i Asceticism and the Spirit of Capitalism Calvinism for seven years, the greater simplicity of life in the more seriously religious circles, in combina- tion with great wealth, led to an excessive propensity to accumulation.®^ That, furthermore, the tendency which has existed everywhere and at all times, being quite strong in Germany to-day, for middle-class fortunes to be absorbed into the nobility, was necessarily checked by the Puritan antipathy to the feudal way of life, is evident. English Mercantilist writers of the seventeenth century attributed the superiority of Dutch capital to English to the circumstance that newly acquired wealth there did not regularly seek investment in land. Also, since it is not simply a question of the purchase of land, it did not there seek to transfer itself to feudal habits of life, and thereby to remove itself from the possibility of capitalistic investment.^^ The high esteem for agriculture as a peculiarly important branch of activity, also especially consistent with piety, which the Puritans shared, applied (for instance in Baxter) not to the landlord, but to the yeoman and farmer, in the eighteenth century not to the squire, but the rational cultivator.®^ Through the whole of English society in the time since the seventeenth century goes the conflict between the squirearchy, the representatives of "merrie old England", and the Puritan circles of widely varying social influence. ^^ Both elements, that of an unspoiled naive joy of life, and of a strictly regulated, reserved self-control, and conventional ethical conduct are even to-day combined to form the English national charac- ter.^^ Similarly, the early history of the North American" Colonies is dominated by the sharp cöntrast~oFlEe 173 The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism adventurers, who wanted to set up plantations with the labour of indentured servants, and live as feudal lords, and the specifically middle-class outlook of the Puritans. ^^ As far as the influence of the Puritan outlook ex- tended, under all circumstances — and this is, of course, much more important than the mere encouragement of capital accumulation — it favoured the development of a rational bourgeois economic life; it was the most important, and above all the only consistent influence in the development of that life. It stood at the cradle of the modern economic man.
To be sure, these Puritanical ideals tended to give way under excessive pressure from the temptations of wealth, as the Puritans themselves knew very well. With great regularity we find the most genuine adher- ents of Puritanism among the classes which were rising from a lowly status, ^^ the small bourgeois and farmers, while~the beati possidentes, even among Quakers, are often found tending to repudiate the old ideals.^* It was the same fate which again and again befell the predecessor of this worldly asceticism, the monastic asceticism of the Middle Ages. In the latter case, when /rational economic activity had worked out its full effects by strict regulation of conduct and limitation of con- sumption, the wealth accumulated either succumbed directly to the nobility, as in the time before the Reforma- tion, or monastic discipline threatened to break down, and one of the numerous reformations became necessary.
In fact the wlible history of monasticTsm is in a certain sense the history of a continual struggle with the problem of the secularizing influence of wealth.
The same is true on a grand scale of the worldly 174 Asceticism and the Spirit of Capitalism asceticism of Puritanism. The great revival of Method- ism, which preceded the expansion of EngHsh industry toward the end of the eighteenth century, may well be compared with such a monastic reform. We may hence quote here a passage^^ from John Wesley himself which might well serve as a motto for everything which has been said above. For it shows that the leaders of these ascetic movements understood the seemingly paradoxical rela- tionships which we have here analysed perfectly well, and in the same sense that we have given them.^^ He wrote: "I fear, wherever riches have increased, the essence' of religion has decreased in the same proportion/ Therefore I do not see how it is possible, in the nature of things, for any revival of true religion to continue long. For religion must necessarily produce both industry and frugality, and these cannot but produce riches. But as riches increase, so will pride, anger, and love of the world in all its branches. How then is it possible that Methodism, that is, a religion of the heart, though it flourishes now as a green bay tree, should continue in this state? For the Methodists in every place grow diligent and frugal; consequently they increase in goods. Hence they proportionately increase in pride, in anger, in the desire of the flesh, the desire of the eyes, and the pride of life. So, although the form of religion remains, the spirit is swiftly vanishing away. Is there no way to prevent this — this continual decay of pure religion? We_9ught^not to prevent people from^ being diligent and frugal; we must exhort all Christians togain all they can, and to save all they can', that isy inj effect f to grow rich.'' ^' 175 The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism There follows the advice that those who gain all they can and save all they can should also give all they can, so that they will grow in grace and lay up a treasure in heaven. It is clear that Wesley here expresses^ even in detail, just what we have been trying to-point^ut. ^^ As Wesley here says, the full economic effect of those great religious movements, whose significance for economic development lay above ail in their ascetic educative influence, generally came only after the peak of the purely religious enthusiasm was past. Then the intensity of the search for the Kingdom of God com- menced gradually to pass over into sober economic virtue; the religious roots died out slowly, giving way to utilitarian worldliness. Then, as Dowden puts it, as in Robinson Crusoe, the isolated economic man who carries on missionary activities on the side ^^ takes the place of the lonely spiritual search for the Kingdom of Heaven of Bunyan's pilgrim, hurrying through the market-place of Vanity.
When later the principle **to make the most of both worlds" became dominant in the end, as Dowden has remarked, a good conscience simply became one of the means of enjoying a comfortable bourgeois life, as is well expressed in the German proverb about the soft pillow. What the great religious epoch of the seven- teenth century bequeathed to its utilitarian successor was, however, above all an amazingly good, we may even say a pharisaically good, conscience in the acqui- sition of money, so long as it took place legally. Every trace of the deplacere vix potest has disappeared. ^^^ [ " A specifically bourgeois economic ethic had grown up. With the conscio.usness of standing in the fullness ~ "176 k Asceticism and the Spirit of Capitalism /of God's grace and being visibly blessed by Him, the 'bourgeois business man, as long as he remained within the bounds of formal correctness, as long as his moral conduct was spotless and the use to which he put his wealth was not objectionable, could follow his pecuniary interests as he would and feel that he was fulfilling ai luty in doing so. The power of religious asceticisnr provided Tum in addition with sober, conscientious, and unusually industrious workmen, who clung to their work as to a life purpose willed by God.^^^ Finally, it gave him the comforting assurance that the unequal distribution of the goods of this world was a special dispensation of Divine Providence, which in these differences, as in particular grace, pursued secret ends unknown to men.^^^ Calvin himself had made the much-quoted statement that only when the people, i.e. the mass of labourers and craftsmen, were poor did they remain obedient to God.^^^ In the Netherlands (Pieter de la Court and others), that had been secularized to the effect that the mass of men only labour when necessity forces them to do so. This formulation of aj leading idea of capitalistic economy later entered into! the current theories of the productivity of low wages. Here also, with the dying out of the religious root, th^ utilitarian interpretation crept in unnoticed, in the line of development which we have again and again observed^ Mediaeval ethics not only tolerated begging but actually glorified it in the mendicant orders. Even secular beggars, since they gave the person of means opportunity for good works through giving alms, were sometimes considered an estate and treated as such. Even the Anglican social ethic of the Stuarts was very 177 The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism close to this attitude. It remained for Puritan Ascetic- ism to take part in the severe EngHsh Poor ReHef Legislation which fundamentally changed the situation. And it could do that, because the Protestant sects and the strict Puritan communities actually did not know any. begging in their own midst. ^^^ On the other hand, seen from the side of the workers, the Zinzendorf branch of Pietism, for instance, glorified the loyal worker who did not seek acquisition, but lived according to the apostolic model, and was thus en- dowed with the charisma^^^ of the disciples. ^^^ Similar ideas had originally been prevalent among the Baptists in an even more radical form.
Now naturally the whole ascetic literature of almost all denominations is saturated with the idea that faithful labour, even at low wages, on the part of those whom life offers no other opportunities, is highly pleasing to God. In this respect Protestant Asceticism added in pitselF nothing new. But it not only deepened this idea most powerfully, it also created the force which was alone decisive for its effectiveness: the psychological sanction of it through the conception of this labour as a calling, as the best, often in the last analysis the only means of attaining certainty of grace. ^^^ And on the oth^ hamülLlegalizedthe exploitation of this specific willingness to work, ip^jthat it also interpreted the j employer's business activity as a calling.^^^ It is obvious ""how powerfully the exclusive search for the Kingdom ,,of God only through the fulfilment of duty in the / calling, and the strict asceticism which Church discil pline naturally imposed, especially on the propertyless \ classes, was bound to affect the productivity of labour 178 Asceticism and the Spirit of Capitalism in the capitalistic sense of the word. The treatment of labour' as a calHng became as characteristic of the modern worker as the corresponding attitude toward acquisition of the business man. It was a perception of this situation, new at his time, which caused so able an observer as Sir William Petty to attribute the economic power of Holland in the seventeenth century to the fact that the very numerous dissenters in that country (Calvinists and Baptists) "are for the most part thinking, sober men, and such as believe that Labour and In- dustry is their duty towards God".^^^ Calvinism opposed organic social organization in the fiscal-monopolistic form which it assumed in Anglican- ism under the Stuarts, especially in the conceptions of Laud, this alliance of Church and State with the monopolists on the basis of a Christian-social ethical foundation. Its leaders were universally among the most passionate opponents of this type of politically privileged commercial, putting-out, and colonial capitalism. Over against it they placed the individual- istic motives of rational legal acquisition by virtue of one's own ability and initiative. And, while the politic- ally privileged monopoly industries in England all disappeared in short order, this attitude played a large and decisive part in the development of the industries which grew up in spite of and against the authority of the State. 1^^ The Puritans (Prynne, Parker) repudi- ated all connection with the large-scale capitalistic courtiers and projectors as an ethically suspicious class. On the other hand, they took pride in their own superior middle-class business morality, which formed the true reason for the persecutions to which they were 179 The Protestafit Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism subjected on the part of those circles. Defoe proposed to win the battle against dissent by boycotting bank credit and withdrawing deposits. The difference of the two types of capitalistic attitude went to a very large extent hand in hand with religious differences. The opponents of the Nonconformists, even in the eight- eenth century, again and again ridiculed them for personifying the spirit of shopkeepers, and for having ruined the ideals of old England. Here also lay the difference of the Puritan economic ethic from the Jewish; and contemporaries (Prynne) knew well that the former and not the latter was the bourgeois capital- istic ethic. 11^ ^ One of the fundamental elements of the spirit of [modern capitalism, and not only of that but of all I modern culture: rational conduct on the basis of the idea of the calling, was born — ^that is what this dis- cussion has sT5trght^o demonstrate — ^from the spirit jof Christian asceticism. One has only to re-read the passage from Franklin, quoted at the beginning of this essay, in order to see that the essential elements of the attitude which was there called the spirit of capitalism are the same as what we have just shown to be the content of the Puritan worldly asceticism,^^^ only without the religious basis, ^^hichby Franklin's time had died awav. The idea that modern "Tabour^iras an ascetic character is of course not new. Limitation to specialized work, with a renunciation of the Faustian universality of man which it involves, is a condition of any valuable work in the modern world; hence deeds and renunciation inevitably condition each other to- day. This fundamentally ascetic trait of middle-class i8o Asceticism and the Spirit of Capitalism life, if it attempts to be a way of life at all, and not simply the absence of any, was what Goethe wanted to teach, at the height of his wisdom, in the Wander- jähren, and in the end which he gave to the life of his ' Fatist}^^ For him the realization meant a renunciation, ' a departure from an age of full and beautiful humanity, which can no more be repeated in the course of our cultural development than can the flower of the Athenian culture of antiquity. [ The Puritan wanted to work in a calling;:a[£_are ' _fo£C£djo_do_sa^For when asceticism was carried out of monastic cells into everyday life, and began to dominate worldly morality, it did its part in building the tremen- dous cosmos of the modern economic order. This order is now bound to the technical and economic conditions of machine production which to-day determine the lives of all^ the individuals who are born into this mechanism, not only those directly concerned with economic acquisition, with irresistible force. Perhaps it will so determine them until the last ton of fossilized coal is burnt. In Baxter's view the care for external ^oods should only lie on the shoulders^oFlhe *jäjnt like a light cloak, which can be thrownaside at any ^_nioment'\^^^ But fate decreed that the cloak should _become an iron cage.
Since asceticism undertook to remodel the world and to work out its ideals in the world, material goods havi gained an increasing and finally an inexorable power\ over the lives of men as at no previous period in his- tory. To-day the spirit of religious asceticism — whether .finally, who knows? — has escaped from the cage. But victorious capitalism, since it rests on mechanical i8i The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism foundations, needs its support no longer. The rosy blush of its laughing heir, the Enlightenment, seems also to be irretrievably fading, and the idea_of_duty in one's calling prowls about in our lives likejiie- ghost ofHdead religious beliefs. Where the_ fulfilment of the calling cannot directly be related to the highest spiritual and cultural values7~br when, on the other hand, it need not be felt simpfy as economic compulsion, the individual generally abandons the attempt to justify it at all. In the field of its highest development, in the United States, the pursuit of wealth, stripped of its religious and ethical meaning, tends to become asso- ciated with purely mundane passions, which often actually give it the character of sport.^^^ ^ No one knows who will live in this cage in the future, or whether at the end of this tremendous development entirely new prophets will arise, or there will be a great rebirth of old ideas and ideals, or, if neither, mechanized petrification, embellished with a sort of convulsive self-importance. For of the last stage of s cultural development, it might well be truly said: Specialists without spirit, sensualists without heart; this nullity imagines that it has attained a level of civilization never before achieved."
But this brings us to the world of judgments of value and of faith, with which this purely historical discussion need not be burdened. The next task would be rather to show the significance of ascetic rationalism, which has only been touched in the foregoing sketch, for the content of practical social ethics, thus for the types of organization and the functions of social ^ groups from the conventicle to the State. Then its 182 Asceticism and the Spirit of Capitalism relations to humanistic rationalism/^^ its ideals of life and cultural influence; further to the development of philosophical and scientific empiricism, to technical development and to spiritual ideals would have to be analysed. Then__its historical development from the mediaeval beginnings of worldl)^ asceticism to its dissolution into pure utilitarianism would have to be traced out through all the areas of ascetic religion. Only then could the quantitative cultural significance of ascetic Protestantism in its relation to the other plastic elements of modern culture be estimated.
Here we have only attempted to trace the fact and the direction of its influence to their motives in one, though a very important point. But it would also Turther be necessary to investigate how Protestant Asceticism was in turn influenced in its development and its character by the totality of social conditions, especially economic.^^'^ The modern man is in general, even with the best will, unable to give religious ideas a significance for culture and national character which they deserve. But it is, of course, not my aim to sub- stitute for a one-sided materialistic an equally one- sided spiritualistic causal interpretation of culture and of history. Each is equally possible,^i^ but each, if it does not serve as the preparation, but as the conclusion of an investigation, accomplishes equally little in the interest of historical truth.^^^ i«3 NOTES INTRODUCTION 1. Ständestaat. The term refers to the late form taken by feudalism in Europe in its transition to absolute monarchy. — ^Translator's Note.
2. Here, as on some other points, I differ from our honoured master, Lujo Brentano (in his work to be cited later). Chiefly in regard to terminology, but also on questions of fact. It does not seem to me expedient to bring such different things as acquisition of booty and acquisition by management of a factory together under the same category; still less to designate every tendency to the acquisition of money as the spirit of capitalism as against other types of acquisition. The second sacrifices all precision of concepts, and the first the possibility of clarifying the specific difference between Occidental capitalism and other forms. Also in Simmel's Philosophie des Geldes money economy and capitalism are too closely identified, to the detriment of his concrete analysis. In the writings of Werner Sombart, above all in the second edition of his most important work. Der moderne Kapitalismus, the differentia specifica of Occidental capitalism — at least from the view -point of my problem — the rational organiza- tion of labour, is strongly overshadowed by genetic factors which have been operative everywhere in the world.
3. Commenda was a form of mediaeval trading association, entered into ad hoc for carrying out one sea voyage. A producer or exporter of goods turned them over to another who took them abroad (on a ship provided sometimes by one party, sometimes by the other) and sold them, receiving a share in the profits. The expenses of the voyage were divided between the two in agreed proportion, while the original shipper bore the risk. See Weber, "Handelsgesellschaften im Mittelalter", Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Sozial- und Wirtschafts- geschichte, pp. 323-8. — ^Translator's Note.
4. The sea loan, used in maritime commerce in the Middle Ages, was "a method of insuring against the risks of the sea without violating the prohibitions against usury...When certain risky maritime ventures were to be undertaken, a certain sum...was obtained for the cargo belonging to such and such a person or capitalist. If the ship was lost, no repayment was exacted by the lender; if it reached port safely, the borrower paid a considerable premium, sometimes 50 per cent." Henri See, Modern Capitalism, p. 189. — Translator's Note.
5. A form of company between the partnership and the limited liability corporation. At lea.st one of the participants is made liable without limit, while the others enjoy limitation of liability to the amount of their investment. — Translator's Note.
o 185 The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism 6. Naturally the difference cannot be conceived in absolute terms. The politically oriented capitalism (above all tax-farming) of Mediter- ranean and Oriental antiquity, and even of China and India, gave rise to rational, continuous enterprises whose book-keeping — though known to us only in pitiful fragments — probably had a rational character. Furthermore, the politically oriented adventurers 'capitalism has been closely associated with rational bourgeois capitalism in the development of modern banks, which, including the Bank of England, have tor the most part originated in transactions of a political nature, often connected with war. The difference between the characters of Paterson, for instance — a typical promoter — and of the members of the directorate of the Bank who gave the keynote to its permanent policy, and very soon came to be known as the "Puritan usurers of Grocers' Hall", is characteristic of it. Similarly, we have the aberra- tion of the policy of this most solid bank at the time of the South Sea Bubble. Thus the two naturally shade off into each other. But the difference is there. The great promoters and financiers have no more created the rational organization of labour than — again in general and with individual exceptions — those other typical representatives of financial and political capitalism, the Jews. That was done, typically, by quite a different set of people.
7. For Weber's discussion of the ineffectiveness of slave labour, especially so far as calculation is concerned, see his essay, "Agrar- verhältnisse im Altertum", in the volume Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Sozial- und Wirtschaftsgeschichte. — Translator's Note.
8. That is, in the whole series of Aufsätze zur Religionssoziologie, not only in the essay here translated. See translator's preface. — Translator's Note.
9. The remains of my knowledge of Hebrew are also quite inadequate.
10. I need hardly point out that this does not apply to attempts like that of Karl Jasper's (in his hook Psychologie der Weltanschauungen, 1919), nor to Klages's Charakterologie, and similar studies which differ from our own in their point of departure. There is no space here for a criticism of them.
11. The only thing of this kind which Weber ever wrote is the section on "Religionssoziologie" in his large work Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft. It was left unfinished by him and does not really close the gap satisfactorily. — Translator's Note.
12. Some years ago an eminent psychiatrist expressed the same opinion to me.
CHAPTER I I. From the voluminous literature which has grown up around this essay I cite only the most comprehensive criticisms, (i) F. Rachfahl, "Kalvinismus und Kapitalismus", biternationale Wochen- schrift für Wissenschaft, Kunst und Technik (1909), Nos. 39-43. In 186 Notes reply, my article: "Antikritisches zum Geist des Kapitalismus," Archiv für Sozialwissenschaft und Sozialpolitik (Tübingen), XX, 1910. Then Rachfahl's reply to that: "Nochmals Kalvinismus und Kapitalismus", 1910, Nos. 22-25, of the Internationale Wochenschrift. Finally my "Antikritisches Schlusswort", Archiv, XXXI. (Brentano, in the criticism presently to be referred to, evidently did not know of this last phase of the discussion, as he does not refer to it.) I have not incorporated anything in this edition from the somewhat un- fruitful polemics against Rachfahl. He is an author whom I otherwise admire, but who has in this instance ventured into a field which he has not thoroughly mastered. I have only added a few supplementary references from my anti -critique, and have attempted, in new passages and footnotes, to make impossible any future misunderstanding. (2) W. Sombart, in his book Der Bourgeois (Munich and Leipzig, 191 3, also translated into English under the title The Quintessence of Capitalism, London, 1915), to which I shall return in footnotes below. Finally (3) Lujo Brentano in Part II of the Appendix to his Munich address (in the Academy of Sciences, 191 3) on Die Anfänge des modernen Kapitalismus, which was published in 191 6. (Since Weber's