The Protestant Ethic. posted by Richard Seymour

I've always been interested in Weber's assertion of a causal connection between the rise of puritan values and the rise of capitalism. In many ways, I had thought that the relationship was rather the opposite that he had stipulated: that the new middle class, the burghers and tradesmen who were already forming a capitalist society simply happened to be drawn toward a certain kind of Protestantism. On the other hand, was it not the aristocratic class which had enabled capitalism through its enclosures of the land, forcing peasants out into the towns where they would both form the labour market and a market for consumption? Things become even more tricky when you look at how Weber draws out the connections he claims exist. He seems, at times, to proffer a stronger thesis (that capitalism could only have come into existence with the unique X-factor of puritanism) than is justified by the evidence he cites; at others, he seems merely to say that the two are connected. For a theorist so profound and exact in the development of his concepts, this is extraordinary. What follows is a rough sketch of Weber's thesis, drawing on the original text and a few cricitical or corroboratory works by other authors. Now, you and I both know there's nothing good on telly, so go ahead and give it a once-over.

"Elective affinity"

Weber’s thesis, in The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (TPESC), is approximately thus: The rise of capitalism in the West is part of its uniqueness, the unique result of an “elective affinity” between the needs of capitalist production and the discipline of the Lutheran ‘calling’. (Weber, TPESC, chapter 3, 1930). There are two contradictory motives involved in capitalist production: 1) Amass wealth beyond personal need, and 2) Avoid the use of wealth to satisfy personal desire. These motives cohabit well with the demands of Protestantism that the believer devote herself to a life of good works, and the Puritan devotion to asceticism. (Ken Morrison, Marx, Durkheim, Weber: Formations of Modern Social Thought, 1995).

Weber’s approach to capitalism is significant for this thesis in a number of ways. First of all, he believed that capitalism was contrary to human nature, a freak occurrence that arose from the conjugation of a number of historical events and epochs, starting with the Greco-Roman city-states. This reflected a commitment to methodological individualism, his opposition to Marxist models which saw history as an ordered procession of stages (modes of production) which were universal. According to Weber, there is no order in history and its stages are unique rather than universal. Weber is interested in locating the general tendencies in history, but he is also alert to the importance of local variations and differences. He seeks to avoid a “one-sided materialistic” view of history, and therefore attempts to conjoin analysis of the material with the spiritual – that is, between patterns of belief and systems of social action. (Bryan S. Turner, Max Weber: From History to Modernity, 1992; Morrison, 1995). Weber contrasts Western capitalism to ‘Oriental’ civilisation in which, he argues, similar economic factors persisted to those which preceded the development of modern capitalism in European countries and yet did not result in countries like India or China developing modern capitalism. (Weber, Introduction to TPESC, 1930).

In his discussion, Weber details a number of connections between the persistence of Protestant values and the development of modern capitalism. Many centres of commercial activity – France, Germany, England, Scotland and Switzerland - evinced intense economic development, just as Protestantism was taking hold of Western Europe. (Morrison, 1995). In modern Europe (Weber wrote TPESC between 1902 and 1903), there was a correlation between religious affiliation and social stratification. Business leaders, owners of capital and highly skilled labourers were overwhelmingly Protestant. The relative dearth of Catholics involved in economic activity in Germany, for example, bucked the usual trend in which minorities are compelled by simple virtue of their marginalisation and oppression, to seek recognition in key industries and to excel even where they can receive no recognition from the State. (Weber, TPESC, chapter 1, 1930). Hence, the ensuing discussion.

The "spirit of capitalism"

The “spirit of capitalism” embodies three demands: 1) devotion to amassing wealth beyond personal needs, 2) commitment to unrelieved toil coupled with self-denial and 3) avoidance of use of wealth for personal enjoyment. (Morrison, 1995). Now, as Weber makes clear, this set of attitudes does not actually persist in modern capitalism. (Weber, TPESC, chapter 1, 1930). It is nevertheless the set of attitudes which eventuated in the development of modern capitalism. Weber adumbrates this “spirit” first by referring to the writings of Benjamin Franklin, a millionaire and self-help guru, specifically to a set of maxims to be found in his Necessary Hints to Those That Would Be Rich. Those hints include: 1) Time is money, 2) Credit is money, 3) Money is of the prolific, generating nature, 4) The good paymaster is the Lord of another man’s purse and 5) Evince a hard-working nature and it will boost one’s stand with creditors. “Truly,” says Weber, “what is preached here is not merely a means of making one’s way in the world, but a particular ethic.” It has “the character of an ethically-coloured maxim for life”. (Weber, TPESC, chapter 2, 1930). In fact, Weber goes on to describe Franklin’s recommendations as “moral attitudes” which are merely “coloured with utilitarianism”. Weber thinks he is justified in making these allusions because Franklin’s own life story speaks of his Calvinistic upbringing, and when Franklin is asked why should “money be made out of men”, he replies with a bible quote: “Seest thou a man diligent in his business? He shall stand before kings.” Franklin, however, had repudiated his Calvinist past when he wrote his manual so it is not clear whether he is entitled to his conclusions in this respect. (Elton, 1963).

Another way in which Weber illustrates the “spirit of capitalism” is by making a distinction between what he calls traditional capitalism and modern capitalism. Traditional capitalism endured until the 19th Century, and was episodic, adventurist, speculative etc. It included war, trade, piracy, even tax-bargaining with a feudal king. Modern capitalism involved the rationalisation of the labour process, the reinvestment of profit, and sustained and regular enterprise. The key difference he points to for his argument, however, is the attitude to work and consumption. Paying workers a higher piece rate in traditional capitalism had the effect of reducing the amount of work done, since they could obtain the same amount of money for less work. In modern capitalism, it would increase production since workers could get more money by working faster. This, he says, is because man does not wish to earn more and more money “by nature”, preferring his accustomed lifestyle. Capitalism has to overcome some stubborn resistance to get people to think and behave as consumers. (Weber, TPESC, chapter 2, 1930).

The "Protestant ethic"

This is where asceticism or the “Protestant ethic” comes in. The first part of the ethic discussed by Weber is the Lutheran notion of the “calling”, in which worldly avocations were considered God created and therefore “fulfillable in a spirit of worship”. This notion was known to medieval writers, but according to Weber it allowed Protestants to see in their daily life a devotion to God’s work. (Elton, 1963). The effect of the Reformation, Weber claimed, was that “the moral emphasis on, and the religious sanction of, organised worldly labour in a calling was mightily increased”. (Weber, TPESC, chapter 3, 1930). This was not enough in itself, however. The second aspect of this asceticism, therefore, is what Weber calls “worldly asceticism” which he attached especially to Calvinism. Calvin had rebuked the Catholic Church for its tolerance of worldly pleasures and its permissive doctrine toward salvation (in which “good works” would be considered a sufficient condition to erase sin and allow admittance to heaven). He proposed the doctrine of predestination in which: 1) God divides humanity into the ‘saved’ and the ‘damned’, 2) no believer can know his fate until it is revealed to her on death, 3) nothing can be done to relieve, or forgive, or reverse the decree, 4) God has abandoned all but the elect – Christ died only for them. To contain the resulting anxiety, Calvin placed two obligations on believers, the first being that they had an absolute duty to assume they were among the elect, the second being that they had to stave off doubt since this would be seen as a loss of faith. (Morrison, 1995; Weber, TPESC, chapter 4, 1930). As brotherly love could not be in the service of the flesh, it had to be expressed by work, in the service of God. This worldly grace served to allay the religious distress created by not knowing whether one was saved or damned. Unlike Catholic asceticism, there was no tendency to retreat from the world – this was asceticism in the world. (Weber, TPESC, chapter 4, 1930).

But it is through the work of Richard Baxter that Weber locates the link between the Puritan asceticism and the ‘spirit of capitalism’. A Presbyterian, he was inclined to religious moderation and dismayed by the more extreme doctrines of the fanatics. His book, the Christian Directory, was a compendium of Puritan ethics. Wealth, according to Baxter, is a moral danger – it invites idleness, relaxation, the temptations of the flesh. (Cock an eyebrow if you must, but some people still take this shit seriously.) A man should, to be certain of his state of grace, “do the works of him who has sent him, as long as it is yet day”. (Weber, TPESC, chapter 5, 1930). Labour was seen as a means both of fulfilling God’s will, and avoiding sin. Work had always been an approved ascetic device, but it was also now a condition of saving grace. There was also a tendency to regard the division of labour as providential, and also necessary to prevent idleness. And since God had his hand in all walks of life, if an opportunity for profit was placed before the Puritan, he was obliged to pursue it with a purpose. “To wish to be poor was, it was often argued, the same as wishing to be unhealthy … [asceticism] has the highest ethical appreciation of the sober, middle-class, self-made man.” Puritans also emphasised the virtues of formal law, insisting that Mosaic law retained its relevancy provided those trappings only relevant to Judaism were shorn - an important contribution to the development of capitalism. (Ibid).

There was a sense, however, in which the Puritan ethic was bound to disintegrate under the weight of its own creation. Weber cites John Wesley: “[R]eligion must necessarily produce both industry and frugality, and these cannot but produce riches. But as riches increase, so will pride, anger, and love of the world in all its branches … we must exhort all Christians to gain all they can, and save all they can; that is, in effect, to grow rich.” Or, as Weber notes, “the full economic effect of those great religious movements … generally came only after the peak of the purely religious enthusiasm was past.” (Weber, TPESC, chapter 5, 1930).

How accurate?

This is the trajectory of the “elective affinity” which was finally to result in the rise of modern capitalism. How accurate is this picture? Weber himself insisted that he was not arguing that capitalism “could only have arisen as the result of certain effects of the Reformation … On the contrary, we only wish to ascertain whether and to what extent religious forces have taken part in the qualitative formation and the quantitative expansion of this spirit in the world.” (Ibid). Indeed, Weber was positing his thesis of a “spirit of capitalism” as an “ideal-type”. Ideal-types, in the Weberian lexicon, are “logically and formally precise statements of possible relationships” which can then be tested for coherence and empirical validity. Weber’s argument was that within the setting of Western Europe in that historical epoch, and only within that setting, “the contribution of the Protestant ethic was indispensable to the rise of capitalism … In that sense only can the Protestant ethic be regarded as the cause of the rise of capitalism.” (Philip Abrams, Historical Sociology). Is even this, relatively weak, thesis compatible with the facts? There are some reasons to doubt this. For one thing, capitalism was well-developed in the south of Italy and Germany before Luther’s emergence as a reformer. And it subsequently developed without impediment in Catholic France, until the Thirty Years War. Anglican Britain and Catholic Belgium industrialised before more notable Protestant countries. (GR Elton, The Reformation, 1963). Moreover, as Maxime Rodinson has argued, it is possible to interpret the absence of capitalism in “Oriental” countries in a different and perhaps more pertinent light. After all, it wasn’t merely the Orient which failed to develop, it was also the rest of Asia and Africa – and this stagnation was confluent with the colonial expansion of Europe. It could be argued that the uniqueness of the West essentially comes down to its getting there first, and being able to subjugate the Rest, politically and economically. (Nazih Ayubi, Political Islam: Religion and Politics in the Arab World). And it was not really the petit-bourgeoisie and self-made men who were the agents of capitalism, as Weber supposes. A critical condition for the expansion of markets was the “enclosures” of land, in which peasants were thrown off the land so that it could be converted to pasture so as to sell sheep-wool. Many of those thrown off the land were forced to get jobs and accept wages in money, which made mass production sensible. In other words, the noble landlords and magnates, whose values were decidedly not those of Puritan asceticism, were in the vanguard of capitalism. (Sami Zubaida). What remains, perhaps, is that there is some connection between the rise of capitalism and the Reformation. It is not clear that it is a causal relationship and, if it is, in which direction the causality flows.

One more thing. Weber witnessed a confluence between hard work and Protestant values. He wasn't around to see the current President of the United States scamper about his ranch with his recently deceased mutt looking for doodle-bugs.