The article critically analyzes the part of Weber’s heritage concerning the procedure of “referring to value“ and the concept of rationalization. The subject of research are his works “The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism” and “The Economic Ethics of World Religions”, as well as the works of N.N. Zarubina who suggests to apply the principles and the method of “understanding sociology” to studying contemporary social phenomena and to resolving methodological problems of sociology. Subjectivism that neglects the objective content of social processes, as well as the dismissal of the idea of revealing the laws of history are regarded as the main flaws of Weber’s method. The article criticizes methodological principle of cultural relativism and the thesis of the primacy and priority of rationalization that completely undermine the main goal of historical sociology – revealing causes and factors of phenomena and processes. Since understanding sociology offers a view on history that cannot be scientifically verified (dominated by subjective values and randomness), studies of large-scale historical processes based on it face significant problems. It is impossible to draw conclusions on them solely using Weber`s approach, especially when his view contradicts the data of positive sociology and economic history.