Max Weber’s political Analysis of the February Revolution of 1917: a crtical Review

• Autor(a) principal: Souza, Luiz Enrique Vieira de
• Data de Publicação: 2020
• Outros Autores: Musse, Ricardo
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: Política & Sociedade (Online)
• Texto Completo: https://periodicos.ufsc.br/index.php/politica/article/view/74416

This paper critically discusses Max Weber’s analysis of the political situation in Russia in 1917,particularly his article on the February Revolution [Russia’s transition to pseudo-democracy].We establish the links between this article and his writings on the Russian revolution of 1905,focusing on the analysis of social classes and the viability of a democratic coalition capableof supplanting tsarism. In 1917, Weber questions the democratic character of the “provisionalgovernment” and concludes that the revolutionary process was nothing but the annulment ofan incompetent monarch, without changing the conservative position of the ruling classes inrelation to the agrarian question, nor their dependence on foreign banks. Thus, we analyze themistakes that led Weber to disregard the possibility of an alliance between workers and peasants,as well as the insufficiencies of his theoretical scheme to include the dynamics of the massmovement in the historical transformation.