There are varying interpretations of Max Weber's liberalism due to his well-known sociological achievements. Max Weber is considered an eminent founder of modern social sciences, rivaled by the figures of Émile Durkheim and Karl Marx. Some students of Weberian thought have paid less attention to Weber's extensive and often passionate engagement with the politics of his day, particularly in the United States. However, European intellectuals have given more attention to his political thought. Most of Weber's political writings have not been published in translation, or have been translated only recently in a piecemeal form. Overview Weber's political ideas have inspired disagreement in Germany for decades. His conception of democracy has been the subject of particularly heated debate. Weber rejected the Wilhelmine regime's authoritarian political structure. He advocated parliamentary and democratic reform. Weber championed the freedoms of what he called the "age of the Rights of Man". Some find the liberalism of Weber as problematic. Raymond Aron has noted that Weber was not a "liberal in the American sense," and not, "strictly speaking, a democrat in the sense that the French, the English, or the Americans gave the term." Aron saw Weber to have looked to place the "glory of the nation and the power of the state" above all other things. Stephen P. Turner and Regis A. Factor have concluded that Weber rejected the philosophical basis for most Western formulations of Enlightenment liberalism. Weber conceived "parliamentarization" primarily for selecting leaders. Weber was strongly technocratic. Interpretations Political views JP Mayer wrote a 1944 critique of Max Weber,Max Weber and German Politics: a study in political sociology. Published in England during the war, the work never appeared in German translation. Mayer had been an archivist for the Social Democratic Party (SPD) and the primary book reviewer for the Vorwärts, the SPD party paper. He was a target of Nazi persecution from which he escaped to England, where he became involved with the Labour Party and was a member of the faculty at the London School of Economics during the end of the Second World War. Mayer labelled Weber's philosophy as the "new Machiavellianism of the steel age." The conception of the state that Weber supported was viewed as a middle phase in a destructive tradition of German realpolitik, a tradition that Mayer saw to extend from Bismarck to Hitler. Mayer interpreted a "tragic" satisfaction with which Weber was seen to embrace "the