The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism
Max Weber was a German sociologist and historian who was concerned both with the importance of history in the social science and the impact of meaning on human conduct. He focused on the development of methodologies for understanding human behavior in groups and provided many significant works in the new field of sociology.
The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism was one of the most important, and controversial, of his works. It was first translated into English in 1930. Essentially the book opposed the Marxist concept of dialectical materialism, while attributing the rise of capitalism to Calvinist Protestantism. Calvinism emphasized the moral value of hard work in the world and fulfillment of one's duties, whatever the station. From the beginning, the work was controversial.
For Weber, historical determinism in Marxian terms was inaccurate in describing the development of Western capitalist economies. To him, capitalism was not inevitable, but the product of specific historical circumstances and ideas. The important ideas, he noted, were the product of the Reformation. The Protestant movement, particularly the Calvinist aspect of that movement, emphasized works in relationship to salvation, along with a renewed emphasis on direct understanding and non mediated religious experience. It focused on the experience of the world as one in which duty was primary and there was value in hard work and the fulfillment of all one's duties to the family and to the community.
For Weber, it was this development that was determinative. He asserted that Catholicism had not developed an outlook, or discipline, that would enable capitalism to succeed. In addition, Catholicism had developed a monastic spirituality that viewed transcendence of the world as important, not fulfilling one's duties within it. Weber talked about Luther's notion of "calling" in Protestantism...