Maxime Rodinson 
Islam and Capitalism 

Presents a rebuttal of the cultural reductionism of Max Weber and others who have tried to explain the politics and society of the Middle East by reference to some unchanging entity called ‘Islam, ‘ typically characterised as instinctively hostile to capitalism. This work looks at the facts, analysing economic texts with his customary common sense.

About the author

Maxime Rodinson was a French Marxist historian, sociologist and orientalist. Rodinson’s work combined sociological and Marxist theories, which, he said, helped him to understand ‘that the world of Islam was subject to the same laws and tendencies as the rest of the human race.’