by Max Weber
Hartmut Lehmann and Guenther Roth (eds.), Weber’s Protestant Ethic: Origins, Evidence, Contexts (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993).
Philippe Besnard (ed.), Protestantisme et capitalisme: La controverse post-weberienne (Paris: Colin, 1970).
Robert W. Green (ed.), Protestantism, Capitalism, and Social Science: The Weber Thesis Controversy (Lexington, Mass.: D. C. Heath and Co., 1973; 2nd ed. (Contains extracts from the critiques of H. M. Robertson, R. H. Tawney, and Kurt Samuelsson, among others).
An excellent exposition of the relationship between Weber’s sociology of religion and economic sociology can be found in Rich-ard Swedberg’s Max Weber and the Idea of Economic Sociology (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998), especially chapter 5.
A useful, up-to-date source on all matters Weberian is the journal Max Weber Studies, edited by David Chalcraft, Austin Harrington, and Sam Whimster, and published by Sheffield Academic Press.
NOTE ON THE TRANSLATION
Any attempt to translate Weber’s Protestant Ethic must acknowledge a debt to Talcott Parsons, whose pioneering work first made the text available to an English-speaking readership. Despite some errors and omissions, Parsons achieved an admirable level of readability. After seventy years, however, the time has come for alternative versions to be offered to the reading public. Additionally, while Parsons translated the 1920 version of the text, we have gone back to its 1905 predecessor. We have also included in our edition Weber’s lengthy rebuttals of H. Karl Fischer and Felix Rachfahl. The initial translation from the German was done by Gordon Wells; the role of Peter Baehr was to scrutinize the draft versions. Conversely, the Introduction and the editorial prefaces were written by Peter Baehr, with Gordon Wells contributing advice and suggestions. Editors’ footnotes were the work of both Baehr and Wells.
Weber is renowned for his dense and convoluted prose, and although The Protestant Ethic cannot be described as one of his most difficult writings, it presents the translator with many challenges. In our experience, the two main problems facing the translator of Weber are (1) terminology and (2) syntax.
(1) Regarding terminology, we have had to make decisions on how to render certain key words and expressions. We have not thought it appropriate to aim for 100 percent consistency regardless of context. To assist the reader in recognizing Weber’s key concepts, however, we have frequently added the German term in square brackets.
The following notes in no way claim to represent a glossary but are intended to give a flavor of the way we attempted to tackle the terminology problem.
For Beruf we have preferred “calling,” with its solidly biblical and Puritan connotations. The word implies the purpose of God yet can still be understood in the sense of a mundane occupation. Occasionally, where the emphasis is strongly on the secular meaning, we have rendered it by using “occupation” or “profession.”
Weber constantly uses the word Lebensführung to denote actively conducting one’s life in the way that rational asceticism entails. We have therefore normally translated the term as “conduct of life” or “way of conducting one’s life.”
For innerweltliche (as in innerweltliche Askese), we decided to stick with a literal rendering (“innerworldly”) as no other solution seemed adequate. The expression, curious for English readers, denotes a form of conduct that is both self-searching and oriented toward world-shaping activity. It is to be contrasted with forms of asceticism that are focused on contemplation and monastic life.
We have normally translated Bewährung as “proof” but occasionally also as “putting to the test.” The German word can have the legal meaning of “probation,” and a Bewährungsprobe is a severe test that, if passed, furnishes proof of an individual’s qualities. Compare the New English Bible version of the Lord’s Prayer: “Do not bring us to the test.” In the Christian context, Bewährung is the test or trial to which believers are subjected, and which, if they come through it unscathed, shows them to be in a state of grace.
The adjectival compound stahlhartes Gehäuse was famously rendered by Parsons as “iron cage.” We pay tribute to the resonance of Parsons’s phrase and acknowledge its canonical place in the social sciences but felt it departed too far from Weber’s original meaning to be acceptable for our version. (Had Weber wished to invoke the iron cage, he could have used the German eisener Käfig to do so.) We might begin by noting that Weber wrote not of iron but of steel. Iron is a metal that is ancient and elemental. Like steel, it evokes hardness and unbending resolution: Bismarck was known as the “Iron Chancellor”; Mrs. Thatcher, the “Iron Lady.” But steel has more complex and more modern connotations than its metallic counterpart. Steel, unlike iron, is an invention rather than an “element”; although premodern in origins, the breakthrough in steel came with its mass industrial production during the 1850s, a result of the pneumatic Bessemer process. As such, steel is the product of human fabrication. It is also capable of being extremely hard (enabling high-speed drills) and flexible (consider steel sheets and wire). Hence, as a metal that is associated in the European context with modernity, fabrication, and malleability, steel appears to have much more in common with rational bourgeois capitalism that the iron of which it is a refinement.
Further, we translated Gehäuse as “shell,” which is one possible meaning of the word (“casing” is another), ending up with “shell as hard as steel.” We were guided in this choice by the thought that a shell has an organic quality and symbolizes something that has not just been externally imposed but that has become integral to human existence. Whereas a cage confines human agents but leaves their powers otherwise intact, a shell suggests that modern capitalism has created a new kind of being.
On this complex expression, readers are referred to Peter Baehr, “The ‘Iron Cage’ and the ‘Shell as Hard as Steel’: Parsons, Weber, and the stahlhartes Gehäuse Metaphor in The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism,” History and Theory 40 (May 2001), pp. 153–69, and the excellent article by David Chalcraft, “Bringing the Text Back In: On Ways of Reading the Iron Cage Metaphor in the Two Editions of ‘The Protestant Ethic,’” in Organizing Modernity: New Weberian Perspectives on Work, Organization and Society, edited by Larry J. Ray and Michael Reed (London and New York: Routledge, 1994), pp. 16–45.
(2) The second major area of difficulty is that of syntax, or sentence structure. Even by the standards of German academic writing, Weber’s sentences are inordinately long, with one subordinate clause being embedded in another like Russian matryoshka dolls. No doubt this is a result of the fecundity of Weber’s thought processes, whereby he constantly sought to further qualify and refine his statements. However, at times this almost seems to have become a mannerism, so that (to give a simple example) he can rarely bear to simply state “most,” without adding, in parenthesis, “but by no means all.” He also seems to have a predilection for phrases meaning “in particular.” And his use of italics for emphasis seems somewhat idiosyncratic. Some of these stylistic features seem more pronounced in the polemical writings and voluminous footnotes, when Weber paid even less attention to stylistic niceties. Sometimes we have broken down particularly indigestible passages into more manageable chunks. More often, however, despite the possible awkwardness that can result, we have thought it best to retain as much as possible Weber’s constructions and mannerisms. We have done this both in order to convey to the reader the flavor of the original and to ensure that the flow of the argument is reproduced as faithfully as possible.
Having expressed these caveats about Weber’s style of prose, it must be emphasized that the texts we have been privileged to translate contain many magnificent passages of eloquent and persuasive writing. If we have succeeded in coming close to conveying some of the force of the original, our labors will not have been in vain.
Editors’ comments and cross references are denoted by square brackets[ ].
The Protestant Ethic and the “Spirit” of Capitalism1
Part I. The Problem2
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p; Contents: 1. Denomination and social stratification. 2. The “spirit” of capitalism. 3. Luther’s concept of the calling. Scope of the investigation.
1. [DENOMINATION AND SOCIAL STRATIFICATION]3
With relatively few variations and exceptions [1], the occupational statistics of a denominationally mixed region reveals a phenomenon which in recent years has frequently been the subject of lively debate in the Catholic press, in Catholic literature [2], and at Catholic conventions: business leaders and owners of capital, as well as the skilled higher strata of the labor force, and especially the higher technical or commercially trained staff of modern enterprises [3] tend to be predominantly Protestant. This undoubtedly applies where the religious difference coincides with a difference of nationality and thus with a difference in the degree of cultural development, such as exists in eastern Germany between Germans and Poles; but the same phenomenon is confirmed by statistics of denominational allegiance almost everywhere where capitalist development has had a free hand to transform social stratification and to structure the population according to occupation in order to meet its own requirements. The greater the freedom enjoyed by capitalism, the more evident this has been.
Now, it is true that there may be historical reasons [4] for the relatively much greater proportion of Protestants (far exceeding the percentage of Protestants in the total population) represented among owners of capital [5], management and the higher grades of labor in the large modern business and trade enterprises. [6] Such reasons go back to the distant past and appear to indicate that religious allegiance is not a cause but to a certain degree a consequence of economic phenomena. Having a share in these economic functions presupposes either ownership of capital or an expensive education, and usually both, and is thus linked to the ownership of inherited wealth or at least to a certain level of prosperity. A large number of the wealthiest regions of the empire, which were favored by geography or natural resources and most economically developed, and in particular the majority of the wealthy cities, embraced Protestantism in the sixteenth century; and even today Protestants are still feeling the benefit in the economic struggle for existence.
A historical question then arises however as to the reason for this particularly strong predisposition of the economically most developed regions toward a revolution in the Church. And here the answer is by no means as simple as one might at first believe. Certainly, the casting aside of economic traditionalism seems to be one phenomenon that was bound to lend strong support to the tendency to call into question religious traditions and to rebel against traditional authorities. But what is often forgotten is that the Reformation meant less the entire removal of ecclesiastical authority over life than the replacement of the previous form of authority by a different one. It meant, in fact, the replacement of an extremely relaxed, practically imperceptible, and scarcely more than formal authority by an infinitely burdensome and earnest regimentation of the conduct of life [Lebensführung], which penetrated every sphere of domestic and public life to the greatest degree imaginable. Today, even peoples of thoroughly modern economic character can tolerate the rule of the Catholic Church—“punishing heretics, but treating sinners gently,” a principle that applied even more strongly in the sixteenth century than it does today; but the rule of Calvinism, as exercised in the sixteenth century in Geneva and Scotland, at the turn of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in large parts of the Netherlands, in the seventeenth century in New England, and at times even in England, would be for us simply the most unbearable form of ecclesiastical control over the individual that it would be possible to imagine.
What the reformers in the countries with the highest economic development disapproved of was not that there was too much but rather that there was too little ecclesiastical and religious control of life. How is it that it was precisely these economically most developed countries, and, as we shall see, within them precisely the economically rising “bourgeois”4 [bürgerlich] classes, which not only tolerated that Puritan tyranny but defended it with the sort of heroism that bourgeois classes as such have rarely before and never since exhibited—with what Carlyle, not without reason, calls “the last of our heroisms”?
As we have said, the fact that the majority of owners of capital and people in managerial positions in business today are Protestants may be understood in part simply as a consequence of the greater average amount of wealth passed on to them. It is important to emphasize, however, that there are phenomena for which no such causal relationship exists. These include, among others, the following. Firstly, the universally demonstrable difference, in Baden as well as in Bavaria and, for example, in Hungary, in the type of secondary education that Catholic, as opposed to Protestant, parents generally provide for their children. The fact that the percentage of Catholics among the pupils and candidates for the “abitur” in “secondary” educational institutions on the whole falls considerably below the proportion of Catholics in the general population [7] can, it is true, be attributed to a considerable degree to the differences in inherited wealth previously mentioned. But among those Catholics who do attend secondary school, the percentage of those educated in the modern institutions designed to prepare pupils for technical studies and commercial and business careers, or indeed for any middle-class [bürgerlich] occupation, again falls well short of that of Protestants. [8] Examples of such institutions are technical grammar school, technical school, city technical school, etc. [Realgymnasium, Realschule, Höhere Bürgerschulen]. Catholics prefer the education offered by the classics-based grammar schools [humanistische Gymnasien]. This is a phenomenon that cannot be explained by differences in inherited wealth. However, it may help to explain the low participation rate of Catholics in capitalist business life.
Even more striking, however, is an observation that helps us to understand the lower proportion of Catholics among skilled workers in modern industry. It is well known that the factories to a large extent take their skilled workers from the younger generation of craft workers, thus leaving the preliminary training of their workers to the trades themselves and only taking them on after this preliminary training is complete. But this practice is far more common among Protestant than among Catholic journeymen. In other words, among journeymen the Catholics show the greater inclination to remain in craft work and thus more often tend to become master craftsmen, while the Protestants to a greater degree tend to flock to the factories, where they form the upper echelons of skilled workers and management. [9] In these cases the choice of occupation [Berufswahl] and future career [berufliche Schicksale] has undoubtedly been determined by the distinct mental characteristics which have been instilled into them and indeed by the influence on them of the religious atmosphere of their locality and home background.
The lower proportion of Catholics in modern business life in Germany is particularly striking since it belies the usual experience of national or religious minorities today. When excluded from politically influential positions by the dominant group (or when choosing to exclude themselves), these minority groups generally come under particular pressure to pursue a business career; in this way their most talented members seek to achieve the ambition that can find no fulfillment within the service of the state. This is unmistakably how things stand today with regard to the Poles in Russia and Prussia, where they are undoubtedly doing well economically—in contrast to the situation in Galicia, where the Poles have political influence. It was the same with the Huguenots in France under Louis XIV and the Nonconformists and Quakers in England. Last but not least, it has been the same with the Jews for the last two thousand years. But in the case of the Catholics in Germany, we see no obvious sign of any such effect. Even in the past they never achieved very much economically, either in Holland or in England, during the periods when they were either persecuted or merely tolerated. It follows that the reason for these differences in attitude must be sought principally in their distinct internal characteristics [Eigenart] and not in the external historical an
d political situation of different denominations. [10]
It would therefore be important to discover which elements of the internal characteristics of the denominations have had (and continue to have) the effect described above. Looking at it from a modern and rather superficial point of view, one might be tempted to express the contrast by saying that the greater “unworldliness” of Catholicism and the ascetic features which express its highest ideals must necessarily induce in its followers a greater indifference toward worldly goods. Indeed, this reasoning does correspond to the view of the two denominations widely held today. This view leads Protestants to criticize those (real or alleged) ascetic ideals of the Catholic conduct of life [Lebensführung], while Catholics respond with the accusation of “materialism,” which they believe to be the consequence of the way Protestantism has secularized every aspect of life. One modern writer has formulated the contrasting attitudes of the two denominations toward business life in this way: “The Catholic . . . is more calm; his acquisitive drive is lower, he places more value on a life which is as secure as possible, even if this should be on a smaller income, than on a perilous, exciting life, which could bring honors and riches. As the popular saying jokingly has it, ‘either eat well or sleep soundly.’ In the above case, the Protestant likes to eat well, while the Catholic wants to sleep soundly.” [11] In fact, “wanting to eat well” may be an accurate, if incomplete, description of the motivation of the religiously indifferent section of Protestants in Germany at present.
In the past, things were very different. It is a well-known fact that the very opposite of enjoyment of life characterized the English, Dutch, and American Puritans. Indeed, as we shall see, this represented one of their most significant features in terms of our investigation. Moreover, French Protestantism has to a great extent preserved to this day the character which was impressed upon the Calvinist Churches in general and especially those “under the cross” in the period of religious conflict. Despite this—or perhaps, as we shall have to consider, precisely because of it—French Protestantism is known to have been one of the most significant agents of commercial and capitalist development in France and has remained so, in the small measure that persecution has permitted. If one wishes to use the term “unworldliness” [Weltfremdheit] to describe this seriousness and the powerful dominance of religious interests in determining their conduct of life [Lebensführung], then French Calvinists were and remain just as unworldly as (in general) the German (or at least the North German) Catholics, to whom Catholicism undoubtedly means more than it does to any other nation on earth. Both differ in similar ways from the predominant religious party: the lower social strata of the French Catholics have a great love of life and their upper strata are quite hostile to religion. In the same way, the Protestants of Germany are today preoccupied with secular commercial life, while their upper strata are largely indifferent to religious matters. [12] Scarcely anything demonstrates as clearly as this parallel that vague ideas, such as the (alleged!) “unworldliness” of Catholicism and of the (alleged!) “worldliness” of Protestantism and many other similar ones, are too general to explain anything, as they are wide of the mark to some extent today, and certainly in relation to the past. If one should wish to apply these concepts, however, then apart from the observations already made, a number of others, which readily present themselves, could even suggest that the supposed antithesis between unworldliness,” “asceticism,” and religious piety, on the one hand, and participation in capitalist commerce, on the other hand, might in fact amount to an inner affinity.