The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism

The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (German: Die protestantische Ethik und der Geist des Kapitalismus) is a book written by Max Weber, a German sociologist, economist, and politician. Beginning as a series of essays, the original German text was composed in 1904 and 1905, and was first translated into English by the American sociologist Talcott Parsons in 1930. It is considered a foundational text in economic sociology and a landmark contribution to thought. generally sociological.

In the book, Weber wrote that capitalism in Northern Europe evolved as the Protestant (particularly Calvinist) ethic influenced large numbers of people to engage in work in the secular world, developing businesses and engaging in commerce and the accumulation of wealth for investment. In other words, the Protestant Work Ethic was a major force behind the unplanned and uncoordinated rise of modern capitalism. In his book, in addition to Calvinists, Weber also talks about Lutherans (especially Pietists, but also notes differences between Lutherans). Traditional and Calvinist), Methodist, Baptist, Quaker, and Moravian (referring specifically to the Herrnhut-based community under the spiritual direction of Count von Zinzendorf. In 1998, the International Sociological Association listed this work as the fourth most important sociological book of the century. XX, after Economy and Society by Weber, Mills The Sociological Imagination , and Social Theory and Social Structure by Merton. It is the eighth book most cited in social sciences published before 1950.

Summary

Basics

Although not a detailed study of Protestantism, but rather an introduction to Weber's later studies of the interplay between various religious ideas and the economy ("The Religion of China: Confucianism and Taoism" 1915, "The Religion of India: The Sociology of Hinduism and Buddhism 1916, and Ancient Judaism 1917), The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism argues that Protestant ethics and ideas influenced the development of capitalism. The 'spirit of capitalism' it does not refer to the spirit in the metaphysical sense but to a set of values, the spirit of hard work and progress.

Religious devotion, Weber argues, is often accompanied by a rejection of worldly affairs, including the pursuit of wealth and possessions. To illustrate his theory, Weber cites the ethical writings of Benjamin Franklin:

Remember, "time is money." He who can earn ten shillings daily with his work and goes abroad or stays unemployed half of that day, although he spends only six pennies during his fun or leisure, should not consider "that" the only expense; he has actually spent, or rather pulled, five shillings as well. [...] Remember that money is "prolific and generating nature." Money can breed money and its offspring can breed more, and so on. Five converted shillings are six, converted again are seven and three pennies, and so on, until they become a hundred pounds. The more there is, the more it produces in each spin, so the gains increase faster and faster. The one who kills a breeding pig destroys all its prole to the thousandth generation. The one who kills a crown destroys everything he could have produced, even tens of pounds.

Weber points out that this is not a philosophy of mere greed, but a statement loaded with moral language. In fact, Franklin claims that God revealed to him the usefulness of virtue.

The Reformation profoundly affected the vision of work, dignifying even the most mundane professions as an addition to the common good, and therefore blessed by God, as much as any so-called "sacred" (German: Ruf). A common illustration is that of a shoemaker, hunched over his work, devoting all his effort to the praise of God.

To emphasize the work ethic of Protestantism in relation to Catholics, he points to a common problem industrialists face when employing pre-capitalist workers: Farmers will try to encourage time spent harvesting by offering a higher wage, with the expectation that workers view time spent at work as more valuable and therefore engage more time. However, in pre-capitalist societies, this often results in workers spending "less" time at harvest. Workers judge that they can earn the same while spending less time working and having more free time. He also points out that the societies that have the most Protestants are the ones with the most developed capitalist economy.

It is particularly advantageous in technical occupations for workers to be extremely dedicated to their craft. Seeing the trade as an end in itself, or as a "call", would be very useful for this need. This attitude is well noted in certain classes that have endured religious education, especially of pietistic origin.

He defines the spirit of capitalism as the ideas and spirit that favor the rational pursuit of economic gain: "However, we will provisionally use the expression 'spirit of capitalism' for that attitude that,' in pursuit of a vocation [ berufsmäßig ] , he systematically strives for profit for himself, in the manner exemplified by Benjamin Franklin & # 34;.

Weber points out that such a spirit is not limited to Western culture if one considers it only as an attitude of individuals, but that such individuals - heroic entrepreneurs, as he calls them - could not by themselves establish a new economic order (capitalism). He further noted that the spirit of capitalism could be divorced from religion, and that those ardent capitalists of his day were ardent against the Church or at least indifferent to it. work as a burden to be avoided, and not making more than enough for a modest living, were common attitudes. As he wrote in his essays:

In order for a well-suited way of life to the peculiarities of capitalism to dominate others, it had to originate somewhere, not only in isolated individuals, but as a way of life common to all groups of men.

After defining the "spirit of capitalism," Weber argues that there are many reasons to find its origins in the religious ideas of the Protestant Reformation. Many others like William Petty, Montesquieu, Henry Thomas Buckle, John Keats have noted the affinity between Protestantism and the development of commercialism.

Weber shows that certain branches of Protestantism had supported worldly activities dedicated to economic gain, considering them endowed with moral and spiritual significance. This recognition was not a goal in itself; rather they were a byproduct of other faith doctrines that encouraged planning, hard work, and self-sacrifice in the pursuit of worldly riches.

Origins of the Protestant Work Ethic

Weber traced the origins of the Protestant ethic to the Protestant Reformation, although he recognized some respect for secular everyday work as early as the Middle Ages. The Catholic Church assured salvation to people who accepted the Church's sacraments and became submitted to clerical authority. However, the Reform had effectively removed such guarantees. From a psychological point of view, the average person had a hard time adjusting to this new worldview, and only the most devout believers or "religious geniuses" within Protestantism, like Martin Luther, they were able to make this adjustment, according to Weber.

In the absence of such assurances from religious authority, Weber argued that Protestants began looking for other "signs" that they were saved. Calvin and his followers taught a doctrine of double predestination, in which from the beginning God chose some people for salvation and others for damnation. The inability to influence one's own salvation presented a very difficult problem for Calvin's followers. It became an absolute duty to believe that one was chosen for salvation and to remove any doubts about it: lack of self-confidence was evidence of insufficient faith and a sign of doom. So self-confidence replaced the priestly assurance of God's grace.

Worldly success became a measure of that self-confidence. Luther made an early endorsement of the emerging divisions of Europe. Weber identifies the applicability of Luther's conclusions, noting that a "vocation" of God is no longer limited to the clergy or the Church, but applies to any occupation or trade. Weber had always detested Lutheranism because of the subservience it inspired toward the bureaucratic state. When he discussed it in the 'Protestant Ethic', he used Lutheranism as the main example of the 'unio mystica'; which was in stark contrast to the ascetic posture. He would later associate Luther, the symbolic exponent of bureaucratic despotism, with ascetic hostility towards Eros, an example of Weber's sporadic tendency to link bureaucratic and ascetic ways of life and to oppose both aristocratic perspectives & # 3. 4;.

However, Weber saw the fulfillment of the Protestant ethic not in Lutheranism, which was too concerned with the reception of the divine spirit into the soul, but in Calvinism and other forms of Christianity. The trend was carried even further. in Pietism. The Baptists diluted the concept of vocation in relation to the Calvinists, but other aspects made their parishioners fertile ground for the development of capitalism, namely the lack of crippling asceticism, the refusal to accept office states and, therefore, develop politically, and the doctrine of control by conscience that provoked a rigorous honesty.

What Weber argued, in simple terms:

• According to the new Protestant religions, an individual was religiously obliged to follow a secular vocation with as much zeal as possible. A person who lives according to this world view is more likely to accumulate money.
• The new religions (in particular, Calvinism and other more austere Protestant sects) effectively promoted the money gained with effort and identified the purchase of luxury as a sin. Donations to the Church or congregation of an individual were limited due to the rejection of certain Protestant sects. Finally, the donation of money to the poor or charity was generally poorly seen, since it was considered to foster begging. This social condition was perceived as laziness, a burden to the neighbor and an affront to God; by not working, one ceased to glorify God.

The way this dilemma was resolved, Weber argued, was the investment of this money, which gave an extreme boost to nascent capitalism of primitive accumulation.

The Protestant Work Ethic in Weber's Day

When Weber wrote his essay, he believed that the religious underpinnings of the Protestant ethic had largely disappeared from society. He cited the writings of Benjamin Franklin, which emphasized frugality, hard work, and thrift, but were mostly free of spiritual content. Weber also attributed the success of mass production in part to the Protestant ethic. Only after expensive luxuries were despised were people able to accept the uniform products such as clothing and furniture that industrialization offered.

In his conclusion to the book, Weber lamented that the loss of the religious foundation of the spirit of capitalism has led to a kind of involuntary servitude to mechanized industry.

Puritan wanted to work in vocation; we are forced to do so. Because when asceticism moved from monastic cells to everyday life and began to dominate worldly morals, it did its part in building the tremendous cosmos of modern economic order. This order is now linked to the technical and economic conditions of the production of machines that today determine the lives of all individuals born in this mechanism, not only those directly interested in economic acquisition, with an irresistible force. Maybe it will determine them until the last ton of fossilized coal burns. In Baxter's opinion, the care of external goods should only fall on the shoulders of "as much as a light mantle, which can be disposed of at any time." But fate decreed that the layer would become an iron cage. (Page 181, 1953 edition of Scribner.)

Weber argued that while Puritan religious ideas had had a significant impact on the development of economic systems in Europe and the United States, other factors were also at play. They included a closer relationship between mathematics and observation, the enhanced value of scholarship, the rational systematization of government administration, and an increase in entrepreneurial initiatives. In the end, the study of the Protestant ethic, according to Weber, investigated a part of detachment from magic, which could be seen as a unique feature of Western culture.

Conclusions

In the endnotes, Weber states that he abandoned research on Protestantism because his colleague Ernst Troeltsch, a professional theologian, had begun work on "The Social Teachings of the Christian Churches and Sects." Another reason for Weber's decision was that Troeltsch's work has already achieved what he wanted in that area, which is laying the groundwork for the comparative analysis of religion and society. Weber went beyond Protestantism with his research, but would continue to investigate the sociology of religion within his later work (the study of Judaism and the religions of China and India.

This book is also Weber's first brush with the concept of rationalization. His idea of modern capitalism as a result of the religious pursuit of wealth meant a shift to a rational means of existence, wealth. That is, at some point the Calvinist reasoning that informed the "spirit" of capitalism ceased to depend on the underlying religious movement behind it, leaving only rational capitalism. In essence, then, the "spirit of capitalism" de Weber is effective and more broadly a spirit of rationalization.

Reception

The essay can also be interpreted as one of Weber's critiques of Karl Marx and his theories. While Marx's historical materialism held that all human institutions, including religion, rested on economic foundations, many have seen that "The Protestant Ethic" turns this theory on its head by implying that a religious movement fostered capitalism, not the other way around.^{[citation needed]}

Other scholars have taken a more nuanced view of Weber's argument. Weber states in the closing of this essay, 'Of course, it is not my aim to substitute a one-sided materialist causal interpretation for an equally one-sided spiritualist causal interpretation of culture and history. Each is equally possible, but each if it does serve not as a preparation, but as a conclusion to an investigation, accomplishes equally little in the interest of historical truth'. Weber's argument can be understood as an attempt to deepen the understanding of the cultural origins of capitalism, which does not exclude the historical materialist origins described by Marx: modern capitalism arose from an elective affinity of 'material'; and "ideal" factors.

María Elvira Roca Barea has criticized the work for not taking into account the discrimination to which Catholics were subjected in Germany.

Table of Contents

Table of contents from Scribner's 1958 edition, with section headings added by Talcott Parsons:

Criticism

Methodology

Weber's causal claim that the Protestant ethic led to capitalism has been criticized for endogeneity issues and case selection issues. Instead of Protestantism leading to capitalism, it may be the case that individuals and communities that were more prone to capitalism were also more likely to embrace Protestantism.

Economic criticism

In an article published on November 10, 2009, Harvard economist Davide Cantoni tested the Protestant Weber hypothesis using population and economic growth in second-millennium Germany as the data set, with negative results. Cantoni writes:

Using population figures in a set of data that includes 276 cities in the 1300-1900s, I find no effects of Protestantism on economic growth. The finding is robust for the inclusion of a variety of controls and does not seem to depend on data selection or the small size of the sample. In addition, Protestantism has no effect when it interacts with other likely determinants of economic development. He also analyzed the endogeneity of religious choice; The estimates of instrumental variables of the effects of Protestantism are similar to the results of OLS.

However, Cantoni uses the size of the city, and not the relative growth of real wages, which was Weber's thesis, as his "main dependent variable" (Cantoni, 2).

Dudley and Blum write:

The evidence of the drop in wages in Catholic cities and the increase in wages in Protestant cities between 1500 and 1750, during the spread of literacy in the vernacular language, is incompatible with most theoretical models of economic growth. In The Protestant Ethic, Weber suggested an alternative explanation based on culture. Here, a theoretical model confirms that a small change in the subjective cost of cooperating with strangers can generate a profound transformation in commercial networks. In explaining urban growth in early modern Europe, the specifications compatible with the human capital versions of the neoclassical model and the theory of endogenous growth are rejected in favour of a formulation of "small world" based on Weber's thesis.

Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson in their book Why Countries Fail reject the relationship between economic progress and Protestantism writing:

And Max Weber's Protestant ethic? Although it may be true that the predominantly Protestant countries, like the Netherlands and England, were the first with economic successes of the modern era, there is little relationship between religion and economic success. France, a predominantly Catholic country, quickly copied the economic results of the Dutch and the English in the nineteenth century and Italy is as prosperous as any of those countries today. If we look further east, we will see that none of the economic successes of East Asia have anything to do with any kind of Christian religion, so there are not many arguments that support the existence of a special relationship between Protestantism and economic success in this regard.

Revisionist criticism

H. M. Robertson, in his book "Aspects of Economic Individualism," argued against Weber's historical and religious claims. Robertson points out that capitalism began to flourish not in Britain, but in 14th-century Italy, a decidedly different time. Since this is true, then the rise of capitalism cannot be attributed to Adam Smith, the Protestant Reformation, etc. In fact, Robertson goes further and claims that what happened in Britain was rather a throwback to what was achieved in Italy centuries before.

Looking at the history of the development of economic thought, Robertson shows that Adam Smith and David Ricardo did not found economic science "de novo". In fact, liberal economic theory was developed by French and Italian Catholics, who were influenced by Scholasticism. British economic thought was rather a step backwards as it embraced the labor theory of value, which had already been proven incorrect by the Salamanca School.

Elvira Roca Barea, a professor at Harvard University, points out that Weber did not take into account in his research the harsh legal conditions in which Catholics lived in Protestant-majority nations, the land seizures they had suffered and the legal impossibility to inherit, which prevents them from accumulating capital over generations. On the other hand, developments in the manufacturing and financial industry that took place in northern Italy and Spain are not noted; which contradicts the thesis of a capitalism product of the social conditions given by Protestantism, since it becomes evident that capitalism as an exchange and generation of capital existed even before the Protestant Reformation and was first developed in countries with a Catholic tradition.

Other reviews

Recently it has been suggested that Protestantism has positively influenced the capitalist development of the respective social systems, not so much through the "Protestant ethic", but rather through the promotion of literacy Sascha Becker and Ludger Wossmann of the University of Munich showed that literacy levels that differ in religious areas can sufficiently explain the economic gaps cited by Weber. The results were supported even under a concentric diffusion model of Protestantism using the Wittenberg distance as a model.

Weber's conclusion has also been criticized for ignoring ethnic dimensions. Weber focused on religion, but ignored the fact that Germany contained large numbers of Poles in Germany due to the partitions of Poland; and the Poles were mainly Catholics and Germans Protestants. As such, scholars have suggested that what Weber observed was in fact "discrimination against Poles" visible in the different levels of income, savings and literacy between Germans and Poles.

The prominent French historian Fernand Braudel, considered one of the greatest of modern historians, vigorously criticized Weber's theory, pointing out its lack of foundation and veracity, stating:

All historians have opposed this tenacious theory, although they have failed to get rid of it once and for all. However, it is clearly false. The countries of the north took the place they had previously occupied for so long and so brilliantly the old capitalist centers of the Mediterranean. They didn't invent anything, technology or business management. Amsterdam copied to Venice, as London would later copy to Amsterdam, and as New York would someday copy to London.

Support

In 1958, American sociologist Gerhard Lenski conducted empirical research on the "impact of religion on politics, the economy, and family life" in the Detroit, Michigan area. He revealed, among other insights, that there were significant differences between Catholics on the one hand and (white) Protestants and Jews on the other with regard to economics and science. Lenski's data supported the basic hypotheses of Weber's work 'The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism'. According to Lenski, "the contribution of Protestantism to material progress has been largely the unintended by-products of certain distinctive Protestant traits." This was a central point in Weber's theory. Lenski noted that more than a hundred years before Weber, John Wesley, one of the founders of the Methodist Church, had observed that "diligence and frugality" they made Methodists rich. "In an early era, Protestant asceticism and dedication to work, as noted by Wesley and Weber, appear to have been important patterns of action that contributed to economic progress. Both facilitated the accumulation of capital, so critically important for the economic growth and development of nations".

German theologian Friedrich Wilhelm Graf notes: "Religious sociologists such as Peter L. Berger and David Martin have interpreted the Protestant revolution in Latin America as implicitly supporting elements of Weber's thesis. [...] In any case, many pious people interpret their transition from the Catholic Church to the Protestant Pentecostal congregations in terms of a moral idea that promises long-term economic gains through strong inner-world asceticism. The strict ascetic self-discipline that has been successfully institutionalized in Pentecostal congregations, the willingness to work longer and harder, and to adopt less leisurely attitudes lead many Pentecostal Christians to believe that their newfound faith in God is backed by their financial successes &# 34;.

See also

• Anglo-Saxon model
• Disengagement
• Iron Jaula
• Thesis of Merton
• Theology of prosperity
• Protestant work ethics
• Rationalization
• Cultural developments

Further reading

• Mill, John Stuart. On Liberty: A Translation into Modern English. ISR Publications, 2013. "Editorial foreword: Christianity and liberty". [2]
• Albrow, Martin. (1990). Max Weber's Construction of Social Theory. London: MacMillan
• McKinnon, AM (2010). «Elective affinities of the Protestant ethic: Weber and the chemistry of capitalism». Sociological Theory 28 (1): 108-126. S2CID 144579790. doi:10.1111/j.1467-9558.2009.01367.x. hdl:2164/3035.
• O'Toole, Roger. (1984). Religion: Classical Sociological Approaches. Toronto: McGraw Hill.
• Parkin, Frank. (1983). Max Weber. London and New York: Routledge
• Poggi, Gianfranco. (1983). Calvinism and the Capitalist Spirit: Max Weber's Protestant Ethic. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press
• Shea, Michael (2015)«The Protestant Ethic and the Language of Austerity». Discover Society. October 6, 2015.
• Tawney, Richard Henry (1922) Religion and the Rise of Capitalism: A Historical Study, London: John Murray