The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism

This brilliant study opposes the Marxist concept of dialectical materialism and its view that change takes place through the conflict of opposites. Instead, Weber relates the rise of a capitalist economy to the Puritan determination to work out anxiety over salvation or damnation by performing good deeds — an effort that ultimately encouraged capitalism.

• The Marx-Engels Reader (Second Edition)
• The Division of Labor in Society
• From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology
• The Elementary Forms of Religious Life
• The Muqaddimah: An Introduction to History - Abridged Edition (Princeton Classics: Bollingen)
• Suicide: A Study In Sociology
• Georg Simmel on Individuality and Social Forms (Heritage of Sociology Series)
• The Wealth of Nations (Modern Library Classics)
• The Elementary Forms of Religious Life
• The Gift: The Form and Reason for Exchange in Archaic Societies