The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism by Max Weber

First published:Die protestantische Ethik und der Geist des Kapitalismus, 1904-1905, rev. ed. 1920 (English translation, 1930)

Type of Philosophy: Ethics, philosophy of history, social philosophy

Context

Max Weber, one of the founders of modern sociology, and certainly one of the most brilliant and influential social thinkers of the twentieth century, was essentially unknown in the United States until the 1930 publication of Talcott Parsons’s translation of The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. Having first published the work in 1904-1905, Weber produced a revised edition shortly before his death in 1920. The book was Weber’s entry into a number of contemporary debates, and this multidimensional quality contributes to its status as a classic. For example, with his book, Weber took a stand in an important methodological debate of his day known to historians of the social sciences as the Methodenstreit, or the struggle over method. In this debate between those who believed the social sciences should follow a method more in line with the natural sciences and those who argued for a method based on the historical approach to human phenomena, Weber demonstrated the possibilities of the latter with his groundbreaking historical analysis of the rise of modern capitalism.

On another front, Weber argued that religion had been a decisive determinant in Western economic development, thus disputing Marxist analyses that reduced ideological expression to primarily economic determinants. Perhaps most important, Weber entered into the debate concerning the nature of modernity itself. In his presentation of the “spirit” of the modern capitalist system, Weber attempted to present a clear and sober analysis of the origins, prospects, and cultural and personal costs of modern economic life.

The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism was only a small part of Weber’s published and unpublished work. In order to place the book in the context of Weber’s wider outlook, Parsons took an essay that Weber published in 1920 as an introduction to a separate set of sociological studies of religion and society and placed it at the beginning of his translation under the title “Author’s Introduction.” In that essay, Weber argued that only by way of the comparative study of cultures can the Western world historically comprehend itself and its own unique development, because what counts as “rational” is relative to the values and goals that structure a person’s or group’s action. Action that is rational from the perspective of consistent devotion to one value or goal may be completely irrational in the light of other values or goals. What is of special interest to Weber is how a sense of obligation to live consistently with a given set of values can emerge in the first place, how changes in what people consider to be rational can occur, and how contradictory goals and values intersect in people’s lives, such that unintended consequences take developments in surprising directions.

Protestants and Modern Capitalism

It was commonly accepted among historians of Weber’s day that territories with Protestant roots seemed to have outpaced Catholic territories in capitalist development. Moreover, in religiously mixed territories, Protestants seemed to outnumber Catholics in both the business classes and the stratum of skilled and technically trained workers. After considering and discarding several possible explanations for these phenomena—for example, that Protestants enjoy less ecclesiastical control than Catholics and are thus freer to innovate and to pursue their economic interests, or that Catholics are more otherworldly and less materialistic than Protestants, who tend to be more progressive and life-affirming—Weber presents his own thesis.

Weber’s position is not that modern capitalism was invented by the Protestants he discusses, nor that modern capitalism is the only sort of capitalism there is. Rather, Weber’s view is that modern capitalism is the unique product of a complex web of material, technological, and ideological conditions. This leads him to oppose as too simplistic any Marxist causal overemphasis on the material substructure of human life. For Weber, as essential as material, political, and technological conditions are for the explanation of any social development, no explanation is complete that fails to take into account the meaning that people ascribe to their actions. People are motivated by the values they hold, and their actions play a causal role in historical change. It is this feature that Weber highlights in his book. He wants to understand what it is about Protestantism that seems to motivate people to act in ways that are congruent with the rationality required by modern capitalism.

A Calling

Referring to the writings of the eighteenth century American Benjamin Franklin, Weber argues that what is most distinctive about modern capitalism is not that it is characterized by greedier, more adventuresome capitalists than in previous eras, but rather that modern economic life is pervaded by the notion that it is one’s paramount duty to work proficiently in one’s “calling.” When Franklin admonished his readers that “Time is money,” he was expressing not merely a shrewd business maxim but an ethical stance toward life. This stance emphasized subordination of one’s own interests to the interests of one’s calling or one’s business, diligence and discipline in economic matters, and abhorrence of idleness in both oneself and one’s money. Modern capitalism emerged in part because sufficient numbers of people renounced the traditional estimation of work as a mere means to maintain an accustomed way of life and instead adopted this ascetic ethic in their everyday working lives. They, like Franklin, came to think of careful reinvestment and relentlessly methodical labor in one’s vocation as a testimony to one’s moral and social worth. These people were bearers of the modern capitalist spirit. However, who were they, and where did they acquire this notion of calling?

Weber’s argument is that Protestantism produced not capitalism, but rather this notion of a calling. During the Protestant Reformation, Martin Luther, with his doctrine of salvation by faith alone, undercut the medieval system of religious callings represented by various monastic orders and elevated service to others in secular callings as the primary arena for the practice of Christian love. However, it would be subsequent Protestant denominations in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries that would become the bearers of the new economic outlook, especially Calvinism, Pietism, Methodism, and the various Anabaptist and Spiritualist sects. Weber singles out these denominations because of their emphasis on what he calls “innerworldly asceticism.” Whereas medieval asceticism was primarily otherworldly—practiced within monastery walls—these Protestant groups required that their members give evidence of their faith by leading disciplined and diligent lives of service in the world by way of their secular vocations.

Weber thinks that of these groups, seventeenth century Calvinism produced the most intense incentive toward innerworldly asceticism. This was because the Calvinist emphasis on the doctrine of predestination, which holds that God has already determined from eternity who will be saved and who will be damned, cut off the traditional means of relief from salvation anxiety. No action, no experience, no magical intervention, no priestly mediation can alter one’s eternal fate, forever sealed by God’s primordial and inscrutable will. Calvinist Puritans were left with no avenues for the achievement of salvation. Nevertheless, there was one avenue left for assurance of their predetermined status: self-observation of one’s relentless activity, proficiency, and diligence in one’s calling. Inefficiency and wastefulness of one’s time and one’s assets were a sure sign that one was not one of the elect. Holding beliefs that were functionally equivalent to predestination, the other three Protestant groups also managed to inculcate in the faithful—although to a somewhat lesser extent than Puritanism—the same notion that diligence in one’s calling provided proof of one’s favorable status before God.

The Work Ethic

Weber notes that even though medieval otherworldly asceticism demanded poverty of its individual devotees, nevertheless the monasteries were subject to ongoing waves of reform because their ascetic organization of time and work paradoxically generated greater productivity, greater wealth, and, inevitably, greater materialistic temptations. A similar consequence results from innerworldly asceticism. Wealth is generated by ceaseless and disciplined work, but, unlike the monk, the Protestant laborer does not renounce property with a vow of poverty. Property presents the Puritan not with an encumbrance on the road to salvation, but rather with a task to be performed in the world for God’s glory. Certainly laborers must not become attached to their property and its fruits, but this is because they are to be stewards of God’s bounty. The idolatrous use of wealth in luxurious and leisurely activity is a constant temptation, but the Puritan resists such attachments, reinvesting and thus multiplying this borrowed bounty.

To those steeped in the traditional medieval economic ethos, such activity appears to be the unnatural pursuit of wealth as an end in itself and thus represents the height of irrationality, if not the epitome of greed and avarice. To those laboring under the new ethos, however, it is assurance of their salvation that is at stake. Either way, one thing is clear: The traditional mode of production cannot compete with the new economic spirit. Traditionally operated enterprises, once confronted on a grand enough scale with this new breed of employer, along with sufficient numbers of exploitable but religiously dutiful employees, must conform or go under.

Weber now asks what all of this has to do with Ben Franklin, who, after all, was not a Puritan. His answer is that the union of Protestant innerworldly asceticism with the relevant material, political, and technological conditions helped transform the way people did business, and the resulting economic system gradually took on a life of its own. In the present, Weber points out, modern capitalism resists and tends to break down religious, traditional, and other forms of interference or restraint. Hence, men and women subordinate themselves to the tasks and sacrifices of their callings not because they are Protestants worried about their salvation, but because the system requires it, binding them to its rules like an “iron cage.” Modern capitalism no longer requires people to be Protestants in belief, but it does require them to practice the Protestant “work ethic”—the discipline, efficiency, and busy-ness of innerworldly asceticism. Failure to do so means economic disadvantage or bankruptcy. The Puritans and related religious groups, of course, did not intend to play a role in the construction of the modern capitalist system, and they would surely be appalled by the materialistic values of modern economic life. However, nevertheless, unintentionally, in pursuit of otherworldly goals, the consequences of their practice far outlived the viability of their beliefs.

Weber’s Legacy

Since its publication, nearly every aspect of Weber’s thesis has been the subject of rigorous and relentless debate. Did Weber properly interpret Ben Franklin? Did he correctly interpret the various religious authors he used for his sources? Was his interpretation of the Protestant idea of calling accurate? Did he miss evidence that showed that modern capitalism may have developed much earlier than the so-called capitalist spirit appeared? If it did, does this negate his thesis? Is it true that Protestant territories were more advanced economically than Catholic ones, or was Weber taken in by the residual anti-Catholicism of Germany’s earlier Kulturkampf? Did Weber ignore or misconstrue other sources of the capitalist spirit? Were the monasteries of medieval Western Christendom in fact seedbeds for economic asceticism? Is Weber’s emphasis on the study of motives and meaning sufficient, appropriate, or relevant for his topic? Did Weber correctly identify the unique characteristics of modern economic life?

On all these issues, Weber has his detractors and defenders. In this respect, perhaps one of the greatest achievements of The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism has been the expansive debates it unleashed about the historical emergence of modernity. However, the book’s continuing appeal cannot be explained only by the suggestiveness of its historical thesis. Many readers of the work find in its pages searing and haunting psychological, cultural, and philosophical insights into life in the modern economic system. They may well catch a glimpse of themselves in Weber’s anxious and lonely Puritans or ponder Weber’s sober appraisal of the human future. For many, there is something uncannily familiar in Weber’s portrait of the Puritan’s search for ultimate assurance through ceaseless rational efficiency and relentless productivity in a disenchanted and rationally inscrutable world.

Principal Ideas Advanced

•Human history can be understood only by way of multicausal analysis, including analysis of human values and beliefs.

•Modern capitalism is the historical product of economic, political, and social developments combined with an ethos that requires people to subordinate personal and traditional interests to the duties of their vocations and the needs of their business enterprises.

•The source of this ethic of duty in one’s calling is the Protestantism of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, especially Puritanism, whose adherents sought relief from salvation anxiety by viewing success in their callings coupled with methodical personal asceticism as proof of their favorable status before God.

•These Protestants unintentionally helped set in motion the modern economic system, which gradually cast aside religion but continues to require methodical work in a calling.

Sources for Further Study

Albrow, Martin. Max Weber’s Construction of Social Theory. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1990. Excellent extended introduction to most of the elements of Max Weber’s social theory, including his personal, historical, and intellectual background. Carefully organizes and clarifies the many complicated thematic strands of Weber’s work.

Bendix, Reinhard. Max Weber: An Intellectual Portrait. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1960. An older, but useful extended overview of Weber’s sociological works.

Brubaker, Rogers. The Limits of Rationality: An Essay on the Social and Moral Thought of Max Weber. London: George Allen and Unwin, 1984. Careful and persuasive presentation of Weber’s profoundly influential concept of “rationalization” in its various forms. Presents Weber as an ethicist and analyst of modernity and its crises.

Collins, Randall. Max Weber: A Skeleton Key. Beverly Hills, Calif.: Sage, 1986. Superb brief introduction to Weber’s life and thought as well as to some of the critical issues in Weber scholarship. Excellent starting point for further study.

Delacroix, Jacques, and Francois Nielsen. “The Beloved Myth: Protestantism and the Rise of Industrial Capitalism in the Nineteenth Century.” Social Forces 80 (December, 2001). The authors criticize Weber for his failure to offer sufficient empirical evidence for his thesis.

Diggins, John Patrick. Max Weber: Politics and the Spirit of Tragedy. New York: Basic Books, 1996. A passionately and clearly written account of Weber’s life as well as of his ethical and political perspective. Uses Weber’s lifelong interest in the United States as a vehicle to explore his relevance to late twentieth century American thought and history.

Lehmann, Hartmut, and Guenther Roth, eds. Weber’s Protestant Ethic: Origins, Evidence, Contexts. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1995. Excellent collection of scholarly essays covering a wide range of late twentieth century assessments of Weber’s famous Protestant ethic thesis.

Morrison, Ken. Marx, Durkheim, Weber: Formations of Modern Social Thought. London: Sage, 1995. Provides an accessible and careful survey of Weber’s key works in sociology and methodology. Includes a helpful glossary of Weberian terminology.

Novak, Michael. “Max Weber Goes Global.” First Things: A Monthly Journal of Religion and Public Life 152 (April, 2005). Novak argues that the Catholic tradition also contributed to the rise of modern capitalism.

Ritzer, George. The McDonaldization of Society. Rev. ed. Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Pine Forge Press, 1996. A stimulating, troubling, and highly readable application of the Weberian concept of rationalization in an analysis of the “iron cages” of late twentieth century life.

Swatos, William H., and Lutz Kaelbar, eds. The Protestant Ethic Turns One Hundred. Boulder, Colo.: Paradigm, 2005. A valuable series of essays assessing the Weber thesis at the time of its centenary.

Tawney, R. H. Religion and the Rise of Capitalism. New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1926. Tawney turns Weber’s thesis on its head, arguing that Protestant Calvinism was a consequence of the emergence of modern capitalism rather than its cause.

Weber, Marianne. Max Weber: A Biography. Translated by Harry Zohn. New York: Wiley, 1975. A haunting and profound account of Weber’s life and times, amounting to an insightful intellectual portrait of Weber and post-World War I Germany by an intimate and intellectually astute participant.