Max Weber's Wirtschaftsgeschichte (General Economic History in English) (1923) was composed by his students from lecture notes shortly after his death. In his General Economic History, Weber creates an institutional theory of the rise of capitalism in the west. Unlike in his Protestant ethic, religion is given a minor role. The emphasis of the work lies instead on the place of a rational state and calculable law in allowing economic actors to pre...
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Max Weber's Wirtschaftsgeschichte (General Economic History in English) (1923) was composed by his students from lecture notes shortly after his death. In his General Economic History, Weber creates an institutional theory of the rise of capitalism in the west. Unlike in his Protestant ethic, religion is given a minor role. The emphasis of the work lies instead on the place of a rational state and calculable law in allowing economic actors to predict exchange for gain.
Weber's institutional theory of capitalism was rediscovered in the early 1980s by writers like Randall Collins, Daniel Chirot, and Douglass C. North, who worked to replace theories based largely on Immanuel Wallerstein's "World Systems" theory.
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