The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism

The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism () is a book written by Max Weber, a German sociologist, economist, and politician. First written as a series of essays, the original German text was composed in 1904 and 1905, and was translated into English for the first time by American sociologist Talcott Parsons in 1930. It is considered a founding text in economic sociology and a milestone contribution to sociological thought in general.

In the book, Weber wrote that capitalism in Northern Europe evolved when the Protestant (particularly Calvinist) 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 other words, the Protestant work ethic was an important influence on the emergence of modern capitalism. In his book, apart from Calvinists, Weber also discusses Lutherans (especially Pietists, but also notes differences between traditional Lutherans and Calvinists), Methodists, Baptists, Quakers, and Moravians (specifically referring to the Herrnhut-based community under Count von Zinzendorf's spiritual lead).

In 1998, the International Sociological Association listed this work as the fourth most important sociological book of the 20th century, after Weber's Economy and Society, C. Wright Mills' The Sociological Imagination, and Robert K. Merton's Social Theory and Social Structure. It is the eighth most cited book in the social sciences published before 1950.

Summary

Basic concepts

Although not a detailed study of Protestantism but rather an introduction to Weber's later studies of interaction between various religious ideas and economics (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 Puritan ethics and ideas influenced the development of capitalism. The 'spirit of capitalism' does not refer to the spirit in the metaphysical sense but rather a set of values, the spirit of hard work and progress.

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

Weber notes that this is not a philosophy of mere greed, but a statement laden with moral language. Indeed, Franklin claims that God revealed the usefulness of virtue to him.

The Reformation profoundly affected the view of work, dignifying even the most mundane professions as adding to the common good and thus blessed by God, as much as any "sacred" calling (German: ). A common illustration is that of a cobbler, hunched over his work, who devotes his entire effort to the praise of God.

To emphasize the work ethic in Protestantism relative to Catholics, he notes a common problem that industrialists face when employing precapitalist laborers: Agricultural entrepreneurs will try to encourage time spent harvesting by offering a higher wage, with the expectation that laborers will see time spent working as more valuable and so engage it longer. However, in precapitalist societies this often results in laborers spending less time harvesting. Laborers judge that they can earn the same, while spending less time working and having more leisure. He also notes that societies having more Protestants are those that have a more developed capitalist economy. He further noted that the spirit of capitalism could be divorced from religion, and that those passionate capitalists of his era were either passionate against the Church or at least indifferent to it.

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

However, Weber saw the fulfillment of the Protestant ethic not in Lutheranism, which was too concerned with the reception of divine spirit in the soul, but in Calvinistic forms of Christianity.

Economic criticism

The economist and historian Henryk Grossman criticises Weber's analysis on two fronts. Firstly, Grossman refers to Karl Marx's work to show that the stringent legal measures that were taken against poverty and vagabondage were a reaction to the massive population shifts caused by the enclosure of the commons, which evicted many peasants from the common land on which they had lived. Secondly, Grossman's own work shows how this "bloody legislation" against evicted peasants was implemented across Europe, especially in France. Grossman asserts that this legislation physically forced people from serfdom into wage-labor. This history is unrelated to Protestantism. Thus, capitalism came about largely by force, and not by any vocational training regarding an inner-worldliness of Protestantism. It remains possible that the "Protestant work ethic" socially legitimized or otherwise reinforced the legal measures that Grossman details, within a larger cultural context.

In a 2015 study, Davide Cantoni tested Weber's Protestant hypothesis on German cities over the period 1300–1900, finding no effects of Protestantism on economic growth.

Historian Laurence R. Iannaccone has written that "Ironically, the most noteworthy feature of the Protestant Ethic thesis is its absence of empirical support", citing the work of Swedish economic historian Kurt Samuelsson that "economic progress was uncorrelated with religion, or was temporally incompatible with Weber's thesis, or actually reversed the pattern claimed by Weber."

Other recent scholarship has found some valid Protestant ethic effects both in historical and contemporary development patterns. Dudley and Blum, using city growth as a proxy for wages growth, write:

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

Revisionist criticism

Hector Menteith Robertson, in his book Aspects of Economic Individualism (1933), argued against the historical and religious claims of Weber. Robertson pointed out that capitalism began to flourish not in Britain, but in 14th-century Italy, so the rise of capitalism cannot be attributed to Adam Smith, the Protestant Reformation, etc. Robertson goes further, and states that what happened in Britain was rather a retrogression from what was achieved in Italy centuries earlier.

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 the Scholastics. According to other critics, British economic thought was rather a step backwards since it espoused the labor theory of value, which had been critiqued by the School of Salamanca.

Other criticism

It has recently been suggested that Protestantism has indeed influenced positively the capitalist development of respective social systems not so much through the "Protestant ethics" but rather through the promotion of literacy. Sascha Becker and Ludger Wossmann of LMU Munich showed that literacy levels differing 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 distance from Wittenberg as a model.

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

Support

In 1958, American sociologist Gerhard Lenski conducted an empirical inquiry into "religion's impact on politics, economics, and family life" in the Detroit, Mich., area. It revealed, among other insights, that there were significant differences between Catholics on the one hand and (white) Protestants and Jews on the other hand with respect to economics and the sciences. Lenski's data supported basic hypotheses of Weber's work The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. According to Lenski, "the contribution of Protestantism to material progress have been largely 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 prior to Weber, John Wesley, one of the founders of the Methodist church, had observed that "diligence and frugality" made Methodists wealthy. "In an early era, Protestant asceticism and dedication to work, as noted both by Wesley and Weber, seem to have been important patterns of action contributing to economic progress. Both facilitated the accumulation of capital, so critically important to the economic growth and development of nations."

German theologian Friedrich Wilhelm Graf notes: "Sociologists of religion like Peter L. Berger and David Martin have interpreted the Protestant revolution in Latin America as implicit support of basic elements of Weber's thesis. [...] At any rate, many pious persons there interpret their transition from the Roman Catholic church to Protestant Pentecostal congregations in terms of a moral idea that promises long-term economic gains through strong innerworldly asceticism. The strict ascetic self-discipline that has been successfully institutionalized in the Pentecostal congregations, the readiness to work more and with greater effort and to take less leisurely attitudes lead many Pentecostal Christians to believe that their new faith in God is supported by their economic successes."

In a journal article published in 2019, scholar of religion Benjamin Kirby critiques Peter L. Berger's analysis for its over-emphasis on the influence of Holiness-oriented Pentecostal churches, neglecting the growing influence of neo-Pentecostal churches across the globe. Kirby argues that it is difficult to draw parallels between contemporary neo-Pentecostals and Weber's ascetic Protestants, specifically because the former group of practitioners, many of whom espouse Prosperity theologies, often do not exhibit the same commitment to "sober economic virtue" and "rational bourgeois economic life" as Weber's Calvinistic Puritans. Nevertheless, Kirby stresses that Weber's text remains important for understanding enduring affinities between Christianity and capitalism. Kirby posits a "new elective affinity" between contemporary Pentecostalism and neoliberal capitalism, suggesting that neo-Pentecostal churches may act as vehicles for embedding neoliberal economic processes, for instance by encouraging practitioners to become entrepreneurial, responsibilised citizens.

References

External links

Internet Archive scan of the first English-language edition (1930)
Online web version of the text
Complete German text
The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism as 'prosperity classic'. Commentary by Tom Butler-Bowdon
'Protestant Ethic Thesis' at the Swatos' Encyclopedia of Religion and Society
Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, (Norton Critical Editions, 2009), Introduction by Richard Swedberg