Max Weber On Capitalism
Monday, 16. July 2007, 18:07:28
John Kilcullen
Division of Humanities
Macquarie University, Australia
Weber's most famous book is The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1904-5). It is generally taken as a counter to the Marxist thesis of the primacy of base over superstructure: Weber is supposed to have argued in this book that capitalism in fact developed historically as a result of a religious movement, protestantism, specifically Calvinism. The argument is that Calvinism, with its doctrine of predestination - i.e. the doctrine that God eternally decreed the salvation of some and the damnation of others, not in view of the good or evil deeds they would do, but simply 'because he willed it' - that this doctrine made Calvinists anxious about their salvation; that this led them to seek reassurance in attempting to succeed in their economic (and other) undertakings, in the belief that God signifies his favour by giving prosperity to the undertakings of the elect; at the same time the Calvinist did not spend his money on self-indulgence, so had nothing else to do with it but plough it back into the business. And his employees, being Calvinists also, had a sense of their jobs as 'callings' to be done well out of religious duty even for small earthly reward. Hence the 'Protestant ethic' - the famous 'work ethic' -, the drive for economic success, the will to work hard, the habit of not spending on frivolous self-indulgence - all this, originating in theology, provided a 'spirit' for capitalism, the set of motivations and attitudes that led to 'rational investment' of profits continually ploughed back, and to the modern world.
I suspect that this is a travesty of Weber's book. It is certainly a travesty of Calvinism. Any properly catechized Calvinist would have known that it was wrong to seek a sign that he had been saved, and nonsense to find it in economic success. If 17th century Calvinists were thinking along those lines, then perhaps Calvinism had been corrupted by the influence of early capitalism; and in that case the economic base might have been the 'independent variable' or initiator of change. As Parkin says (Max Weber, p.57): 'The question then arises as to why the doctrine [Calvinism] evolved in the particular manner it did... Weber does not address this problem of what might be called "the transition from Calvinism to Puritanism"'. As Parkin points out, Weber generally supposes that a religion will be held in differing senses by different social strata; if Calvinism underwent some change between John Calvin and the early Calvinist capitalists that Weber studied in his book, then that change should have something to do with the way Calvin's doctrine was received in different social strata. 'What seemed to be required was a complementary study designed to demonstrate the effects of the stratification system on the peculiar evolution of early protestantism. Had Weber managed to get round to conducting such a study, he would have had to clarify and expand upon his own brand of materialism and to show how it differed from the Marxist version.... there are enough hints in his work to suggest that his own final position would not have differed very much from a sophisticated Marxist one' (ibid.).
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Division of Humanities
Macquarie University, Australia
Weber's most famous book is The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1904-5). It is generally taken as a counter to the Marxist thesis of the primacy of base over superstructure: Weber is supposed to have argued in this book that capitalism in fact developed historically as a result of a religious movement, protestantism, specifically Calvinism. The argument is that Calvinism, with its doctrine of predestination - i.e. the doctrine that God eternally decreed the salvation of some and the damnation of others, not in view of the good or evil deeds they would do, but simply 'because he willed it' - that this doctrine made Calvinists anxious about their salvation; that this led them to seek reassurance in attempting to succeed in their economic (and other) undertakings, in the belief that God signifies his favour by giving prosperity to the undertakings of the elect; at the same time the Calvinist did not spend his money on self-indulgence, so had nothing else to do with it but plough it back into the business. And his employees, being Calvinists also, had a sense of their jobs as 'callings' to be done well out of religious duty even for small earthly reward. Hence the 'Protestant ethic' - the famous 'work ethic' -, the drive for economic success, the will to work hard, the habit of not spending on frivolous self-indulgence - all this, originating in theology, provided a 'spirit' for capitalism, the set of motivations and attitudes that led to 'rational investment' of profits continually ploughed back, and to the modern world.
I suspect that this is a travesty of Weber's book. It is certainly a travesty of Calvinism. Any properly catechized Calvinist would have known that it was wrong to seek a sign that he had been saved, and nonsense to find it in economic success. If 17th century Calvinists were thinking along those lines, then perhaps Calvinism had been corrupted by the influence of early capitalism; and in that case the economic base might have been the 'independent variable' or initiator of change. As Parkin says (Max Weber, p.57): 'The question then arises as to why the doctrine [Calvinism] evolved in the particular manner it did... Weber does not address this problem of what might be called "the transition from Calvinism to Puritanism"'. As Parkin points out, Weber generally supposes that a religion will be held in differing senses by different social strata; if Calvinism underwent some change between John Calvin and the early Calvinist capitalists that Weber studied in his book, then that change should have something to do with the way Calvin's doctrine was received in different social strata. 'What seemed to be required was a complementary study designed to demonstrate the effects of the stratification system on the peculiar evolution of early protestantism. Had Weber managed to get round to conducting such a study, he would have had to clarify and expand upon his own brand of materialism and to show how it differed from the Marxist version.... there are enough hints in his work to suggest that his own final position would not have differed very much from a sophisticated Marxist one' (ibid.).
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