Rights sold to Brazil (Boitempo) and Turkey (Ayrinti)
Max Weber is frequently compared and contrasted to Karl Marx. Granted, the great German sociologist was a liberal, hostile to Communism, but, Michael Löwy reminds us with the support of documentation, he was also an analyst who strongly criticised capitalism and its rampant pursuit of profit which has trapped modern-day humanity in an implacable treadmill.
Rereading the famous study on the “elective affinities” between the Protestant ethic and the spirit of capitalism, Michael Löwy takes the analysis further still. Here he explores the “negative affinities” between the Catholic ethic and the spirit of capitalism, and finds traces of them in a variety of left-wing Catholic trends in Europe, as well as in the theology of freedom in present day Latin America. He also explores other anti-capitalist tendencies favoured by the sociologist from Heidelberg.
On the one hand we find Weberian Marxism from Georg Lukács to Maurice Merleau-Ponty, via the first theoreticians of the Frankfurt School; and on the other a socialist-romantic trend, effectively put forward by German Jewish authors in the Weimar Republic, such as Ernst Bloch and Walter Benjamin.
Löwy is both an erudite Weberian and a committed Marxist, and he represents this legacy in his own way. He also hopes to show to how relevant Weberian Marxist criticisms are to us today when all-powerful markets have a tighter stranglehold than ever on people trapped in the steel cage of selfish speculation.
An emeritus Director of research at the CNRS and a lecturer at the EHESS, Michael Löwy has written 17 books published in 29 languages. They include Rédemption et Utopie. Le Judaïsme libertaire en Europe centrale (1985); Révolte et Mélancolie. Le romantisme à contre-courant de la modernité (co-written with R. Sayre, 1992); Walter Benjamin. Avertissement d’incendie (2001) and Franz Kafka, rêveur insoumis (Stock, 2004).
L'auteur
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