Applicability of Protestant Ethic to Canadian Economic Development

This research assesses the relevance of Max Weber's thesis in The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism as an explanation of the development and growth of the capitalist market economy in Canada. An absence of such relevance might indicate that Weber's thesis, based on the experience of Europe, is not transferable to a North American context.

The Protestant Ethic and Capitalist Development

The work ethic of the Protestant Church valued work as a religious virtue. One implication for economic development of the Protestant work ethic is that hard work and the accumulation of wealth are considered virtuous and indicative of a worthwhile life.

Industriousness and the need for achievement are specific values broadly held by many individuals in a variety of cultures. The individual who has learned the value of industriousness while young is most likely to have a high need to work hard and achieve something meaningful. Weber, in The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism concluded that some cultures achieve more than others because of the values of their people. Protestant values encourage the need for achievement, as the Protestant ethic holds that an individual's life is to be judged by her or his accomplishments.

The Protestant churches in Europe and North America early on were instrumental in the economic and social transformation of the societies of northern Europe and

. . .
y the facts that the most important demands of labor and social activists made during the Winnipeg General Strike have been recognized and enacted into law by the Canadian federal and provincial governments over the past 75 years, and the political successorùthe New Democratic Partyùto the forces behind the Winnipeg General Strike has emerged as a major political force in Canada. In the aftermath of the First World War, Canadian Prime Minister Robert Borden (Conservative) was in Paris with other world leaders attempting the formulate a new international political structure that would be built around the League of Nations. Borden's political advisors in Ottawa, however, were urging him to come home, because they sensed that the country "was full of strange unrest, and noisy with extraordinary complaints." Economic and social pressures "pent up by the war were now being released into Canadian society. The à example of the Russian Revolution, the brave new worlds and peaceful utopias of wartime oratory and idealism, had bred in many à an unquestioning belief that peace would bring a different and far better Canada in which government would do vastly more for them than it had ever done before." In the post-war period, ordinary
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Approximate Word count = 2316
Approximate Pages = 9 (250 words per page)