Max Weber, Protestant ethic and capitalism

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.

Max Weber is one of the philosophers best able to explain to us the peculiar economic system
we live within called capitalism. Born Erfurt in Germany in 1864,
Weber grew up to see his country convulsed by the dramatic changes of the Industrial
Revolution. Cities were exploding in size. Vast companies were forming.

A new managerial elite was replacing the old aristocracy. Weber spent his life analyzing these
changes and he developed some key ideas with which we can better understand
the workings and future of capitalism. The standard view is that capitalism began
as a result of developments in technology especially steam power. But Weber proposed
something more interesting that what actually made capitalism possible
was a set of ideas and in particular religious ideas and not just any religious ideas.

Capitalism was created by Protestantism, specifically Calvinism. In his great work The
Protestant Ethic and The Spirit of Capitalism, published in 1905, Weber laid out some of the
reasons why he believed Protestant Christianity had been so crucial to capitalism.
In Weber's analysis Catholics have it relatively easy. They were able to confess their
transgressions at regular intervals and can be cleansed by priests. But no such purifications
are available to Protestants who believe that only god is able to forgive anyone and he won't
make his intentions known until the day of judgment. Until then Weber alleged Protestants are
left with heightened feelings of anxiety as well as lifelong guilty desires to prove their virtue to a
severe all-seeing but silent god.

In Weber's eyes Protestant feelings of guilt were diverted into an obsession with hard work.
This was what he called the Protestant work ethic. The sins of Adam could only be expunged
through constant toil. Not coincidentally there were far fewer festivals and days of rest in
Protestantism. God didn't like time off. Catholics had limited their conception of holy work to
the activities of priests, monks and nuns but now Protestants declared that work of any kind
could be done in the name of God even jobs like being a baker or an accountant. This lent new
moral energy and earnestness to all branches of professional life.

In Catholic countries the family was and often still is everything. But Protestants took a less
benevolent view of family. The family could be a haven for selfish and egoistic motives. For
early Protestants one was meant to direct one's selfless energies to the community as a
whole, the public realm, where everyone deserved fairness and dignity.
Protestantism and eventually scientific capitalism turned its back on miracles. Weber called
this the disenchantment of the world. So prosperity wasn't to be thought of as something
mysteriously ordained by God, it could only be the result of thinking methodically, acting
honestly, and working industriously and sensibly over many years.
Without a belief in miracles people turn to science for explanations and changes which
encouraged scientific investigation and discovery and eventually technological booms.

Taken together these five factors created, in Weber's eyes, the crucial catalytic ingredients for
capitalism to take hold. Marx had argued that religion was the opium of the masses, a drug
that induced passive acceptance of the horrors of capitalism. But Weber turned this dictum on
its head. People didn't tolerate capitalism because of religion. They only became capitalists as
a result of their religion. There are about 35 countries where capitalism is now well developed.
It probably works best in Germany where Weber first observed it.

But in the remaining 161 nations it arguably isn't working very well at all. This is a source of
much puzzlement and distress. Billions of dollars in aid are transferred every year from the rich
to the poor parts of the world. But a Weberian analysis tells us that these materialist
interventions will never work because the problem isn't really a material one to begin with
Instead certain countries for Weber fail to succeed at capitalism because they don't feel
anxious and guilty enough. They trust too much in miracles. They like to celebrate now rather
than invest in tomorrow and their members feel it's acceptable to steal from the community in
order to enrich their families favoring the clan over the nation.

Today, Weber would counsel those who wish to spread capitalism to concentrate on our
equivalent of religion -- culture. It's a nation's attitudes hopes and a sense of what life is about
that produces an economy that either flourishes or flounders. To reduce poverty, Weber would
say one has to start at the level of ideas. What the World Bank and the IMF should be giving
sub-saharan Africa is not, in a Weberian analysis, money and technology but a new outlook.
The decisive question for an economy should not be what the rate of inflation is but what's on
TV tonight. Weber was writing in an age of revolution.
He, too, wanted things to change but he believed that one first had to work out how political
power operated.