ABSTRACT
There is no contradiction involved in saying that Weber’s theory of rationalization has enormous relevance to contemporary conditions and has even proved prophetic and, at the same time, that it is undeveloped as a theory. It remained in his work at a relatively low level of abstraction, amply illustrated at a concrete level with examples of a comparative and historical kind. In consequence, it is entirely feasible to illustrate it in a modern society such as Britain and produce an indefinite amount of evidence in support, and at the same time to remain unsatisfied at a more fundamental level as to our understanding of the underlying mechanisms. It is as if we were to analyse Britain under Thatcher in the same mode as The Class Struggles in France (1972) and be without the theoretical developments that were to be laid in Capital. It could of course be done, and convincingly at an intuitive level; and if Marx had died at an early age, we might have had to be content with that. But it would have been necessary for others to develop the theory of labour and capital, the tendency of the rate of profit to fall and the growing concentration of capital. The underlying forces would have remained relatively unclarified at the level of the Grundrisse.
