Marbury Education: A2 Sociology

Beliefs in Society

Religion and Social Change

Max Weber Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism

If a religion and social change essay comes up in your examination and it often does, you will need to show a detailed understanding of Weber and also be able to offer some criticism and analysis too. This podcast will help you to achieve both of those objectives. By using Weber as an illustrative example, you can show how religion can have the potential to help create social change. Don’t forget when you write about social change, especially in your introductions, you need to differentiate between progressive and retrogressive change. So progressive, or going forward, is synonymous with Weber and retrogressive, or going backwards, becoming more basic, Godly, simplistic or in many cases unequal, is synonymous with fundamentalism in all its forms. Anyway, let’s look at Weber.

Much of Weber’s writings were in response to the work of Karl Marx. For Weber, Marx could be criticised because his ideas were based on a deterministic belief that all could be explained by making reference to the substructure, or economic relations of Capitalist society. So if Marx wanted to explain something, he would point to class relationships because further analysis was already a foregone conclusion. Methodologically, Weber sought to do the opposite. By finding something that happened, in this case Capitalism in the West, he sought to go back in history in order to determine why it occurred. So for Weber, this approach was better ‘science,’ more rigorous and more rational. So maybe Weber was out to prove a point and he was really having a conversation with someone who was already dead, namely Marx.

Weber argued that Protestant forms of Christianity like Methodists, Baptists, Pietists and Calvinists who existed towards the end of the 17^th century had certain ethical characteristics associated with Puritanism. Puritanism was all about leading the ascetic life of self denial, thrift and hard work. Furthermore, their belief was based on something called predestination. This means that God had already determined who was the saved, the elect, and who is not saved, the damned. You assumed that you were part of the elect and you proved your perfect faith by working hard, avoiding gluttony on rich food, wine and pleasures of the flesh. You led an ascetic pure life and this symbolised your faith in God and his wise decision about your destiny. However, predestination caused something called salvation anxiety and I remember seeing an example of this in one of those period dramas on the TV many years ago. I remember seeing a female writing in her diary about how fortunate her family had been in business and how she thought this was surely a sign of Gods pleasure and that she/they were part of the elect. This is an important point for your exam because it means that economic prosperity was viewed as a sign directly from God that one was part of the elect. The result of all this was to foster what we call the Protestant work ethic. Work, invest, self denial, prosper and reinvest, grow wealthy and be sure of your chosen status as part of the elect. Even those who were not wealthy might be part of the elect and by working hard in their vocation or calling as you were adding to Gods Glory. So for Weber, Protestant Calvinism helped to provide the spark, or drive that led to a particular form of rational Capitalism in the West. If it aided the formation of Capitalism as Weber argues then this is a form of progressive social change and something highly relevant to your topic area.   

Weber then goes onto explain that there were similar characteristics or features in both the East and the West. These might include double entry book keeping, raw materials, labour, a legal system for enforcing contracts and a banking system to facilitate exchange. In fact, Weber says that these characteristics were better suited towards the development of Capitalism in places like India and China than they were in places like Germany, but surprisingly no such development occurred. If one examined the dominant religions in countries like China and India, like Buddhism, Confucianism, Taoism and Hinduism, none of them place much importance on hard work or growing rich. In fact one might argue the opposite, meditation, prayer and the embracing of poverty are seen as more desirable traits. For Weber, these religions failed to provide the passion for work where regular labour was an end in itself. Weber doesn’t deny that forms of Capitalism were present elsewhere in the world before type he describes but for him it wasn’t the same. For example, a merchant might do business and by taking advantage of people he might grow rich quickly but once he had the wealth he would seek repose, or rest. He wouldn’t have the need or desire to work continuously or regularly. He would be a pleasure seeker, wasting money, squandering it. Money was only necessary to buy rest and enjoyment, something very different to the Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism Weber describes. But under the particular ethic Weber describes, Protestant Calvinism helps propel the development of a uniquely successful form of Capitalism in the West. The Puritan would grow rich and never cease to stop working and investing all for the glory of God and to demonstrate the perfection of his religious faith.

The subtle point is that there wasn’t a mechanical process going on where religion simply created capitalism, more that a particular form of religious ethic helped in the creation of a particular type of rational, organised Capitalism in the West where maximum profit was the objective. The Protestant work ethic helped to foster the Spirit of Capitalism and this can be viewed as a form of progressive social change. So religion shapes our attitudes, this affects our behaviour and this in turn shapes our economic development.

Now we can look at some of the criticisms directed at Weber:

Sombart (1907) argues that Calvinists were not money orientated and saw such acquisitiveness as greedy. However, this is perhaps unfair to Weber because he never referred to the teachings of Calvin himself, who was writing some 150 years earlier, he was referring to certain Calvinist circles that existed towards the end of the 17^th century. Predestination may not have intentionally caused us to become obsessed with becoming wealthy but it had that affect none the same. Salvation anxiety makes us look for signs of Gods pleasure and growing rich was viewed a positive sign.

Others say that there were many Calvinist communities in Scotland, Switzerland, Hungary and the Netherlands where capitalism didn’t occur but Gordon Marshall says that this is perhaps unfair to Weber because he isn’t claiming that the only thing responsible for the development of Capitalism is protestant religion.

The Marxist Kautsky (1953) offers a more significant critique in that he says Weber has his history muddled up. For Kautsky, Protestant Calvinism developed after Capitalism, not the other way round. This is often referred to as the chicken and egg argument. What Marxists are getting at is that Jesus wasn’t a great fan of rich people and he embraced a life of poverty. The quote from the bible that says ‘it’s easier for a camel to jump through the eye of a needle than it is for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God,’ is a good illustrative example. So perhaps Protestant Calvinism is simply a religion of the rich as it takes away their guilt for being so rich whilst others are so poor. If being rich is a sign of Gods pleasure, it seems to be a very convenient religion for the rich. So Protestant Calvinism becomes an apologia or defence for the bourgeoisie.

In short, there hasn’t been a lot of agreement about how valid Weber’s thesis is but that shouldn’t worry us as students of sociology. As long as you can offer an accurate account of the main aspects of the Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism at it relates to social change along with some criticisms, that’s the main thing.

Gordon Marshall wrote an article on Weber’s Protestant Ethic in Sociology Review September 1991, a bit long but certainly worth having a look at.