Introduction to Henryk Grossman’s critique of Franz Borkenau and Max Weber

Abstract

Henryk Grossman's previously unpublished essay 'The Beginnings of Capitalism and the New Mass Morality' offers a Marxist critique of Max Weber's arguments, as expressed by Franz Borkenau, about Calvinism’s role in the emergence of capitalism. This article places Grossman's essay in the context of his political and intellectual background, the immediate circumstances of his response to Borkenau's work and its place in the early literature on Weber's argument.