by Max Weber
It was in every respect a “capitalist” form of organization: the entrepreneurs were engaged purely in commerce; the use of capital stocks in the conduct of business was essential; viewed objectively, the economic process was capitalist in form. But it was traditionalist economy if one looks at the spirit which inspired the entrepreneurs: the traditional way of life, level of profit, and amount of work; the traditional style of running the business and of relations with workers; the essentially traditional clientele; the traditional manner of obtaining clients and sales. These things dominated the operation of the business and underlay the “ethic” of this circle of entrepreneurs.
At some point this easygoing state of affairs was suddenly disturbed, often without there being any fundamental change in the form of the organization—such as conversion to a unified business,24 machine operation, or the like. What happened was often simply this. A young man from one of the putter-out families from the town moved to the country, carefully selected the weavers he needed, tightened up control over them and made them more dependent, thus turning peasants into workers. He also took personal charge of sales, approaching the ultimate buyers, the retail stores, as directly as possible; he gained customers personally, traveled to see them every year on a regular basis; most important, he was able to adapt the quality of the products exclusively to their needs and wishes, and to “personalize” the products. At the same time he began to carry out the principle of “low price, high turnover.” There was then a repetition of what invariably follows a “rationalization” process of this kind: you either prospered or went under. Under the impact of the bitter struggle for survival that was beginning, the idyll collapsed. Considerable fortunes were made and not invested at interest but reinvested in the business. The old, comfortable, and easygoing way of life gave way to harsh realities. Those who became involved got on; they had no wish to consume but only to make profits. Those who carried on in the same old way were compelled to tighten their belts.
In such cases (and this is the main point), it was not normally an influx of new money that brought about this revolution—in a number of cases known to me the entire “revolutionizing process” was set in motion with a few thousand marks capital borrowed from relatives: it was the new spirit at work—the “spirit of capitalism.” The question of the motive forces behind the development of capitalism is not primarily a question of the origin of the money reserves to be used, but a question of the development of the capitalist spirit. Wherever it emerges and is able to make its influence felt, it creates the money as the means of achieving its effects, although the reverse is not true. However, its entry on to the scene is not normally a peaceful one. Suspicion, occasionally hatred, most of all moral indignation, can threaten to overwhelm the pioneer. Often—several cases are known to me—myths begin to circulate regarding his supposedly murky past. Few people are sufficiently clear-sighted to be aware of the unusual strength of character that is required from this “new type” of entrepreneur if he is not to lose his sober self-control and face moral and economic shipwreck. As well as energy and clarity of vision, he will need certain outstanding “ethical” qualities to win the absolutely indispensable confidence of the clients and of the workers when introducing these innovations and to maintain the vigor necessary to overcome the innumerable obstacles he will meet. It is these qualities above all which have made possible the infinitely more intensive work rate that is now demanded of the entrepreneur. There is no longer any place for the comfortable lifestyle. These ethical qualities are quite different in kind from those that were adequate for the traditionalism of the past.
Now one may be inclined to observe that these personal moral qualities, in themselves, have nothing whatever to do with any ethical maxims, let alone religious ideas, but rather that the negative ability to relinquish old traditions (by a kind of liberal enlightenment) is an adequate basis for this conduct of life. And, in fact, today this is, in general, certainly true. Not only is there normally no correlation between the conduct of life and religious principles, but where a correlation does exist it tends to be, at least in Germany, negative in character. The kind of people who are inspired by the “capitalist spirit” today tend to be, if not exactly hostile to the Church, then at least indifferent. The prospect of the “holy tedium” of paradise holds few attractions for their active nature; for them, religion is simply something that stops people from working here on earth. If one were to ask them what is the purpose of their restless chase and why they are never satisfied with what they have acquired (something which must seem inexplicable to those who are entirely oriented to this world), they would answer, if they had an answer at all, “to provide for children and grandchildren.” More frequently, however—and this motive is obviously not peculiar to them but applies to “traditionalist people”—they would answer, with greater justification, that business, with its ceaseless work, had quite simply become “indispensable to their life.” That is in fact their only true motivation, and it expresses at the same time the irrational element of this way of conducting one’s life, whereby a man exists for his business, not vice versa.
Of course, the sense of power and the prestige that the mere fact of wealth bestows play their part. When the imagination of an entire nation has become focused on sheer size, as in the United States, the mystique of figures may work its irresistible magic on the “poets” among businessmen. But it holds few attractions for leading entrepreneurs, especially those that are consistently successful. And certainly, the behavior of typical German capitalist parvenu families who enter the safe haven of inherited property and ennoblement [Fideikommiβbesitzes und Briefadels], and whose sons try to hide their social origins by the way they conduct themselves at the university and in the officers’ corps, is an example of the decadence of epigones. The “ideal type” of the capitalist entrepreneur [34], exemplified in our country by certain outstanding examples, is worlds away from such pretentiousness, whether crude or more refined. He shuns ostentation and unnecessary show, spurns the conscious enjoyment of his power, and is embarrassed by the outward signs of the social esteem in which he is held. His conduct of life, in other words, is often characterized to a certain degree by a form of asceticism like that which emerges clearly in the “sermon” of Franklin which we previously quoted. We shall have to pursue the historical significance of this phenomenon, which is not unimportant for our purpose. In particular, it is by no means unusual, in fact it is quite common, to find in him a degree of modesty that is significantly more honest than the reserve that Benjamin Franklin so judiciously recommends. He “gets nothing out of” his wealth for his own person—other than the irrational sense of “fulfilling his vocation” [Berufserfüllung]. [35]
It is precisely this however that seems so incomprehensible and puzzling, so sordid and contemptible, to precapitalist man. For anyone to make the purpose of his life’s work exclusively the idea of eventually going to one’s grave laden with a heavy weight of money and goods seems to him the product of perverse instinct, of the “auri sacra fames.”
At present, under our political, legal, and trading institutions, with the business structure characteristic of our economy, this “spirit” of capitalism could, as we have said, be understood purely as a product that has adapted to its environment. The capitalist economic order needs this uncompromising devotion to the “vocation” [Beruf] of moneymaking. It is an attitude to outward possessions which is so appropriate [adäquat] to the economic structure, and is so very closely linked with the prerequisites for success in the economic struggle for existence, that there can no longer be any question today of a necessary connection between that chrematistic25 conduct of life and any one uniform philosophy of life. Indeed, those who take this attitude no longer find it necessary to rely on the approval of any religious powers and regard the influence exerted on economic life by the norms of the Church, to the extent that this influence still makes itself felt, to be just as much of a hindrance as regulation by the state. T
he interests represented by the politics of trade and social affairs then tend to determine the “philosophy of life.” But these are phenomena of a period in which capitalism, having emerged victorious, has liberated itself from the old supports. Just as once it could only break the mold of medieval economic regulation in alliance with the emerging modern state power, so—let us say provisionally—the same could be true of its relationship with the religious powers. Whether and in what sense this actually was the case is precisely what we propose to investigate here.
Scarcely any proof is needed that this attitude toward moneymaking as an end in itself, a “vocation” [Beruf], which one has a duty to pursue, runs counter to the moral feeling of entire eras. The phrase “Deo placere non potest” was used in relation to the activity of the merchant.26 But, when compared to widely held radical antichrematistic views,27 this represented a considerable accommodation of Catholic doctrine to the interests of the financial powers of the Italian cities that were politically so closely allied with the Church. And even when the doctrine was softened even more, as in the case of Antoninus of Florence, the feeling still lingered that gain as an activity pursued as an end in itself was basically a “pudendum,”28 which was tolerated solely because it had become an established institution. A “moral” view like that of Benjamin Franklin would have been simply unthinkable. This was also the position of those directly concerned. Their life’s work was, at best, something morally neutral—tolerated, but, on account of the constant danger of clashing with the Church’s ban on usury, spiritually dubious. The sources reveal that upon the death of wealthy people, considerable sums of money flowed into the coffers of Church institutions as “conscience money,” some of it even going back to former debtors as “usura” wrongfully taken from them. Even skeptical persons not in sympathy with the Church tended to play safe and pay these sums in order to be reconciled with the Church just in case the worst came to the worst. It was an insurance against the uncertainties concerning the afterlife and because, after all (at least this rather lax view was widely held), outward conformity to the laws of the Church was sufficient for salvation. [36] It is here that the amoral and in part immoral character of their actions becomes clear, as those concerned themselves saw it.
How, then, did what was, at best, behavior which was morally no more than tolerated, become a “calling” as understood by Benjamin Franklin? This behavior was regarded as the epitome of a morally laudable conduct of life—and was even enjoined as a duty—in the primitive, petit bourgeois environment of eighteenth-century Pennsylvania, where the economy was in constant danger of collapsing into barter, where there was scarcely a trace of the larger commercial [gewerblichen] enterprises, and only the antediluvian beginnings of banks could be detected. And yet, in the Florence of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the money and capital market for every political great power, the center of the “capitalist” world at that time, it was regarded as morally dubious. How is this historically explicable? To speak of a “reflection” of the “material” conditions in the “superstructure of ideas” would be sheer nonsense here. What, then, is the philosophy according to which an activity that is outwardly directed solely toward profit is characterized as a “calling”—one to which the individual feels an obligation? For it is this philosophy that, here too, guarantees the ethical foundation and support for the conduct of life of the “new style” entrepreneur.
As Sombart has said in his highly felicitous and effective writings, the basic motive of economic life can be termed “economic rationalism.” And this is undoubtedly true, if one understands by this the increase in the productivity of labor, which by structuring the production process along scientific lines has eliminated labor’s links with the naturally existing “organic” limitations of the human being. This rationalization process in the field of technology and economics undoubtedly also determines a significant proportion of the “ideals” of modern civil [bürgerlich] society: in the minds of the representatives of the “spirit of capitalism,” labor in the service of a rational structuring of the provision of the material needs of humanity has always been one of the guiding purposes of their life’s work. To grasp this self-evident truth, one only needs to read, for example, Franklin’s description of the efforts he made to bring about municipal improvements in Philadelphia. Creating employment for numerous people and contributing to the economic prosperity (in the capitalist sense of demography and trade) of one’s hometown is a source of pleasure and pride to the modern entrepreneur and helps to give him an “enjoyment of life” which is undoubtedly founded on “idealism.” Similarly, it is, of course, one of the fundamental characteristics of the private capitalist economy that, rationalized on the basis of strict arithmetical calculation—or as Sombart puts it: shaped “by calculation”—it aims at the economic success desired and planned for, in contrast to the hand-to-mouth existence of the peasant or the privileged routine of the guild craft worker.
It might appear, then, that the development of the “capitalist spirit” can most easily be understood as a part of the total development of rationalism and must be derived from the latter’s fundamental attitude to the ultimate problems of life. Thus Protestantism could only be considered historically to the extent that it had played a part as “harbinger” of a purely rationalist philosophy of life. But as soon as one begins the task in earnest, it becomes evident that such a simple way of approaching the problem will not do, if only because the history of rationalism by no means shows parallel advances being made in different individual areas of life.
The rationalization of civil law, for example, if by this we mean a conceptual simplification and ordering of the contents of the law, reached its highest form yet in the Roman law of late antiquity. But it is at its most backward in some of the economically most highly rationalized countries, notably in England, where a renaissance of Roman law was thwarted by the power of the great legal associations; by contrast, the dominance of the Roman law in the Catholic regions of southern Europe has continued uninterrupted. The purely secular rational philosophy of the eighteenth century became established not solely or even primarily in the countries with the highest capitalist development. Even today, the philosophy of Voltaire is commonly subscribed to by broad swathes of upper and—what is in practice more important—middle social strata, particularly in the Catholic Latin countries. Most of all, if we understand by practical “rationalism” that conduct of life which deliberately relates the world to the secular interests of the individual and judges from that perspective, then (it must be said that) this style of life was and today remains a quite “typical” feature of the nations of the “liberum arbitrium,”29 a feature which is deeply ingrained in the Italians and the French. And we have already found convincing proof that this is by no means the soil in which that relationship of man to his “calling,” viewed as a task given to him, which is what capitalism demands, best flourishes. It is possible to “rationalize” life from extremely varied ultimate standpoints and in very different directions; “rationalism” is a historical concept which embraces a world of opposites, and we shall have to investigate the intellectual origin of that concrete form of “rational” thinking and living from which arose the idea of the “calling” and that devotion to the work of the calling—so irrational from the point of view of eudaemonistic self-interest—which was and still is one of the most characteristic components of our capitalist culture. What interests us here is the origin of that irrational element which is contained in the concept of the “calling.”
3. [LUTHER’S CONCEPTION OF THE CALLING]
Now it is unmistakable that the German word “Beruf,” and even more clearly the English word “calling,” carry at least some religious connotations—namely, those of a task set by God—and the more strongly we emphasize the word in a particular case, the more strongly felt these connotations become. And if we trace the word back through history in the civilized languages, it becomes evident that the Latin, Catholic peo
ples, like those of classical antiquity [37], have no expression which quite corresponds to our word “Beruf,” in the sense of one’s station in life or defined area of work. By contrast, all Protestant peoples have such an expression. And it is further evident that what we are concerned with is not some ethnically determined characteristic of the Germanic languages, or the expression of a “Germanic spirit of the people,” but the fact that the word in its present meaning derives from the translations of the Bible, in fact, from the spirit of the translators, not from the spirit of the original. [38] In Luther’s translation the word seems to have been used for the first time in the book of Ecclesiasticus [Jesus Sirach] (11, 20–21) in precisely our modern sense. [39] Very soon after that it took on today’s meaning in the secular [profan] language of all Protestant peoples. Previously, no suggestion of such a meaning had been observable in the secular literature of any of them. Even in published sermons it has, as far as one can tell, only appeared in the work of one German mystic, whose influence on Luther is well known.