FOUNDATIONS OF CAPITALIST ECONOMIC THINKING ACCORDING TO MAX WEBER

Abstract

The research proposed by Max Weber on the beginning of the capitalist economic thinking aims to transcend the appearances and conceptual surfaces that have been consolidated over the founding truths of this thinking. Thus, Weber is interested in the origin and evolution of key concepts in the capitalist economy such as computability, profit, investment, efficiency or economic capitalization. But what preoccupies him most in his studies is the basis of the capitalist economic mentality, the way in which the idea of ​​free initiative and the motivation of its transposition in practice arose, a transposition that is only completely made in the Western civilization, the Orient keeping its openness to economic centralized elements, subject to the political factor. According to Weber, the spirit of capitalism and its economic choices are based on the vein of the Protestant theological thought. From this historical, theological and psychological foundation there is a possible understanding of capitalist economic thinking.