padraig (u.s.)
a monkey that will go ape
Weber >> Marx is definitely a cool position to takeI'm eager to learn more about Weber. People have been hyping him up as the dethroner of Marx in terms of influence on how to theorize our current stage of capitalism
(next level up is to claim that other, more obscure early 20th C. German sociologist >> Weber)
really they - to my limited understanding - have different projects
brass tacks, Weber is primarily describing social relations, Marx describing economic relations
Marx is great at describing how a system functions but not how individuals act (see also: the resounding failure of Marxism in practice)
in a time of the mass disruption of traditional economic relations and they're ever-increasing blur with the social, Weber perhaps seems more directly applicable
I'm a big fan myself. I've read The Protestant Ethic and "Politics as Vocation", and some excerpts about authority/leadership.
The Protestant Ethic often gets tied up in challenges about its specific historical claims (i.e. the Protestant ethic) where the useful parts are actually about the rationalization of time and effort (the spirit of capitalism)
Weber would definitely recognize the current drive to optimize everything