common good and are viewed as sacred by Protestants and in honor and praise of God.
The Protestant ethic fit well within a capitalistic structure of society, since it increased individual production to add to overall economic output and growth. It also promoted a self-denial among laborers who led ascetic lives as they toiled hard and long at their labor in the name of God. As noted in Weber (2002), "Calvinism made a positive addition: the idea of the necessity of putting one's faith to the test in secular working life. It thus provided the positive motivation for asceticism, and with the firm establishment of its ethics in the doctrine of predestination" (p. 83). This perspective of the work ethic is different than the work ethic model proposed by Randall Collins (1997) in An Asian Route to Capitalism.
In contrast to Weber's Protestant work ethic, Collins' model asserts that Christian Europe was not the only region where capitalism emerged. Collins' (
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