Comments On The Contradiction Between M. Weber's Religious Thoughts And K. Marx's Religious Thoughts

Max Weber himself said he worked in the ideological framework of what Karl Marx had set. But we can say, to a large extent, his heritage of Marx is a negative one. which is always used by the western ideological circles to counterwork Marx. Thus. we have to discuss, treat with. and answer Weber nowadays if we want to heritage and develop Marx's heritage. This thesis mainly depicts the contradiction between M. Weber' religious thoughts and Marx's religious thoughts, and makes further comments and analysis.The main hody of this thesis includes three parts. The first part introduces Marx's historical materialist religious critical thoughts and respectively explained the hypostasis of historical materialism, man's social being determining his thinking, f(?)om the aspects of Marx's theories concerning religious thoughts reflecting the social being. class benefits, etc. Moreover, the thesis depicts how Marx and Engel explain the historical process of religion's emergence, occurring and dying out by employing this hypostasis of historical materialism. Finally. in the special correlation with Weber's Protestant ethics and capitalist spiritual topics, it introduces Marx's discussion--how the variation of capitalist way of production and way of life determines emergence and essence of religious revolution.The second part of this thesis introduces Weber's historical mentalist religious thoughts against Marx. Weber believes that Protestant ethics brings about capitalist spirit. While capitalist spirit brings about capitalist way of production and way of life; There don't exist such religious ethics and spiritual factors in eastern religion, although the material condition and other conditions are in favor of the emergence and development of capitalism, the capitalist way of production and way of life can't be created: Western capitalist way of production and way of life can find their origin not only in Protestantism, but also in the ancient Judaism and Christianity: in the world historical scope, capitalism is, to a great extent, one part or the endgame of the whole process of world rationalization and fascination deviationalization greatly determined by religion step by step.The third part tries to analyze and comment on Weber's mentalist religious thoughts in Marxs way. Firstly. according to Weber, capitalism is created by some New Protestants who work hard and value any fortune inspired by Calvin's doctrines. It is a capitalist myth depicted bv Weber regarding capitalist origin which gives a color of holiness and morality to capitalist brutal original accumulation process. Secondly, the essence of Weber's religious thoughts lies in that it is not only the bourgeois' political theory. but also bourgeois' political theory in special times, the bourgeois' political theory in imperialist times, preachi g the bald-faced capitalist power politics. Thirdly, from the perspective of research methodology, the contradiction of Marx' religious thoughts and Weber's is not absolute, but relative and conditional, from which, A consistency and inter-complementarity between Marx' religious thoughts and Weber's can be realized.