David Nirenberg, “The Birth of the Pariah: Jews, Christian Dualism, and Social Science,” Social Research, vol. 70, no. 1 (Spring 2003): 201-236 (original) (raw)
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This essay will seek to explain and analyse Max Weber’s Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism thesis. In doing so, a thorough description of Weber’s thesis will consist of half of this piece, whilst offering an analyses upon each point made. Firstly this essay will discuss Weber’s view on Capitalism, and what it is. Focus will then shift towards Weber’s theological explanation for the rise of modern capitalism. In which he describes The Protestant Reformation as an accelerating force of Capitalism. Weber’s theory offers an insight into the dynamics of capitalism, but it is also open to scrutiny, of which focus will turn towards conflicting theories on capitalism and its origins, with particular attention focused on the writings of Karl Marx.
2006
N 1904-1905 MAX WEBER published the sociological classic The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. In this book Weber argues that religion, specifically "ascetic Protestantism" provided the essential social and cultural infrastructure that led to modern capitalism. Weber's suggests that Protestantism has "an affinity for capitalism." Indeed, something within Protestantism-by accident or design-creates the necessary preconditions that lead to the flowering of a just, free, and prosperous society. At the same time, Weber wonders if the economic backwardness of certain societies and regions of the world are somehow related to their religious affiliation. Weber's century old thesis challenges the erroneous core assumptions of many secular humanists, postmoderns, Roman Catholic traditionalists, and Islamists. In view of the threat of the War on Terror, and in the face of the inadequate response of secularist and post-modern intellectuals, it is vital that we understand and appreciate the profound paradigm shift that occurred during the sixteenth and seventeenth century that led to the unfolding of modern capitalism. Despite a plethora of critics Max Weber's one-hundred year old thesis still stands. vi
Protestant Ethic and the Rise of Modern Capitalism: An Analytical Critique of Max Weber
Man is both a religious and an economic being. Both the spiritual obligation to worship the creator, seek for explanations to ultimate questions, and the need to satisfy temporal needs and wants meet in the one and the same being, man. Sometimes, the economic and the religious influence each other either negatively or positively. Max Weber had done a study of the influence of protestant ethic on the rise of capitalism in modern Europe. He seemed to hold that this ethic is the sole factor responsible for the capitalist spirit. This paper seeks to examine the thoughts of Weber in this regard. It equally seeks to critique the Weberian thesis and posit that protestant ethic can at best be an infinitesimal factor in the development of capitalism. The paper, finally, is of the view that there are so many variables that combined themselves to effect the economic system we refer to today as capitalism.
Religion and Capitalism. Weber, Marx and the Materialist Controversy
The main concern of this article is Weber's antagonism with respect to materialism and the distance or affinity between Marx's and Weber's standpoints. It focuses on two interconnected issues: the social and political role of religion and the emergence of modern capitalism. These two points are justified because of their strategic importance and because, with them, Weber's distance with respect to materialism apparently reaches its zenith. Through them, this text attempts to expose the main features of the controversy between Marxism and Weberianism, evaluating the alternatives on the matter offered by different perspectives.
In 1904/05 the first edition of Weber's Protestant Ethics was issued, where the thematic framing is 'uncertain' and not yet completed: religion is linked to a certain kind of ethos (of the economic system) and of ethic (rational), the ethic of «ascetic Protestantism». Around the same years, Sombart outlines the expository path contained in Modern Capitalism, a detailed «picture of the general economic development», which seems to be a 'more serious' work – for its content and set of problems – when compared to the research conducted by his friend and colleague Max Weber. Both scholars view the question of the rise and development of capitalism as a rhythmic research: from the historic origins of the phenomenon, to the elaboration, synthesis and change of the economic process that becomes an autonomous and corrosive force in the modern stage. In the Sombartian discourse, however, the particular 'attitude' of the Protestant ethic as analysed by Weber can be regarded at most as one of the possible forms of heresy that justifies a certain approach (moral/punitive) to money – and not as the only movement which has roused and regulated the economic or capitalistic processes in the strict meaning of economic surplus, profitable and to be reinvested following entrepreneurial logics. Whereas, what the two sociologists have in common is not only the use of sources (almost identical), but the very concept of Geist and individual predisposition of the subjects who accept the modes of action of this ordering spirit that gives an ethical/psychological boost to men endowed with charisma or with particular energy.