The Protestant Sect Credit MachineSocial Capital and the Rise of Capitalism (original) (raw)
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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.
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
The Protestant Ethic and Capitalism
2021
ABSTRACT: The Reformation arose from society's reaction to the luxury, immorality and indifference of the clergy of the Catholic Church and returning to the original purity of New Testament Christianity. The Protestant culture supports the principle of equality and individualism. These were the basis for the development of capitalism. Various studies conclude that there is a strong link between Protestantism's behavioral patterns, concepts of secular ethics and religious doctrines of Protestantism. KEYWORDS: ethic, morality, values, protestantism, capitalism, Max Weber
Human and Social Studies, 2016
For many reasons, it is true that the Protestant Reformation unleashed the forces that lay behind the emergence of capitalism. Such a system was compatible with the emancipation of individuals, their mentalities, due to specific societal reforms and transformations. Therefore, it gave birth, in an unprecedented way, to a “new form of capitalism”. But the main idea I want to stress in this article is that the capitalist ethos was present before the Reformation, many centuries ago, in what is called now the “Christian spirit”. In this direction, I emphasize many theories which disagree with the Weber’s well-known thesis about the relation between capitalism and religion, especially when it comes to generalize a particular result that is both theologically vague and empirically disprovable.
The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism: a Natural Scientific Perspective..
The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism is widely recognized as one of the most outstanding contributions made by a sociologist to the understanding of the origins and development of modern capitalist society. Yet Weber himself felt towards the end of his life that his thesis had been fundamentally misunderstood. Critics such as Sombart and Brentano had mistakenly assumed that he was concerned with the impact of religious ethical teaching on the development of practical economic conduct: We are interested rather in something entirely different: the influence of those psychological sanctions which, originating in religious belief and the practice of religion, gave a direction to practical conduct and held the individual to it. This is, to speak frankly, the point of the whole essay, which I had not expected to find so completely overlooked. 1 which action has pushed by the dynamic of interest.