The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1904)
Max Weber (1864-1920)
292 pages
The capitalistic economy of the present day is an immense cosmos into which the individual is born, and which presents itself to him, at least as an individual, as an unalterable order of things in which he must live. It forces the individual, in so far as he is involved in the system of market relationships, to conform to capitalistic rules of action. The manufacturer who in the long run acts counter to these norms, will just as inevitably be eliminated from the economic scene as the worker who cannot or will not adapt himself to them will be thrown into the streets without a job. (54)
Over a century after German sociologist and historian Max Weber wrote these lines in his essay The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, his stark summary of the all-encompassing nature of the capitalist economy’s impact on society and the merciless logic of its implications on individuals has become, if anything, only more trenchant. Capitalism is not simply the dominant economic system of our present day, it has taken on a kind of end-of-history aura as the best possible economic system, the inexorable outcome of the project of civilization.
For Weber, however, this modern form of capitalism was not inevitable. Instead, he ties its origins to “the specific and peculiar rationalism of Western culture” (26) that he argues arose out of a distinctive form of asceticism introduced by the Protestant reformation. Exploring this Protestant ethic of asceticism, he compares it to the Catholic asceticism that preceded it, and then demonstrates how it fundamentally altered the existing social fabric, leading ultimately to a modern economic pattern of behavior that he refers to as the spirit of capitalism.
In an Introduction written some two decades after the original essay – and with the goal, according to the translator’s brief opening note, of answering “the voluminous discussion which [had] grown up around the essay” – Weber clarifies that this Protestant ethic did not create the basic capitalist system, or the desire for profit.
The impulse to acquisition, pursuit of gain, of money, of the greatest possible amount of money, has itself nothing to do with capitalism. This impulse exists and has existed among waiters, physicians, coachmen, artists, prostitutes, dishonest officials, soldiers, nobles, crusaders, gamblers, and beggars. One may say that it has been common to all sorts and conditions of men at all times and in all countries of the earth. (17)
Later in that same paragraph, however, comes a statement that can, for a present-day reader, seem startlingly naïve:
“Unlimited greed for gain is not in the least identical with capitalism, and is still less its spirit. Capitalism may even be identical with the restraint, or at least a rational tempering, of this irrational impulse.” (17) Weber’s claim here appears, at least at first glance, hard to square with the rapacious nature of so much of the behavior of businesses, as well as individuals, over the past century and a half – behavior that has at times led to levels of inequality egregious enough to prompt periods of populist agitation and government action.
The key, in fact, to understanding Weber’s comment, given the exhibited behaviors of the capitalist system, lies within the nuance of his arguments, from his definition of the phrase “the spirit of capitalism,” to his arguments about its origins and the idealized behaviors that make it up.
He sets the stage by defining capitalism broadly, as when:
an actual adaptation of economic action to a comparison of money income with money expenses takes place, no matter how primitive the form. Now in this sense capitalism and capitalistic enterprises … have existed in all civilized countries of the earth, so far as economic documents permit us to judge.” (19)
He then clarifies that his analysis deals not with the origins of this generic form of capitalism, but rather with the observation that “in modern times the Occident has developed … a very different form of capitalism which has appeared nowhere else: the rational capitalistic organization of (formally) free labor,” (21) what he goes on to call a “sober bourgeois capitalism” (23)
Weber ties the origins of this sober bourgeois capitalism to a fundamental shift in Western culture, one that in fact impacted a variety of separate, if ultimately deeply interconnected, aspects of society.
The development of [the natural] sciences [based on mathematics and exact and rational experiment] and of the technique resting upon them now receives important stimulation from … capitalistic interests in its practical economic application. [While] it is true that the origin of Western science cannot be attributed to such interests … the technical utilization of scientific knowledge, so important for the living conditions of the mass of people, was certainly encouraged by economic considerations, which were extremely favorable to it in the Occident. But this encouragement was derived from peculiarities of the social structure of the Occident. … Of undoubted importance are the rational structures of law and of administration. For modern rational capitalism has need, not only of the technical means of production, but of a calculable legal system and of administration in terms of formal rules. We must hence inquire where that law came from. (24-25)
Thus, according to Weber, the West went through profound cultural changes that created a radically different societal structure from that present elsewhere in the world. What he seeks to explain is the origin of these changes, and how they led the West to develop an “attitude which seeks profit rationally and systematically” (64) and, most importantly, as a goal in and of itself.
The reason Weber gives for seeking an explanation for the origins of this particular form of capitalism that arose in the West is that he finds it an unusual event. For, based on his view of human social and economic history:
A man does not “by nature” wish to earn more and more money, but simply to live as he is accustomed to live and to earn as much as is necessary for that purpose. Wherever modern capitalism has begun its work of increasing the productivity of human labor by increasing its intensity, it has encountered the immensely stubborn resistance of this leading trait of pre-capitalist labour. (60)
Thus, the question becomes: what force could so utterly change society as to overcome what Weber regards as having been a deeply held characteristic of human nature?
The answer, he argues, lies in the development of a worldly asceticism, which he traces to the rise of Protestantism and particularly Calvinism. He notes that Catholicism had long established a kind of dual path, in which some few withdrew from society as ascetics, for example into monasteries, while those who remained in the world did so without strict religious requirements: able to atone for their sins through the purchase of indulgences and the act of confession, and so effectively becoming free to sin again – and repeat the process. Protestantism, in contrast, demanded a worldly asceticism, one that required its followers to demonstrate their devotion to God through their actions in their daily lives, and in particular, through their work.
Over the middle part of the essay, Weber examines what he refers to as the “four principal forms of ascetic Protestantism” to explain the origin of this worldly asceticism, with specific focus on the elements that came to have direct impact on social behavior. He demonstrates how the beliefs that evolved out of the protest against the perceived laxity and corruption of the Catholic church created an ascetic mindset that came to fundamentally change society, and concludes his analysis with a direct comparison of the Catholic and Protestant ethics:
Christian asceticism, at first fleeing from the world into solitude, had already ruled the world which it had renounced from the monastery and through the Church. But it had, on the whole, left the naturally spontaneous character of daily life in the world untouched. Now it strode into the market-place of life, slammed the door of the monastery behind it, and undertook to penetrate just that daily routine of life with its methodicalness, to fashion it into a life in the world, but neither of nor for this world [rather, purely of and for God]. (154)
This new form of worldly asceticism – this Protestant ethic – had a particularly powerful economic consequence according to Weber: the development of the doctrine that each person has a calling in life – a profession given by God. To not pursue this calling to the best of one’s ability was to reject God’s gift. And in practice, this meant that a businessman or worker must needs, in fact, achieve the maximum possible profit out of their business or work – their calling:
A further, and, above all, in practice the most important, criterion is found in private profitableness. For if that God, whose hand the Puritan sees in all the occurrences of life, shows one of His elect a chance of profit, he must do it with a purpose. Hence the faithful Christian must follow the call by taking advantage of the opportunity. “If God show you a way in which you may lawfully get more than in another way (without wrong to your soul or to any other), if you refuse these, and choose the less gainful way, you cross one of the ends of your calling, and you refuse to be God’s steward, and to accept His gifts and use them for Him when He requireth it: you may labour to be rich for God, though not for the flesh and sin.” [Richard Baxter] (162)
Here, then, what for Weber became the spirit of capitalism – a worldly ascetism that required one to follow one’s calling, with the ordained goal of making as much money out of that calling as one legally could.
This conception of a requirement from God to maximize lawful gain has oddly striking parallels with the oft-repeated idea that businesses in the United States are legally required to maximize their shareholder value – that is, their profit. And, even if there is some debate over the presence of an actual legal requirement for maximizing profit (i.e., over the definition of ‘maximize stockholder value’, as argued here versus here) the persistence of the belief in the concept, and support for it, speaks to how ingrained the Protestant ethic of worldly asceticism has become in society in general, and in its economic structure in particular.
Interestingly, for all the positive connotations that present-day society has built-up around the idea of the importance of a strong work ethic and the pursuit of increased profit and wealth, Weber acknowledges the reality that these drives, in spite of their religious origins, tend to corrupt the very disciples who follow them. And he points out that religious scholars and leaders themselves have long worried about this consequence.
To be sure, these Puritanical ideals tended to give way under excessive pressure from the temptations of wealth, as the Puritans themselves knew very well. With great regularity we find the most genuine adherents of Puritanism among the classes which were rising from a lowly status, the small bourgeois and farmers, while the beati possidentes, even among Quakers, are often found tending to repudiate the old ideals. It was the same fate which again and again befell the predecessor of this worldly asceticism, the monastic asceticism of the Middle Ages. In the latter case, when rational economic activity had worked out its full effects by strict regulation of conduct and limitation of consumption, the wealth accumulated either succumbed directly to the nobility, as in the time before the Reformation, or monastic discipline threatened to break down, and one of the numerous reformations become necessary.
In fact, the whole history of monasticism is in a certain sense the history of a continual struggle with the problem of the secularizing influence of wealth. The same is true on a grand scale of the worldly asceticism of Puritanism. (174)
This recognition of the reality that the spirit of capitalism as he defines it often leads to the renunciation of the very foundations that brought it into existence clarifies the idealized nature of his conception of it.
And so, returning to Weber’s claim from his Introduction that “unlimited greed for gain is not in the least identical with capitalism, and is still less its spirit [and that] capitalism may even be identical with the restraint or at least a rational tempering, of this irrational impulse,” it can be understood that he views the spirit of capitalism as existing to the extent that a person follows their calling, exhibits a work ethic based on Protestant worldly ascetism, and legally maximizes their profits to the extent God’s gifts have made possible for them. In the real world, filled with the many temptations that money can satisfy, Weber (and the religious and spiritual leaders he cites) recognize that this idealized view of the spirit of capitalism can too often come to be abandoned in the pursuit of wealth.
In his engaging and enlightening essay The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, Weber demonstrates that the deeply entrenched capitalist behaviors and beliefs we now take for granted are not a natural outcome of historical processes leading inevitably toward achieving the best possible economic system. Rather, they originated out of a particular – and “peculiar” – social transformation in the West in the wake of the Protestant reformation and the worldly asceticism that it engendered. And the resulting spirit of capitalism has become so deeply ingrained that it has decisively transformed our way of life, altering our natural human behavior.
The spirit of capitalism, in the sense in which we are using the term, had to fight its way to supremacy against a whole world of hostile forces. … [It] would both in ancient times and in the Middle Ages have been proscribed as the lowest sort of avarice and as an attitude entirely lacking in self-respect. (56)
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