Weber, Max

A German sociologist of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Weber maintained that modern capitalist society is created when technical advances require administration by a bureaucracy . Disagreeing with Karl Marx (see also Marx ), Weber argued against the inevitability of revolution by the proletariat (see also proletariat ) and the triumph of socialism , maintaining that social and political ideology can act independently of economic and material conditions. He also wrote extensively on the Protestant work ethic . Weber's research methods established the foundations of social science research, as distinct from the natural sciences.