGICAL IRONIES IN MARX AND WEBER

B. B. LEVINE

The difficulty one encounters in trying to understand others becomes strikingly apparent when we come upon a new society. There, where even ordinary things become sharp and stimulating, the meaning of acts is nonetheless elusive. In spite of this obvious experience social scientists have often asserted that it is in fact the stranger who has the methodological vantage point in deciphering social reality. This belief in the advantage of the stranger goes back to the writings of the French political philosopher Montesquieu (1689-1755). In his 1721 manuscript Persian Letters (Montesquieu (1721) 1975), he portrayed Persians roaming Paris asking questions about everyday life that would otherwise have been taken for granted by the typical Parisian. The fact that they were strangers to Parisian society imposed upon them the requirement of asking about things not normally thought about. But the difficulty with Montesquieu's thesis is that his book was not written by Persians but by a Parisian: Montesquieu himself. A better-known argument advocating the 'objectivity of the stranger' was advanced by Georg Simmel (1858-1918). Simmel's claim was that the stranger 'who comes today and stays tomorrow...[although always the potential wanderer]' (Simmel (1908) 1950: 402) is objective by virtue of the fact that he is not permanently entangled in the society in question. But Simmel, a Jew in Christian Germany, cannot demonstrate that the stranger is necessarily anything more than different - why objective also? It is ironical that very often the same social scientists that profess the advantage of the outside view also demand that we 'understand' the phenomena in question. A more recent example of such a perspective is found in the essay 'The Stranger: An Essay in Social Psychology' by Alfred Schutz (Schutz 1964: 91105). Schutz attempts to reconcile the apparently contradictory demands for both alienation and understanding. His essay, perhaps more appropriately entitled 'The Approaching Stranger', posits the newcomer's need to exchange knowledge about the society for knowledge enabling him to gain a response or reaction within it. In attempting to fit in and 'work' the society he is approaching, the newcomer is forced consciously to reconstruct routines that to the others would be in fact routine; typical recipe solutions to typical problems, apparently taken for granted by the members of the society he is approaching, must be worked out by our newcomer.
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But one may question the value of the newcomer status with respect to any supposed ability to resolve in any typical or representative way problems newly encountered. Indeed, as the saying goes, immigrants are frequently prone to be 'more American than the Americans'; more taken in by the society they come to than are those already there, they are more likely to be true believers. Schutz, himself a German immigrant to the United States, claims to take as given the thesis that the common sense man lives under the arch of the natural epoch, willingly suspending all disbelief. Yet the common sense man may be more thoughtful than Schutz would have us suspect. Before we convert the social scientist into a professional stranger, perhaps we should question once again whether or not we could know a society just because we have been there. Acts are hard to decipher, by the actor or the observer, cultural neighbor or cultural stranger, layman or social scientist. Given time in a new society one may notice uniformities which, when compared with the uniformities back home, seem to reveal an order. Sex, age, intelligence, class, status, power, institutional strategies, private styles of life, inter alia, are all distributed in a quasi-organized and somewhat distinct way. Actions of the actors appear regular and even understandable. What is to be made of them? Do we 'know' them once we have toured the distribution of their performances? Do we take them as seriously as an immigrant might? Who 'knows' more about these acts, the subjective actor himself or the social scientist believed to be objective? That the social scientist has as much difficulty with understanding others as does the lay person can be demonstrated by comparing and contrasting the social theories of German sociologists Karl Marx (1818-1884) and Max Weber (18631920). Marx and Weber crossed swords over many issues. They approached their subject-matter with different methods: praxis versus value-free sociology, the dialectical method versus a sociology of understanding, historical materialism versus comparative sociology, class conflict versus social action, etc. In their substantive work they differed over such issues as the emergence and consequences of modern capitalism, the nature of the state, the significance of class and status groups, the role of religion, etc.. Juxtaposition of their views, focusing on their respective interpretations of the emergence of modern capitalism, can perhaps serve as a tool to demonstrate how difficult it is to achieve understanding in the social world. By using heuristic simultaneity as that tool some of the methodological ironies in their work can also be revealed.
POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY AND APPEARANCES

With the rise of modern science in the 16th and 17th centuries a gulf arose between the 'world of everyday experience' and the 'world of the scientist.' Nature, drained of her animate being, was to be conceived of in mathematical

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terms. Mind was no longer thought of as copying nature but rather as constructing it. That which presents itself to the senses was relegated to mere 'appearance'. True reality was thought to be somewhere 'behind' the appearances. The project for the seeker of knowledge was now formulated in such a way that he was to pierce these appearances to uncover the thought-to-be hidden reality. The belief that 'the world is not as it looks but as it is constructed by the scientist' (Gurwitch 1967) became the guideline for future action. Whether the perspective was rationalist, attempting to get at an underneath structure, or empiricist, attempting to distinguish true fact from fuzzy error, that which presented itself to man's considered-to-be inadequate senses was now to have secondary status. In the study of politics this scientific distrust of the apparent begins with the Italian political philosopher Niccolo Machiavelli (1469-1527) and continues with the English political philosopher Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) and the French political philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778). Consider what Hobbes finds 'beneath the surface': the social world does not reveal the true nature of man for it is but the layer of appearance covering over man's true potential, which, if ever expressed, would overthrow any apparent sociability in a 'war of all against all'. If the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle (384-322 B.C.) pictured man as a social animal by his very nature, naturally integrated into society and guided by his intentions and ideas of right and wrong, Hobbes saw man as social, not by nature but, as it were, artificially, by contract, ultimately guided by his passions: '[It is] the similitude of Passions, which are the same in all men, desire, feare, &c; not the similitude of the objects of the Passions, which are the things desired, feared, &c.' (Hobbes (1651) 1962: 9) Hobbes looks beneath the intentions, beneath the ideas, beneath the acts, to get at the 'reality.' It is not the objects of the passions that ground Hobbes' materialism, but it is the passions themselves that move men. Rousseau likewise uncovers something beneath the surface, beneath the appearances of the everyday intentions of subjective actors: in his case, their potentially free nature: 'Man was born free, but is everywhere in bondage' (Rousseau (1762) 1954: 2). HISTORICAL SOCIOLOGY AND APPEARANCES Karl Marx, too, wants to get at the bottom of things, to get behind the appearances. What merely presents itself for observation cannot be understood on its own. After all, as Friedrich Engels, Marx's colleague, explained, The laws of the dialectic assert themselves unconsciously, in the form of external necessity in the midst of an endless series of seeming accidents.' (Engels (1886) 1959: 226). Thus, Marx argues that 'Scientific truth is always paradox, if judged by everyday experience, which catches only the delusive appearance of things.' (Marx (1865)

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1935: 37). He, therefore, tells us of the proper attitude to take before history's events: 'As in private life one differentiates between what a man thinks and says of himself and what he really is and does, so in historical struggles one must distinguish still more the phases and fancies of the parties from their real organism and their real interests, their conception of themselves, from their reality.' (Marx (1852) 1963: 47) Marx's doubt that you could make a science of society by accepting the apparent intentions of men on their own grounds carries over to his view on the relation between theory and practice: 'The question of whether objective truth can be attributed to human thinking is not a question of theory but is a practical question. In practice man must prove the truth of his thinking.' (Marx (1888) 1959: 243). For Marx, the way to get behind the revealed but not revealing intentions of subjective actors is not to divide men into a 'natural versus social' dichotomy as did Hobbes and Rousseau. Rather, one needs to perform the dissection on society itself, to divide society into its various spheres of activity in order to discover its structure. The Marxian distinction between the material base - reality and the superstructure - appearance - is well known. The material base, i.e. that activity aimed at overcoming scarcity, moves history. The base is defined by the means of production and their effect on the relations of production. For any specific set of technological means there is a specific set of economic or class institutions appropriate to it. Change in technology, through scientific efforts to overcome scarcity, creates and brings about new classes. At a certain point these new classes no longer can support the official economic and superstructural institutions and demand revolution; thus, social change. Historical materialism, Marx's application of dialectics to history, reveals the 'great law of motion of history': 'All historical struggles...are in fact only the more or less clear expression of struggles of social classes...the existence and thereby the collisions, too, between these classes are in turn conditioned by the degree of development of their economic position, by the mode of production and of their exchange determined by it.' (Engels (1885) 1963: 14) Behind the historic events there is this deeper reality. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels discovered 'the great moving power of all important historic events in the mode of production and exchange, in the consequent division of society into classes and in the struggle of these classes against one another.' (Engels (1892) 1963:63). When Marx tries to understand something, its significance is seen as a function of the structure of society and its relation to historical development. 'Historical structuralism' might be a more descriptive label for his method. It is often mistakenly claimed that Marx gives no weight to the role of ideas in history. Nothing could be more erroneous. It is worth analyzing in detail the role that Marx allows for ideas for not only does it demonstrate how historical materialism functions but it provides one of the classic differences between his thought and Weber's.

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For Marx, man is not mere economic man, continuously seeking to maximize profit, a sort of vulgarization of the conception of the classical economists, Adam Smith (1723-1790) and David Ricardo (1772-1823). Indeed, Marx took care to put into historical perspective, to locate within history, the economic man of the liberal economists. In Marx's thought, ideas play the following roles: I) They are important in the development of technology. II) They are important as ideology and have a restraining effect upon the actions of men, either through religion (vide the famous dictum that religion 'is the opium of the people' (Marx (1844) 1970: 131) or by more direct propaganda. Marx goes so far as to consider the restraining effect of ideas on the progressive development of a society. His analysis of the failure of social and political development in Spain serves to illustrate this point. He asks how we can account for the fact that in 'Spain, the very country, where of all the feudal states absolute monarchy first arose in its unmitigated form, centralization has never succeeded in taking root?' (Marx (1854) 1939: 25). He responds that the absolute monarchy 'did all in its power to prevent the growth of common interests arising out of a national division of labor and the multiplicity of internal exchanges - the very basis on which alone a uniform system of administration and the rule of general laws can be created.' (Marx (1854) 1939: 26). He compares Spain to 'the Asiatic forms of government...[it is] an agglomeration of mismanaged republics with a nominal sovereign at their head.' (Marx (1854) 1939: 26). When Napoleon's troops entered Spain in 1807-1808 Napoleon conferred the Spanish crown on his brother Joseph. But while 'the Spanish state was dead, Spanish society was full of life and every part of it overflowing with resistance.' (Marx (1854) 1939: 27). The French presence offered Spain a chance to modernize but at the expense of imperial domination by Napoleon. The subsequent wars of independence, while nationalistic, were also reactionary: the 'beloved' Fernando VII was pitted against 'the rational innovations of Napoleon'; the 'holy religion' was pitted against 'what was called French Atheism, or the destruction of the special privileges of the Roman Church.' (Marx, (1854) 1939: 31). Marx demonstrates the effect of the re-imposition of these symbols 'in the imagination of the people' (Marx (1854) 1939: 31):
The revolutionary minority [composed of the inhabitants of areas where the 'material conditions of modern society had developed themselves to a certain degree' (Marx (1854) 1939: 32)] in order to foment the patriotic spirit of the people had not hesitated themselves to appeal to the national prejudices of the old popular faith. Favorable to the immediate objects of national resistance, as these tactics might have appeared, they could not fail to prove fatal to this minority when the time had arrived for the conservative interests of the old society to entrench themselves behind these very prejudices and popular passions, with the view of

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defending themselves against the proper and ulterior plans of the revolutionists. (Marx (1854) 1939: 33)

Thus the revolution against the Spanish monarchy and the progressive development of Spanish society were retarded because of the effect of these ideas discussed above. Ill) Marx also indicates that certain ideas are appropriate to certain rising classes. Thus, with regard to the development of capitalism, Marx asserts a certain relation between Protestantism and the rising bourgeoisie:
For a society based on the production of commodities...Christianity with its cultus of abstract man, more especially...its bourgeois development...Protestantism is the most fitting form of religion (Marx (1867) 1954: 79).

Moreover,
The cult of money has its asceticism, its self-denial, its self-sacrifice - economy and frugality, contempt for mundane, temporal, and fleeting pleasures; the chase after the eternal treasure. Hence the connection of English Puritanism, or also of Dutch Protestantism, and money-making (Marx (1939) 1973: 232).

Marx also signaled the relation between utilitarianism and the rising bourgeoisie. With regard to socialism Marx professes considerable reliance on critical intellectuals defining the need for, and clarifying the process of, revolution. Such an assertion seems to contradict the basic determinism of his thinking; cf. his claim that 'no social order ever disappears before all the productive forces, for which there is room in it, have been developed; and the new higher relations of production never appear before the material conditions of their existence have matured in the womb of the old society.' (Marx (1859) 1904: 12). But any contradiction evaporates when one considers that the proletariat as well as the intellectuals was conceived of as products of the ever-worsening conditions of capitalism (Bendix 1970: 267). Yet ideas for Marx are not imagined as floating apart from history; special conditions determine their effectiveness if not their generation. Thus, e.g., Marx criticized those socialists who over-zealously reacted to the ideas of Marxism and were pushing for revolution before Germany was ripe, before it had a proletariat class to carry the idea to fruition (Marx and Engels (1848) 1959: 32-35). Marx's argument is structural. 'It is not the consciousness of men that determine their existence, but on the contrary, their social existence determines their consciousness' (Marx (1859) 1904:11-12). One is born in a certain society, in a certain historical stage, in a certain class. One's motivation is determined by one's position - either by acknowledging one's class interests or by being subject to the force and fraud of the ruling class and thereby suffering what Engels called 'false consciousness' (Engels (1893) 1959:408). One suffers false consciousness to

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the extent that one neither recognizes one's class interests as articulated by Marx and Engels nor recognizes 'the great law of motion of history' also articulated by them. Thus, false consciousness is false to the extent that what men think is happening differs from what is actually happening according to Marx and Engels. Clearly these authors assume the social scientist to know more than the actor. It is against this 'structural' aspect of the Marxist argument that Weber writes. It is often erroneously held that Marx is a mere materialist and Weber a mere idealist. Both sides of that distinction are wrong. Perhaps a more acute distinction would be that Marx is a 'structuralist' and Weber an 'empiricist.' An act has meaning for Marx in terms of its relationship to his structural model and its location in the evolution of history. An act has meaning for Weber in terms of its relation to his models of empirical situations and its location in comparatively derived causal chains of historical events whose courses were not predetermined. Weber's attempt to inaugurate a 'sociology of understanding' puts the objects of sociology squarely on the empirical level. One must be careful when considering what Weber means by 'understanding'. In no sense is he referring to a casual process in which 'understanding' is guaranteed; Weber is aware that social science is just as likely to misunderstand as to understand. For him, the fact that sociology can 'understand' is important with reference to the nature of the models with which the social scientist must work. The specific task of sociological analysis' says Weber, 'is the interpretation of action in terms of its subjective meaning' (Weber (1925a) 1966: 94) - 'in order thereby to arrive at a causal explanation of its course and effects' (Weber (1925a) 1966: 88). He distinguishes between 'rational observational understanding of action' and 'rational understanding of motivation'. With this latter, 'the particular act has been placed in an understandable sequence of motivation, the understanding of which can be treated as an explanation of the actual cause of behavior' (Weber (1925a) 1966: 95). Weber, however, is well aware that the model of the act need not necessarily reveal to the observer the meaning it has for its performer: (1) the motives may not be fully or even partially conscious to the actor himself; (2) different actors can have different motives for the same act; and (3) the same actor can have many, even contradictory motives for the same act (Weber (1925a) 1966: 97). When Weber proceeds to deal with regular and repeated acts the problem of levels is even more difficult. Regularities include customs (socially non-rewarded routines), conventions (customs with the approval or disapproval of referred-to groups), and enforced rules (conventions with a staff to carry out sanctions). Yet whether a custom is a mere taken-for-granted, sedimented usage or a rational uniformity (to get something out of it) is not revealed to the observer by the behavior itself. Weber argues that conventions and rules are regularities induced by a belief in

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the existence of a social order, if not by a belief in the order itself. Thus obedience can be generated by self-interested motives because of an expectation of certain external effects as well as it can be generated from disinterested motives because of a belief in the legitimacy of the order, which legitimacy in turn has a multiplicity of origins (Weber (1925b) 1967: 5-10). In fact in the case of enforced rules Weber argues that obedience can be a manifestation of any of the following psychological motives and meanings: (1) empathy, an emotional identification with the order-giver; (2) inspiration, an awakening to the values of the order; (3) conviction of the propriety of the command; (4) conviction of a sense of duty; (5) because of fear of sanction; (6) because of a desire to get some benefit; and (7) because of 'dull' custom, etc. (Weber (1925b) 1967: 328). Thus, Weber, dealing on the level of acts - i.e. on the level of appearances - is plainly aware of the limitations that are imposed upon his attempts to get at their 'real' meaning. Not only are ideal types selections of the totality of phenomena, but they also represent the social scientist's deliberate attempt to incorporate many varieties of motivation into one model. Yet we are dealing with acts, and Weber argues that our models of them must take into account their meaningful nature. Thus, the scientist constructs rational courses of action, rational from the subject's point of view, as methodological devices to understand the empirical situations under question. Clearly, for Weber, the assumption is that the actor knows more than the social scientist. Furthermore, Weber is not sanguine about the possibilities for discovering laws that underlie human behavior: 'It is altogether possible that future research may be able to discover non-understandable uniformities underlying what has appeared to be specifically meaningful action, though little has been accomplished in this direction thus far' (Weber (1925a) 1966: 94). From the Weberian perspective then, false consciousness is impossible, although misunderstanding certainly is not. One can create many models of the same social situation but they are not all of the same scientific worth according to Weber. He stipulates two conditions for their value: (1) that the argument must be 'adequate on the level of meaning...i.e. 'that its component parts, taken in their mutual relation, are recognized to constitute a "typical" complex of meaning'; and (2) that the interpretation be 'causally adequate...i.e. that 'according to established generalizations from experience, there is a probability that it will always occur in the same way' (Weber (1925a) 1966: 99). When dealing with historical problems this latter condition cannot be met with experimentation in the sense of the natural sciences. Thus Weber allows for the only remaining procedure, the thought experiment: 'which consists in thinking away certain elements of a chain of motivation and working out the course of action which would then probably ensue, thus arriving at causal judgment' (Weber (1925a) 1966: 97).

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Unable to generate causality, as did Marx, by a set of laws which govern historical evolution, Weber can generate it only by comparative sociology. An advantage to this is that Weber is not tied to a structural model of historical evolution, is committed to but descriptive models of empirical situations, and can give even more freedom to the effectiveness of ideas than did Marx. As a consequence, Weber devotes considerable efforts to studying group action derived from groups other than classes: status groups which form around conventions, and organizations, which form around rules.
THE APPARENT AND THE REAL IN THE EMERGENCE OF MODERN CAPITALISM

The differences between Marx and Weber become further focused when we consider their descriptions and explanations of the rise of modern capitalism. It is necessary to examine both their causal explanations of the phenomena and their subjective models that describe the activity of the actors. In Marx, the descriptive model is in some sense a result of the explanation. In Weber, the explanation is presupposed by the descriptive model. As Norman Birnbaum has clearly noted (Birnbaum (1953) 1965: 7), Marx and Weber agreed that modern capitalism is a unique phenomenon. Whereas feudalism was characterized by a magical culture, a spend-thrift elite, set patterns, and goals of production, modern capitalism is characterized by a concentration of the means of production in a few hands, a relentless application of the canons of rationality to production, the engaging in industry for the purpose of unending profit, etc. Both Marx and Weber agree that modern capitalism saw the exit of magic, was the result of the rise of a new class in the towns, and saw the emergence of formally free workers who sold their services on the labor market. Marx's explanation of the rise of bourgeois capitalism out of feudalism depends essentially on structural reasons. He refers to the ascendance of the producer as 'merchant and capitalist' (Marx (1894) 1962: 329). Such a 'revolutionizing path' is the result of changes in the economic basis of society: the development of steam and machine technology, the development of the world market and commerce, the migration to the cities by former peasants, the creation of the army of unemployed landless proletarians, the primitive accumulation of capital by violent and other means, etc. Weber never denied the force of economic factors but thought the effect of ideology had not been properly taken into account in the Marxist explanation of the emergence of bourgeois capitalism. To test his hypothesis he set up his thought experiment: holding material factors constant, did a differential effect of ideas account for the emergence of modern capitalism in Western Europe and

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not in India and China? His affirmative answer to this question, however, does not classify him as an idealist for he could have just as easily located societies with similar ideologies but dissimilar economies, in which case the economic factor would have been the differential element. Rather, the result of his thought experiment implies a dualistic conclusion: proper economic and ideal factors were together necessary and only together sufficient for the emergence of modern capitalism. For Weber, modern capitalism is characterized by a certain conventional style of work. Capitalism has existed before in the forms of booty, political or colonial capitalism, but these have been sporadic intermittent operations. Modern capitalism, on the other hand, is aggressively systematic and relentless in its application of rationality. It presents itself as characterized by what Weber considered the unnatural attitude of living to work rather than the more traditional natural attitude of working to live, working merely to maintain one's style of life. The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism traces the specific conventional styles to the influence of religious ideas on action (Weber 1904 - 5). Before proceeding, caution must be again advised to keep distinct the level of action from the level of personal meaning. To this end I should like to quote at length from Reinhard Bendix's Nation Building and Citizenship (Bendix 1964: 149-50):
Max Weber's original essay leaves unspecified how religious ideas influence the conduct of individuals. His later sociology of religion makes this influence of ideas on conduct still more problematic, since he emphasizes the great emotional, social, and intellectual distance between religious leaders and the mass of people... ..In his essay on the Protestant sects he points out that sectarian religions provide sanctions as well as incentives designed to inculcate methodical work habits. Through social pressure the individual is forced to conform to the standards of the community: 'The members of the sect had to have qualities of a certain kind in order to enter the community circle...in order to hold his own in this circle, the member had to prove repeatedly that he was endowed with these qualities...for, like his bliss in the beyond, his whole social existence in the here and now depended upon his "proving" himself.... According to all experience there is no stronger means of breeding traits than through the necessity of holding one's own in the circle of one's associates.' (Weber (1920-2la) 1958: 320) ...he attributes to the ideas expressed on Puritan preaching the spirit of sober zeal and rationality which he finds characteristic of capitalist economic activities. He looks to the social pressure of the sectarian community for the 'mechanism' of internalization; and he believes that once launched these ideas attain a momentum of their own, owing to their (elective) affinity with economic activities and to their secularized diffusion in all phases of modern capitalism. (Bendix 1964: 149-59)

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Weber (Mayer 1965) looks for the cause of the new style of work in the Protestant religion; Luther changed the Catholic dualism and turned the whole world into a monastery. Calvin, as interpreted by the later synods, established the idea of predestination. Weber interprets the effect of this doctrine as that of leaving the typical Protestant lonely and without any understanding as to his life after death. Consequently, Weber surmised that while one could do nothing to change one's destiny one might interpret (i.e. misinterpret) worldly success as indicative of one's ultimate destiny. Success, however, did not give an absolute sign; moreover, one could not use any income for worldly pleasures and thus it was reinvested. There is an irony in the apparent similarity of Marx's and Weber's realization of a connection between capitalism and Protestantism. Marx sees capitalism and Protestantism as both being individualistic and/or both being ascetic (see above p 210). Weber, on the other hand, sees modern capitalism, that apparently most modern, liberal and progressive economic system, as having its roots in the very anti-liberal, anti-modern, anti-progressive ideology of 16th century Protestant theology. Marx sees the systems as similar; Weber, as opposites. It is as if Marx sees an 'elective affinity' between the two systems and Weber sees them as 'dialectically' linked! Weber's discussion here, incidentally, represents his interpretation regarding the primitive accumulation necessary to lift a society out of the endless cycle of eating up its surplus profit. Marx interprets the same in a somewhat less idyllic light. With this positive case where development took place, Weber then turns to a negative case where development did not. Whereas a Marxist understanding of the lack of economic development in China would hinge around a discussion of the failure of the economic forces to develop under the Asiatic mode of production, Weber undertakes a different analysis. According to Weber (Weber (1920-21b) 1964), China had overall favorable economic conditions for the rise of capitalism (population rise, therefore an abundant labor supply, some technology, the decline of the feudatory powers, some mobility, etc.). Yet modern capitalism did not develop there. Weber looks at a class that could have developed into a capitalist bourgeoisie: the literati. However, Confucianism as creed and convention encouraged both magic and a non-tense relation to the world as if one tried to adjust to the world, not to change it. Thus, in China, the ideal factors were not favorable to the development of the capitalist conventional style of acting as if one were acquisitive for the sake of acquisitiveness, as if one lived to work rather than worked to live. In a similar manner Weber argues that the ideal factors were not conducive to the development of the capitalist spirit in India. Thus, by comparing and contrasting comparable historical situations, Weber is able to isolate the causal elements in the generation of modern capitalism.

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Let us turn to the descriptive models that Marx and Weber each drew about the actors under study. Marx did not frequently refer to what he supposed to be the subjective intentions of the actors. Infrequently, however, he referred to the 'stimulus of passions, the most infamous, the most sordid, the pettiest, the most meanly odious' (Marx (1867) 1954: 762) to describe the bourgeoisie in their 'drive towards unlimited expansion of production, towards development of the social productivity of labor' (Marx (1894) 1962: 245).
At the historical dawn of capitalist production - and every capitalist upstart has personally to go through this stage - avarice, and the desire to get rich are the 'ruling passions'..... When a certain stage of development has been reached, a conventional degree of prodigality which is also an exhibition of wealth, and consequently a source of credit, becomes a business necessity to the 'unfortunate' capitalist. Although the prodigality of the capitalist never possesses the bonafide character of the open-handed feudal lords' prodigality, but on the contrary, has always lurking behind it the most sordid avarice and the most anxious calculation.....there developed in his breast a Faustian conflict between the passion for accumulation and the desire for enjoyment. (Marx (1867) 1954: 593-94)

Thus, Marx's model of the rising bourgeoisie is one of avaricious men 'accumulating for accumulation's sake' sometimes conspicuously consuming, sometimes buying credit and status with a show of generosity. Moreover, being Protestant probably helps one's business prosper and certainly legitimates any success. Is this the same man Weber is talking about? Weber's description of the men and activity crucial for the development of modern capitalism is somewhat different. According to Weber, the typical bourgeois Protestant sought symbolic recognition of his ultimate plight and inadvertently became wealthy. His ideal type, however, comes with two limitations: (1) it is not descriptive of all Protestants and all capitalists, nor is it typical of any particular Protestant in all of his activity; and (2) it is not a model of the personality of the typical Protestant. Weber was typifying a conventional situation; some Protestants acted because they believed in what they were doing, some in spite of the fact that they did not and were seeking the approbation of the group. Is this the same person that Marx is talking about? One theorist portrays a greedy capitalist who becomes Protestant and generous as a projection of his avariciousness and his squeezing a surplus out of the hides of others; the other portrays a Protestant who becomes wealthy as an accident of his religiosity and his squeezing a surplus out of his own hide. What Weber thought was 'real' Marx thought was 'appearance'; what Marx thought was 'real' Weber thought was 'appearance'. Which theorist was correct? The juxtaposition of their two views demonstrates how difficult it is to decipher social reality.
Florida International University

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