what is the protestant ethic thesis

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).

Philip S. Gorski: The Protestant Ethic Revisited

Temple University Press, Philadelphia, 2011, 342 pp., $74.50

• Book Review
• Published: 19 August 2012
• Volume 54 , pages 557–558, ( 2012 )

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Swatos, W.H. Philip S. Gorski: The Protestant Ethic Revisited. Rev Relig Res 54 , 557–558 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13644-012-0081-2

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Weber's Protestant Ethic Thesis in Five Steps

2019, Academicus

As a result of many years of reading about and teaching Max Weber's famous Protestant Ethic thesis, I have developed an approach to covering this material in both my undergraduate and graduate theory courses which has been beneficial to students and has helped them make sense of the rather complex argument developed by Weber. I provide a working model of all such scholarly inquires geared off the Science Triad, culminating in a five-step approach to organizing and explaining the Weber thesis. In addition, I provide an annotated bibliography of selected scholarly ruminations on Weber's work in general and the Protestant Ethic thesis in particular. Note: Please cite as: Chriss, James J. 2019. “Weber’s Protestant Ethic Thesis in Five Steps.” Academicus 20:51-65.

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Currently, most of Weber's work is still one that lends itself to various interpretations and, thus, it equally lends itself to countless debates. Weber has been criticized for various reasons: lack of a full understanding of the Protestant doctrine; a faulty interpretation of the Catholic doctrine and for the idea of various forms of capitalism; his ignorance of non-religious intellectual sources; the use of incorrect and incomplete statistics, and for his overgeneralization. When important critical approaches arise, they shouldn't suggest just new reflection on the way we understand some determinisms in human action, but they should also stimulate future research for reinterpret the scientific knowledge. Our empirical analysis, although it only touched one of the avenues of scientific research, seems to prove that there is more than just saying Weber was clearly wrong.

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How Martin Luther gave us the roots of the Protestant work ethic

Researcher in English and Biblical Studies, University of Sheffield

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Iona C Hine is director of 500 Reformations, a not-for-profit initiative at the University of Sheffield disseminating research about Luther, Reformation and its aftermath.

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The posting of 95 theses is not the only act for which Martin Luther is famed. In 1522, he began the work that would last a lifetime: translating the Bible. This was not a neutral act. If we can trace society’s influence on tales of his theses’ posting , we can also see similar factors at work as Luther deliberated over what a German Bible should say.

Luther’s was not the first German Bible translation. When he translated the New Testament, there were already 18 German Bibles in print . What was different about Luther’s text? Partly the source – older Bibles were based on the traditional Latin text attributed to Jerome (circa 400AD). Inspired by humanist scholars such as Erasmus , Luther translated from Greek and Hebrew – the original biblical languages.

He was also determined to communicate God’s word in a way that would strike people afresh. Like William Tyndale in English, Luther coined new words and deliberately reworded well-known texts. Christians who had been used to “Ave Maria” (Hail Mary) now heard an angel give her “Greetings”. A natural translation, Luther argued, would be simply “Liebe”, that is “Dear…” Mary.

But Luther well knew that in rewording this New Testament dialogue, he was undermining centuries of “Hail Mary” penance. Jesus’ command to repent – “poenitentiam agite” – interpreted in the medieval church as “do penance” through ritual actions, provided the starting point for Luther’s 95 theses, because of his distaste for indulgences, which he saw as a corrupt form of repentance. In Luther’s view this – and the notion that Jesus’ mother had power over Christians’ destiny – were flawed.

A new understanding

If the changes Luther introduced were sometimes visibly doctrinal, there were other concerns at work, too. Translating the Bible into everyday language involved deciding how to frame a text that would shape everyday life.

Though the New Testament was complete in 1522, a full Wittenberg edition of Luther’s Bible did not appear until 1534. By that point, other reformers – most notably Ulrich Zwingli and colleagues in Zurich – had completed alternative translations from the original languages.

Why were they ahead? Luther’s work seems to have stalled in 1525. That year, tens of thousands died during the German Peasants’ War , an uprising prompted in large part by the notion that the Bible (and God) supported the cause of the lowliest in society. In the aftermath, Luther became more reticent about who should read the Bible and when .

Evidence of this rethinking can be seen in the book of Ruth, the story of a widow who emigrates with her widowed mother-in-law, marries Boaz – a relative of her late husband – and so becomes the great grandmother of King David. Luther first translated this short Hebrew text in 1524, revising it very slightly for a 1525 reprint (the speed of reprinting is itself an indication of how eagerly his work was received).

Ruth: the ‘proper’ woman

By 1540, Luther was once again revising the Bible. This time he worked with a team of colleagues. The records of this work include notes taken by one of the team and marginal annotations that Luther himself made in a copy of the Bible, along with the published revision. They got to Ruth on April 7 1540. There was not much to edit here, but Ruth 2:7 presented a particular challenge.

Scholars today are uncertain how to fit together the last Hebrew words of this verse , which are: “this”, “rest” (or “stay”), “the house” and “little”. The landowner (Boaz) has asked his harvest manager about a strange young woman (Ruth). The manager’s answer seems staccato, words piled together without due grammatical attention. Some have suggested this is stylistic – that we are meant to imagine the manager stammering his response.

Ruth has arrived at the field, hoping to gather leftover grain after the harvesters. But has she been stood waiting for an answer, an example of patience? Was she on the verge of giving up and going home, heightening the drama of Boaz’s sudden arrival? Can Boaz see her sitting indoors? One scholar traced 18 different ways of translating the passage, gathering together Greek, French, English and German texts through to the present day.

The 1540 records show Luther and his fellows agreeing first that Ruth is a “fromm” – that is a “proper” or “pious”, woman. This opinion intrudes upon the biblical text in chapter one, and recurs as a remark on Ruth 2:10 . Right after that note, the discussion turns back to verse 7: “Her stay in the house is little”, the minute-taker writes in Latin. “A comment on her habits”. In Luther’s own handwriting we learn that Ruth is not like other women, accustomed to lounging around at home.

Midway through this remark, he switches from Latin – the language of scholarly discourse – to the language of his target audience. In the printed German Bible of 1541 and its successors, the whole sentence appears in the margin.

Difficult Hebrew words are taken out of context and turned into a commentary upon her whole character. Luther is convinced that Ruth is a decent woman. The textual uncertainty is determined by her model status: modelling the best of possible female behaviour.

In Ruth, the ready and willing worker, we sense the beginnings of what Weber would term the Protestant work ethic . That ethic is normally associated with the later Reformer, John Calvin , whose teaching about predestination created an anxiety that drove Protestants to ensure they spent their time well. But in the margins of the 1541 Luther Bible and its successors, we can see that concern already at hand. Good women should not be idle.

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Protestant ethic

Protestant ethic , in sociological theory, the value attached to hard work, thrift, and efficiency in one’s worldly calling, which, especially in the Calvinist view, were deemed signs of an individual’s election, or eternal salvation.

German sociologist Max Weber , in The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1904–05), held that the Protestant ethic was an important factor in the economic success of Protestant groups in the early stages of European capitalism; because worldly success could be interpreted as a sign of eternal salvation, it was vigorously pursued. Calvinism’s antipathy to the worship of the flesh, its emphasis on the religious duty to make fruitful use of the God-given resources at each individual’s disposal, and its orderliness and systemization of ways of life were also regarded by Weber as economically significant aspects of the ethic.

Weber’s thesis was criticized by various writers, especially Kurt Samuelsson in Religion and Economic Action (1957). Although English historian R.H. Tawney accepted Weber’s thesis, he expanded it in his Religion and the Rise of Capitalism (1926) by arguing that political and social pressures and the spirit of individualism with its ethic of self-help and frugality were more significant factors in the development of capitalism than was Calvinist theology .

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

Edmund Ruge

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