The Young Max Weber and German Social Democracy: The 'Labour Question' and the Genesis of Social Theory in Imperial Germany (1884-1899)

By Berlin Institute of Critical Theory and Victor Strazzeri

The Young Max Weber and German Social Democracy examines the formative years of a classic social thinker once called the 'bourgeois Marx' from the standpoint of his relationship to the foremost working-class organization of his time. It argues that Weber's early engagement with the standpoint of the rural worker -- not his later study of the ethics of ascetic Protestant entrepreneurs -- first convinced him of the central role of culture in human agency. The crisis of liberalism in a rapidly modernising, conflict-ridden Imperial Germany embarking on colonial expansion emerges in the work as the decisive setting for the genesis of Weberian social thought; the rising labour movement, in turn, as the young Weber's little-know yet crucial interlocutor.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 9004524428
• ISBN13: 9789004524422
• Release Date: September 2022
• Publisher: Brill
• Length: 356 Pages