In a very memorable fashion, she one day pointed out that the whole field of sociology can be summed up as the intellectual competition between Max Weber and Karl Marx. This was a simple yet elegant way of dividing the world between those who argued that culture was the main driver of social change versus those who believed that economic factors should take priority. Max Weber, the late 19th century German sociologist, was the culturalist par excellence. He was, after all, the most prominent promoter of the idea that capitalism was the product of the protestant ethic and mindset. In his widely read “The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism” Weber argued that the emergence of capitalism in England was no coincidence and that capitalism as a system could only come to existence and thrive under certain religious and cultural contexts. Accordingly, the Catholic faith was at a clear disadvantage compared to Protestantism (more specifically Calvinism). Simply put, culture, religion and civilization determined the feasibility of capitalism. Weber’s cultural determinism was nowhere more visible than in this “Calvinist Manifesto,” as Francis Fukuyama playfully called it.
But beyond this analysis of capitalism, the Weberian methodology of cultural determinism came to influence a cohort of scholars, ranging from Samuel Huntington and Fukuyama to Bernard Lewis, who argued that cultural dynamics can explain almost everything. Huntington’s “Clash of Civilizations,” for instance, is a typical example of this methodology whereby cultural groups, defined and delineated by religious identity, are analyzed as the drivers of global conflict in the post-Cold War era. Similarly, the field of “Orientalism,” where scholars such as Lewis tirelessly question the compatibility of Islam with democracy, secularism and modernity, is deeply rooted in the Weberian tradition of cultural determinism.
At the opposite end of this spectrum there is economic determinism. In many ways, this methodology is most closely identified with the work of Karl Marx. For Marxists, culture does not determine the political or economic system. On the contrary, it is what Marxists call “the mode of production” that determines the political, social and cultural norms of the system.
For instance, let’s assume that the mode of production is based on feudalism. This is a system where landlords own both the land and the peasants who work the land. This particular mode of production needs a particular set of political and cultural conditions to survive. It is, therefore, the feudalist economic system that determines the cultural, political and social norms of this particular period of human history. The same goes for the later stages of economic evolution as world history moves from feudalism to mercantilism and from mercantilism to capitalism. In short, this is the Marxist theory of historical materialism. It puts the economy, with a subset of factors such as private property, ownership of the means of production and class conflict in the driver’s seat of social and political change. As you can see, in this Marxist paradigm culture is secondary to structure. In other words, the emergence of capitalism, according to Marxists, has nothing to do with Calvinism or the Protestant ethic that Weberians considered so crucial. What you need instead is a mode of production based on private property. This is why Britain had an advantage compared to Asia, where private property did not exist. The Asian mode of production, as Marxists called it, was based on state ownership of the land and the means of production.
Now, why is all this relevant for our current understanding of Turkey? The answer is simple. If you are a Weberian, you put Islam at the heart of your analysis. You look at culture, religion, or civilization in order to understand the political and economic dynamics in the country. This is what cultural determinists do. But if you are a Marxist you look at economic dynamics first. You try to understand the changing cultural, political, and civilizational norms in the country by looking at how class dynamics, the mode of production and the capitalist structure of the country are evolving. This is what we will try to do next week.
