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The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism

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The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism , (1904–05), thesis by Max Weber that asserts a connection between success in capitalist ventures and the accidental psychological consequences of Calvinist Christian doctrines, especially predestination .

Weber began his thesis by noting the statistical correlation in Germany between interest and success in capitalist ventures on the one hand and Protestant background on the other. He then attributed this relationship between capitalism and Protestantism to certain accidental psychological consequences of the notions of predestination and calling in Puritan theology .

John Calvin ’s formulation of the doctrine of predestination stated that sinful humanity could know neither why nor to whom God had extended the grace of salvation . Weber inferred that the psychological insecurity that this doctrine had imposed on Calvin’s followers, stern believers in hellfire , was such that they began to look for signs indicating the direction of God’s will in daily life. The consequence was an ethic of unceasing commitment to one’s worldly calling (any lapse would indicate that one’s state of grace was in doubt) and ascetic abstinence from any enjoyment of the profit reaped from such labours. The practical result of such beliefs and practices was, in Weber’s estimation, the most rapid possible accumulation of capital.

To some degree, Weber’s thesis reflects his lived experience and personal environment . The sociologist’s mother was raised in Calvinist orthodoxy, and she maintained a Puritan morality throughout her life. By contrast, Weber’s father was an aspiring liberal politician who established himself as a fixture of the Berlin social milieu and entertained prominent politicians and scholars in the Weber household, bringing behaviour into the home that was directly at odds with the ethics favoured by his wife. He adopted a traditionally authoritarian manner at home and demanded absolute obedience from his wife and children.

Despite a brief period away from home early in his adulthood, Weber remained immersed in the conflict of his childhood home well into his adulthood. He left home in 1882 to study at the University of Heidelberg , but he interrupted his studies in 1883–84 to fulfill military service in Strassburg ( Strasbourg ). At that time he became very close to the family of his maternal aunt, Ida Baumgarten, and to her husband, the historian Hermann Baumgarten, who had a profound influence on Weber’s intellectual development. When Weber returned to his studies in 1884, his father, perhaps concerned that the Baumgartens’ influence on him had been subversive, persuaded him to live at home in Berlin.

Weber remained at his parents’ home, subjected to their conflicting interests, until 1893, and he developed a compulsive work regimen that he maintained after leaving home and marrying that year. Only through such disciplined labour, believed Weber, could he stave off a natural tendency to self-indulgence and laziness, which could lead to an emotional and spiritual crisis. Weber’s great capacity for disciplined intellectual effort, together with his unquestionable brilliance, led to his meteoric professional advance. By 1894, only a year into his paid career, he had been appointed a full professor in political economy at the University of Freiburg . A year later he attained that position at Heidelberg.

However, Weber suffered a nervous collapse several months after his father’s death in 1897. By mid-1898 he had become incapacitated, and he was intermittently institutionalized over a span of five years. In 1903, at the height of his illness, Weber resigned his position at Heidelberg. He did not teach again until after World War I , and he never returned to lecturing full-time.

But it was after his resignation that Weber produced his most important work. His prolonged agony had led him to develop brilliant insights into the relationship between Calvinist morality and compulsive labour, into the relationship between various religious ethics and social and economic processes, and into many other questions of lasting importance. Weber soon formulated The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism , which became his best-known and most controversial work. In this and other works, he sought to take a scientific approach to the social sciences that would overcome deficiencies he perceived in the field’s intellectual traditions. However, he never fully defined a systematic research program explaining his comparative methodology .

Weber’s thesis, which challenged current assumptions within German schools of sociology that economic needs drove religious and social impulses, was met with controversy from the time of its publication. Critics of Weber countered that highly developed capitalist enterprises had existed centuries before Calvin, a claim Weber never denied in his rebuttals. Weber also acknowledged counterarguments that other preconditions, both material and psychological, had contributed to the development of modern capitalism . He responded to such criticisms by arguing that before Calvinism , capitalist enterprise and wealth accumulation had always been fettered by the passive or active hostility of the prevalent religious order. If some capitalists had, by virtue of their skepticism , been able to escape the feelings of guilt that the predominant religious ethos dictated, it was nevertheless a fact that no other religious tradition had ever caused people to see the accumulation of capital (saving money) as a sign of God’s everlasting grace .

Among the most well-known responses to The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism was the Swedish economic historian Kurt Samuelsson’s Religion and Economic Action (1957), which directly critiqued Weber’s thesis. The English economic historian Richard Henry Tawney , although accepting Weber’s general thesis, shifted and expanded the emphasis in his Religion and the Rise of Capitalism (1926) by arguing that Calvinist theology merely set the stage for the ethic of hard work and the spirit of individualism , which were more-direct factors in the development of capitalism than was Calvinist theology.

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The Protestant Ethic Thesis

Donald frey, wake forest university.

German sociologist Max Weber (1864 -1920) developed the Protestant-ethic thesis in two journal articles published in 1904-05. The English translation appeared in book form as The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism in 1930. Weber argued that Reformed (i.e., Calvinist) Protestantism was the seedbed of character traits and values that under-girded modern capitalism. This article summarizes Weber’s formulation, considers criticisms of Weber’s thesis, and reviews evidence of linkages between cultural values and economic growth.

Outline of Weber’s Thesis

Weber emphasized that money making as a calling had been “contrary to the ethical feelings of whole epochs…” (Weber 1930, p.73; further Weber references by page number alone). Lacking moral support in pre-Protestant societies, business had been strictly limited to “the traditional manner of life, the traditional rate of profit, the traditional amount of work…” (67). Yet, this pattern “was suddenly destroyed, and often entirely without any essential change in the form of organization…” Calvinism, Weber argued, changed the spirit of capitalism, transforming it into a rational and unashamed pursuit of profit for its own sake.

In an era when religion dominated all of life, Martin Luther’s (1483-1546) insistence that salvation was by God’s grace through faith had placed all vocations on the same plane. Contrary to medieval belief, religious vocations were no longer considered superior to economic vocations for only personal faith mattered with God. Nevertheless, Luther did not push this potential revolution further because he clung to a traditional, static view of economic life. John Calvin (1509-1564), or more accurately Calvinism, changed that.

Calvinism accomplished this transformation, not so much by its direct teachings, but (according to Weber) by the interaction of its core theology with human psychology. Calvin had pushed the doctrine of God’s grace to the limits of the definition: grace is a free gift , something that the Giver, by definition, must be free to bestow or withhold. Under this definition, sacraments, good deeds, contrition, virtue, assent to doctrines, etc. could not influence God (104); for, if they could, that would turn grace into God’s side of a transaction instead its being a pure gift. Such absolute divine freedom, from mortal man’s perspective, however, seemed unfathomable and arbitrary (103). Thus, whether one was among those saved (the elect) became the urgent question for the average Reformed churchman according to Weber.

Uncertainty about salvation, according to Weber, had the psychological effect of producing a single-minded search for certainty. Although one could never influence God’s decision to extend or withhold election, one might still attempt to ascertain his or her status. A life that “… served to increase the glory of God” presumably flowed naturally from a state of election (114). If one glorified God and conformed to what was known of God’s requirements for this life then that might provide some evidence of election. Thus upright living, which could not earn salvation, returned as evidence of salvation.

The upshot was that the Calvinist’s living was “thoroughly rationalized in this world and dominated by the aim to add to the glory of God in earth…” (118). Such a life became a systematic living out of God’s revealed will. This singleness of purpose left no room for diversion and created what Weber called an ascetic character. “Not leisure and enjoyment, but only activity serves to increase the glory of God, according to the definite manifestations of His will” (157). Only in a calling does this focus find full expression. “A man without a calling thus lacks the systematic, methodical character which is… demanded by worldly asceticism” (161). A calling represented God’s will for that person in the economy and society.

Such emphasis on a calling was but a small step from a full-fledged capitalistic spirit. In practice, according to Weber, that small step was taken, for “the most important criterion [of a calling] is … profitableness. For if God … shows one of His elect a chance of profit, he must do it with a purpose…” (162). This “providential interpretation of profit-making justified the activities of the business man,” and led to “the highest ethical appreciation of the sober, middle-class, self-made man” (163).

A sense of calling and an ascetic ethic applied to laborers as well as to entrepreneurs and businessmen. Nascent capitalism required reliable, honest, and punctual labor (23-24), which in traditional societies had not existed (59-62). That free labor would voluntarily submit to the systematic discipline of work under capitalism required an internalized value system unlike any seen before (63). Calvinism provided this value system (178-79).

Weber’s “ascetic Protestantism” was an all-encompassing value system that shaped one’s whole life, not merely ethics on the job. Life was to be controlled the better to serve God. Impulse and those activities that encouraged impulse, such as sport or dance, were to be shunned. External finery and ornaments turned attention away from inner character and purpose; so the simpler life was better. Excess consumption and idleness were resources wasted that could otherwise glorify God. In short, the Protestant ethic ordered life according to its own logic, but also according to the needs of modern capitalism as understood by Weber.

An adequate summary requires several additional points. First, Weber virtually ignored the issue of usury or interest. This contrasts with some writers who take a church’s doctrine on usury to be the major indicator of its sympathy to capitalism. Second, Weber magnified the extent of his Protestant ethic by claiming to find Calvinist economic traits in later, otherwise non-Calvinist Protestant movements. He recalled the Methodist John Wesley’s (1703-1791) “Earn all you can, save all you can, give all you can,” and ascetic practices by followers of the eighteenth-century Moravian leader Nicholas Von Zinzendorf (1700-1760). Third, Weber thought that once established the spirit of modern capitalism could perpetuate its values without religion, citing Benjamin Franklin whose ethic already rested on utilitarian foundations. Fourth, Weber’s book showed little sympathy for either Calvinism, which he thought encouraged a “spiritual aristocracy of the predestined saints” (121), or capitalism , which he thought irrational for valuing profit for its own sake . Finally, although Weber’s thesis could be viewed as a rejoinder to Karl Marx (1818-1883), Weber claimed it was not his goal to replace Marx’s one-sided materialism with “an equally one-sided spiritualistic causal interpretation…” of capitalism (183).

Critiques of Weber

Critiques of Weber can be put into three categories. First, Weber might have been wrong about the facts: modern capitalism might have arisen before Reformed Protestantism or in places where the Reformed influence was much smaller than Weber believed. Second, Weber might have misinterpreted Calvinism or, more narrowly, Puritanism; if Reformed teachings were not what Weber supposed, then logically they might not have supported capitalism. Third, Weber might have overstated capitalism’s need for the ascetic practices produced by Reformed teachings.

On the first count, Weber has been criticized by many. During the early twentieth century, historians studied the timing of the emergence of capitalism and Calvinism in Europe. E. Fischoff (1944, 113) reviewed the literature and concluded that the “timing will show that Calvinism emerged later than capitalism where the latter became decisively powerful,” suggesting no cause-and-effect relationship. Roland Bainton also suggests that the Reformed contributed to the development of capitalism only as a “matter of circumstance” (Bainton 1952, 254). The Netherlands “had long been the mart of Christendom, before ever the Calvinists entered the land.” Finally, Kurt Samuelsson (1957) concedes that “the Protestant countries, and especially those adhering to the Reformed church, were particularly vigorous economically” (Samuelsson, 102). However, he finds much reason to discredit a cause-and-effect relationship. Sometimes capitalism preceded Calvinism (Netherlands), and sometimes lagged by too long a period to suggest causality (Switzerland). Sometimes Catholic countries (Belgium) developed about the same time as the Protestant countries. Even in America, capitalist New England was cancelled out by the South, which Samuelsson claims also shared a Puritan outlook.

Weber himself, perhaps seeking to circumvent such evidence, created a distinction between traditional capitalism and modern capitalism. The view that traditional capitalism could have existed first, but that Calvinism in some meaningful sense created modern capitalism, depends on too fine a distinction according to critics such as Samuelsson. Nevertheless, because of the impossibility of controlled experiments to firmly resolve the question, the issue will never be completely closed.

The second type of critique is that Weber misinterpreted Calvinism or Puritanism. British scholar R. H. Tawney in Religion and the Rise of Capitalism (1926) noted that Weber treated multi-faceted Reformed Christianity as though it were equivalent to late-era English Puritanism, the period from which Weber’s most telling quotes were drawn. Tawney observed that the “iron collectivism” of Calvin’s Geneva had evolved before Calvinism became harmonious with capitalism. “[Calvinism] had begun by being the very soul of authoritarian regimentation. It ended by being the vehicle of an almost Utilitarian individualism” (Tawney 1962, 226-7). Nevertheless, Tawney affirmed Weber’s point that Puritanism “braced [capitalism’s] energies and fortified its already vigorous temper.”

Roland Bainton in his own history of the Reformation disputed Weber’s psychological claims. Despite the psychological uncertainty Weber imputed to Puritans, their activism could be “not psychological and self-centered but theological and God-centered” (Bainton 1952, 252-53). That is, God ordered all of life and society, and Puritans felt obliged to act on His will. And if some Puritans scrutinized themselves for evidence of election, “the test was emphatically not economic activity as such but upright character…” He concludes that Calvinists had no particular affinity for capitalism but that they brought “vitality and drive into every area … whether they were subduing a continent, overthrowing a monarchy, or managing a business, or reforming the evils of the very order which they helped to create” (255).

Samuelsson, in a long section (27-48), argued that Puritan leaders did not truly endorse capitalistic behavior. Rather, they were ambivalent. Given that Puritan congregations were composed of businessmen and their families (who allied with Puritan churches because both wished for less royal control of society), the preachers could hardly condemn capitalism. Instead, they clarified “the moral conditions under which a prosperous, even wealthy, businessman may, despite success and wealth, become a good Christian” (38). But this, Samuelsson makes clear, was hardly a ringing endorsement of capitalism.

Criticisms that what Weber described as Puritanism was not true Puritanism, much less Calvinism, may be correct but beside the point. Puritan leaders indeed condemned exclusive devotion to one’s business because it excluded God and the common good. Thus, the Protestant ethic as described by Weber apparently would have been a deviation from pure doctrine. However, the pastors’ very attacks suggest that such a (mistaken) spirit did exist within their flocks. But such mistaken doctrine, if widespread enough, could still have contributed to the formation of the capitalist spirit.

Furthermore, any misinterpretation of Puritan orthodoxy was not entirely the fault of Puritan laypersons. Puritan theologians and preachers could place heavier emphasis on economic success and virtuous labor than critics such as Samuelsson would admit. The American preacher John Cotton (1582-1652) made clear that God “would have his best gifts improved to the best advantage.” The respected theologian William Ames (1576-1633) spoke of “taking and using rightly opportunity.” And, speaking of the idle, Cotton Mather said, “find employment for them, set them to work, and keep them at work…” A lesser standard would hardly apply to his hearers. Although these exhortations were usually balanced with admonitions to use wealth for the common good, and not to be motivated by greed, they are nevertheless clear endorsements of vigorous economic behavior. Puritan leaders may have placed boundaries around economic activism, but they still preached activism.

Frey (1998) has argued that orthodox Puritanism exhibited an inherent tension between approval of economic activity and emphasis upon the moral boundaries that define acceptable economic activity. A calling was never meant for the service of self alone but for the service of God and the common good. That is, Puritan thinkers always viewed economic activity against the backdrop of social and moral obligation. Perhaps what orthodox Puritanism contributed to capitalism was a sense of economic calling bounded by moral responsibility . In an age when Puritan theologians were widely read, Williams Ames defined the essence of the business contract as “upright dealing, by which one does sincerely intend to oblige himself…” If nothing else, business would be enhanced and made more efficient by an environment of honesty and trust.

Finally, whether Weber misinterpreted Puritanism is one issue. Whether he misinterpreted capitalism by exaggerating the importance of asceticism is another. Weber’s favorite exemplar of capitalism, Benjamin Franklin, did advocate unremitting personal thrift and discipline. No doubt, certain sectors of capitalism advanced by personal thrift, sometimes carried to the point of deprivation. Samuelsson (83-87) raises serious questions, however, that thrift could have contributed even in a minor way to the creation of the large fortunes of capitalists. Perhaps more important than personal fortunes is the finance of business. The retained earnings of successful enterprises, rather than personal savings, probably have provided a major source of funding for business ventures from the earliest days of capitalism. And successful capitalists, even in Puritan New England, have been willing to enjoy at least some of the fruits of their labors. Perhaps the spirit of capitalism was not the spirit of asceticism.

Evidence of Links between Values and Capitalism

Despite the critics, some have taken the Protestant ethic to be a contributing cause of capitalism, perhaps a necessary cause. Sociologist C. T. Jonassen (1947) understood the Protestant ethic this way. By examining a case of capitalism’s emergence in the nineteenth century, rather than in the Reformation or Puritan eras, he sought to resolve some of the uncertainties of studying earlier eras. Jonassen argued that capitalism emerged in nineteenth-century Norway only after an indigenous, Calvinist-like movement challenged the Lutheranism and Catholicism that had dominated the country. Capitalism had not “developed in Norway under centuries of Catholic and Lutheran influence,” although it appeared only “two generations after the introduction of a type of religion that produced the same behavior as Calvinism” (Jonassen, 684). Jonassen’s argument also discounted other often-cited causes of capitalism, such as the early discoveries of science, the Renaissance, or developments in post-Reformation Catholicism; these factors had existed for centuries by the nineteenth century and still had left Norway as a non-capitalist society. Only in the nineteenth century, after a Calvinist-like faith emerged, did capitalism develop.

Engerman’s (2000) review of economic historians shows that they have given little explicit attention to Weber in recent years. However, they show an interest in the impact of cultural values broadly understood on economic growth. A modified version of the Weber thesis has also found some support in empirical economic research. Granato, Inglehart and Leblang (1996, 610) incorporated cultural values in cross-country growth models on the grounds that Weber’s thesis fits the historical evidence in Europe and America. They did not focus on Protestant values, but accepted “Weber’s more general concept, that certain cultural factors influence economic growth…” Specifically they incorporated a measure of “achievement motivation” in their regressions and concluded that such motivation “is highly relevant to economic growth rates” (625). Conversely, they found that “post-materialist” (i.e., environmentalist) values are correlated with slower economic growth. Barro’s (1997, 27) modified Solow growth models also find that a “rule of law index” is associated with more rapid economic growth. This index is a proxy for such things as “effectiveness of law enforcement, sanctity of contracts and … the security of property rights.” Recalling Puritan theologian William Ames’ definition of a contract, one might conclude that a religion such as Puritanism could create precisely the cultural values that Barro finds associated with economic growth.

Max Weber’s thesis has attracted the attention of scholars and researchers for most of a century. Some (including Weber) deny that the Protestant ethic should be understood to be a cause of capitalism — that it merely points to a congruency between and culture’s religion and its economic system. Yet Weber, despite his own protests, wrote as though he believed that traditional capitalism would never have turned into modern capitalism except for the Protestant ethic– implying causality of sorts. Historical evidence from the Reformation era (sixteenth century) does not provide much support for a strong (causal) interpretation of the Protestant ethic. However, the emergence of a vigorous capitalism in Puritan England and its American colonies (and the case of Norway) at least keeps the case open. More recent quantitative evidence supports the hypothesis that cultural values count in economic development. The cultural values examined in recent studies are not religious values, as such. Rather, such presumably secular values as the need to achieve, intolerance for corruption, respect for property rights, are all correlated with economic growth. However, in its own time Puritanism produced a social and economic ethic known for precisely these sorts of values.

Bainton, Roland. The Reformation of the Sixteenth Century . Boston: Beacon Press, 1952.

Barro, Robert. Determinants of Economic Growth: A Cross-country Empirical Study . Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1997.

Engerman, Stanley. “Capitalism, Protestantism, and Economic Development.” EH.NET, 2000. https://eh.net/bookreviews/library/engerman.shtml

Fischoff, Ephraim. “The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism: The History of a Controversy.” Social Research (1944). Reprinted in R. W. Green (ed.), Protestantism and Capitalism: The Weber Thesis and Its Critics . Boston: D.C. Heath, 1958.

Frey, Donald E. “Individualist Economic Values and Self-Interest: The Problem in the Protestant Ethic.” Journal of Business Ethics (Oct. 1998).

Granato, Jim, R. Inglehart and D. Leblang. “The Effect of Cultural Values on Economic Development: Theory, Hypotheses and Some Empirical Tests.” American Journal of Political Science (Aug. 1996).

Green, Robert W. (ed.), Protestantism and Capitalism: The Weber Thesis and Its Critics . Boston: D.C. Heath, 1959.

Jonassen, Christen. “The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism in Norway.” American Sociological Review (Dec. 1947).

Samuelsson, Kurt. Religion and Economic Action. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1993 [orig. 1957].

Tawney, R. H. Religion and the Rise of Capitalism . Gloucester, MA: Peter Smith, 1962 [orig., 1926].

Weber, Max, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism . New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1958 [orig. 1930].

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Max Weber, the Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism

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R. J. Holton

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It is fortunate that many recent interpretations of Max Weber’s contribution to the analysis of modern Western capitalist development have moved beyond certain well-worn tracks of the past. There are, for example, few who would now present Weber’s sociology as profoundly antipathetical to Marxism in all its aspects. On the contrary, much of Weber’s conceptualisation of capitalism and of his analysis of capitalist development may be shown to be complementary with thematic emphases in Marx (Birnbaum, 1953; Giddens, 1970; Turner, 1981). Similarly, not many writers now believe Weber’s contribution to the transition debate to be dominated by the Protestant Ethic thesis as some kind of mono-causal ‘idealist’ explanation of capitalist development.

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Holton, R.J. (1985). Max Weber, the Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. In: The Transition from Feudalism to Capitalism. New Studies in Sociology. Palgrave, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-17745-5_5

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Max Weber: The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism

Table of Contents

Last Updated on October 10, 2023 by Karl Thompson

Weber argued the values of the protestant religion led to the emergence of capitalism in Northern Europe in the 1600s.

Weber observed that Capitalism first took off in Holland and England, in the mid 17th century. He asked himself the question: ‘ why did Capitalism develop in these two countries first? ’

the protestant ethic and the spirit of captialism

Protestant Individualism and the Emergence of Capitalism

Weber argued that the particular varieties of protestantism present in England and Holland in the 1600s were essential to the emergence of capitalism in those two countries.

The values of Protestantism encouraged ways of acting which (unintentionally) resulted in capitalism emerging, over a period of many decades, even centuries.

Weber observed that most other countries in Europe at that time were Catholic. He theorised the different value systems of the two religions had different effects.

Protestantism encouraged people to ‘find God for themselves’. Protestantism taught that silent reflection, introspection and prayer were the best ways to find God. This (unintentionally, and over many years) encouraged Protestants to adopt a more ‘individualistic ’ attitude to their religion by seeking their own interpretations of Christianity.

In contrast, Catholicism was a religion which encouraged more conservative values and thus resisted social changes. The Catholic Church had a top-down structure: from God to the Pope to the Senior Bishops and then down to the people. Ultimate power to interpret Catholic doctrine rested with the Pope and his closest advisers. The authorities expected practising Catholics to abide by such interpretations and not to interpret religious scripture for themselves.

Similarly, part of being a good Catholic meant attending mass, which was administered by a member of the Catholic establishment. This reinforced the idea that the church was in control of religious matters.

book cover in german: protestant ethic and spirit of capitalism

The Protestant Ethic: necessary but not sufficient!

Other factors existing in England and Holland were also important for capitalism to emerge, such as governments which supported protestantism and the availability of capital to invest. But protestantism was also an essential driver in the emergence of capitalism.

The Protestant Ethic

Calvinism originated in the beliefs of John Calvin who preached the doctrine of predestination: God had already decided who was going to heaven (‘the elect’) before they were born. Similarly, God had also already decided who the damned were. Whether or not you were going to hell had already been decided before your birth.

According to Weber this led to a situation in which Calvinist communities encouraged work for the glory of God, and discouraged laziness and frivolity. Believers were motivated to stick to these ethical codes, given that hell was the punishment if you didn’t.

Calvinism: all work and no play!

John Wesley, leader of the Methodist revival just before the industrial revolution wrote towards the end of the 18th century:

Since asceticism was also a belief, people couldn’t spend their riches on enjoying themselves. Rather, they should invest profits back in their businesses to enhance capacity to meet their calling.

The Spirit of Capitalism

Underlying the practice of capitalism was what Weber called the ‘Spirit of Capitalism’.

The Spirit of capitalism was more than about making money, it was also a way of life and a set of ethics. Making money became both a religious ethic and a business ethic.

Weber argued that over the following centuries, the norm of working hard and investing in your business became entrenched in European societies. These norms encouraged entrepreneurialism and a rational approach to mass production which fuelled capitalism.

Evaluations of the Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism

Kautsky developed a Marxist critique of Weber. He argued that early capitalism preceded Calvinism. He sees Calvinism as developing in countries and cities where commerce and early industrialisation were already established. Then Calvinism came along to justify their already existing capitalist practices.

However, defenders of Weber dismiss the above criticisms. They point out that if we drill down into the examples of where capitalism didn’t emerge in some calvinist countries, those countries didn’t have other necessary factors. For example in Scotland, they lacked capital investment and government policies were not favourable.

Max Weber’s Protestant Ethic: how is it relevant to A-level Sociology?

This criticises Functionalist and Marxist theories of religion which argue that religion prevents social change.

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The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism is a book written by sociologist and economist Max Weber in 1904-1905. The original version was in German and it was translated into English by Talcott Parsons in 1930. In the book, Weber argues that Western capitalism developed as a result of the Protestant work ethic. The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism has been highly influential, and it is often considered a founding text in economic sociology and sociology in general.

Key Takeaways: The Protestant Ethic and The Spirit Of Capitalism

Weber’s famous book set out to understand Western civilization and the development of capitalism.
According to Weber, societies influenced by Protestant religions encouraged both accumulating material wealth and living a relatively frugal lifestyle.
Because of this accumulation of wealth, individuals began to invest money—which paved the way for the development of capitalism.
In this book, Weber also put forward the idea of the “iron cage,” a theory about why social and economic structures are often resistant to change.

The Book's Premise

The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism is a discussion of Weber’s various religious ideas and economics. Weber argues that Puritan ethics and ideas influenced the development of capitalism. While Weber was influenced by Karl Marx , he was not a Marxist and even criticizes aspects of Marxist theory in this book.

Weber begins The Protestant Ethic with a question: What about Western civilization has made it the only civilization to develop certain cultural phenomena to which we like to attribute universal value and significance?

According to Weber, only in the West does valid science exist. Weber claims that empirical knowledge and observation that exists elsewhere lacks the rational, systematic, and specialized methodology that is present in the West. Weber argues that the same is true of capitalism —it exists in a sophisticated manner that has never before existed anywhere else in the world. When capitalism is defined as the pursuit of forever-renewable profit, capitalism can be said to be part of every civilization at any time in history. But it is in the West, Weber claims, that it has developed to an extraordinary degree. Weber sets out to understand what it is about the West that has made it so.

Weber's Conclusions

Weber's conclusion is a unique one. Weber found that under the influence of Protestant religions, especially Puritanism , individuals were religiously compelled to follow a secular vocation with as much enthusiasm as possible. In other words, hard work and finding success in one’s occupation were highly valued in societies influenced by Protestantism. A person living according to this worldview was therefore more likely to accumulate money.

Further, the new religions, such as Calvinism, forbade wastefully using hard-earned money and labeled the purchase of luxuries as a sin. These religions also frowned upon donating money to the poor or to charity because it was seen as promoting beggary. Thus, a conservative, even stingy lifestyle, combined with a work ethic that encouraged people to earn money, resulted in large amounts of available money.

The way these issues were resolved, Weber argued, was to invest the money—a move that gave a large boost to capitalism. In other words, capitalism evolved when the Protestant ethic influenced large numbers of people to engage in work in the secular world , developing their own enterprises and engaging in trade and the accumulation of wealth for investment.

In Weber's view, the Protestant ethic was, therefore, the driving force behind the mass action that led to the development of capitalism. Importantly, even after religion became less important in society, these norms of hard work and frugality remained, and continued to encourage individuals to pursue material wealth.

Weber’s Influence

Weber’s theories have been controversial, and other writers have questioned his conclusions. Nevertheless, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism remains an incredibly influential book, and it has introduced ideas that influenced later scholars.

One especially influential idea that Weber articulated in The Protestant Ethic was the concept of the "iron cage." This theory suggests that an economic system can become a restrictive force that can prevent change and perpetuate its own failings. Because people are socialized within a particular economic system, Weber claims, they may be unable to imagine a different system. Since Weber’s time, this theory has been quite influential, especially in the Frankfurt School of critical theory.

Sources and Additional Reading:

Kolbert, Elizabeth. “Why Work?” The New Yorker (2004, Nov. 21). https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2004/11/29/why-work
“Protestant Ethic.” Encyclopaedia Britannica .
Overview of The History of Sexuality
The Main Points of "The Communist Manifesto"
The Social Transformation of American Medicine
Understanding Durkheim's Division of Labor
Definition of the Sociological Imagination and Overview of the Book
McDonaldization: Definition and Overview of the Concept
An Overview of the Book Democracy in America
Malcolm Gladwell's "The Tipping Point"
The Asch Conformity Experiments
The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life
Savage Inequalities: Children in America’s Schools
Émile Durkheim: "Suicide: A Study in Sociology"
Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity
Understanding Max Weber's 'Iron Cage'
Biography of Max Weber
Max Weber's Key Contributions to Sociology

Weber argues that Protestantism was part of the casual chain that led to the development of world-system dominance by Anglo-American capitalism. Specifically, Calvin’s doctrine of predestination-namely, that a person’s eternal fate as elect to heaven or damned to hell was determined by God before the person’s birth and could not be altered by any act the person performed while on earth-when superimposed upon Luther’s radical alteration of “vocation” ( beruf ) to refer to one’s daily occupation in the world (rather than a monastic withdrawal from the world), dynamically interacted with the social psychological condition of salvation anxiety to create conditions whereby people sought to determine whether or not they were among those elected to eternal life. Weber argued that among the English Puritans, epitomized by Richard Baxter, the tension of Calvin’s austere doctrine was resolved by a belief (based principally on the Old Testament book of Proverbs) that God would reward in this life those whom he had elected to eternal glory, who lived according to his laws. Thus the “rising parvenus” of the English middle classes were told that if they strictly followed biblical teachings for the conduct of life (as interpreted by the Puritans) and they succeeded in their businesses, this would be a sign of their election- but only if they also used the fruits of their labors properly. Specifically, they were to invest all their income beyond the necessities of a frugal lifestyle, in so doing making even more money, to invest similarly all the days of their life. This is the connection between the Protestant “work ethic” and capitalism, not merely as an economic philosophy but a lifestyle.

Origins The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism in its present, generally used English translation by Talcott Parsons (Weber 1930, but see Collins 1996) is a 1920 revision by Weber of two essays he first published in 1904-1905. To these are prefixed the introduction (written c. 1920) to his entire world religions corpus, which was the context for his revision. When combined with Weber’s 1909-1910 reaction (translated 1978) to criticisms of the original essays by Felix Rachfahl, this introduction is extremely important for understanding what it was Weber thought he was (and was not) doing in his work. There is also a third Protestant ethic essay, related to his observations on the Protestant ethic in America, that appeared in 1906 and is translated separately in both its revised 1920 version (1946) and the original (1985).

In spite of occasional claims to the contrary, the work is accurately titled. It is an enthymematic argument about a religious ay of acting and an economic world-view. Religious beliefs , as Gianfranco Poggi has aptly noted (1983:56), are “upstream” of Weber’s thesis; the thesis is not about belief but about practices that a specific social strata derived from those beliefs and how those in turn affected economics. The original context for Weber’s writing was his acceptance of the coeditorship of the journal Archiv fur Sozialwissenschaftund Sozialpolitik, on the one hand, and his frustration, on the other, at finding a political solution to what he perceived to be a German national identity crisis. The “Protestant” in The Protestant Ethic properly contrasts to “Lutheran,” not Catholic (see Liebersohn 1988, Maurer 1924); although by the time of the 1920 revision this was altered, and a universal-historical dimension seeking to discern the impediments to the capitalist ethos in the action systems of the world religions was added. The essay remains basically historical in character, however, and offers an intentionally one-sided argument (1930:27) that the breakthrough to modern rational capitalism as a life-encompassing social system was facilitated by Protestant morality (the “work ethic”). It does not argue that Protestantism as a specific set of Christian dogmas was either necessary or sufficient to “cause” modern rational capitalism to appear, but that Protestantism, especially at the hands of late sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century English Puritans, did create a system of meaningful action that functioned historically as the “last intensification” (Collins 1986:93) in a casual chain that led to modern capitalism, “the most fateful force in our modern life” (1930:17).

This historical point is all Weber needed to carry on not only a “dialogue with the ghost of Karl Marx,” as Albert Salomon phrased it (1945:596), but also with other theorists in the social sciences as well as Weber’s German political allies and adversaries. What Weber lamented in Germany and in himself (see Jaspers 1989:169) was “the fact that our nation has never experienced the school of hard asceticism in any form.” On this cultural critique he lay tremendous weight as an explanation for the failure of Germany to attain the international political-economic stature of Anglo-America. This historical logic can be seen, for example, in a somewhat exasperated comment in Weber’s response to Rachfahl’s criticisms of Weber’s thesis when Weber writes that “the great centers of the Middle Ages such as Florence,…were, God knows, capitalistically developed to quite another degree than…the American colonies with their largely subsistence economy,” yet Anglo-America became the cultural center of the spirit of capitalism, while the centers of capitalism’s origin paled (1978:1119).

Extensions and Critiques The PE thesis has generated several kinds of extensions (see the literature reviews in Fischoff 1944, Kivisto and Swatos 1988, Little 1969, Nelson 1973). Among the most fruitful is Robert Merton’s work (1970 [1938]} on religion and science in seventeenth-century England, where he applies a Weber-like analysis to British scientific acumen; this argument, now often simply referred to as “the Merton thesis,” has been so significant as to have generated a literature all its own.

Another line of research has been the search of PE “analogies” in favorable developmental contexts elsewhere in the world-particularly the new nations of Africa and Asia (see, e.g., Bellah 1957, 1970). The theoretical strategy of this approach is to find in the PE a constellation of action orientations that enhance the disposition toward capitalism; although it can overextend itself, the value of this type of study is to reinforce the crucial Weberian principle that the PE is not a specific theological doctrine but a generalizable system of action that can occur without any theological referent at all (as Weber himself pointed out in the somewhat apocalyptic conclusion to the 1920 revision of the 1905 essay).

A third valuable line of extension has been to use a PE-like analysis to assess other historical associations between action models and economic orientations in Western civilization; the most finely nuanced example of this approach is Colin Campbell’s work The Romantic Ethic and the Spirit of Modern Consumerism (1987).

Other critiques, which began with that of Rachfahl to which Weber himself replied, have been more misguided, hence far less helpful. In general, these critiques make either or both of two errors based on misreading Weber’s text: (1) They attempt to study theology rather than practice-for example, suggesting that Puritanism is a corruption of “pure” Calvinism (e.g., Hudson 1961, George and George 1955)-ignoring the fact that not theology, but the working out of theology in practical action, is Weber’s concern. This is why Weber can lump together such theologically diverse groups as Presbyterianism of the Westminster Confession, the Independents, Baptist sects, some Continental pietists, Mennonites, Quakers, and Methodists under the single rubric of the PE (see 1930:95-154, 217). (2) They fail to differentiate among types of capitalism, again ignoring Weber’s careful distinction of the character of “modern rational” capitalism (1930:17-27) and ignoring Weber’s reply to Rachfahl, which shows that Weber was well aware of the origins of capitalist thought and its varying historical appearances.

Early forms of this critique were those of Werner Sombart (1915), who associated capitalism with the Jews, to whom Weber himself replied, and H. M. Robertson (1933), who attempted to identify capitalism with the Jesuits (refuted by Broderick 1934). A more current, tendentious critique is that of Kurt Samuelsson (1961, reprinted 1993), which commits both of the errors noted here; as David Little notes, “Samuelsson’s book demands attention not because of its contribution to the general literature (which is negligible), but because it is the most recent expression of so many of the typical and wildly inadequate rejections of Weber’s thesis” (1969:228). A reader lacking historical sophistication in either religion or economics can, however, be greatly misled by the Samuelsson text.

Perhaps the strongest advocate for Weber’s thesis against these critics is an unwitting one, namely the Spanish author Jaime Balmes, who wrote well prior to Weber. In El Protestantismo , Balmes, who died in 1848, makes precisely the case that Weber does, that Protestantism is the principal engine of modern rational capitalism and all it entails, not least its peculiar work discipline. (The difference between Weber and Balmes is that Balmes bemoans the triumph of capitalism, while Weber generally celebrates it; Balmes’s book appeared in an English translation in the United States by 1850, European Civilization .)

Another line of extension and critique that has proved relatively valueless has been to study contemporary Protestants and Catholics (and others) for evidence of the presence or absence of the PE, usually using some form of survey research procedure. Weber himself indicates that this is not at all the context in which the thesis is to be applied (see 1978:1120), and that in fact the PE has been transvalued into a secular work ethic quite apart from, and perhaps even antithetical to, any religious considerations. Weber specifically points to Benjamin Franklin’s Poor Richard’s Almanac as early evidence of this process. The unproductivity of this line of research in the 1960s led Andrew Greeley (1964) to suggest a “moratorium” on further PE research in contemporary American society, although he later (1989) would offer his own comparative differentiation between current Protestant and Catholic life orientations.

A final, more difficult set of issues surrounds the phenomenon of Puritanism itself. Beginning with Michael Walzer’s work (e.g., 1966) specifically, there has been increasing concern to assess the complexity of Puritanism. David Zaret (e.g., 1985) also has made contributions in this area, and each has drawn responses (e.g., Little 1966). With regard to any historical actions, the process of discerning and labeling a “movement” is a secondary objectivation of meaning; in Weber’s case, this involves some form of typification. In other words, the PE comes to symbolize a collection of action orientations that only occasionally, if ever, coalesce in concrete cases. The PE thesis ultimately rests on making a convincing comparative case that one “type” of life orientation differs sufficiently from another type of life orientation that an “either this or that” argument may be drawn. In Weber’s cases, for example, the role of holy days is particularly instructive; a quite clear line can be drawn between those groups in Western Christianity that historically observed the principal Christian holy days and those that did not. The groups Weber identifies with the PE did not. (This is connected, in turn, to the larger question of work discipline). The treatment of Sunday as festival or Sabbath similarly separates the groups, as does the role of the sermon in worship. In general, then, one can identify two types of Western life orientation, promulgated in the name of Christianity, that began to divide from each other in the sixteenth century, and suggest that these divisions has consequences beyond a narrowly “religious” realm; perhaps the finest small-scale illustration of this dynamic is Stephen Kent’s study (1990) of the impact of the “fixed-price” policy of Quakers on all of subsequent economic history.

-William H. Swatos, Jr.

J. Balmes, El Protestantismo comprado con el catolicismo (Madrid: Biblioteca de Autores Cristianos, 1968 [1842]);

R. Bellah, Tokugawa Religion (Glencoe, Ill.: Free Press, 1957);

R. Bellah, “Reflections on the Protestant Ethic Analogy in Asia,” in Beyond Belief (New York: Harper, 1970); 53-63;

J. Broderick, The Economic Morals of the Jesuits (London: Oxford University Press, 1934);

C. Campbell, The Romantic Ethic and the Spirit of Modern Consumerism (Oxford: Blackwell, 1987);

R. Collins, Max Weber (Beverly Hills, Calif.: Sage, 1986);

R. Collins, “Introduction,” in The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (Los Angeles: Roxbury, 1996): vii-xxxix;

E. Fischoff, “The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism,” Social Research 2(1944): 53-77;

C. H. George and K. George, “The Weber Thesis,” in The Protestant Mind of the English Reformation (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1955): 144-149;

A. M. Greeley, “The Protestant Ethic,” Sociological Analysis 25 (1964):20-33;

A. M. Greeley, “Protestant and Catholic,” American Sociological Review 54 (1989):385-402;

W. Hudson, “The Weber Thesis Reexamined,” Church History 30(1961):8-99;

K. Jaspers, On Max Weber (New York: Paragon House, 1989);

S. Kent, “The Quaker Ethic and the Fixed Price Policy,” in Time, Place and Circumstance , ed. W. H. Swatos, Jr. (New York: Greenwood, 1990): 139-150;

P. Kivisto and W. H. Swatos, Jr., Max Weber (New York: Greenwood, 1988);

H. Liebersohn, Fate and Utopia in German Sociology (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1988);

D. Little, “Max Weber Revisited,” Harvard Theological Review 59(1966):415-428;

D. Little, Religion, Order, and Law (New York: Harper, 1969);

G. Marshall, In Search of the Spirit of Capitalism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1982);

H. Maurer, “Studies in the Sociology of Religion I,” American Journal of Sociology 30(1924):257-286;

R. K. Merton, Science, Technology and Society in Seventeenth Century England (New York: Harper, 1970 [1938]);

B. Nelson, “Weber’s Protestant Ethic,” in Beyond the Classica? ed. C. Y. Glock and P. E. Hammond (New York: Harper, 1973): 71-130:

G. Poggie, Calvinism and the Capitalist Spirit (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1983);

H. M. Robertson, Aspects of the Rise of Economic Individualism (Clifton, N.J.: Kelley, 1933);

A. Salomon, “German Sociology,” in Twentieth Century Sociology, ed. G. Gurvitch and W. E. Moore (New York: Philosophical Library, 1945): 586-614;

K. Samuelsson, Religion and Economic Action (New York: Basic Books, 1961 [1993 reprint, University of Toronto Press]);

W. Sombart, The Quintessence of Capitalism (London: Unwin, 1915);

M Walzer, Revolution of the Saints (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1966);

M. Weber, “Die Protestantische Ethik und der ‘Geist’ des Kapitlismus,” Archiv fur Sozialwissenschaft und Sozialpolitik 20(1904):1-54, 21(1905):1-110;

“’Kirchen’ und ‘Sekten’ in Nordamerika,” Die christliche Welt , 24-25(1906):558-562, 577-583;

“Antikritisches Schlusswort zum ‘Geist’ des Kapitalismus,” Archiv fur Sozialwissenschaft und Sozialpolitik 30(1910):176-202;

“Vorbemerkung,” Gesammelte Aufsatze zu Religions-soziologie (Tubingen: Mohr, 1920): 1-16;

The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (New York: Scribner, 1930);

“The Protestant Sects and the Spirit of Capitalism,” in From Max Weber (New York: Oxford University Press, 1946): 302-322; “

Anticritical Last Word on The Spirit of Capitalism,” American Journal of Sociology 83(1978): 1105-1131;

“’Churches’ and ‘Sects’ in North America,” Sociological Theory 3 (1985):1-13;

The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (Los Angeles: Roxbury, 1996);

D. Zaret, The Heavenly Contract Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985).

The SAIS Review of International Affairs

Weber’s Protestant Ethic Revisited: Explaining the Capitalism We Take for Granted

August 17, 2017
Economics , Europe , International Development

In The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism , Max Weber illustrates a relationship between ideology and economic structure. Though critics quickly attacked him for espousing a spurious causal mechanism, this was not his intention. Rather, he argues that Puritan ideology provided a favorable environment for the rise of capitalism. This essay will explain Weber’s central thesis before placing it in dialogue with Hegelian and Marxist modernization theories.

By selling as blessed the concepts of work and wealth as blessed, “ascetic Protestantism” – most specifically Calvinism, Pietism, Methodism, and Baptism – produces an environment amenable to the development of capitalism. According to Weber, this process occurs via the Calvinist concept of predestination, in which heaven is reserved for an elect and predetermined few ( certudo salutis ), and the rest of humanity is doomed to damnation. Each human’s fate has already been decided as blessed or condemned and neither human effort nor divine sacrament may be employed to ensure passage to the kingdom of heaven. Calvinists, therefore, live in constant fear. As a result, they search for possible signs of their election, both in order to outwardly demonstrate their status as one of the chosen as well as to convince themselves of their own guaranteed entrance into heaven.

Calvinist behavior is thus conducive to capitalism: they work tirelessly and reinvest accumulated wealth into their endeavors. They do this because such behavior provides a visible sign of one’s grace; confidently and constantly fulfilling one’s vocational duty to God marks you as one of the chosen. Though such a positive view of labor seems intuitive today, it is only because we have forgotten about the major mechanism responsible for the connection between work and godliness. This connection lies in the German word beruf , an amalgam of what today we deem one’s vocation or profession or calling. The word only appears in the Christian liturgy following the Protestant Reformation and proves difficult to translate because the idea itself has since become disaggregated. [1] (p 50). That is, the word beruf referred to a type of practice or labor considered both one’s personal vocation and the work that one is called by God to perform. By assiduously performing one’s beruf , a Puritan fulfills two tasks: first, he obeys a holy commandment regarding his duty on earth and, second, he demonstrates his divine election to the afterlife. Alternately, neglecting one’s beruf and engaging in idleness amounts to shirking the will of God and displays a sure sign of damnation.

This separates Puritan society from what Weber terms “traditionalism.” [2] According to Weber, it is human nature to only work as much as is necessary for subsistence. Working excessively in pursuit of wages could lead to the amassing of wealth, and such a path – prior to the onset of the Reformation – was considered sinful. Whereas Christian doctrine clearly defines riches as abhorrent (i.e., it is easier for a camel to squeeze through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter God’s Kingdom), [3] and whereas the devout previously engaged in very little labor at all (as in the case of many orders of monks), Puritanism construed wealth as grace and labor as a devotion to God. Thus, it broke with contemporary ideologies and connected faith to labor. It spurred Puritans to work, articulating labor itself as a calling.

Capitalism, however, did not need ascetic Protestantism to survive. Increased mechanization and the rise of capital-intensive labor allowed capitalism to shed its religious snares and its ideological support. Puritans may have been the only ones that felt obliged to perform beruf -style labor with such intensity centuries ago, but the work-imperative, the calling of productivity has now fallen on the heads of everyone in capitalist society. At last, Western capitalism has reached the point at which “man exists for the sake of business, instead of the reverse.” [4]

A large volume of criticism leveled at Weber’s The Protestant Ethic targeted his supposed causal relationship between the Protestant Reformation and the rise of capitalism. This is an animadversion rooted in misinterpretation. Weber took pains to avoid being accused of constructing such a flimsy argument by emphasizing that his essay develops a much more nebulous theory of what Goethe called Wahlverwandtschaft , or “elective affinity.” He borrowed from Goethe’s chemistry-born theory of human interaction and behavior to cultivate his own sociological theories regarding human motivation and its effect on history. Viewed in the context of sociology as a whole, such a concept hardly seems to stand out. As Weber would do in later works on religion in China and India, The Protestant Ethic seeks to parse what R.H. Tawney called “the psychological conditions which made possible the development of capitalist civilization.” [5]

Weber would go on to defend himself over the next several decades, asserting that it was never his intention to argue that the rise of Protestantism brought about capitalism. In his own introduction that he wrote in 1920, he describes the intention of his major life’s work as one that explicates “the influence of certain religious ideas on the development of an economic spirit, or the ethos of an economic system.” [6] This was never to say that religion triggered the ascension of an economic system, but rather that religion could play a singular role in driving human action. Puritanism provided a framework for breaking free of traditionalist models, and resulted in a “genesis of a psychological habit which enabled men to meet the requirements of early modern capitalism.” [7] Capitalism was heretofore anathema to traditionalist society because the zeitgeist condemned work and riches. By not only justifying, but glorifying the act of devotion to a profession ( beruf ), the Reformation unlocked the door to capitalist-style labor. This is not a causal relationship but rather a fostering of conditions conducive to the progress of an economic system. Such an argument may seem less clear-cut, but Weber was aware of his limitations and scope. Attacks on his supposed causal model easily dismantle a much simpler argument than Weber sought to lay out.

Weber set himself apart from Karl Marx and Georg W.F. Hegel by pointing to the role of thought-systems and their effects on human behavior as historical levers. Whereas Marxist theory consistently cited material forces, and whereas Hegel pointed to peoples (i.e., the Germans or the French) as the essential blocks in question, Weber pointed to the individual as the major unit in explaining change. His goal as sociologist is to determine the forces that drive human action via verstehen , or an emphatic understanding of human behavior. Weber thus reduces explanations of historical trends to the micro level and argues for the significance of ideas in driving humans and humans in driving change.

Weber’s second departure from Hegel, Marx, and more contemporary modernization theorists lies in his pessimism. Hegel and Marx, though they differed strongly on the point of liberal society being the ultimate end for Universal History, agreed that humanity’s long road winds forever forward. In Hegel’s dialectic, history climbs to higher ideas as thought systems in conflict iron out their contradictions. For Marx, the same contradictions manifest not in ideas, but in material contradictions about the forces of production: from the fall of feudalism to the rise of the bourgeoisie and the onset of capitalism, all steps forward can be explained by a class struggle that is rooted in the material dynamics of production. Capitalism, for Marx, was also due to be overcome. Both thinkers thus elaborate triumphant, forward-facing ideologies

Weber paints a bleaker picture. History’s “increasing rationalism and secularism” leads him to the conclusion that humans are not even heading in the right direction (Fukuyama 1992). Writing at the eve of WWI, Weber was inclined to see history’s progression towards the given moment as a mistake. Puritanism dispelled all sense of magic – spread a general Entzauberung , or disenchantment – by rendering the Christian sacraments ineffectual in redeeming human souls. Its belief in predestination dismissed as meaningless and pagan all Catholic use of pomp, music, and ceremony. Then the Enlightenment and the rise of science not only allowed humans to explain everything in sight, effectively killing the wonders of superstition and tradition, but also gave rise to mechanization through technological innovation. This all combined to set capitalism on an unstoppable rampage. Capitalism shed Puritanism and “escaped from its cage.” [8] That is to say, capitalism’s ties to religious asceticism has long since fallen away. All that remains is the human imperative to work, now divorced from any ideology beyond materialism. Capitalism is, after all, an “economic system based, not on custom or tradition, but on the deliberate and systematic adjustment of economic means to the attainment of the objective of pecuniary profit.” [9] The system will continue to shackle human life until “the last ton of fossilized coal is burnt.” [10] This is not a happy outlook.

Weber’s pessimism rings truer today than he may have intended. Despite being over a century old, The Protestant Work Ethic reads all too familiar. Weber bemoans elements of German society in which “man exists for the sake of his business, instead of the reverse,” and citizens are unable to justify their relentless activity with anything beyond the need to “provide for [their] children and grandchildren.“ [11] Not only has capitalism continued to progress nearly uninhibited since his writing – shirking failed socialist experiments repeatedly – but its followers have now forgotten the key role ascetic Protestantism played in its rise. The idea of work for the sake of work goes unchallenged in the West, and its origins unexamined. Now, as we witness the rise of robotics and automation, the question of “why do we work?” is inescapable. Weber’s work bares rereading, even if only to remind us not to take capitalism for granted.

Edmund Ruge (Latin American Studies; BC ’16, DC ’17) is a Boren Fellow en route to Brazil. Before attending SAIS, he served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Mozambique. He also holds a BA in Latin American Studies from the Johns Hopkins University.

Works Cited

Bendix, Reinhard. Max Weber; an Intellectual Portrait . Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1960.

Eisenstadt, S. N. The Protestant Ethic and Modernization; a Comparative View . New York: Basic, 1968.

Ferguson, Niall. Civilization: The West and the Rest . New York: Penguin, 2011.

Fukuyama, Francis. The End of History and the Last Man . New York: Free, 1992.

Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, and J. Sibree. The Philosophy of History . New York: Dover Publications, 1956.

Marx, Karl. Capital: A Critique of Political Economy. London: Penguin Books in association with New Left Review, 1992.

Swedberg, Richard, and Ola Agevall. The Max Weber Dictionary: Key Words and Central Concepts . Stanford, CA: Stanford Social Sciences, 2005.

Weber, Max, Anthony Giddens, and Talcott Parsons. The Protestant Ethic; Spirit of Capitalism . London: Routledge, 1992.

[1] Weber, Max, Anthony Giddens, and Talcott Parsons. The Protestant Ethic; Spirit of Capitalism . London: Routledge, 1992, p. 50

[2] Ibid, p. 39

[3] Matthew 19:24, CEB

[4] Weber, Max, Anthony Giddens, and Talcott Parsons. The Protestant Ethic; Spirit of Capitalism . London: Routledge, 1992. p. 45

[5] Ibid, p. 8

[6] Ibid, p. 22

[7] Eisenstadt, S. N. The Protestant Ethic and Modernization; a Comparative View . New York: Basic, 1968

[8] Weber, Max, Anthony Giddens, and Talcott Parsons. The Protestant Ethic; Spirit of Capitalism . London: Routledge, 1992. p. 104

[9] Ibid, p. 9

[10] Ibid, p. 103

[11] Ibid, p. 45

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Department: Department of Sociology
Grantor: University of North Texas

Objectives. Scholars have debated Max Weber's theory of the relationship between religion and capitalism for almost 100 years. Still, the debate is clouded by confusion over Weber's claims about religious doctrine and over the supporting evidence. The purpose of this study is to clarify Max Weber's claims regarding the concept of the calling and the related "anti-mammon" injunction and concept of "good works" and substantiate with historical evidence the religious doctrine Weber describes. Methods. Comparative analysis of early Protestant Lutheran and Calvinist documents from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was used to flesh out a history of ideas to determine whether evidence exists to support Weber's claims related to religious doctrine. Results. Historical analyses revealed that the concept of the calling pre-dated Luther in the Bible. Luther's innovation was not in his use of the word beruf but in his application of the concept of the calling to the common people and his teaching of that idea. The idea of sanctified work was key in both Lutheran and Calvinist documents. There was an increased emphasis on work and encouragement to accumulate wealth in Calvinist documents. Conclusion. Weber's etymological evidence surrounding Martin Luther's use of the word beruf in his German translation of the bible is idiosyncratic and not important to the transmission of the concept of the calling. Luther's application of the concept of the calling to the laity and idea of sanctified work, however, is the foundation on which the Protestant ethic rests, as Weber claims. Weber's other claims regarding the concept of work in early Protestantism are also supported here. Weber did not overstate the implications for societal transformation in early Protestant theology.

protestant ethic

Library of Congress Subject Headings

Capitalism -- Religious aspects -- Protestant churches.
Christian ethics.
Weber, Max, 1864-1920. Protestantische Ethik und der Geist des Kapitalismus.
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December 2000

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Schindley, Wanda Beatrice Higbee. Work in the calling in Max Weber's Protestant ethic thesis , dissertation , December 2000; Denton, Texas . ( https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc2668/ : accessed August 24, 2024 ), University of North Texas Libraries, UNT Digital Library, https://digital.library.unt.edu ; .

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UGC NET SOCIOLOGY Unit -1 Sociological Theory 1-Classical Sociological Tradition Lecture -1 About and Major Works of Max Weber

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