Questioning the Paradigm: The Roots of Capital Accumulation and the Crisis of Contemporary Academia

This article examines the initial point of the capital accumulation by contrasting Karl Marx and Max Weber’s approach to the topic, and goes back and forth to the problems of how current social sciences are shaped by the classical liberal paradigm. It tries to understand the limits of this paradigm, and questions the status-quo in social sciences—its denials and hypocrisies. The main goal of the article is to encourage the prospective future social scientists by revisiting the methodology of historical materialism. The ‘impossibility’ of this duty has been emphasized in the article due to the discourses in academia. However, it also underlines the possibilities of this duty while examining capital accumulation, from its starting point to evolving periods, and also capital’s recent past. In this process the Protestant ethic with the Reformation of Church, and ‘so-called’ primitive accumulation with the Enclosures in England were the main reference points to understand Weber and Marx’s methodology and their bondage in today’s social sciences. Rather than being a ‘scientific’ article, in time it has become a thought experiment, trying to break the boundaries of the current perceptions in academia. With its shortcomings and strengths, it basically tries to depict ‘the Emperor’s new clothes.’