Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse: Marx, Weber, Schumpeter, and Polanyi

This paper is an attempt at developing an analytical framework that could be helpful to understand the unstable character of the capitalist society, by drawing upon the work of four important thinkers: Marx, Weber, Schumpeter, and Polanyi. It is argued that all four share a similar vision towards capitalism, and that they are all indispensable for the thesis that the working of capitalism undermines its own institutional structure, and thus make the reproduction of the capitalist society a contradictory process. The paper advances three theses in regard of these thinkers: first, being various representatives of the German “expressivist ” tradition, they conceive human history as displaying two antinomical tendencies at the same time; namely, human self expression through creative action vs. the loss of freedom due to increasing rationalization, alienation, and domination; second, capitalism should be seen as a decisive step towards more rationalization and therefore the loss of freedom, even if it creates the preconditions of the self-realization of the “species-being”; and third, they all believe that the very success of capitalism is the basic cause of its failure.