The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism

by Max Weber

  52. Ed Andrew, Closing the Iron Cage: The Scientific Management of Work and Leisure (Montreal: Black Rose Books, 1981).

  53. Michael Schwalbe, Unlocking the Iron Cage: The Men’s Movement, Gender Politics, and American Culture (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995).

  54. Friedrich H. Tenbruck, “The Problem of Thematic Unity in the Works of Max Weber,” in Keith Tribe (ed.), Reading Weber (London: Routledge, 1989 [1975]), translated by Sam Whimster.

  55. Hennis, Max Weber: Essays in Reconstruction, pp. 21–61.

  56. Frank Parkin argues that both theses can be found in The Protestant Ethic. See Parkin’s Max Weber (London: Tavistock, 1982), pp. 40–70. See also Pellicani, The Genesis of Capitalism and the Origins of Modernity, p. 34.

  57. “Thus Weber demonstrates only that Calvinism was an accelerator of capitalist development, not its generator,” Pellicani, The Genesis of Capitalism and the Origins of Modernity, p. 32. Compare Poggi, Calvinism and the Capitalist Spirit: Max Weber’s “Protestant Ethic,” pp. 56, 93ff.

  58. Weber’s rhetorical strategy is well analyzed by MacKinnon (“The Longevity of the Thesis: A Critique of the Critics”), in Lehmann and Roth, pp. 211–43.

  59. Viner, Religious Thought and Economic Society, p. 158. For a more sympathetic treatment of the ideal types (Troeltsch’s use of them, rather than Weber’s), see A. G. Dickens, The German Nation and Martin Luther (Glasgow: Fontana, 1976 [1974]), pp. 209–10.

  60. Respectively, James S. Coleman, Foundations of Social Theory (Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1990), pp. 6–10; Francis Fukuyama, Trust: The Social Virtues and the Creation of Prosperity (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1996 [1995]), pp. 43–57; Anthony Giddens and Christopher Pearson, Conversations with Anthony Giddens: Making Sense of Modernity (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998), p. 59; George Ritzer, The McDonaldization Thesis: Explorations and Extensions (London: Sage, 1998), pp. 4, 77–78, 164; and David S. Landes, The Wealth and Poverty of Nations (New York: W. W. Norton, 1999 [1998]), pp. 174–79.

  61. Aspects of the British reception are examined in Gordon Marshall, In Search of the Spirit of Capitalism: An Essay on Max Weber’s Protestant Ethic Thesis (London: Hutchinson, 1982), and Larry Ray, “The Protestant Ethic Debate,” in R. J. Anderson, J. A. Hughes, and W. W. Sharrock (eds.), Classic Disputes in Sociology, pp. 97–125. On the Japanese reception, see Hayashi Makoto and Yamanaka Hiroshi, “The Adaptation of Max Weber’s Theories of Religion in Japan,” Japanese Journal of Religious Studies (1993) 20/2–3, pp. 207–28, and Wolfgang Schwentker, Max Weber in Japan: Eine Untersuchung zur Wirkungsgeschichte 1905–1995 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1998).

  62. For a sketch, see Hans H. Gerth, “The Reception of Max Weber’s Work in American Sociology” [originally published in Japanese in 1963], in Joseph Bensman, Arthur J. Vidich, and Nobuko Gerth (eds.), Politics, Character, and Culture: Perspectives from Hans Gerth (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1982), pp. 208–17.

  63. On their relationship, see Richard Swedberg, Economics and Sociology (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990), pp. 14–15.

  64. Weber’s General Economic History (New York: Collier Books, 1961), translated by Frank H. Knight and first published in 1927, concludes with an overview of the place of Protestantism in the formation of the capitalist spirit. (The book is based on lectures that Weber delivered to students in Munich in 1919–20.) Talcott Parsons’s translation of The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism appeared in 1930. Both authors published articles on Weber at around the same time and communicated with each other about their Weber translations. See Frank H. Knight, “Historical and Theoretical Issues in the Problem of Modern Capitalism,” Journal of Economic and Business History (1928), vol. 1, pp. 119–36; and Talcott Parsons, “Capitalism in Recent German Literature: Sombart and Weber,” Journal of Political Economy 36 (1928), pp. 641–54, and 37 (1929), pp. 31–51.

  65. Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (London: Unwin University Books, 1930), translated by Talcott Parsons, with a foreword by R. H. Tawney.

  66. A new translation by Stephen Kalberg of the 1920 version is now available from Roxbury Press (Los Angeles, 2001). On the need for a new translation, see Kalberg’s remarks in Perspectives: The American Sociological Association Theory Section Newsletter 23:1 (January 2001), pp. 1–4.

  67. Gisela J. Hinkle, “The Americanization of Max Weber,” Current Perspectives in Social Theory 7 (1986), p. 89.

  68. Talcott Parsons, The Structure of Social Action (New York: Free Press, 1968 [1937]); the reference in the previous sentence to a “single body etc.” comes from p. xxi, emphasis in the original.

  69. Max Weber, The Theory of Social and Economic Organization (New York: Oxford University Press, 1947), edited with an introduction by Talcott Parsons, translated by A. M. Henderson and Talcott Parsons.

  70. Marshall and Pareto are, today, marginal figures in sociology. Durkheim and Weber, the two thinkers accorded the most space in The Structure of Social Action, have remained pivotal. We might note that Weber receives a longer treatment in Structure than Durkheim and that Parsons begins his exposition of the former with a treatment of Protestantism and capitalism, pp. 500–686, at pp. 500–38.

  71. Pitirim A. Sorokin, Contemporary Sociological Theories through the First Quarter of the Twentieth Century (New York: Harper and Row, 1928).

  72. On the conflict between them, see Barry V. Johnston, Pitirim A. Sorokin: An Intellectual Biography (Kansas: University Press of Kansas, 1995), 84–102.

  73. Parsons, Structure, p. xvi.

  74. The following major treatments can suffice: Raymond Aron, Main Currents in Sociological Thought (2 vols.) (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1971 [1967]), translated by Richard Howard and Helen Weaver (Aron expands the canon to seven thinkers: Montesquieu, Tocqueville, Comte, Marx, Pareto, Durkheim, and Weber); Anthony Giddens, Capitalism and Modern Social Theory: An Analysis of the Writings of Marx, Durkheim and Max Weber (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971); Jeffrey C. Alexander, Theoretical Logic in Sociology (4 vols.) (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980–1983), where Parsons joins the ranks of Marx, Durkheim, and Weber; and Jürgen Habermas, The Theory of Communicative Action (2 vols.) (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1987 [1981]), translated by Thomas McCarthy, in which George Herbert Mead, Durkheim, Weber, and Parsons assume pride of place as “classics, that is, as theorists of society who still have something to say to us,” vol. 1, p. xl.

  75. Robert K. Merton, Science, Technology and Society in Seventeenth Century England (New York: Howard Fertig, 2001 [1938]); Robert N. Bellah, Tokugawa Religion: The Cultural Roots of Modern Japan (New York: Free Press, 1985 [1957]; Randall Collins, Weberian Sociological Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), especially pp. 19–44.

  76. For instance, Gerhard Lenski, The Religious Factor (New York: Doubleday, 1961).

  77. Andrew Greeley, “The Protestant Ethic: Time for a Moratorium,” Sociological Analysis 25 (1964), pp. 20–33, at p. 23.

  78. For a review of the historical literature, see Philip Benedict, “The Historiography of Continental Calvinism,” in Lehmann and Roth, pp. 305–25, and Richard F. Hamilton’s bracing, The Social Misconstruction of Reality: Validity and Verification in the Scholarly Community (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1996), pp. 88–97. The only country, Benedict points out, in which Weber’s thesis has significantly affected “mainstream” historical research is Britain on account of R. H. Tawney’s influence and that of his pupils, notably, Christopher Hill.

  79. Joseph A. Schumpeter, History of Economic Analysis (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1967 [1954]), edited from manuscript by Elizabeth Boody Schumpeter, pp. 80–81. A much more sympathetic appraisal of The Protestant Ethic’s enduring value, from the standpoint of economic culture, can be found in the majority of essays included in Lawrence E. Harrison and Samuel P. Huntington (eds.), Culture Matters: How Values Shape Human Progress (New York: Basic Books, 2
001).

  80. We are not saying that all sociologists have been indifferent to the accuracy of Weber’s argument about Protestantism. It is rather that they have rarely returned to the sources that could sustain, qualify, or refute that argument and, in any case, employ selectively Weber’s ideas and hypotheses as a springboard to other related projects. Fine exceptions to sociological ahistoricity include Gordon Marshall’s Presbyteries and Profits: Calvinism and the Development of Capitalism in Scotland, 1560–1707 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980), and David Zaret, The Heavenly Contract: Ideology and Organization in Pre-Revolutionary Puritanism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985).

  81. See the essays collected in S. N. Eisenstadt, The Protestant Ethic and Modernization: A Comparative View (New York: Basic Books, 1968).

  82. See the research agenda that Benjamin Nelson extrapolates from The Protestant Ethic in “Weber’s Protestant Ethic: Its Origins, Wanderings, and Foreseeable Futures” in Charles Y. Glock and Phillip E. Hammond, Beyond the Classics? Essays in the Scientific Study of Religion (New York: Harper and Row, 1973), pp. 71–130, at pp. 106–11.

  83. Major landmarks, aside from texts already mentioned, were The Methodology of the Social Sciences (Glencoe, Ill.: The Free Press, 1949), translated and edited by Edward A. Shils and Henry A. Finch; Max Weber on Law in Economy and Society (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1954), edited and annotated by Max Rheinstein; translated by Edward Shils and Max Rheinstein; The Religion of China: Confucianism and Taoism (Glencoe, Ill.: The Free Press, 1951), translated and edited by Hans H. Gerth; Ancient Judaism (Glencoe, Ill.: The Free Press, 1952), translated and edited by Hans H. Gerth and Don Martindale; The Religion of India: The Sociology of Hinduism and Buddhism (Glencoe, Ill.: The Free Press, 1958), translated and edited by Hans H. Gerth and Don Martindale; Economy and Society: An Outline of Interpretive Sociology (New York: The Bedminster Press, 1968) edited [with some new translations and revisions of older ones] by Guenther Roth and Claus Wittich; Max Weber on Universities (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1976 [1973]), translated, edited, and with an introductory note by Edward Shils; Roscher and Knies: The Logical Problems of Historical Economics (New York: The Free Press, 1975), translated with an introduction by Guy Oakes; The Agrarian Sociology of Ancient Civilizations (London: New Left Books, 1976), translated by R. I. Frank; Critique of Stammler (New York: The Free Press, 1977), translated with an introductory essay by Guy Oakes. Marianne Weber’s Max Weber: A Biography, translated by Harry Zohn, became available in 1975. For a new edition of the text that includes an introduction by Guenther Roth, see the New Brunswick, N.J., Transaction imprint of 1988.

  84. Max Weber. An Intellectual Portrait (London: Methuen & Co, 1966 [1959]). Almost half the book is devoted to Weber’s studies of religion and their relationship to economic phenomena.

  85. C. Wright Mills, The Sociological Imagination (New York: Oxford University Press, 1959), p. 5.

  86. It is richly documented in Guy Oakes and Arthur J. Vidich, Collaboration, Reputation, and Ethics in American Academic Life: Hans H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1999).

  87. Albert Salomon, “Max Weber’s Methodology,” Social Research 1:3 (1934), pp. 147–68; “Max Weber’s Sociology,” Social Research 2:1 (1935), pp. 60–73; “Max Weber’s Political Ideas,” Social Research 2:3 (1935), pp. 368–84. The second of these articles is framed by a discussion of Weber’s sociology of religion.

  88. Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958), p. 254. In common with her husband, Heinrich Blücher, Arendt deplored Weber’s “ideal-type” methodology, particularly as adumbrated by Salomon. See Within Four Walls: The Correspondence between Hannah Arendt and Heinrich Blücher 1936–1968 (New York: Harcourt, 2000), pp. 62–64, 69.

  89. Franz L. Neumann, “The Intelligentsia in Exile” [1953] in Paul Connerton, Critical Sociology: Selected Readings (New York: Penguin Books, 1976), pp. 423–41, at p. 438.

  90. Among many engagements, see Leo Strauss, “The Social Science of Max Weber,” Measure: A Critical Journal 2:2 (1951), pp. 204–30, and Natural Right and History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1953), especially chapter 2. We should note that while Strauss opposed Weber’s theoretical legacy, he had no hesitation in calling him “the greatest social scientist of our century,” p. 36.

  91. Allan Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1987), pp. 208–09.

  92. Daniel Bell, “Afterword: 1996” to The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism: Twentieth Anniversary Edition (New York, Basic Books, 1996 [1976]), p. 287.

  93. H. Stuart Hughes, Consciousness and Society: The Reorientation of European Social Thought 1890–1930 (London: Paladin, 1974 [1958]), p. 319.

  94. See note 66 above.

  95. We have no wish to join the ranks of Parsons’s detractors. Let us say simply that the problems encountered in translating Weber have, since Parsons’s time, received growing scholarly attention from which we have been fortunate to benefit. For some helpful reflections, see Keith Tribe, “Translator’s Appendix,” in Wilhelm Hennis, Max Weber’s Science of Man (Newbury: Threshold Press, 2000) pp. 205–16; Peter Ghosh, “Some Problems with Talcott Parsons’ Translation of ‘The Protestant Ethic,’” Archives Européennes de Sociologie 35 (1994), pp. 104–23; Guenther Roth, “Interpreting and Translating Max Weber,” 7:4 (1992), pp. 449–59.

  96. From the 1920 edition of The Protestant Ethic alone, it would be impossible to discern the amount of pages that Weber devoted to his critiques of H. Karl Fischer and Felix Rachfahl, or the gratuitously insulting manner in which they were conducted. Fischer is not so much as mentioned, while Rachfahl is simply “a scholar whom I otherwise respect, [but who has] ventured on to a field with which he [is] not really familiar.” Weber now considers the polemics against Rachfahl to have been “rather fruitless” (here). Weber’s counterarguments with Brentano and Sombart, tucked away in the footnotes of the 1920 revision, are robust but generally much more respectful in tone. Weber had close but troubled collegial relationships with both Brentano, whose chair at the University of Munich he assumed in 1919, and Sombart, his fellow editor at the Archiv. In particular, Weber’s relationship with Sombart became increasingly strained over the years and his famous description of Sombart’s Der Bourgeois (1913) as “a book with a definite ‘thesis,’ in the bad sense of the word” remains one of the more memorable academic putdowns of the period (Weber, this volume, here). On the “reserve and distance, even the barely concealed ressentiment, that crept into the Weber-Sombart relationship,” that led Weber to emphasize “the very different ‘spirit’ in which you [Sombart] and I engage in ‘science,’” see Lawrence A. Scaff, Fleeing the Iron Cage: Culture, Politics and Modernity in the Thought of Max Weber (Berkeley/Los Angeles/London: University of California Press, 1989), p. 204.

  97. For Walter Kaufmann, “Nothing in previous German literature equals the bold conception and the concentrated power of that draft [the Urfaust], and the final scene may well be the high point of German drama, not barring the later version which the poet deliberately made less stark,” “Introduction” to Goethe’s Faust, translated by Walter Kaufmann (New York: Doubleday, 1961), pp. 3–56, at p. 4.

  98. For arguments in favor of the 1818 version, see the introductory remarks of Paddy Lyons in Mary Shelley, Frankenstein (London: J. M. Dent, 1992), pp. xv–xxviii.

  99. Both will be edited by Hartmut Lehmann. Because the Max Weber Gesamtausgabe is a multivolume project that will take years, if not decades to complete, its progress is best monitored by consulting the regularly updated publisher’s Web site: http://www.mohr.de/mw/ mwg.htm.

  100. Hartmut Lehmann, “The Rise of Capitalism: Weber versus Sombart,” in Lehmann and Roth, pp. 195–208, at p. 204.

  101. The three volumes of the Religionssoziologie (edited by Marianne Weber), which appeared in 1920 (vol. 1) and 1921 (vols. 2 and 3), largely reproduce, in revised form, articles that had
previously been published in the Archiv für Sozialwissenschaft und Sozialpolitik. Besides the essays on the Protestant ethic and the Protestant sects, and three important theoretical statements, they contain studies of the economic ethics of Confucianism and Taoism (vol. 1), Hinduism and Buddhism (vol. 2), and ancient Judaism (vol. 3). Although a fourth volume was to be devoted to Talmudic Judaism, early Christianity, Oriental Christianity, and Islam, Weber died before he could make any extensive progress on it. For an outline of Weber’s own plan for the Religionssoziologie, see Wolfgang Schluchter’s Rationalism, Religion, and Domination: A Weberian Perspective (Berkeley/Los Angeles/London: University of California Press, 1989), translated by Neil Solomon, pp. 469–71.

  102. “Zur Lage der bürgerlichen Demokratie in Ruβland” (1906) and “Ruβlands Übergang zum Scheinkonstitutionalismus” (1906), in Max Weber: Zur Russischen Revolution von 1905 (Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr [Paul Siebeck], 1989), edited by Wolfgang J. Mommsen, in collaboration with Dittmar Dahlmann, pp. 86–684. For an abridged English edition of this work, see Max Weber, The Russian Revolutions (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1995), translated and edited by Gordon C. Wells and Peter Baehr.

  103. Ernst Troeltsch’s master work on Protestantism, Die Soziallehren der christlichen Kirchen und Gruppen (1912) was translated by Olive Wyon as The Social Teaching of the Christian Churches, vols. 1 and 2 (Louisville, KY.: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1992 [1931]), with a foreword by James Luther Adams. (Only volume 2 is directly concerned with Protestantism.) Most of it had previously appeared in twelve articles published in the Archiv für Sozialwissenschaft und Sozialpolitik between 1908 and 1910. Although Troeltsch praises Weber’s The Protestant Ethic as “a brilliantly acute piece of analysis and observation,” he is equally keen to assert that his “researches do not start from those of Weber.” On the intellectual relationship of Weber and Troeltsch, and their division of labor, see Friedrich Wilhelm Graf, “Friendship between Experts: Notes on Weber and Troeltsch,” in Mommsen and Osterhammel (eds.), pp. 215–33.