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"One of the most renowned and controversial works of modern social science."
-Anthony Giddens
"Max Weber is the one undisputed canonical figure in contemporary sociology."
-Times Higher Education Supplement
--This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.
-Anthony Giddens
"Max Weber is the one undisputed canonical figure in contemporary sociology."
-Times Higher Education Supplement
--This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.
Review
"One of the most renowned and controversial works of modern social science."
-Anthony Giddens
"Max Weber is the one undisputed canonical figure in contemporary sociology."
-Times Higher Education Supplement
--This text refers to the Library Binding edition.
-Anthony Giddens
"Max Weber is the one undisputed canonical figure in contemporary sociology."
-Times Higher Education Supplement
--This text refers to the Library Binding edition.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
8 of 8 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
One must be careful with the words that Weber uses: "Protestant ethic" and "Spirit of Capitalism". This book is also about understanding capitalism.
Let's start from the basics: Capitalism existed long before Protestantism. Capitalism existed long before Weber's days form of Capitalism. Let's call this modern capitalism, as opposed to ancient capitalism. There is a stark distinction between them: modern capitalism is using a moral language. Continuous re-investing of profits, not living luxury lives (or not stopping earning more when one can achieve its original goal to earn a luxury life for themselves) and hard working up until the end of the capitalist's life no matter the age, just for the shake of it, all those are characteristics that describe more a moral duty to do so, rather than plain profit-taking activity.
Transformation of ancient capitalism to modern capitalism occurred only through the Calvinist approach of Protestantism. It could not have occurred otherwise..
How was this done?
Let's do another step back. Weber's approach to religion was unprecedented, in his time. He took the antipodal stance from Karl Marx on this. Marx, as a reductionist considered religion to be "nothing more than economics". Weber suggested quite the opposite: religion is an independent variable that could well affect all others, even in terms of constructing a full scale economic theory and its application into the real world.
With the Reformation, Protestant Christians rejected the idea that they should necessarily belong to the Catholic Church in order to be saved. Any profession could well be equally dignified, as priesthood or monkhood. The door has opened that the individual relation with God could well be a way of saving oneself. With the notion of "predestination" (that came from Calvinism), people were looking for signs for God's glory. Acquired wealth could serve this purpose, but not in itself. The way of spending one's earning was vital. Not on luxury goods, nor on expensive life-style, nor on stopping working in order to live on so far earnings.
The perfect match was done. The Protestant (Calvinist) Ethic provided Capitalism with the appropriate spirit to dominate the world.
The above is my understanding of Weber's thesis, in a nutshell.
Weber looked a lot into statistics and correlation between Protestant dominated societies and business activities etc. He is quite convincing of his analysis.
Let's start from the basics: Capitalism existed long before Protestantism. Capitalism existed long before Weber's days form of Capitalism. Let's call this modern capitalism, as opposed to ancient capitalism. There is a stark distinction between them: modern capitalism is using a moral language. Continuous re-investing of profits, not living luxury lives (or not stopping earning more when one can achieve its original goal to earn a luxury life for themselves) and hard working up until the end of the capitalist's life no matter the age, just for the shake of it, all those are characteristics that describe more a moral duty to do so, rather than plain profit-taking activity.
Transformation of ancient capitalism to modern capitalism occurred only through the Calvinist approach of Protestantism. It could not have occurred otherwise..
How was this done?
Let's do another step back. Weber's approach to religion was unprecedented, in his time. He took the antipodal stance from Karl Marx on this. Marx, as a reductionist considered religion to be "nothing more than economics". Weber suggested quite the opposite: religion is an independent variable that could well affect all others, even in terms of constructing a full scale economic theory and its application into the real world.
With the Reformation, Protestant Christians rejected the idea that they should necessarily belong to the Catholic Church in order to be saved. Any profession could well be equally dignified, as priesthood or monkhood. The door has opened that the individual relation with God could well be a way of saving oneself. With the notion of "predestination" (that came from Calvinism), people were looking for signs for God's glory. Acquired wealth could serve this purpose, but not in itself. The way of spending one's earning was vital. Not on luxury goods, nor on expensive life-style, nor on stopping working in order to live on so far earnings.
The perfect match was done. The Protestant (Calvinist) Ethic provided Capitalism with the appropriate spirit to dominate the world.
The above is my understanding of Weber's thesis, in a nutshell.
Weber looked a lot into statistics and correlation between Protestant dominated societies and business activities etc. He is quite convincing of his analysis.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
As part of my enquiry into the forces that the Reformation unleased, I decided to at last read this classic.
Alas, it was disappointing in that Weber makes the assertion - that reformation-spawned ideologies were the foundation of the capitalist revolution - and then offers little historical explanation as proof of his thesis. Instead, what he does is to painstakingly describe the ideologies in question, to show that they are compatible conceptually with his definition of capitalism (the rise of an urban bourgeoisie that created wealth by investing in industry as a major new economic actor, eventaully leading to the eclipse of the old land-based aristocracy). As Hannah Ardnt said, so long as you are far enough from reality, you can make almost any ideas appear compatible. As such, I was unconvinced that a) the feeling of being among the elect made people work harder to prove it by material success and b) that a heightened sense of individuality that arose with separation from the papist ideologies augmented this pursuit of self-development via the massing of personal capital. While the protestant ideologies may conform vaguely to these notions, that does not in the slightest prove a direct causal connection. Indeed, one might argue that it was the repression by the Inquisition - against the bourgoise's challenge to traditional aristocrats - that may have delayed the development of capitalism in Catholic countries for a few centuries. (That capitalism did develop in many Catholic countries also undermines the book's prinicpal thesis.)
This essay is interesting as a pioneering attempt at sociological determinism from a rather existentialist perspective, but reading the whole thing was a bit much for me. Weber was a great and innovative thinker, however out of date his modes of reasoning have become - they are strictly qualitative. Not recommended except asof historical interest.
Alas, it was disappointing in that Weber makes the assertion - that reformation-spawned ideologies were the foundation of the capitalist revolution - and then offers little historical explanation as proof of his thesis. Instead, what he does is to painstakingly describe the ideologies in question, to show that they are compatible conceptually with his definition of capitalism (the rise of an urban bourgeoisie that created wealth by investing in industry as a major new economic actor, eventaully leading to the eclipse of the old land-based aristocracy). As Hannah Ardnt said, so long as you are far enough from reality, you can make almost any ideas appear compatible. As such, I was unconvinced that a) the feeling of being among the elect made people work harder to prove it by material success and b) that a heightened sense of individuality that arose with separation from the papist ideologies augmented this pursuit of self-development via the massing of personal capital. While the protestant ideologies may conform vaguely to these notions, that does not in the slightest prove a direct causal connection. Indeed, one might argue that it was the repression by the Inquisition - against the bourgoise's challenge to traditional aristocrats - that may have delayed the development of capitalism in Catholic countries for a few centuries. (That capitalism did develop in many Catholic countries also undermines the book's prinicpal thesis.)
This essay is interesting as a pioneering attempt at sociological determinism from a rather existentialist perspective, but reading the whole thing was a bit much for me. Weber was a great and innovative thinker, however out of date his modes of reasoning have become - they are strictly qualitative. Not recommended except asof historical interest.
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
An important and thoughtful work, but clothed in the most dense, complicated, unreadable 'scholarly' language imaginable ... a depressing, boring chore to read.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Protestantism, capitalism, money in circulation
The main thesis of Max Weber's book is the definite link between the Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism: `through which fruits can the Reformed see without doubt that he... Read more
Published 15 months ago by Luc REYNAERT
Rational analyses ...
Max Weber (1864-1920) had noticed that Protestants appeared excessively under the numbers of people who economically were successful. Read more
Published on 20 Oct 2005 by FrizzText
Revewing the revew...
I think it's a revew on the revew you've got there, as it shows a little misunderstanding of Max Weber plan. Read more
Published on 29 Nov 1998
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