The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism

by Max Weber

  2) So that there can be no doubt as to whom I meant on that occasion by those “others,” whose assessment of my views seemed to me (here and there) one-sided, I would say this. In particular, Hans Delbrück in my opinion has been holding forth for far too long about how particular historians are still overly keen to discover “refutations” of the materialist view of history. Also, I can only regard F. J. Schmidt’s “edifices of ideas” (also published in the Preuβische Jahrbücher)—even if they have been undertaken with much intelligence—as mere “constructions,” as I feel that they also conclude too much from what I have so far been able to set down, although I do not wish to disparage them in themselves. The “British imperialism” of my friend von Schulze-Gävernitz is assuredly very far from being a mere construction, and certainly not one based entirely on my views, as R. has maintained. As far as he has assessed these at all, he has complemented and extended them in a very felicitous manner. He himself will not deny that he “one-sidedly” pursues the causal series in a spiritualist direction: this is both his strength and, if you like, his weakness; in particular, I completely agree with my Bonn colleague when he makes the point that the dualism of the squirearchy and the bourgeois [bürgerlich] middle classes, (which again and again, and even in the Cobden movement, are typically allied with the dissenters), runs right through the last three hundred years of English history. But even Schulze-Gävernitz will not dispute this. Exaggerations like those indulged in by Delbrück in particular, really did not serve the purpose of my essay, which dealt with a clearly defined subject, and did so, if I may say so, with unpretentious and straightforward objectivity. But I was not responsible for this, as I was at pains to point out and moreover, as Rachfahl very well knew—for, as I have mentioned, he cites the article concerned—I did what I could at the first opportunity that presented itself to ensure that they did not even come up for discussion, so that there was scarcely any need for Rachfahl’s belated assistance in the matter. How he proposes to reconcile the use of such exaggerations against me with his sense of literary propriety is a matter for him.

  This is not the place to discuss the representation of my views by Troeltsch except to say that it contains just a few sentences that might give the assiduous “critic” who likes to dissect quotations like these in the manner of a talmudic exegesis of the Torah (and then declares that this is the essence of “historical criticism”) an opportunity to utilize them [Fruktifikation] in the way Rachfahl does. The brief remarks of von Schubert cannot, of course, be considered here either. As far as Gothein is concerned, however, who has also been named, Rachfahl either does not know, or since he could have read my quotation of it, has once again simply forgotten, that his relevant remarks were printed more than a decade before the publication of my essay. Naturally, Gothein has not altered his standpoint since.

  Where I believe I have genuine differences with authors whose findings are tangential to my own, it is not, of course, my practice to make any secret of this. For example, thanks to Rachfahl’s blatantly self-assured manner, Troeltsch has now gained the impression that I actually did “retrospectively” add something by way of justification of my views. Much to the delight of Rachfahl, of course, who, typically, now, for want of any other proof, appeals to him as a witness. For my part, I can only request my readers again to study my essay and convince themselves that everything I said in my rebuttal I had already said equally clearly in my essays. In my rebuttal I merely mentioned a couple of details by way of response to the objection regarding Hamburg and the Dutch development—something which, since Gothein had already demonstrated the significance of Calvinism, in particular, for Germany, I had not considered worthy of mention—and I have cited the situation in Wuppertal (I could have added Calw where Pietism is concerned). That is all! What are these tiny “new elements” to what I had said in my essays regarding all the great principal regions where ascetic Protestantism spread (England, France, the Netherlands, America)? It is not difficult to understand that Troeltsch, who was simply answering for himself and only mentioned me in passing, was not prepared to trawl through my essay again from A to Z ad hoc for the sake of a polemic about his theses. He simply credited Rachfahl with at least a modicum of reliability. But someone who claims to have made a fundamental “critique” of these essays, and, as we shall see, makes great play with the “exactitude” of his “historical criticism” (and explicitly contrasts this with Troeltsch!), can have no such excuse.

  Columns 792–93 present us with a particularly characteristic effort, where in the expansive manner favored by Rachfahl, using bold print for the particular words by which he sets the greatest store, he informs his readers that, because at one point I speak of “ascetic Protestantism creating for capitalism the ‘soul’ that corresponds to it, namely, the soul of the ‘man of the calling,’” my thesis therefore in fact already states that the “disposition” [Habitus] analyzed by me in and of itself alone contains everything by way of motives that is effective in today’s (!) capitalism. He fails to mention that the context shows quite naturally that I am referring to the particular kind of bourgeois [bürgerlich] capitalist development specific to the period of which I speak. He is also kind enough to imply that I excluded the capitalism of Jewish origin from my analysis, basing his implication solely on the fact that in a completely different place I said just one word about the attitude of states toward the Jews being an instance where toleration or the lack of it could in fact—see below—be economically relevant.

  The best of it is that R., basing his argument on this pathetic quibbling, finds it (col. 793) “at least pardonable” that others, on his interpretation of my words, have “made absolute” that single motive. He goes on to name (col. 792) as those to whom this applies not only Troeltsch but also Gothein (who as I have said was writing more than a decade before me) and von Schubert, after having previously (col. 791) given an assurance that he himself had not misunderstood my intentions in this way, although as we have seen, both in his original critique and even now, when it suits him, he still does so. All of this I find merely “pathetic.” And how is one supposed to answer a “critic” who talks about my having recently attempted, in a “rebuttal,” to solve problems that I “had not dared” to approach before?

  3) For a historian, this formulation is itself surely unduly naive. It is a well-known fact that the question of whether something “goes beyond the religious sphere” has been precisely the unresolved point at issue, on which everything turns, in all the cultural struggles throughout history. R. claims that he has no difficulty in identifying the boundary line. The fact that he nonetheless refrains from attempting this seems to me to be no loss for us, for he goes on to express the strange view that on this point “the actors in history have often demonstrated a remarkably fine instinct.” Well, this “fine instinct” permitted, for example, many a Huguenot army commander to engage in piracy, while the same instinct caused the Huguenot merchants to persuade the economically disinterested members of the Huguenot synod (who were, after all, also “actors”)12 to make an attempt to call them to account for this. The same “instinct” caused the Stuarts to take up the struggle against the Puritans’ ascetic Sunday observance, and the radical strata among the latter to take up the struggle against the tithes, on which, for example, the existence of the universities was based, which in turn led Cromwell to break with them. This very same supposedly unambiguous instinct inspired, on the one hand, Bismarck’s May Laws, and, on the other hand, the Pope’s decrees regarding the political stance of the Catholics in Italy and Germany, and finally the opposition of the Center Party both to the May Laws and (on occasion) to the Pope.

  All the difficulties to which the dogma of the Vatican is exposed and will continue to be exposed, and all the difficulties of the separation of church and state, are the result of the intrinsic impossibility of determining with certainty where the limits of what is religiously relevant lie. So the idea that only “modern theologians” could be in any dou
bt about those limits (col. 719) can only be described as politically infantile. Such things are widely known and it certainly never occurred to me to claim “originality” for them, as R. maliciously suggests. And although I really did not therefore take the view that “whole generations of historians” ought to devote themselves to an exhaustive treatment of these palpable matters—for no serious-minded historian would forget such things in the way that Rachfahl does when attempting, in the course of his polemic, to prove that he is right—I do continue to believe that R. himself and his ilk occasionally need to be forcefully reminded of them.

  Rachfahl has taken on the special task of attacking a supposed “Heidelberg” speciality. I have in front of me a doctoral dissertation that he supervised, dealing, inter alia, with G. Jellinek’s writings on the role played by religion in determining “human rights.” The style in which the writer of this dissertation reproduces opinions with which he disagrees, and the way he homes in on alleged “contradictions,” etc., bears all the hallmarks of R.’s “critical” effort. Of course, no one is inclined or obliged to take responsibility for everything that is written in dissertations that he has supervised—I would certainly not accept it for myself. But the “style” can scarcely be coincidental in the present case.

  Moreover, when R. sums up his view of the development of American democracy (vol. 3, col. 1358) by saying that it “essentially developed by itself,” this original solution to the problem would at least appear to have the advantage of a simplicity which could be recommended for all historical questions. Seriously, though, the fact that the religious basis of life was completely taken for granted was what most clearly distinguished the American state, with its strict formal neutrality, from European and other democracies, and—as Troeltsch himself has convincingly demonstrated—is the reason why the notion of the “separation of state and church” has such a totally different cachet there from what is has for us. In all seriousness, it is questionable whether the original character of American democracy would have been possible if the religious basis of life had not been universally taken for granted in this way (as I also stressed in Christliche Welt). Today this is in decline, and, for example, the prayer, with which the Supreme Court, as well as almost every party convention was opened, or the “chapel record” (sic), which according to the statutes of many universities is a requirement for the official recognition of the semester, has become a farce, rather like the act of worship before the opening of the Reichstag here in Germany. At one time that was very different!

  4) Troeltsch says (and Rachfahl quotes this): Rachfahl wanted to use examples “to illustrate how little effect the religious factor has on life in general.”

  5) Rachfahl himself informs us that he has become confused by my arguments. I decline to accept responsibility for this, and Rachfahl’s critique and reply show the reason why, for anyone willing to see it.

  6) Let there be no doubt about this. We are talking about trivialities such as Troeltsch’s errors regarding my relationship to Sombart, or what I had already said in my essay about the Reformed people in Hungary and similar matters, in other words about things that even now Rachfahl still serves up to his public, even after I have pointed out to him in my rebuttal the erroneous nature of the assertions he has taken from Troeltsch. None of this stops him informing Troeltsch, who rightly looks upon these things with undisguised indifference, that historical criticism, faced with such sins, “will not have the courage to rise to this sublime and pleasing standpoint” (sic).

  7) Volume 3, column 1257: “so we arrive at the fundamental difference (between Troeltsch and me) . . . the conception (sic) of the old Protestant asceticism,” and this is (col. 1258): “that he” (I) “knows nothing of a general old Protestant ascetic ethic (sic) in the sense that Troeltsch understands it.” But compare this with column 1260: the “Weber-Troeltsch asceticism concept” (similarly in his reply where he explicitly refers to “the Weber-Troeltsch thesis”), and further, column 1259: the assurance that what I say about the “ascetic style of life amounts to the same” as Troeltsch’s “definition” of the asceticism concept, and indeed the entire polemic on this “question,” aimed at the two of us jointly, a question which was only created by Rachfahl for polemical purposes.

  7a) Compare columns 755, 782, 786 and throughout.

  8) Typical of the general tenor of this so-called critique is what I can only call the little faultfinding trick of contrasting Troeltsch’s remark that he had simply “taken over” my findings where these complemented his own with my remark that my theories had not been “taken over” by Troeltsch, and printing the words “taken over” in bold, thus making the two remarks appear to “contradict” each other. In fact, anyone can see that in the first case what is meant is that Troeltsch reproduced my findings and reported them with approval, whereas in the second I meant that he did not “take over” my theories as a scientific justification for his own researches, which were quite unlike mine and had different aims.

  Now (col. 689) R. even tries to make his readers believe that Troeltsch’s writings are “the only coherent attempt to show that the Weber schema underlies the course of history” (sic)—a “chemically pure” nonsense about which Troeltsch would probably be just as amused as anyone who knows what his work is actually about, but which may fool the uninformed reader, on whom R., here as ever, depends. In another place (in his first “critique”), von Schulze-Gävernitz and von Schubert were depicted as being in the same position, that of being actually no more than apostles of my “doctrines.” And (according to Rachfahl) “it is well known that I have left the Jews” to Sombart. It would seem, then, that I have a whole vassal army of the most outstanding scholars dancing to my tune. Presumably, their number now even includes Professor H. Levy, whom, after I had referred to a favorable notice he had given me, R., in malicious and (I would say) childish fashion, greets as a fellow conspirator in the “working party” he alleges to exist, and, finally, I suppose, Professor A. Wahl as well, whom (according to R.) I “can scarcely be said to have done a favor” by reproducing a comment of his.

  Similar standards are in evidence when Rachfahl falsely alleges the existence of a contradiction in the following instance. Rachfahl knows full well that Troeltsch, where he explicitly agrees with me, has in mind the aspects relating to theology and the psychology of religion (the only ones treated in depth), that he as a specialist is certainly far better qualified to judge than I am. Where this agreement is not self-evident, he has expressly declared it. As a nonspecialist, however, he declares himself not competent to judge those passages outside his specialist area, that is, those dealing with economic history, where I have quoted, by way of illustration, examples of the (well-known) economic dominance of ascetic Protestantism. Nevertheless, Rachfahl claims to see here a contradiction or even a “recantation” by Troeltsch of his agreement with my theses on the psychology of religion, even though he has now explicitly reiterated this agreement.

  9) It is clear from my essays, to which I referred in my rebuttal, where I am in agreement with Rachfahl on the role of toleration. Rachfahl has simply added nothing new.

  10) A “constructor of history” could very easily make the mistake of deriving the character of the Dutch development from the fact that in this country Calvinism was obliged to abandon its intolerance to a particularly large extent (incidentally, it did so to the least extent in the province of Holland). And there would be a grain of truth (if only a small one) in this.

  Since we have gotten onto the subject of Holland, I will take the opportunity to deal with a few of Rachfahl’s “critical” efforts on the subject. I have mentioned the fact that Groen van Prinsterer, like me, mentions the combination of high levels of earnings and limited expenditure as a specific feature of the Dutch economic development. (Prinsterer’s special political position toward Prussian Conservatism, which was to a large extent religiously motivated, stands out in sharp relief, especially in the correspondence and disputes with th
e Stahl Circle, to which he was close and which was influenced by him). Rachfahl, who does not know the passage (he should look it up to widen his reading!), doubts that I have read the works of this scholar. In an author of less dubious pedigree, I should have to call this “effrontery.” In the case of Rachfahl, whose own standards of behavior led him to see practically nothing wrong with it, I shall, of course, refrain from so doing.

  To digress: when Busken-Huet occasionally speaks of Erasmus as a father of Dutch culture, this may make good sense with respect to the things of which he is speaking and in the sense in which he does so. With respect to the religious character [Eigenart] of Holland, Rachfahl has “generalized” [verabsolutiert] the word in a most questionable manner. Erasmus as father of the economic features [Eigentümlichkeiten] of Holland? Both Groen van Prinsterer and Busken-Huet would have laughed, as I did. Anyone with an unbiased interest in sixteenth- and especially seventeenth-century Dutch history knows that in view of the wider concept of “culture” with which we are here dealing, it would be foolish to speak of “the” Dutch culture in the way that Rachfahl does, in Busken-Huet’s name; in fact, within Dutch history and essentially up to the present day, the most stark antitheses have existed alongside each other and flourished.

  Anyone who has examined the internal disputes within these communities in any depth can see that these facts concerning the character [Eigenart] of the Dutch, which are explicitly confirmed by Groen, are very closely connected with the strict discipline of their religious communities. They are absolutely typical problems of the conduct of life [Lebensführung], which appear among the Huguenots, in America, and among the continental Pietists. They may differ in characteristic ways depending on the cultural milieu, yet the manner in which they are dealt with is identical in its basic tone. I would rather not ask Rachfahl, who adopts the pose of an expert throughout the whole of his polemic, to confess to his intellectual bankruptcy in this area. Anyone who has done any work on the subject can see that he knows nothing about it, indeed that for the most part he is not even aware of the literary character of the tiny fraction of the published literature on it quoted by me in the “criticized” essay. Perhaps he will at least make good this deficiency. Admittedly, to gain a true overview he would need to do more than what he has achieved so far: merely a brief stroll through unfamiliar works with his schoolmaster’s cane in his hand, hoping to rap the unqualified nonhistorians over the knuckles with it. For my part, I have not given up hope of being able to continue with these sections of my work (and to deepen them a great deal further), a task that would, of course, necessitate a further period in America, as much material for both the Quaker and the Baptist communities is only available there. A great deal can be found in the old sectarian colleges in America, and also (I am not sure whether in complete form) in England, which is not available in the libraries of the European continent, including Holland.