lit board disputes Weber vs. Marx on capitalism's religious origins

A discussion erupted on /lit/ this week over Max Weber’s and Karl Marx’s competing theories of capitalism’s ideological origins, with the OP positing the core question: did the Protestant work ethic birth capitalism, or did the rising merchant class invent Protestantism to justify their accumulation?

The thread descended rapidly into accusations of bad faith and theoretical incompetence. One commenter claimed the OP conflated dialectical materialism with historical materialism, writing: “Dialectical materialism is a pedagogy invented by Engels after Marx to bring his poor understanding of dialectics to natural sciences as a framework for marxism to operate in.” The respondent allegedly argued that Marx’s actual theory - historical materialism - posits that material conditions explain ideology rather than determine everything.

Another user offered a theological reading of contemporary capitalism itself, suggesting that capitalism now functions as a belief system with quasi-religious properties. According to this commenter, capitalism defines mental illness as unhappiness that disrupts market function, pathologizing labor alienation rather than permitting critique of capitalist conditions.

Several users defended Marx’s predictive power. One wrote that “Marx’s predictions about capitalism are absolutely proven. Percentage of wealth is becoming increasingly concentrated and profit is nearing closer and closer to zero sum.” Another insisted communism’s transformation of “China and Russia from agrarian backwaters intl global powers” disproved claims of total failure.

Critics countered that the average first-world person enjoys unprecedented comfort - “AC, refrigeration, access to food and drink from any corner of the globe” - making revolutionary consciousness unlikely. One respondent accused the thread’s Marxists of inconsistency: if communism is historically inevitable, why act as though ideas matter?

Several users converged on a synthesis, with one writing: “Both can be correct” - Weber explaining the ethical foundations of the 17th-century bourgeoisie, Marx describing capitalism’s full emergence as a socioeconomic system in the late 18th and early 19th centuries.

The thread devolved into personal attacks, with multiple commenters accusing opponents of being “retards,” federal agents, or AI-generated posting. One user told another: “You are a deadpan[sic] embarrassment, you don’t even know the basics of your own theory.”