First published in French, Marx's The Poverty of Philosophy (1847) was composed during his years in Brussels, when he was developing his economic views and, through confrontations with the chief leaders of the working-class movement, establishing his intellectual standing. In this classic work, which laid the foundation of ideas later developed in Capital, Marx polemicized against then premier French socialist, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon. Proudhon wanted to unite the best features of such contraries as competition and monopoly. He hoped to save the (...) good features of economic institutions while eliminating the bad. Marx, however, declared that no equilibrium was possible between the antagonisms in any given economic system. Social structures were transient historical forms determined by the productive forces: "The handmill gives you society with the feudal lord; the stream mill, society with the industrial capitalist.". (shrink)

Sociology, like poetry, explores/discovers/creates hidden or heretofore non-existing human potentialities; both rebel against closing, identifying the-already-achieved reality with the limit of that potential. Sociology is destined to sustain the autonomy of, simultaneously, human society and human individuals, and autonomy means the awareness of the human origins of social reality and of the possibility of making it different from what it is. In the age of rapid and radical individualization, the task of sociology is to service self-interpretation with the view of (...) widening the sphere of human autonomy through disclosure of multiple social connection which contribute to its present form and future changes. (shrink)

During 1909 and 1910, Max Weber planned a major study of the con temporary newspaper business. Although the project eventually col lapsed, he did draft an outline proposal which is here translated into English for the first time.