Reconsidering Weber's Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism.

• Author: Stein, Solomon

Since the initial publication of The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (henceforth TPE) in 1905, Max Weber's arguments have been subjected to extensive debate concerning both the validity of the work's method and the accuracy of its substantive theses. (1) It has been both championed as an exemplary text of sociological analysis and condemned as inaccurate and indeed even subversive; its concepts have found application across a wide variety of contexts outside of Weber's original lines of inquiry; and it continues to be taught in universities (with a greater or lesser extent of fidelity to the various caveats and qualifications Weber included in his argument). TPFs prominence is arguably sufficient to often overshadow the remainder of Weber's corpus. (2)

This article offers a reconsideration of The Protestant Ethic, beginning with a discussion of the book's central arguments and continuing with a brief discussion of its stature as a key text in economics and sociology and a review of the literature that has attempted to assess its key claims. We then conclude with a discussion of the text's key insights that might still speak to the modern social scientist.

Does Capitalism Have a Spirit?

Weber advances five core claims in TPE:3 (1) capitalism takes on different forms; (2) each form is animated by a particular "spirit"; (3) the "spirit" in modern capitalism is one of this-worldly asceticism; (4) the features of this asceticism resemble in large part the ethical orientation within Protestantism, especially in its Calvinist and Puritan forms; and (5) it is this "elective affinity" (TPE, 36) that grounds the spirit particular to industrial capitalism as it emerged in the West in these forms of Protestantism. (4)

Weber's claim (1), that capitalism is capable of a multiplicity of forms, is far more conventional in the contemporary context, where stadial theories of economic development are all but extinct and there is an entire framework referred to as "varieties of capitalism." (5) Weber both employs a conceptual and methodological view in which capitalism is capable of variation and describes a few (ideal-typical) varieties. (6) As a conceptual question, acknowledging the possibility that there are "varieties of capitalism" begins with a rejection of deterministic histories of capitalism. (7) If the historical development of economic institutions involves contingencies, that relationship requires an understanding of those institutions as having (at least conceivable) alternative forms. Weber likewise argues against treating capitalistic modes of economic activity as exclusively a modern phenomenon. The features that are often invoked as unique to (or as the cause of) the contemporary capitalist era, Weber explained, usually existed in other eras. Modern capitalism, for instance, lacks a historical monopoly on greed and opportunism as human motivations (TPE, 14-15) or on the particular institutional forms associated with business organization (TPE, 19, 36), (8) nor was it the first domain of social activity to become systematically rationalized (TPE, 27). Recognition that, as Weber suggests, at least some form of capitalistic organization of economic activity "has always existed ... from as far back as our knowledge of history extends" (TPE, 256, emphasis in original), (9) we should consider not a dichotomy between precapitalist and capitalist societies but rather contrasts between alternative capitalisms. (10)

In TPE, Weber is concerned with the general orientation toward economic activity that existed alongside a given form of capitalism--that is, the "style of life" that individuals within a particular type of capitalism are engaged in. Weber conceptualizes these modes of conduct in terms of (any given) capitalism's animating spirit--an ideal-typical illustration of the interlinked modes of orientation that are conditioned upon and that reciprocally condition economic activity (claim [2]). Weber's "spirit" is methodological rather than metaphysical, marking out a certain locus of ideas as of particular importance in the development of the particularities that define a particular capitalistic form. In modern capitalism, Weber argued, the animating spirit involves an "attitude which, in pursuit of a calling, strives systematically for profit for its own sake" (TPE, 19, italics in original). In Weber's view, although this particular attitude was far from universal among historical capitalisms, the mutually supporting elective affinities between this orientation and capitalist institutions justified thinking of this attitude as "the" capitalist spirit. However, Weber also freely admits (as seen earlier) that there have always been activities that can be accurately described as capitalistic but were animated on the basis of quite different conducts of life and that there remain individuals whose economic orientations are best understood in terms of those other spirits, even in the contemporary case. We can thus conceive of the spirit of (modern) capitalism that Weber develops in TPE as an orientation with a particular elective affinity to (and thus relevance in) modern capitalism without upsetting any of Weber's other arguments.

The existence of multiple types of capitalism across space and time, each of which involves modes of conduct that reflect distinct animating "spirits," provides the analytical scaffolding upon which Weber develops his account of the spirit particular to modern capitalism (claim [3]). The modern spirit's emphasis on the unbounded pursuit of profit (11) is contrasted with a "traditionalist" (TPE, 15) spirit, which understands economic activity as the means to secure the resources needed to live in the style to which one is accustomed. As noted earlier, the spirit of modern capitalism shares with the historical forms of capitalism, which Weber saw as universally present, an alternative conception that favors pursuit of as much wealth as can be attained. Importantly, however, the spirit of modern capitalism differs from what we might call this "profiteering" ethos of amoral opportunism typical in different spaces and places--for example, tax farming and the financing of colonial expeditions. The spirit of modern capitalism involves the adoption of profit making as a fundamental ethic whose systematic and rational pursuit imbues it with an ascetic character: the ideal-typical entrepreneurial actor of modern capitalism, Weber explains, "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.... He 'gets nothing out of his wealth for his own person--other than the irrational sense of 'fulfilling his vocation"' (TPE, 24). The ascetic element of this orientation, which "shuns ostentation and unnecessary show," is more than just the presence of elements of self-denial on the entrepreneur's part. Asceticism in this sense, for Weber, is but one possible behavioral response suggested by the ascetic mindset, which conceives of religious salvation as the result of "active ethical behavior performed in the awareness that god directs this behavior ... [and] characterized by a methodical procedure for achieving religious salvation" (1978, 541). Asceticism, Weber argues, inevitably involves an adversarial relationship with "the world," arising both from (what according to the ascetic's standpoint are) the ethically meaningless considerations that determine its structure and from the numerous alternatives (one might say "temptations") it offers that distract from the consistent adherence to a rational program of salvation. One possible ascetic approach is therefore a withdrawal as much as is necessary (or possible) from interactions that are devoid of (or are distractions from) the divinely prescribed modes of conduct: this is the "world-rejecting" asceticism reflected in monasticism. Alternatively, the ascetic could establish an alternative set of relationships appropriate to the systematic pursuit of salvation within the social world, insisting upon a systematic, religiously meaningful pattern of life within the extant context. These alternative patterns are inner-worldly forms of asceticism, (12) which include that of the modern entrepreneur. (13) Of course, the entrepreneur within modern capitalism is oriented toward the systematic and meaningful pursuit of profit and not of religious salvation. But, Weber suggests, the profit that drives the...