The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism

A summary of:
Weber, M. (2004). The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. Routledge Classics: London.

In Sarah Vowell's book, she mentions Weber, writing: "Tireless labor and ambition in pursuit of salvation, [Weber] opined, led to a culture of tireless labor and ambition and a new religion - capitalism. No wonder a German historian dubbed John Calvin 'the virtual founder of America'" (44). I find this particular choice of words ("virtual founder") very ironic; because it will be my contention that the same forces that led to the development of the spirit of capitalism has also led, inevitably, to the development of the Internet as it is now.

As we saw in Vowell's book, it makes sense that Puritan roots led to the development of particular ideas we can now see evident in our technology, and the development of behavior we now use technology to act out in more efficient ways. I now turn to Weber's sociology of capitalism to look at how these roots impacted our relation to the material world and produced materialism in the form of modern capitalism.

Perhaps it is best to begin by stating what it is the Weber is NOT saying. Firstly, he is not arguing that the pursuit of wealth is a uniquely Western or modern idea: “At all periods of history, wherever it was possible, there has been ruthless acquisition, bound to no ethical norms whatever” (22). And even rational calculation of profit is not unique to this time and place: “Now in this sense capitalism and capitalistic enterprises, even with a considerable rationalization of capitalistic calculation, have existed in all civilized countries of the earth, so far as economic documents permit us to judge. In China, India, Babylon, Egypt, Mediterranean antiquity, and the Middle Ages, as well as in modern times” (xxxiii). But here's the critical difference: “But in modern time the Occident has developed, in addition to this, a very different form of capitalism which has appeared nowhere else: the rational capitalistic organization of (formally) free labour. Only suggestions of it are found elsewhere” (xxxiv). This, as we shall see, has to do with a long process of religious education: “Labour must, on the contrary, be performed as if it were an absolute end in itself, a calling. But such an attitude is by no means a product of nature. It cannot be evoked by low wages or high ones alone, but can only be the product of a long and arduous process of education” (25).

Secondly, he is not making any moral judgment about the relative merits of any kind of religion. “The question of the relative value of the cultures which are compared here will not receive a single word” (xli). And, “…no attempt is made to evaluate the ideas of the Reformation in any sense, whether it concern their social or their religious worth” (48). “On the contrary, we only wish to ascertain whether and to what extend religious forces have taken part in the qualitative formation of the quantitative expansion of that spirit over the world. Furthermore, what concrete aspects of our capitalistic culture can be traced to them” (49).

He is, however, making a rather harsh (though perhaps not undeserved) judgment of capitalism: “For 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’” (124).

How did we get to this position? It may seem, as Weber points out, that modern capitalism is the logical conclusion of "the development of rationalism as a whole" (37). But it's more complicated than that, because this explanation does not fit for other "departments of life," such as the development of law, etc.. And it is easy to find make an evolutionary argument, that capitalism only allows those who prescribe to its tenets to survive: "Whoever does not adapt his manner of life to the conditions of capitalistic success must go under, or at least cannot rise" (34). If there is a survival component, it is this: "For it [continuous, rational, capitalistic enterprise] must be so: in a wholly capitalistic order of society, an individual capitalistic enterprise which did not take advantage of its opportunities for profit-making would be doomed to extinction” (xxxi-xxxii). But even this is too simplistic; there is more to this puzzle. And it has to do with the idea of the "calling".

First, let's define what Weber means by the "spirit of capitalism." Weber emphatically does not use this phrase synonymously with greed: “Unlimited greed for gain is not in the least identical with capitalism, and is still less its spirit. Capitalism may even be identical with restraint, or at least a rational tempering, of this irrational impulse. But capitalism is identical with the pursuit of profit, and forever renewed profit, by means of continuous, rational, capitalistic enterprise” (xxxi-xxxii). In Benjamin Franklin's time, the beginning of this kind of thinking is manifested in utilitarian values: Now, all Franklin’s moral attitudes are coloured with utilitarianism. Honesty is useful, because it assures credit; so are punctuality, industry, frugality, and that is the reason they are virtues” (17)....“According to Franklin, those virtues, like all others, are only in so far virtues as they are actually useful to the individual, and the surrogate of mere appearance is always sufficient when it accomplishes the end in view” (18). Here's how Weber explains the evolution of this state of things:

“In fact, the summum bonum of this ethic, the earning of more and more money, combined with the strict avoidance of all spontaneous enjoyment of life, is above all completely devoid of any eudaemonistic, not to say hedonistic, admixture. It is thought of so purely as an end in itself, that fro the point of view of the happiness of, or utility to, the single individual, it appears entirely transcendental and absolutely irrational. Man is dominated by the making of money, by acquisition as the ultimate purpose of his life. Economic acquisition is no longer subordinated to man as the means for the satisfaction of his material needs. This reversal of what we should call the natural relationship, so irrational from a naïve point of view, is evidently as definitely a leading principle of capitalism as it is foreign to all peoples not under capitalistic influence. At the same time it expresses a type of feeling which is closely connected with certain religious ideas. If we thus ask, why should ‘money be made out of men’, Benjamin Franklin himself, although he was a colourless deist, answers in his autobiography with a quotation from the Bible, which his strict Calvinistic father drummed into him again and again in his youth: ‘Seest thou a man diligent in his business? He shall stand before kings’ (Prov. xxii. 29)”.

But then, by Franklin's time, the rational accumulation of wealth had been justified. This was not always the case. Weber asks, “Now, how could activity [accumulating wealth], which was at best ethically tolerated, turn into a calling in the sense of Benjamin Franklin” (35)?

Weber argues that in the apostolic era, people were preoccupied with "eschatological hopes" (43) which prevented them from worrying too much about their material existence. However, “As he became increasingly involved in the affairs of the world, he came to value work in the world more highly” (44). But Luther had an even more profound impact on this kind of thinking when he introduced the notion of "the calling": "...for Luther the concept of the calling remained traditionalistic. His calling is something which man has to accept as a divine ordinance, to which he must adapt himself” (44). This subsequently underwent further evolution thanks to Calvinism: “For everyone without exception God’s Providence has prepared a calling, which he should profess and in which he should labour. And this calling is not, as it was for the Lutheran, a fate to which he must submit and which he must make the best of, but God’s commandment to the individual to work for the divine glory” (106).

There are two further important keys of this "calling":
1. “What God demands is not labour in itself, but rational labour in a calling” (107).
“Wealth is thus bad ethically only in so far as it is a temptation to idleness and sinful enjoyment of life, and its acquisition is bad only when it is with the purpose of later living merrily and without care. But as a performance of duty in a calling it is not only morally permissible, but actually enjoined” (108).
2. “…the attainment of [wealth] as a fruit of labour in a calling was a sign of God’s blessing. And even more important: the religious valuation of restless, continuous, systematic work in a worldly calling, as the highest means to asceticism, and at the same time the surest and most evident proof of rebirth and genuine faith, must have been the most powerful conceivable lever for the expansion of that attitude toward life which we have here called the spirit of capitalism.
"When the limitation of consumption is combined with this release of acquisitive activity, the inevitable practical result is obvious: accumulation of capital through ascetic compulsion to save” (116).

There are further psychological impacts of Calvinism which have eventually produced the spirit of capitalism.
1. “…leisureliness was suddenly destroyed” (30); “Waste of time is thus the first and in principle the deadliest of sins” (104).
2. “Unwillingness to work is symptomatic of the lack of grace” (105).
3. “That great historic process in the development of religions, the elimination of magic from the world which ad begun with the old Hebrew prophets and, in conjunction with Hellenistic scientific thought, had repudiated all magical means to salvation as superstition and sin, came here to its logical conclusion” (61). In other words, one has to make ones own salvation in the material world.
4. This produced loneliness and individualism: “It its extreme inhumanity this doctrine must above all have had one consequence for the life of a generation which surrendered to its magnificent consistency. That was a feeling of unprecedented inner loneliness of the single individual” (60); “On the other hand, it forms one of the roots of that disillusioned and pessimistically inclined individualism which can even to-day be identified in the national characters and the institutions of the peoples with a Puritan past” (62).
5. “The same fear which drives the latter to every conceivable self-humiliation spurs the former on to a restless and systematic struggle with life” (63-4). Is this perhaps part of the reason we now spend so much time, money, and energy trying to lessen our perceived burdens with technology? - is this part of this "restless and systematic struggle with life"?

The point of Weber's book is NOT that capitalism is religious or spiritual, although it does have roots in Protestantism. In fact, what he's arguing is that the religion is no longer needed to support capitalism and it has taken on a life of its own: “Then the intensity of the search for the Kingdom of God commenced gradually to pass over into sober economic virtue; the religious roots died out slowly, giving way to utilitarian worldliness” (119). Consider this:

“The people filled with the spirit of capitalism to-day tend to be indifferent, if not hostile, to the Church. The thought of the pious boredom of paradise has little attraction for their active natures; religion appears to them as a means of drawing people away from labour in this world. If you ask them what is the meaning of their restless activity, why they are never satisfied with what they have, thus appearing so senseless to any purely worldly view of life, they would perhaps give the answer, if they know any at all: ‘to provide for my children and grandchildren’. But more often and, since the motive is not peculiar to them, but was just as effective for the traditionalist, more correctly, simply: that business with its continuous work ahs become a necessary part of their lives. That is in fact the only possible motivation, but it at the same time expresses what is, seen from the view-point of personal happiness, so irrational about this sort of life, where a man exists for the sake of his business, instead of the reverse” (32).

Weber concludes his work with some incendiary, poetic language, well worth capturing here:

“In Baxter’s view the care for external goods should only lie on the shoulders of the ‘saint like a light cloak, which can be thrown aside at any moment’. But fate decreed that the cloak should become an iron cage” (123)....“…the idea of duty in one’s calling prowls about in our lives like the ghost of dead religious beliefs. Where the fulfillment of the calling cannot directly be related to the highest spiritual and cultural values, or when, on the other hand, it need not be felt simply as economic compulsion, the individual generally abandons the attempt to justify it at all. In the field of its highest development, in the United States, the pursuit of wealth, stripped of its religious and ethical meaning, tends to become associated with purely mundane passions, which often actually give it the character of sport” (124).

So what does this have to do with spiritual technology? The point that I will try to make is that the Internet has similar religious or spiritual roots - although we tend not to think of this as being the case - but these roots have similarly been obscured over time. Take for example the ways in which the Internet is designed for efficiency, which I could easily see the Protestant roots of. Further, the Internet is inherently capitalistic; in many ways it is the embodiment our spirit of capitalism. In suggesting the design of a new kind of Internet, I'm going to have to sort out the capitalistic, i.e. money-making, aspects of the "product." In short, understanding the spirit of capitalism is necessary for understanding the development of the Internet as it exists now.