On the Roots of Development and Underdevelopment in the New World: Smith and Marx v. The Weberians

Andre Gunder Frank

Chapter 3 in Dependent Accumulation and Underdevelopment, 1978, pp 25-69 from Palgrave Macmillan

Abstract: Abstract An important alternative interpretation to the analysis of capitalist development and underdevelopment by Marxists and the present writer is the interpretation by Max Weber, his followers and his perverters, which has attained dominance in the United States from where it has in turn been re-exported to its cultural neo-colonies. Karl Mannheim (cited by Shapiro, 225) referred to Max Weber as the Marx of the bourgeoisie; and his widow and biographer, Marianne Weber, said that his principal work was an attempt to replace historical materialism as an interpretation. Such otherwise diverse writers as Kautsky, H. M. Robertson, Sorokin, Aron, Bastide, Gerth and Mills, Marcuse, Parsons, Bendix, and Gouldner agree that Max Weber’s work represented an attempt to replace or at least seriously to amend the Marxist theory of economic infrastructural dominance over the superstructure and to lend instead particular importance to psycho-cultural factors and religion to account for the rise of capitalism. Of course, this ambition obliged Weber to devote considerable attention to the work and working methods of Marx, whom Weber respected as an opponent.

Keywords: Capital Accumulation; Capitalist Development; Slave Trade; Protestant Ethic; Unequal Exchange (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 1978
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DOI: 10.1007/978-1-349-16014-3_3

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