The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism

by Max Weber

  Neither do I feel responsible for my critic’s assumption that I wrote my essays simply to explain the relationship (still noticeable today) between denominational circumstances and economic and social stratification. I have stressed very strongly (vol. 20, p. 23; here in this volume; and frequently elsewhere) that present-day capitalism, which is built on a mechanical foundation and imports Polish workers into Westphalia, and coolies to California, takes a totally different attitude to this problem from the capitalism of the early period. The fact that, despite all of this, even today differences in economic behavior between the denominations may still be observed, and have occasionally been debated, merely gave me, as I have said (op. cit., p. 25; here in this volume), the starting point and the occasion justifiably to pose the question of how denomination and economic conduct may have related to each other in the early period of capitalism.

  The fact that these two cultural components even then did not stand in a relationship of “lawful” dependency—so that where x (ascetic Protestantism) is, there y (capitalist “spirit”) will also be, without exception—is, a priori, self-evident, given the nature of the causal linkage of historically complex phenomena with each other. [5] However, the remarks of my critic on the Dutch capitalists are inaccurate even from the factual point of view: the process of the purchase of feudal estates by certain strata of the city patriciate was typical there too (see vol. 21, p. 103 [note 299 in this volume]). I have also made some (purely provisional) observations on the determinants (to be discussed in detail later) of the development in Holland in volume 20, page 26 [note 32 in this volume], and volume 21, pages 85–86 [here in this volume, but Holland is not mentioned there], observations with which my critic also to some extent confronts me as though they were objections. I shall probably also have more to say at a later stage about the significance of certain religious groups for the development of the Lower Rhine region in the early capitalist period. [6] Furthermore, I should like to remind readers that “Reformed” is not simply identical to “Calvinist,” and also that “Calvinism” did not exhibit those characteristics of concern to my investigations to their fullest extent prior to its development into ascetic Puritanism. I should also like to stress once again that “Calvinism” is by no means identical to the genuine doctrine taught by Calvin. I refer once again to what I wrote in volume 21, pages 103–104 [footnote on page 117 in this volume]. Surely no one could think me capable of believing that denominational allegiance alone could produce out of thin air in this way a certain type of economic development—that Baptists in Siberia, for example, would inevitably turn into wholesalers, or Calvinist dwellers in the Sahara become factory owners—clearly, no one would wish to attribute such an opinion to me. To give an example, in a country in the geographic and cultural situation of Hungary at the time when it was repeatedly being subjected to and liberated from the Turks, the assumption that Calvinism ought to have created capitalist forms of business would be as bizarre as the assumption that the dominance [Herrschaft] of capitalism in Holland ought to have led to the production of seams of coal under the ground there. By the way, even in Hungary it did have a characteristic effect, although this was in another sphere. I have also (vol. 20, p. 4, notes 1–2 [notes 7 and 8 in this volume]) referred incidentally to figures which show that, despite everything, there are signs even there of the appearance of those characteristic phenomena regarding choice of occupation [Berufswahl] by Reformed people which was my starting point. I believe I have already made my views on the relationship between religious and economic conditions in general sufficiently clear for the time being, albeit briefly (see, for example, vol. 21, p. 101, note 69 [note 295 in this volume]). There is little I can do about it if such passages, together with numerous others, in particular the concluding remarks to the entire essay, are simply ignored.

  I therefore reject any responsibility for the misunderstandings that appear to me to underlie the present “critique.” I shall, however, in the forthcoming separate edition of the essays, which for technical reasons concerned with publication really cannot be put off any longer, attempt once again to eliminate any phrasing that could be erroneously taken to imply the suggestion on my part that economic forms could be derived from religious motives. I shall also try to make even clearer that it is the spirit of the “methodical” conduct of life [Lebensführung] which should be “derived” from “asceticism” in its Protestant form, and that this spirit stands only in a relationship of “adequacy” to the economic forms—a relationship which is, however, in my view most important from the standpoint of cultural history. I am grateful to my critic for helping me to appreciate the need to do this, although it has to be said that no critique in this area of infinitely complex causal relationships can be genuinely factually [sachlich] based without a thorough familiarity with the source material, something which he lacks. [7]

  Regretfully, I must inform him that his positive “psychological” analyses get us absolutely nowhere. When I declared today’s agreed body of “psychological” concepts to be inadequate (vol. 21, p. 45 [note 148 in this volume]) to be safely employed to solve a concrete problem of religious history, namely, the significance of certain hysterical phenomena, in early Pietism, I was obviously not speaking about attempts like those made by my critic, but about exact researches in the area of hysteria. It is only from these that I would expect any new insights [8] of value for this problem. By contrast, the arguments of my critic in his critique precisely illustrate the uselessness of what passes for “psychology” as a means of historical explanation of phenomena like those with which I am concerned. “If,” he says, “we express the idea of the acquisition of money. . . , purely as an end in itself, in psychological terms, we can look upon it as the individual’s pleasure in powerful activity.” [9] Even this first step into the territory of this “psychology” is, from the historical point of view, a false step. Such “pleasure in powerful activity” may be an accurate description of a side effect of moneymaking for many types of modern businesspeople, and similarly in the past for types like Jakob Fugger and similar economic “supermen,” of whom I myself have also spoken. These were types who since Babylonian antiquity have existed wherever there was money to be made [10], but who are precisely not characteristic of that spirit of the sober methodical life [Lebensmethodik], the analysis of which was my concern. The “powerful activity of the individual” and his “pleasure” in this may be studied in the so-called Renaissance men—but if we apply the same expression to Puritans, who were subject to ascetic discipline in the same way as the monks were, then (how could it be otherwise when dealing with such imprecise abstractions?) we understand something fundamentally different.

  Generalizing doctrines of this kind are worlds away from the phenomena of historical reality. This, in my view, is evident from his subsequent exploration of questions such as the following. To which category [Schema] of psychological phenomena should this “plea-sure” be assigned? Should a certain kind of “transference of emotional states” be seen as a “general psychic occurrence” and if so what should theoretically follow from this? What historical processes were consequently “conceivable” and which ones were not? When could the “high regard for money” have arisen and when could it not? (Such high regard, as I stress again, embraces quite heterogeneous “psychic” phenomena from Molière’s Avare to Carnegie and the Indian raja, and, in itself, has simply nothing to do with the methodical life of the Puritans.) [11] How might an abstract concept like the “sense of duty” have arisen, and, in particular, could the origin of the duty of the calling have a more “natural” explanation than that which I had offered? I have already demonstrated on so many other occasions that such generalizing doctrines rest upon fundamental errors that it would be superfluous to do so again here.

  It would certainly be a far more convenient way of tracing certain effects back to their historical causes if we could simply deduce the origin of certain characteristic styles of life from the abstractions of
“psychology.” However, historical reality is outside our control and does not first ask whether the psychological schemata of John Stuart Mill, Herbert Spencer [12], or even of my critic, can accommodate the fact that the people of that past age had very concrete ideas of what awaited them after death, that they held firm views on how best to improve their chances in this regard, that they designed their actions accordingly, and that how they did this, which depended on the different views regarding the conditions to be met in order to guarantee salvation, was important for cultural development. It is, of course, hard for modern man to imagine the agonizing force of such metaphysical notions.

  Nevertheless, after all the various “psychological” considerations, my critic finally admits the obvious connection between the development of the capitalist “spirit” in France and the Huguenot movement. I am sufficiently lacking in modesty to believe that (1) I have found a similar “parallelism,” which he at first finds quite inexplicable, in a number of other areas, and (2) I have made a reasonably plausible attempt at an explanation, and backed this up with a series of noteworthy facts. It is, to be honest, a matter of indifference to me whether or not some abstract “psychology” happens to fit the facts I have adduced: the theory must be made to fit the facts, not vice versa. I warmly welcome the assistance of any psychology whose concepts help me in any way to assign concrete historical phenomena to their concrete causes. Regarding my problem, however, I can derive nothing from what I know of “psychological” literature, including the works cited by my critic, that goes any way toward satisfying my need to find causes. It is, unfortunately, well known that exact scientific work on religious pathology, as far as the questions which interest me are concerned, is still in its infancy.

  WEBER’S NOTES

  1) And, moreover, only in these two statements. He will surely have to concede that on pages 18–35, op. cit. [here in this volume] I have contributed rather more to the elucidation of the concept (even if all this is merely provisional).

  2) For the precisely opposite case, see, for example, the remarks in volume 20, page 28 [here in this volume].

  3) Self-evidently, as I have stated myself, the reshaping of the Baptist ethic (which was originally in part eschatological, in part enthusiastic,6 and in part antipolitical) is “conformity to the world,” just as it was for early Christianity.

  4) In one single instance a printing error—albeit one that could easily be recognized as such—may have been partly responsible. On page 69 (op. cit.) [here in this volume] it is said of the Anabaptists: “Admittedly, the effect of this “waiting” can result in hysterical states, prophecy, and, where eschatological hopes are cherished, even to an outbreak of fanatical reforming zeal, as has existed in the Münster movement, which was crushed.” Owing to a printing error, “hysterische Zustände” [“hysterical states”] appeared as “hysterischen Zuständen.”7 However, the context immediately makes it clear, in my view, that this is a printing error, and what follows reinforces this. What could possibly be meant by “Waiting in hysterical states”—and yet the author understands this as contrasting with sober work in the calling?

  5) The only incautious formulation of which I could be accused is the remark (vol. 20, p. 8 [here in this volume]) that Calvinism shows the coincidence of intense piety and capitalist acquisitiveness [Erwerbs-sinn] “wherever it [Calvinism] occurred.” When saying this I had in mind the Calvinism of the diaspora, of which Gothein also speaks in the passage I quoted shortly afterward.

  6) For the present period, of course, what I have said about capitalism today still applies. In particular regarding Belgium today. By contrast, the gradual migration of Calvinists northward from Belgium to Holland was highly significant, both politically and economically, as we can see from any history of the Thirty Years War. These were Calvinists who originally, in the sixteenth century, had moved into the southern regions of Belgium, where they found themselves in a minority.

  7) Although there may be some who see this as “old-fashioned,” I would regard theologians as most competent to provide this critique.

  8) From this source, light could be shed on the influence of religious institutions and attitudes on everything that is covered today by the insubstantial concept of “national character” [Volkscharakter]. More on this in due course in the separate edition.

  9) On this he again quotes Fugger’s maxim, which, as I have already said, I had placed in opposition to what I had called the “spirit of capitalism.”

  10) I myself have frequently discussed this (for example, vol. 21, p. 109 [here in this volume]). Obviously, this type exists not only in this pure American form; something of it can be found among broad strata of the business community today.

  11) See volume 20, page 19 [here in this volume], and the whole of the final section of the second essay.

  12) The quoted “explanatory methods” of the two important scholars named are specifically English and to some extent themselves a late embodiment of that kind of “natural” philosophy of life that we find in Franklin—which, however, is the antithesis of empirical historical analysis. The only aspects of such constructions that are correct are a few trivialities from everyday experience with which all economic historians operate even if they lack any knowledge of Mill and Spencer.

  EDITORS’ NOTES

  1. Max Weber “Kritische Bemerkungen zu den vorstehenden “Kritischen Beiträgen,” Archiv für Sozialwissenschaft und Sozialpolitik 25 (1907), pp. 243–49.

  2. H. Karl Fischer, “Kritische Beiträge zu Prof. M. Webers Abhandlung: ‘Die protestantische Ethik und der Geist des Kapitalismus,’” Archiv für Sozialwissenschaft und Sozialpolitik 25 (1907), pp. 232–42; “Protestantische Ethik und ‘Geist des Kapitalismus.’ Replik auf Herrn Prof. Max Webers Gegenkritik,” Archiv für Sozialwissenschaft und Sozialpolitik, vol. 26 (1908), pp. 270–74.

  Curiously, in the first article (1907), the author’s name is given as H. Karl Fischer, whereas in the second article (1908) it is given as K. H. Fischer.

  H. Karl Fischer has proved to be a tantalizingly elusive figure to track down, but the following biographical information has been very kindly supplied by Dr. Michael Matthiesen, of the Max-Planck-Institut für Geschichte, Göttingen, through the good offices of Dr. Guenther Roth.

  Karl Heinrich Otto Fischer was born on June 3, 1879, in Berlin. From 1899 to 1902 he taught in schools in Hamburg, the Magdeburg region, and Lüdenscheid. From 1902 to 1904 he taught in Berlin and Potsdam. During this period he began to study philosophy and history as a Gasthörer (attending lectures only) at the University of Berlin, enrolling as a full-time student in 1904 and adding economics [Nationalökono-mie]. From 1905 to 1908 he continued his studies at the University of Zurich, adding pedagogy and psychology to his range of subjects. In 1908 he took his doctorate at Zurich, the title of his dissertation (which makes no mention of Weber) being “Die objektive Methode der Moralphilosophie bei Wundt und Spencer.” It was published in Leipzig in 1909. The supervisor was Gustav Wilhelm Störring (1860–1946), who had been a student of Wilhelm Wundt. Unfortunately, after the controversy with Weber and the award of the doctorate, the trail goes cold. All we know is that he was employed as Schulrat (official in the local education authority) in Berlin, where he died on March 22, 1975.

  3. The reference is to Edgar Jaffé and Werner Sombart, coeditors with Weber of the Archiv für Sozialwissenschaft und Sozialpolitik.

  4. The reference is to volume 20 of the Archiv für Sozialwissenschaft und Sozialpolitik, in which Weber’s essay appeared.

  5. Weber consistently refers to H. K. Fischer as “Mein Herr Kritiker,” but Herr is merely a conventional form of address (though not without a touch of irony in this case), and we have omitted it in the translation. By contrast, Weber is seldom even prepared to dignify Professor Rachfahl with the title of “critic” without putting it in quotation marks.

  6. The word used is from the older meaning of enthusiasm, namely, a state of religious ecstasy.

  7
. The former is in the accusative case, and implies a transformation into a hysterical state, whereas the erroneous form is in the dative case, implying that the waiting itself occurs in a hysterical state.

  Remarks on the Foregoing “Reply”1

  A READER WHO WISHED to orient himself in this (rather fruitless) debate would need to be not only “thoughtful” but above all patient enough to inform himself at every point by reference to my essays about what I said and did not say. He would then no doubt be amazed to hear the assertion that I had not “seen” the childishly simple “methodical” principles and problems of historical causality about which we have been lectured, and that I therefore “had nothing to offer” by way of thoughts on the decisive causal questions of my investigation. The assertion seems all the more astonishing when one compares it to the purely a priori approach with which my critic himself imagines he can tackle these problems, knowing absolutely nothing about “our” material, which concerns us here, not even the most general literary characteristics of the sources. In his supposedly “methodological” study he calls them “religious books of edification” and confuses them with “dogmatic systems.”