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The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of
Capitalism
Max
Weber
New York: Scribner's
Press, 1958, pp. 35-46.
CHAPTER I:
RELIGIOUS AFFILIATION AND SOCIAL
STRATIFICATION1
A GLANCE at the occupational statistics of any country of
mixed religious composition brings to light with remarkable
frequency2 a situation which has several times
provoked discussion in the Catholic press and
literature,3 and in Catholic congresses in
Germany, namely, the fact that business leaders and owners
of capital, as well as the higher grades of skilled labour.
and even more the higher technically and commercially
trained personnel of modern enterprises, are overwhelmingly
Protestant.4 This is true not only in cases where
the difference in religion coincides with one of
nationality, and thus of cultural development, as in Eastern
Germany between Germans and Poles. The same thing is shown
in the figures of religious affiliation almost wherever
capitalism, at the time of its great expansion, has had a
free hand to alter the social distribution of the population
in accordance with its needs, and to determine" its
occupational structure. The more freedom it has had, the
more clearly is the effect shown. It is true that the
greater relative participation of Protestants in the
ownership of capital,5 in management, and the
upper ranks of labour in great modern industrial and
commercial enterprises,6 may in part be explained
in terms of historical circumstances7 which
extend far back into the past, and in which religious
affiliation is not a cause of the economic conditions, but
to a certain extent appears to be a result [35] of
them. Participation in the above economic functions usually
involves some previous ownership of capital, and generally
an expensive education; often both. These are to- day
largely dependent on the possession of inherited wealth, or
at least on a certain degree of material well-being. A
number of those sections of the old Empire which were most
highly developed economic ally and most favoured by natural
resources and situation, in particular a majority of the
wealthy towns, went over to Protestantism in the sixteenth
century. The results of that circumstance favour the
Protestants even to-day in their struggle for economic
existence. There arises thus the historical question: why
were the districts of highest economic development at the
same time particularly favourable to a revolution in the
Church? The answer is by no means so simple as one might
think.
The emancipation from economic traditionalism appears, no
doubt, to be a factor which would greatly strengthen the
tendency to doubt the sanctity of the religious tradition,
as of all traditional authorities. But it is necessary to
note, what has often been forgotten, that the Reformation
meant not the elimination of the Church's control over
everyday life, but rather the substitution of a new form of
control for the previous one. It meant the repudiation of a
control which was very lax, at that time scarcely
perceptible in practice, and hardly more than formal, in
favour of a regulation of the whole of conduct which,
penetrating to all departments of private and public life,
was infinitely burdensome and earnestly enforced. The rule
of the Catholic Church, "punishing the heretic, but
indulgent [36] to the sinner", as it was in the past
even more than to-day, is now tolerated by peoples of
thoroughly modern economic character, and was borne by the
richest and economically most advanced peoples on earth at
about the turn of the fifteenth century. The rule of
Calvinism, on the other hand, as it was enforced in the
sixteenth century in Geneva and in Scotland, at the turn of
the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in large parts of
the Netherlands, in the seventeenth in New England, and for
a time in England itself, would be for us the most
absolutely unbearable form of ecclesiastical control of the
individual which could possibly exist. That was exactly what
large numbers of the old commercial aristocracy of those
times, in Geneva as well as in Holland and England, felt
about it. And what the reformers complained of in those
areas of high economic development was not too much
supervision of life on the part of the Church, but too
little. Now how does it happen that at that time those
countries which were most advanced economically, and within
them the rising bourgeois middle classes, not only failed to
resist this unexampled tyranny of Puritanism, out even
developed a heroism in its defence? For bourgeois classes as
such have seldom before and never since displayed heroism.
It was "the last of our heroisms") as Carlyle, not without
reason, has said.
But further, and especially important: it may be, as has
been claimed, that the greater participation of Protestants
in the positions of ownership and management in modern
economic life may to-day be understood, in part at least,
simply as a result of the greater material wealth they have
inherited. But there are [37] certain other
phenomena which cannot be explained in the same way. Thus,
to mention only a few facts : there is a great difference
discoverable in Baden, in Bavaria, in Hungary. in the type
of higher education which Catholic parents, as opposed to
Protestant, give their children. That the percentage of
Catholics among the students and graduates of higher
educational institutions in general lags behind their
proportion of the total population,8 may, to be
sure, be largely explicable in terms of inherited
differences of wealth. But among the Catholic graduates
themselves the percentage of those graduating from the
institutions preparing, in particular, for technical studies
and industrial and commercial occupations, but in general
from those preparing for middle-class business life, lags
still farther behind the percentage of
Protestants.9 On the other hand, Catholics prefer
the sort of training which the humanistic Gymnasium affords.
That is a circumstance to which the above explanation does
not apply, but which, on the contrary. is one reason why so
few Catholics are engaged in capitalistic enterprise.
Even more striking is a fact which partly explains the
smaller proportion of Catholics among the skilled labourers
of modern industry. It is well known that the factory has
taken its skilled labour to a large extent from young men in
the handicrafts; but this is much more true of Protestant
than of Catholic journeymen. Among journeymen, in other
words, the Catholics show a stronger propensity to remain in
their crafts, that is they more often become master
craftsmen, whereas the Protestants are attracted to a larger
extent into the factories in order to fill the upper ranks
of [38] skilled labour and administrative
positions.10 The explanation of these cases is
undoubtedly that the mental and spiritual peculiarities
acquired from the environment, here the type of education
favoured by the religious atmosphere of the home community
and the parental home, have determined the choice of
occupation, and through it the professional career.
The smaller participation of Catholics in the modern
business life of Germany is all the more striking because it
runs counter to a tendency which has been observed at all
times11 including the present. National or
religious minorities which are in a position of
subordination to a group of rulers are likely, through their
voluntary or involuntary exclusion from positions of
political influence, to be driven with peculiar force into
economic activity. Their ablest members seek to satisfy the
desire for recognition of their abilities in this field,
since there is no opportunity in the service of the State.
This has undoubtedly been true of the Poles in Russia and
Eastern Prussia, who have without question been undergoing a
more rapid economic advance than in Galicia, where they have
been in the ascendant. It has in earlier times been true of
the Huguenots in France under Louis XIV, the Nonconformists
and Quakers in England, and, last but not least, the Jew for
two thousand years. But the Catholics in Germany have shown
no striking evidence of such a result of their position. In
the past they have, unlike the Protestants, undergone no
particularly prominent economic development in the times
when they were persecuted or only tolerated, either in
Holland or in England. On the other hand, it is a fact that
the Protestants [39] (especially certain branches of
the movement to be fully discussed later) both as ruling
classes and as ruled. both as majority and as minority, have
shown a special tendency to develop economic rationalism
which cannot be observed to the same extent among Catholics
either in the one situation or in the other.12
Thus the principal explanation of this difference must be
sought in the permanent intrinsic character of their
religious beliefs, and not only in their temporary external
historico-political situations.13
It will be our task to investigate these religions with a
view to finding out what peculiarities they have or have had
which might have resulted in the behaviour we have
described. On superficial analysis, and on the basis of
certain current impressions, one might be tempted to express
the difference by saying that the greater other-worldliness
of Catholicism, the ascetic character of its highest ideals,
must have brought up its adherents to a greater indifference
toward the good things of this world. Such an explanation
:fits the popular tendency in the judgment of both
religions. On the Protestant side it is used as a basis of
criticism of those ( real or imagined) ascetic ideals of the
Catholic way of life, while the Catholics answer with the
accusation that materialism results from the secularization
of all ideals through Protestantism. One recent writer has
attempted to formulate the difference of their attitudes
toward economic life in the following manner: "The Catholic
is quieter, having less of the acquisitive impulse; he
prefers a life of the greatest possible security, even with
a smaller income, to a life of risk and excitement, even
though it may bring the [40] chance of gaining
honour and riches. The proverb says jokingly, 'either eat
well or sleep well'. In the present case the Protestant
prefers to eat well, the Catholic to sleep
undisturbed."14
In fact, this desire to eat well may be a correct though
incomplete characterization of the motives of many nominal
Protestants in Germany at the present time. But things were
very different in the past: the English, Dutch, and American
Puritans were characterized by the exact opposite of the joy
of living, a fact which is indeed, as we shall see, most
important for our present study. Moreover, the French
Protestants, among others, long retained, and retain to a
certain extent up to the present, the characteristics which
were impressed upon the Calvinistic Churches everywhere,
especially under the cross in the time of the religious
struggles. Nevertheless ( or was it, perhaps. as we shall
ask later, precisely on that account? ) it is well known
that these characteristics were one of the most important
factors in the industrial and capitalistic development of
France, and on the small scale permitted them by their
persecution remained so. If we may call this seriousness and
the strong predominance of religious interests in the whole
conduct of life otherworldliness, then the French Calvinists
were and still are at least as otherworldly as, for
instance, the North German Catholics, to whom their
Catholicism is undoubtedly as vital a matter as religion is
to any other people in the world. Both differ from the
predominant religious trends in their respective countries
in much the same way. The Catholics of France are, in their
lower ranks, greatly interested in the enjoyment of life,
[41] in the upper directly hostile to religion.
Similarly, the Protestants of Germany are to-day absorbed in
worldly economic life, and their upper ranks are most
indifferent to religion.15 Hardly anything shows
so clearly as this parallel that, with such vague ideas as
that of the alleged otherworldliness of Catholicism, and the
alleged materialistic joy of living of Protestantism, and
others like them, nothing can be accomplished for our
purpose. In such general terms the distinction does not even
adequately fit the facts of to-day, and certainly not of the
past. If, however, one wishes to make use of it at all,
several other observations present themselves at once which,
combined with the above remarks, suggest that the supposed
conflict between other-worldliness, asceticism, and
ecclesiastical piety on the one side, and participation in
capitalistic acquisition on the other, might actually turn
out to be an intimate relationship.
As a matter of fact it is surely remarkable, to begin
with quite a superficial observation, how large is the
number of representatives of the most spiritual forms of
Christian piety who have sprung from commercial circles. In
particular, very many of the most zealous adherents of
Pietism are of this origin. It might be explained as a sort
of reaction against mammonism on the part of sensitive
natures not adapted to commercial life, and, as in the case
of Francis of Assisi, many Pietists have themselves
interpreted the process of their conversion in these terms.
Similarly., the remark able circumstance that so many of the
greatest capitalistic entrepreneurs-down to Cecil
Rhodes-have come from clergymen's families might be
explained as a reaction against their ascetic upbringing.
But this [42] form of explanation fails where an
extraordinary capitalistic business sense is combined in the
same persons and groups with the most intensive forms of a
piety which penetrates and dominates their whole lives. Such
cases are not isolated, but these traits are characteristic
of many of the most important Churches and sects in the
history of Protestantism. Especially Calvinism, wherever it
has appeared,16 has shown this combination.
However little, in the time of the expansion of the
Reformation, it ( or any other Protestant belief) was bound
up with any particular social class, it is characteristic
and in a certain sense typical that in French Huguenot
Churches monks and business men (merchants, craftsmen) were
particularly numerous among the proselytes, especially at
the time of the persecution.17 Even the Spaniards
knew that heresy (i.e. the Calvinism of the Dutch) promoted
trade, and this coincides with the opinions which Sir
William Petty expressed in his discussion of the reasons for
the capitalistic development of the Netherlands.
Gothein18 rightly calls the Calvinistic diaspora
the seed-bed of capitalistic economy.19 Even in
this case one might consider the decisive factor to be the
superiority of the French and Dutch economic cultures from
which these communities sprang, or perhaps the immense
influence of exile in the breakdown of traditional
relationships.20 But in France the situation was,
as we know from Colbert's struggles, the same even in the
seventeenth century. Even Austria, not to speak of other
countries, directly imported Protestant craftsmen.
But not all the Protestant denominations seem to have had
an equally strong influence in this direction. [43]
That of Calvinism, even in Germany, was among the strongest,
it seems, and the reformed faith21 more than the
others seems to have promoted the development of the spirit
of capitalism, in the Wupperthal as well as elsewhere. Much
more so than Lutheranism, as comparison both in general and
in particular instances, especially in the Wupperthal, seems
to prove.22 For Scotland, Buckle, and among
English poets, Keats, have emphasized these same
relationships.23 Even more striking, as it is
only necessary to mention, is the connection of a religious
way of life with the most intensive development of business
acumen among those sects whose otherworldliness is as
proverbial as their wealth, especially the Quakers and the
Mennonites. The part which the former have played in England
and North America tell to the latter in Germany and the
Netherlands. That in East Prussia Frederick William I
tolerated the Mennonites as in dispensable to industry. in
spite of their absolute refusal to perform military service,
is only one of the numerous well-known cases which
illustrates the fact, though, considering the character of
that monarch, it is one of the most striking. Finally, that
this combination of intense piety with just as strong a
development of business acumen, was also characteristic of
the Pietists, is common knowledge.24
It is only necessary to think of the Rhine country and of
Calvin. In this purely introductory discussion it is
unnecessary to pile up more examples. For these few already
all show one thing: that the spirit of hard work, of
progress, or whatever else it may be called, the awakening
of which one is inclined to ascribe to [44]
Protestantism, must not be understood, as there is a
tendency to do, as joy of living nor in any other sense as
connected with the Enlightenment. The old Protestantism of
Luther, Calvin, Knox, Voet, had precious little to do with
what to-day is called progress. To whole aspects of modern
life which the most extreme religionist would not wish to
suppress to-day, it was directly hostile. If any inner
relationship between certain expressions of the old
Protestant spirit and modern capitalistic culture"is to be
found, we must attempt to find it, for better or worse, not
in its alleged more or less materialistic or at least
anti-ascetic joy of living, but in its purely religious
characteristics. Montesquieu says (Esprit des Lois,
Book XX, chap. 7) of the English that they "had progressed
the farthest of all peoples of the world in three important
things: in piety, in commerce, and in freedom". Is it not
possible that their commercial superiority and their
adaptation to free political institutions are connected in
some way with that record of piety which Montesquieu
ascribes to them?
A large number of possible relationships, vaguely
perceived, occur to us when we put the question in this way.
It will now be our task to formulate. what occurs to us
confusedly as clearly as is possible, considering the
inexhaustible diversity to be found in all historical
material. But in order to do this it is necessary to leave
behind the vague and general concepts with which we have
dealt up to this point, and attempt to penetrate into the
peculiar characteristics of and the differences between
those great worlds of religious thought which have existed
historically in the various branches of Christianity.
[45]
Before we can proceed to that, however, a few remarks are
necessary, first on the peculiarities of the phenomenon of
which we are seeking an historical explanation, then
concerning the sense in which such an explanation is
possible at all within the limits of these investigations.
[46]
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