7.8 The Protestant Ethic and The Spirit of Capitalism

modern capitalism is not characterized by the drive to make as much money as you can but by the wish to gradually increase your profits in a controlled calculated goal rational way the modern entrepreneur wants to create a predictably increasing flow of profits and he tries to realize this by organizing his enterprise in a completely rational way now the strange thing is that this hard-working capitalist never enjoys the fruits of his labor he may succeed in generating this ever-growing stream of money but he continues to lead an aesthetic life this surprising combination leads to the expansion of capitalism because the profits now are pumps back so to speak into the enterprise as they are not needed for more frivolous purposes this spirit of capitalism leads to a flowering capitalism and it is also produced by capitalism but how did this capitalist spirit come into existence in the first place we can already find it in Western Europe in the 16th century before the serious takeoff of modern capitalism and here Weber presents his famous thesis according to which the Protestant ethic had an important influence on the spirit of capitalism in its earliest phase in the 60s and in the 17th century a new kind of Christian faith made its way in northwestern Europe and in the United States this of course is the age of the rise of Protestantism the Protestant doctrine teaches that we all have to work very hard because God wants us to make this world a better place it is our moral duty to leave this world in a better state than the state in which we found it and we should certainly not indulge in luxury so here we see at the moment when capitalism is only just beginning to take shape the outlines of a new economic mentality that is consonant with the capitalist ethos of hard work plus an aesthetic lifestyle part of the way Berrian argument here is concerned with the doctrine of predestination according to the strict interpretations in some Protestant churches there is no way of finding out whether you belong to the small group of the chosen people the elect who will be admitted into heaven the fear of eternal damnation became so violent among the believers that in some churches this doctrine was softened a bit if you discover that you are the kind of person that loves to work extremely hard if you are very very successful in your work if you don't spend much of your money then you have good reason to assume that you belong to the chosen few now this somewhat watered down version of Protestantism led to this striking outpouring of entrepreneurial energy you could say that those dedicated Protestant entrepreneurs were driven by deep religious metaphysical hopes and fears wavers thesis is really more complex and subtle than that and you know my advice and I really mean this my advice is you should read the entire book it's one of the most beautiful books in the sociological tradition and among the books written by Max Weber it is also his most accessible work it is interesting to compare the approach of religion by Marx and the argument by Weber sometimes it is suggested that Weber took Marx's theory and turned it upside down where Marx believes that the arrow of causality points from the economic infrastructure to words to superstructure and the superstructure of course also includes religious belief systems weber gives us the mirror image and says that it is in fact a protestant religion that produced the mentality that was a necessary condition for modern capitalism to develop but that is not quite the case it's a bit an exaggeration weber writes that the arrows of causality point in both directions there is a mutual interaction going on between the religious sector and the economic sector of society but then he says Karl Marx has been so very one-sided in stressing over and over and over again the importance of the underlying economic elements that now I want to show that you can also discern a causal arrow that points just the other way so I believe that we should not see Beiber's book as a refutation of Marx's analysis with more as an extension of and as an addition to the argument that was given to us by Karl Marx

Channel: Social Sciences - UvA

Views: 101,054

Rating: 4.9040208 out of 5

Keywords: amsterdam, Karl Marx, Marx, Norbert Elias, sociological, Elias, Bernard Mandeville, Adam Smith, Max Weber, mooc, Auguste Comte, Alexis de Tocqueville, open, sciences, wetenschappen, online, coursera, Bart van Heerikhuizen, Universiteit van Amsterdam, University of Amsterdam, Comte, Classical Sociological Theory, Tocqueville, Smith, Émile Durkheim, social, van, theory, classical, uva, Weber, Durkheim, heerikhuizen, course, massive, Mandeville, sociale, Sociologie, bart

Id: CpGupes7NvI

Length: 6min 9sec (369 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 04 2015