by Max Weber
In contrast to those Pietist circles and ascetic sects in Holland, there was undoubtedly much ostentatious display and gourmandizing by the nouveau riche, together with rustic and unsophisticated exuberance on the part of those marsh peasants who owed their livelihood to the capital investment [Kapitalverwertung] taking place in the cities, and who from the ascetic point of view were doing “too well”; the same thing applied to the petite bourgeoisie [Kleinbürgertum], who were in a comparable situation. There were also the artistic bohemian circles, and lastly the humanist educated strata with their fine aesthetic, literary, and scholarly tastes and judgment. These antitheses were included, in a rather different form, in the composition of the emigration from the south of the Netherlands to the north: it comprised, besides political refugees without any fervent religious belief, both numerous Calvinists and, for example, artists who were liable to suffer persecution or at least discrimination by the Church on account of the incorrectness of their personal or even artistic opinions, but whose personal style of life [Lebensstil] took such a form that it was possible to maintain in all seriousness that their unconventionality was methodically cultivated “as a matter of principle,” as a sort of negative version of the ethic of the calling. Even this kind of assertion is characteristic—it tells us something about those who make it.
11) Such reductions in the volume of wealth and population have, of course, often been the consequence of intolerance, both Catholic and Protestant (for example, in Geneva, as I stressed earlier). But wealth is not to be equated with acquired capital [Erwerbskapital], and not every population is fitted by psychological disposition for the capitalist activity. The decisive factor remained the “spirit” that was prevalent in the population (whether or not enjoying toleration) and therefore in economic life.
11a) These include:
1. “solidly Lutheran Hamburg.” Rachfahl objects to what I, referring to information from Adalbert Wahl, said about this, namely, that commercial wealth was more unstable than industrial wealth (hence the difference between Basel and Hamburg). Assuming the general correctness of this thesis (which was told to him by a “valued external colleague”—presumably, the same highly respected historian who also made the remark to me), then this simply lends weight to my original argument: namely, that what was apparently the only big merchant fortune that had been utilized as capital in the same family ever since the seventeenth century, and therefore remained just as stable as the industrial fortunes of Basel, belonged to members of the Reformed churches [Konfession]. This is the proof of the effects of denominational [konfessionell] differences. I repeat, once again, that to be perfectly honest I cannot personally at this moment check this individual instance in detail in all its causal connections, and it may, of course, be attributable to a number of “coincidences”—except that the “coincidences” are becoming rather numerous, and the great developmental connections between capitalism and Protestantism within whole countries that I have cited cannot be dismissed as such. I only mention this instance because the mere fact that in that period there were some places with capitalist development but without as-cetic Protestantism, which I myself have termed absolutely self-evident, has nevertheless been put to me as an “objection.”
2. When he made the remarks quoted by me, Petty—whom Rachfahl first quoted, naturally in incomplete form, that is, only as far as it happened to suit his “critique”—was allegedly not (according to Rachfahl) “thinking of” capitalists, despite the fact that his whole argument is based on the fact that business in all Catholic countries was essentially in heretical hands. Moreover, his special topic of investigation (as in so many writings of that period) is the question of why this should be, and in particular the question of what the source of Holland’s powerful international economic position might be, that is, its “capitalist” prosperity, which mercantilism measured by the volume of money flowing into individual countries. The paradoxical thing about Petty’s statement lies in precisely the same point which (although I did not notice the passage at the time) I also found to be a problem and attempted to explain: namely, that the broad strata of the rising bourgeois [bürgerlich] middle class, although and indeed because they were hostile to the sinful enjoyment of the consumption of wealth, and were hostile to those who possessed wealth (see the passage from Petty in my essay in Archiv, vol. 30, p. 188 [here in this volume]) and therefore maintained no religious fellowship with them, became, on the basis of their own kind of religiously oriented ethic of the calling, bearers of the “spirit” of that early modern capitalism which no longer rested on the ethical laxity of the Middle Ages, and which was the subject of my investigation.
As usual, what Rachfahl uses as an objection is something that I myself have already said (p. 184 [here in this volume]), namely, that Petty had in mind the Dutch freedom fighters; the fact that he interpreted them not as a historian, but with the eyes of a man of his time (the seventeenth century) (which gives R. the opportunity just for a change to question the significance of the words of an author whom he himself had introduced), just shows how things appeared at that time to a man who was well informed in business affairs, that is, at a time when, according to Rachfahl’s own thesis, Holland had already ceased to be dominated by those religious motives. Probably not even all of Rachfahl’s readers will believe him when he alleges that I had the “misfortune” to identify the Dutch freedom fighters with those English dissenters close to Petty. But only someone who is completely ignorant of these things could maintain, as R. does, that the Dutch heresy at the time of the break with Spain had “nothing to do” with the later English dissenters. Puritan dissent in England, as is shown not only by the religious trials already taking place under Elizabeth but by all other contemporary sources, was continually boosted and spiritually supported in the strongest possible way by refugees from the southern Netherlands coming from Holland (as was Holland itself).
Ultimately, Dutch influences underlie not only the specifically ascetic direction taken by Calvinism, but also the development of the Baptist movement (so important for the Independents) whose writers have always claimed for it the distinction of being the bearer of specifically modern political and economic principles. Dutch influences are also important for the Mennonites (whose “mercantilist” usefulness caused even the Prussian soldier-kings to grant them a dispensation from military service), indirectly for Quakerism (the last renaissance of the Baptists), which grew out of the Baptist predispositions of English Independent circles, and whose tradition also claims the distinction of having, since the seventeenth century, been the constant bearer of the modern business ethic and of therefore “being blessed by God with wealth,” and, finally, for Pietism.
As in New England and Pennsylvania, so too in the Netherlands, the basic schema of the practical ethic of the calling had to develop on a relatively small area of capitalist ground (East Friesland), and is therefore not a consequence of capitalist development; then, however, Amsterdam and Leyden became the breeding grounds from which, for example, specifically sectarian principles of community life, after having come to fruition there, spread to England; and this historian could equally have been expected to know that the impetus for the voyage of the Pilgrim Fathers came from Holland, even if he could not be expected to be familiar with the positions taken up by the Scottish element and the English Quaker element, in fact, English dissent in general, right up to the threshold of the present day.
3. The fact that, according to Rachfahl, Calvin (col. 730) called for the “sensual” enjoyment of life (in any case a very distorted interpretation of the passage quoted by me, which is, by the way, only one of a number of similar ones I could have quoted) does not prevent him from asserting elsewhere that even Calvin himself stood for the same principles that are characteristic of ascetic Calvinism and important for the development of the capitalist spirit.
12) Compare column 776, lines 10ff.: With a pettifogging pedant like Rachfahl, one is forced to quote precise lines as though on
e were studying a manuscript, otherwise—see above—he is incapable of finding his own assertions. Compare further column 777, line 22, where one is informed that one’s opinion is a mere “figure of speech, that at school (sic) one was taught to call ‘pars pro toto.’” For his part, Rachfahl has forgotten that he himself had questioned (vol. 3, col. 1322) whether the “capitalist ethic,” “in whatever sense one understood it,” bore any relation to the Calvinist ethic of the calling.
13) At this point, with regard to present-day America, I may, for example, refer to Veblen’s excellent book The Theory of Business Enterprise. Veblen emphasizes, inter alia, precisely the gradual emancipation of the most modern billionaires from the attitude expressed by the maxim “honesty is the best policy,” an attitude that had hitherto been characteristic of the capitalism of the modern era. In my essays in the Archiv and in the one in the Christliche Welt that Rachfahl has ignored, I have explored the origins of this maxim and will return to it later.
14) I am completely at a loss to recall anything in Rachfahl’s writings that might be described as a “debate” with me regarding the relationship between irrational “drive” [Trieb] and rational “spirit” (col. 779, footnote). I refer the reader to my rebuttal and advise Rachfahl to set himself somewhat higher standards.
15) Rachfahl is unhappy about the fact that I take exception to the malicious and petty way he keeps harping on about that example concerning the businessman and the oysters—which, be it noted, I only mentioned in a few lines in a footnote. The reader may recall that I quoted the example of a highly successful businessman who, even when they were prescribed by his doctor, retained his antipathy for certain gourmet delights (oysters), because he had that “ascetic” conviction (which I believe to be highly characteristic of whole generations) that pleasure and luxury as such was a “wrong” use of wealth (as capital) which should properly be employed in the interests of the calling. Rachfahl wishes to convey the impression that such examples constitute a vitally important part of my “proof.” I notice that despite my remarks in response, this example plays the same part in his reply, indeed that Rachfahl has the effrontery to address his readers with the words: “at least it was not I (Rachfahl) who started evaluating the modalities of the consumption of oysters as an indication of . . . .” This is despite the fact that he knows that I was describing, in as comprehensive a fashion as possible and with as many examples as the occasion permitted, the attitude as a whole within which, besides numerous others, this small example also belongs. All this is indeed most “impressive.”
16) For Rachfahl it is now the sixteenth, now the eighteenth century—as it happens to suit him—that is “significant.” Since not only the specifically ascetic direction taken by Calvinism, but also the transformation of the Baptist movement (hitherto discredited by the Münster riots) into the Anabaptist, General Baptist, and Particular Baptist denominations, as well as the rise of Quakerism and Pietism (I myself have described Methodism as a latecomer and “revival”), all took place solely in the seventeenth century and the years immediately before and after it, as did the first large-scale and systematic development of modern and consciously bourgeois [bürgerlich] capitalist state policy and literature, Rachfahl’s opinionated determination to stick to that dating reveals itself to be a product of the quite understandable embarrassment of clinging à tout prix to an erroneous position, adopted for polemical reasons.
17) In truth, this last attribution would correspond rather to the view that Rachfahl himself takes in his “critique”—if one can talk about “taking a view” at all where it is really just a case of faultfinding for its own sake. According to R. (vol. 3, col. 1329), it is Calvinism (“of all things” precisely that) which inter alia also has the tendency to “serve” (sic) (besides the “capitalists”) not only the “middle and lower merchants and craftsmen” but especially also the clerical staff (sic) and the “workers” (sic). It almost defies belief that such a mindless notion could ever have seen the light of day. In just how totally unthinking a fashion R. can react when he feels he is “being challenged” can be illustrated by a case about which he himself utters such a shout of triumph that one really wishes that, just this once, he could be proved right (after so often having revealed his ignorance in ways that do him little credit)—unfortunately, however, his argument fails to stand up to even the most superficial examination. He assures his readers that it must be extremely “unpleasant” for me to be “nailed down” to admitting that—as he claimed in his critique—with reference to New England, I had cited the craft professions as evidence for the capitalist spirit. If his readers would care to look at the passage where I was “nailed down,” they would find there the following words: “The existence of metallurgical works (1643), weaving for the market (1659), and the full flowering of the craft professions in New England in the first generation after the founding of the colony are, from a purely economic point of view, anachronisms, and contrast most strikingly with conditions in the south. . . .” I would certainly not wish to change one word of this remark, nor of the way in which I would justify it, namely, by portraying these phenomena of a strong autonomous small business culture (which were capitalist and yet occurred, remarkably, in a colonial territory still largely at a stage of development based on barter—as Rachfahl discovered from my writings and then put forward as his own idea) as being determined, at least in part, by the immigrants’ style of life, a style that was pervaded at every point by religion. And I might add that the Americans had previously expressed similar views. Quite apart from the answer (which can scarcely be in doubt) to the question of precisely who and what has been “nailed down” in this particular case, I should simply like to “nail down” the general question of the kind of intellect that can produce a “critique” that regards its business throughout as nothing more than the attempt to “nail down” the “criticized” author to individual words and individual sentences (and, moreover, does it with a consistent lack of success). Rachfahl’s “critique” does nothing else from start to finish.
18) The maxim “He who will not work shall not eat” is directed toward a certain kind of parasitic missionary activity which has existed in all periods and which is exemplified today in classical form by the divine “call,” delightfully depicted by Booker Washington, that tends to come to the Negro when he finds that he prefers the life of the saint to that of the worker. The other passages are either found in parables or are eschatological in character. The idea of work seen as something positive is found much more commonly in the philosophy of the Cynics and in certain pagan Hellenistic petit bourgeois epitaphs than in primitive Christianity. In view of everything I have said in my essays about the influence of the Old Testament spirit on the Puritan ethic of the calling, it is somewhat grotesque that R. now holds these same things against me, when all he knows about them comes from these same essays, as the contents of his casual vacuous remark shows. Moreover, I also reminded the reader of the manner in which this renaissance of the Old Testament was connected with the specific qualities of Puritan religiosity that I was analyzing. Rachfahl has forgotten this.
19) This is not intended to deny the possible educational value of confession in general. But if we take a look at the instructions for confession or inform ourselves from other sources about what exactly was asked in the confession, we find that it was concerned with quite different matters from those that concern us here.
A nice example of how the Catholic doctrine related to economic life in practice is provided by the history of the ban on usury. It is a well-known fact that even today it has not been lifted; nor could it be “lifted,” according to the established principles of Catholic Church law [Kirchenregiment], since it is clearly enunciated in the papal decrees, although it is based on a complete mistranslation arising from a mistaken reading of the Greek (››μηδεν« instead of ››μηδενα απελπιξοντες«13 in the Vulgate (an inspired text!). In practice, however, it has been annulled, although
only definitively so for less than a hundred years, by instruction of the Congregation of the Holy Office. The Holy Congregation has ruled that from now on father confessors should no longer inquire about usuraria pravitas arising from the practice of lending at interest, provided that it can be guaranteed that the penitent would obey, if the Church should find it opportune to insist on enforcement of the ban. (In a similar way, the opinion has been publicly expressed in French Catholic circles, and I believe has not been censored by the Church, that father confessors should no longer inquire about “onanismus matrimonialis,” the form of contraception encouraged by the two-child system—in spite of the biblical curse on “coitus interruptus.”)