Max Weber (1864-1920)

No one knows who will live in this cage in the future, or whether at the end of this tremendous development entirely new prophets will arise, or there will be a great rebirth of old ideas and ideals; or if neither, mechanized petrification embellished with a sort of convulsive self-importance. For of the last stage of this cultural development it might well be truly said: “Specialists without spirit, sensualists without heart; this nullity imagines that it has attained a level of civilization never before achieved.”

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Rationalization

• rationalization: the process whereby an increasing number of social actions and social relationships become based on considerations of efficiency or calculation

• Values, traditions, and emotions are displaced in favor of formal and impersonal bureaucratic practices

• The Protestant Ethic & the Spirit of Capitalism shows how the bases of social action in modern capitalism shift:• from traditional and affective to rational• from value-rational to instrumental-rational

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The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism(1904)

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What’s the connection between

Protestantism and capitalist development?• Why, in modern Europe, are business leaders and owners of

capital, as well as high-ranking skilled labor, and the higher technically and commercially trained personnel of modern enterprises overwhelmingly Protestant?

• Why, even in the early 16th century, were the centers of early capitalist development predominantly Protestant?

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Isn’t religion the opposite of materialism?

• Weber was puzzled by an anomaly• typically those whose lives are bound up with the

pursuit of economic gain are either indifferent to religion or positively hostile to it• their lives are focused on the material, whereas

religion is concerned with the immaterial

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The inductive method

• Weber explains that he's studying a phenomenon that is significant for its "unique individuality" • The rise of modern capitalism in the West will only happen once, yet

is no less sociologically significant • Weber does not begin with a definition of the concept, the "spirit

of capitalism," only a "provisional description" • Empirical study of this historical case – the rise of capitalism in the

West – is used to build the concept, from the ground-up• "Thus the final definitive concept cannot stand at the beginning

of the investigation, but must come at the end" • Contrast with Marx's and Durkheim's deductive approach

• assumption that the “capitalist system” or the “social organism” operates according to a set of general laws 6

The role of ideas in the development of capitalism• Weber rejects historical materialism, the theory that systems

of ideas are reflections of material conditions

• “What was the background of ideas which could account for the sort of activity apparently directed toward profit alone as a calling toward which the individual feels himself to have an ethical obligation?” (p. 174)

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The Calling

• Calling: Calvinism transformed the idea of the calling (or vocation) by emphasizing relentless, disciplined labor• God’s commandment to work for His divine glory

• Calvinists believe in predestination, which is God’s purpose or plan • They did not believe that good acts on part of humanity are redeeming

• Wealth served as confirmation of one’s salvation – but only if it did not lead to idleness or enjoyment of luxuries

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The Protestant ethic

• “The peculiarity of this philosophy of avarice appears to be the idea of the honest man of recognized credit, and above all the idea of a duty of an individual toward the increase of his capital, which is assumed as an end in itself. Truly what is here preached is not simply a means of making one's way in the world, but a peculiar ethic. The infraction of its rules is treated not as foolishness but as forgetfulness of duty…It is not mere business astuteness, that sort of thing is common enough, it is an ethos.“ (171)

• aim is to earn more and more money -- while avoiding all enjoyment of life

• economic acquisition becomes an end in itself (in this world)• proof of “grace”

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Protestant asceticism

• One of fundamental elements of the spirit of modern capitalism and modern culture in general is the spirit of Christian asceticism• Asceticism is a lifestyle characterized by abstinence from various

worldly pleasures, often with the aim of pursuing religious and spiritual goals.

• Weber calls this kind of austerity and renunciation the essence of middle class life

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“Puritan Valentines Day cards”

Faith replaced by an iron cage of rationality

• Over time capitalism loses the ethical driving force that spurred its initial rise

• "The Puritan wanted to work in a calling; we are forced to do so" • "Fate decreed that the cloak should become an iron cage" • he means the cloak of rationality, which earlier ascetics wore voluntarily

• He characterized "the last stage of this cultural development" thus: "Specialists without spirit, sensualists without heart; this nullity imagines that it has attained a level of civilization never before achieved."

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Rejection of historical materialism

• Weber argues that there's an "elective affinity" b/w Calvinism or certain sorts of Calvinist beliefs and the economic ethics of modern capitalism• Not a causal argument, religious beliefs don’t “cause” capitalism

• Weber rejects historical materialism, but doesn't try to replace it with idealism

"But it is of course not my aim to substitute for a one-sided materialistic an equally one-sided spiritualistic causal interpretation of culture and of history"

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Alternative explanations

• Engels, and others, claimed that Protestantism was a reflection of economic changes in the early development of capitalism• a materialist explanation

• Weber disagrees: "We must free ourselves from the view that one can deduce the Reformation as a historically necessary development from economic changes.“• rejection of historical materialism

• Weber insists that modern capitalism is different than "economic traditionalism" • a man does not "by nature" wish to earn more and more money, but

simply to live as he lives and as he is accustomed to live, and to earn as much as is required to do so" -- it’s not natural

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Capitalism isn’t immoral…

• Modern capitalism is not about immoral pursuit of gain, but upon disciplined obligation of work as duty

a unique combination of devotion to earning of wealth thru legit economic activity together with the avoidance of using income for personal enjoyment

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