Rationalization and Capitalism's Dialectic of Scarcity

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Focusing on the relationship between capitalism, rationalization and scarcity, this book offers a critical reinterpretation of Marx, Weber, Lukacs and Gramsci. Pointing out the materialist elements in Weber's conception of the impulse underlying religious rationalization, this work argues that the emergence of capitalism creates the possibility of an alternative society that would use modern technology to drastically reduce the existence of undeserved human suffering that religious theodicies have tried to interpret. Thus, the emergence of capitalist society has inadvertently initiated a new stage in the rationalization process. The challenge is no longer to provide a coherent explanation of undeserved human suffering, but to undertake the social change necessary to reduce it. This challenge can be met by an alternative society that would use modern technology to overcome scarcity and meet everybody's needs. In this respect, capitalism creates a universal human interest in its own overcoming. To understand the obstacles to the recognition of this universal interest, this work draws from and reinterprets the works of Lukacs and Gramsci.