The only two figures before Weber who will be
discussed here, however, are Tocqueville and Marx.

Marx
The second major predecessor to economic sociology was Karl Marx
(1818–83). Like Tocqueville, Marx had been trained in law (and in
philosophy), but was self-taught in economics. As opposed to his
French contemporary, however, Marx was obsessed with the role of
the economy in society and developed a theory in which the economy
determines the general evolution of society. What drives people in
their everyday lives, Marx argues, is material interest, and this also
determines the structure and evolution of society at large. While Marx