Organizations in and across Societies

Abstract

In the preface to the first German edition of Capital, Karl Marx defended himself against the charge made by his French and German critics that his analysis of capitalism was based solely on the English experience and was therefore irrelevant to other countries. Marx’s simple answer was to quote the Latin phrase ‘De te fabula narratur’ (Capital, vol. 1, p. 8), which roughly translated means ‘This is going to happen to you as well’. It succinctly expresses an approach to the study of society that has in many ways dominated sociology until recently.