The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism discusses the socio-economic and religious roots of modern capitalism—and of our productivity-focused culture. In it, Max Weber argues that the Protestant Reformation, a 16th-century European religious movement, changed how people lived, worked, and used their money. Mainly in America and western Europe, the Protestants’ unique way of life laid the seeds for capitalism to emerge as a full-fledged economic system.
Born in 1864 in Prussia, Weber was a German lawyer, historian, and sociologist and is recognized as one of the founders of modern sociology. His argument in The Protestant Ethic (1905) is considered a classic and is often compared to Karl Marx’s writings on the economic origins of capitalism. Weber wrote extensively on “economic sociology,” a theory he developed to explain how culture and economics mutually influence each other. His main interest was how different religions affected economics. After writing The Protestant Ethic, he analyzed world religions in The Religion of China (1915), The Religion of India (1916), and Ancient Judaism (1917-1919).
In this guide, we present Weber’s argument in two parts: First, we’ll discuss the question he poses and the answer he gives. Second, we’ll detail the historical account of the Protestant Reformation that he uses to support his thesis. In commentary, we’ll discuss how Weber’s contemporaries responded to his thesis, and we’ll discuss critiques that theologians and scholars have made to his presentation of the Reformation.
To begin, we’ll discuss the question that The Protestant Ethic tries to answer. We’ll then look at the big picture of Weber’s argument: What the Protestant ethic is, how it developed, and how it led to the “spirit of capitalism”—the modern capitalist’s distinct morals and way of life.
Writing from Germany at the turn of the 20th century, Weber observes that in western Europe and America, most business owners and skilled workers were Protestants. While this effect wasn’t universal, it was prominent amongst Protestants in the Netherlands, England, and the United States, and to a lesser extent in Germany and France. In contrast, Weber says, Catholics were often less focused on financial success and were less prosperous overall.
(Shortform note: Weber originally published The Protestant Ethic in two parts. Part 1 was published prior to his landmark 1904 trip to the United States, whereas Part 2 was published afterward. Scholars generally agree that Weber’s trip influenced his thought in major ways, so it’s likely that his emphasis on American Protestantism is no accident.)
Upon his observation, Weber asks whether and to what extent Protestantism contributed to the development of capitalism. He argues that if Protestants make good capitalists today, something about their beliefs and way of life must be conducive to capitalism. To understand this, we must look at the history of Protestantism and capitalism to see how they relate.
Weber’s New Sociological Methods
Since sociology wasn’t yet an established field at Weber’s time, he had to pioneer techniques for his work. Two key concepts he created are “objective possibility” and “adequate causation.” He used these concepts to explain how he reasoned out causal explanations that were logically plausible (the former term) and likely enough to be true (the latter term). The idea is that in the social sciences, it’s difficult to find clear cause-and-effect explanations for complex phenomena such as the onset of capitalism—so Weber created criteria that enabled him to find answers that were good enough.
“Objective possibility” allowed him to argue for the plausibility of a phenomenon such as the Protestant ethic, which isn’t observable in the way that gravity or ocean currents are.
“Adequate causation” allowed him to make a reasonable enough argument for such a phenomenon without having exact, precise evidence for it.
While Weber’s answer to this problem is complex, he essentially asserts that yes, Protestantism did influence the rise of capitalism. Specifically, the Protestant ethic, or way of life, shaped the capitalist lifestyle that prevailed by the 19th and 20th centuries. He explains each of these two concepts as follows:
Weber argues that the former influenced the latter on two levels. First, Protestant beliefs and morality influenced capitalist beliefs and morality. Second, the Protestants’ practical lifestyles influenced capitalist habits and lifestyles. Put together, the Protestant ethic contributed its rigorous, systematic, and rational character to the capitalist way of life.
Weber and Marx on the Origins of Capitalism
Weber’s argument was the first to assert that ideas and culture can influence a society’s material and economic development (idealism). This contrasts with Karl Marx’s stance that class struggle shapes the economy and material conditions of life (materialism). At the time, Weber’s view was controversial and sparked great debates. Put roughly, here’s what they each say:
Weber: Ideas and culture, such as religious beliefs, can influence how people behave and therefore how economies and societies develop. Protestant religious ideals shaped behaviors and lifestyles conducive to capitalism’s success.
Marx: Human history is a history of struggle between the oppressors and the oppressed. The modern economy came about through the bourgeoisie’s violent seizure of land and capital and forcible exploitation of labor.
Today, some interpret The Protestant Ethic as a direct refutation of Marx’s argument. However, Weber says that he isn’t trying to deny Marx’s assertions—he just doesn’t think it’s the whole story. Rather, he believes that numerous factors contributed to the onset of capitalism, and that it’s a mistake to attribute it to just one dynamic, as he says Marx does.
At first, the early Protestants themselves became skillful entrepreneurs and business people. They were the earliest people to embody the spirit of capitalism, though Weber says that they didn’t do so on purpose. Rather, the Protestant way of life was simply well-suited to economic success.
Over time, the religious zealotry that ushered in Protestantism died down. Through the 1700s and 1800s—long past the Reformation’s start in the early 1500s—people gradually became more secularized. But while they softened their religious zeal, they retained the practical, systematic way of life that began with the early Protestants. This secularized offspring of the Protestant ethic became, in Weber’s view, the modern capitalist lifestyle.
(Shortform note: Weber doesn’t explain exactly how Protestantism—specifically Puritanism—waned and led to a secular work ethic. There isn’t a clear date at which Puritanism “ended,” though it may have died out around the turn of the 18th century, when New England Puritans became more interested in Protestant unity against the Catholic church. Concerned about the perceived menace of Catholicism back in Europe, they became less concerned about petty doctrinal differences between Protestant sects and sought solidarity. This movement was called the “Protestant interest.”)
With the broad strokes of Weber’s argument outlined, let’s dive into the details. In this section, we’ll look at his account of the Protestant Reformation, the 16th-century European religious movement from which Protestantism sprang forth.
We’ll explain the specific doctrinal developments introduced by Martin Luther, John Calvin, and Richard Baxter that, according to Weber, produced the Protestant ethic. These doctrines caused people to live more systematically, ascetically, and rationally than ever before. Fueled by piety and fear of God, the Protestants kicked off changes that echo to this day.
Weber starts with Martin Luther, a German priest and theologian. Luther started the Protestant Reformation on October 31st, 1517, when he posted his 95 theses disputing the practices of the Catholic church. In particular, Luther took issue with indulgences and with the church governing believers’ relationships with God. His fight with the Catholic church led to his excommunication in 1521, after which he founded his own denomination, the Lutheran church.
(Shortform note: Popular myth holds that Luther nailed his 95 theses to the door of the Wittenberg Castle church, but he might not actually have done so. In fact, Luther may simply have mailed his theses to the local archbishop in order to start a dialogue and seek change. This less dramatic version of the story suggests that Luther may originally have wanted reform within the church rather than without it—but when he was excommunicated, he had no choice but to start his own church.)
Indulgences were a practice that the medieval papacy created to allow Christians to work off the debt of their sins through good works. However, they became distorted over the years and by Luther’s time, many clergy would accept money in place of works. In effect, churchgoers could buy forgiveness for various sins by helping fund the construction of cathedrals and other clergical luxuries.
Luther saw that many Catholic priests exploited indulgences to get rich, and he felt that was immoral. He reasoned that you shouldn’t be able to buy your way into heaven. And as for church-meditated religion—before Luther, the Bible was written in Latin and available only to the clergy. This meant that priests had power over people’s religious lives and could control whether or not they were saved by God.
A Brief History of the Indulgence System
Indulgences weren’t so corrupt at the beginning. Formalized by popes in the 12th and 13th centuries, the indulgence system was meant to help the pious work out how much “debt” they owned due to sins they had committed. Knowing that amount, they could then confess, seek absolution (forgiveness given by the church), and do good works to lessen and remove the debt.
However, the system was complicated in practice, and this made it easy to abuse. Specifically, the practice of “commutation,” or assigning a monetary value to a religious debt, allowed wealthy believers to remove their debts by giving money to fund church projects, such as the construction of cathedrals. This “selling” of indulgences was what Luther took issue with.
Weber explains that Luther disagreed with the Church’s power over the common man’s salvation. He felt that salvation comes through faith alone, and the Bible was the only true source of religious authority. To remedy the situation, he translated the Bible into German and used Johannes Gutenberg’s printing press (invented in the mid-1400s) to spread it. From then on, individual Christians could read the Bible for themselves and develop their own relationships with God. Soon after, additional reformers followed Luther’s example and created more reformed churches based on their own interpretations of scripture (one of these was John Calvin, who we’ll discuss shortly).
(Shortform note: Protestantism is distinct from Catholicism for its insistence that each person should have a direct relationship with God, without the involvement of clergy or any intermediaries. This is called “universal priesthood,” which means that everyone has an equal ability to relate to God. Thus in Protestantism, ministers and church staff were generally not held up as morally superior to the layperson, and many churches devised their own forms of organization, such as congregationalism.)
Weber emphasizes one key detail of Luther’s Bible translation: To render the notion of God’s preordained purpose for each individual, he used the word calling (beruf, in the original German). This word combined the secular notion of your job or occupation with the religious notion of God’s purpose for you. In doing this, Luther created a wholly new idea: That faithful secular work was the highest moral good you could do. That is, God wants you to work hard in your calling.
To Luther, wherever you found yourself in life—whether you were a tailor, a blacksmith, a peasant, or a businessperson—is where God intended you to be. Consequently, he taught that it’s your duty to submit to that destiny and work in your calling for God’s glory. In contrast to working in that calling, Luther saw monkhood as a devilish path. He felt that monks shut themselves away from the world and choose not to contribute to secular, practical life.
(Shortform note: Some argue that Weber’s interpretation of “the calling” is inaccurate. Weber quotes the Westminster Confession, a 1646 statement of belief by the Westminster Protestants in England, but the Confession doesn’t equate God’s calling and your highest moral duty. Rather, it emphasizes duty to God over secular pursuits, and it recommends that Christians follow callings that best serve God rather than their own gains. If we take this as true, then the idea of the calling may not have been as innovative as Weber describes. Either way, it played a large role in the Reformation.)
After introducing Luther’s key contributions to the Protestant ethic—challenging the Catholic church and introducing the notion of the calling—Weber discusses John Calvin. Calvin was a French priest and theologian who carried the Reformation beyond Luther’s initial changes. According to Weber, Calvin introduced the key idea that created the Protestant ethic: the doctrine of predestination.
Put simply, predestination said that humans are inherently sinful and deserve only death. God chose everyone’s fate at the beginning of time. Some lucky few would be “elect” (saved), while most of humanity was “reprobate” (damned). There was nothing you could do to change this. You couldn’t lose salvation, and you couldn’t earn it. Further, there was no way you could know your status.
(Shortform note: Weber presents Calvin’s doctrine of predestination as profoundly grim. However, Calvin may not have seen it as such—to him, it was simply an important truth he’d reasoned out from reading the Bible. He also understood it as a way to humble the prideful, as well as a means of comforting the faithful. The idea was that since God has determined your life ahead of time, you can take comfort in faith and worry not about the trials of life. However, it’s clear that whatever nuance Calvin might’ve intended to convey, the doctrine was frightening and lost many of its finer points to popular thought.)
Calvin’s God, Weber says, was profoundly distant and inhuman. He was divinely, infinitely more than mere humans—cold and removed from worldly concerns. At the same time, Calvin taught that it was your absolute duty to have faith and glorify him, regardless of your status as elect or reprobate (which you couldn’t know, anyway). To think you could understand his will would be presumptuous and unfaithful.
This view of God stood in sharp contrast to Luther’s, who taught that you could find salvation through faith and could earn or lose it. Weber argues that by removing Luther’s more easygoing God, Calvin’s doctrine created a powerful motivation for people to live utterly devoted religious lives (though it differed from Catholicism in its focus on the secular rather than spiritual world).
(Shortform note: Calvin himself had a reputation for being cold and focused on the abstract, theological world rather than immediate human concerns. He took his faith very seriously, and he expected others to do the same. There’s some evidence that Calvin even condoned or contributed to the executions of a handful of religious figures who took issue with his teachings. In one letter, he wrote of one such theologian “Servetus offers to come hither… if he shall come, I shall never permit him to depart alive…” Michael Servetus, an acquaintance of Calvin, was arrested when he next visited Calvin in Geneva, charged with heresy, and burned alive—though Calvin may have pressed for a lesser form of execution.)
You might imagine that Calvin’s doctrine worried people. In fact, Weber stresses that it caused people to feel profoundly anxious and alone. Since nobody knew their status, people couldn’t trust each other—nobody wanted to associate with the potentially damned. This intense inner isolation was the psychological backdrop of a Calvinist’s life.
Despite Calvin’s teaching that you couldn’t know your status, people still wanted to know. Everyone, Weber asserts, would’ve asked: “Am I saved? Or am I damned? How can I know?” Calvin was not much help. As an ordained man of God, he considered himself elect and said that you must only trust in God’s will for you. Lack of faith meant, most likely, that you were not chosen for salvation.
(Shortform note: Thomas Bayes, a statistician and Presbyterian minister, might have approached this dilemma with Bayes’ theorem. Given a range of probabilities from a 1% through to a 100% chance of salvation, where each probability is equally likely or unlikely (since there’s no way you can know), you end up with a coin toss: 50/50 chances of salvation. To some, this might seem decent—but believers wanted certainty rather than a chance. However, the insistence on a way of knowing actually goes against Calvinist doctrine, which says that it’s presumptuous to think you can understand the mind of God.)
In practice, Calvin’s answer didn’t do much to assuage people’s anxieties, so Calvinist pastors tried to give better answers. Weber says that they gave two main pieces of advice:
Acting on this advice, the everyday Calvinist began to live his life in complete service to God’s will for him. Calvinist pastors taught that when you work tirelessly in your calling and faithfully regard yourself as elect, God’s favor will manifest in your life as grace. Practically, grace looked like success in your calling and the complete cessation of doubt or worry about your status. According to Weber, everyone wanted to achieve this state.
The Notion of Grace in Christianity
Grace is a central concept in both Protestantism and Catholicism; it broadly refers to a freely given gift from God that takes the form of divine favor and an experience of the divine nature. The question of the means by which an individual obtains grace is a primary schism between Protestantism and Catholicism:
Protestants generally believe that grace comes through faith alone, and it’s given by God alone. Upon receiving grace, you are “born again” into the true Christian faith.
Catholics hold that you receive grace over time through participation in the sacraments of the church, as well as through works and faith.
In Weber’s argument above, then, Calvinist Protestants were looking for a definitive moment upon which God gave them grace. The various sects disagreed about specifics—whether it was an internal, emotional experience of God entering your soul, or an outward sign such as social and financial success—but all looked for that “born again” moment.
Weber explains that since achieving grace meant you were (probably) saved, the most important thing in a Protestant’s life became proving their state of grace. They wanted to prove this to themselves and their community. To prove it to themselves was to end their existential anxiety; to prove it to the community was to secure high social standing.
To achieve this, Weber argues that Protestants began to live ascetic, systematic lives in order to attain the state of grace (following the example of Catholic monks, except in the secular world). In plain language, the ideal Protestant had strict daily routines, habits, and standards of moral conduct.
(Shortform note: Protestants distinguished between two concepts surrounding the idea of grace: “sanctification” and “justification.” Justification referred to God’s gift of grace when given to the elect, and it was what Protestants sought. Sanctification referred to the purified, holy behavior that an individual was thought to demonstrate once they were justified. Proving grace, then, meant experiencing justification and proving it to your church community through sanctified behavior—hence the rigorous, methodical lifestyles lived in utter devotion to God’s will.)
The ideal Protestant systematized two main areas of life: his internal relationship with God, and his external work in a calling.
As a result of this intense, methodical focus on attaining the state of grace, Protestants had no room in their lives for anything superfluous. Idle talk, drinking and feasting, and other “instinctive” pleasures were all off-limits. Anything that took away from working in your calling to glorify God was a waste of time. Weber calls this way of life “innerworldly asceticism,” which refers to the Protestant’s way of working in the secular world but not for it (rather, they worked for God).
(Shortform note: Weber termed this process of systemizing life “rationalization.” By this, he meant that people began to use reason to find more efficient ways of conducting their practical affairs. Thus as above, rational thought had merged with religiosity to produce a thoroughly optimized, systematized way of life. Outside of The Protestant Ethic, Weber discusses rationalization in relation to bureaucracy, explaining that bureaucracy is the form of administration that arises when people systematize and optimize the functions of government.)
Fueled by existential anxiety, Calvinist Protestants became the first rational, systematic middle class of skilled workers and entrepreneurs. Specifically, Weber focuses on the lifestyles of the Puritans, the main sect of Anglo-American Calvinists in the 1600s.
(Shortform note: The Puritans were a sect of Protestants who originated in England in the 1600s. They split into two groups: non-separatists and separatists. Non-separatist Puritans wanted to reform the Church of England by removing any remaining vestiges of Catholicism and to spread their way of life throughout the nation. Separatist Puritans—also known as the Pilgrims—established settlements in the American colony of New England. Lacking any opposition to their way of life, these American Puritans successfully built religious communities that gave the elect exclusive power to vote and rule the church.)
Weber emphasizes that the ambition of the Calvinists was a big break from tradition. Previously, people worked only as long as they needed to earn enough money for food and housing. People considered it immoral to chase more money than you needed, and early entrepreneurs had a hard time getting workers to labor for longer hours. Offer higher wages, and they’d work less to earn the same amount. Impose lower wages, and you’d cut productivity and hurt your own business.
According to Weber, this was not the case with the Calvinists. They saw tireless work in their callings as the highest moral good: Work was the end in itself. Consequently, they made better business owners and better workers. They would work longer and do a better job, because they saw their every action as serving to glorify God. This shift was one key to the rise of the “spirit of capitalism”: People became willing to work for the work itself.
(Shortform note: Because the Protestant ethic induced people to feel that they should work hard, it was useful to those who owned the means of production. Thus, the wealthy had an incentive to maintain the belief that more labor means more good. In the past, this may have been true—an industrializing society does need large amounts of raw labor to develop. More recently, however, some argue that more labor no longer produces more good: In a post-industrial society, we no longer need to labor constantly to procure enough food, shelter, and material comfort for everyone.)
Weber goes on to explain that through this ambition, some Puritans became wealthy: Since they were hardworking, diligent, and frugal, they naturally made money. However, Christians traditionally saw the pursuit of wealth as immoral, so the financial success of these Puritans conflicted with their religious ideals. Part of their solution to this issue was to avoid indulging in material pleasures—food, drink, and luxury goods—and to give to the church.
(Shortform note: In the Middle Ages, Christians believed in a demon called Mammon, who had fallen from heaven due to his immense greed. Superstitions around Mammon held that he tempted men with promises of wealth, preying on people prone to greed. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus is said to have taught that “no man can serve two masters… Ye cannot serve God and Mammon.” This declaration shaped the Christian view of material wealth as unimportant compared to spiritual obedience to God.)
According to Weber, the full solution to the question of wealth came from Richard Baxter, a prominent English and Puritan theologian. Baxter taught that becoming wealthy was justified under the right conditions, reasoning as follows:
So long as your wealth was a byproduct of your faithful work for God, it was okay. In other words, it became morally acceptable—even encouraged—to get wealthy for God’s glory. In this way, Weber argued that wealth became associated with the state of grace (God’s favor).
Seeing that God favored them, the wealthy now considered themselves elect (saved). This further reinforced the idea that pursuing wealth was a morally upright act, though the wealthy remained ascetic and avoided indulging.
The Prosperity Gospel: Modern Christians on Wealth
Today, some Christian teachings on wealth are enmeshed with capitalist ideals of material success. Namely, some evangelical church leaders, such as Joel Osteen, preach the “prosperity gospel,” a loosely Bible-based ideology that says God wants to make his followers wealthy. These teachings lose much of the religious foundations explained above in favor of an easy, feel-good stance that reconciles God and wealth as follows:
You can believe yourself into positive changes—your mind and thoughts influence your material reality.
God rewards his faithful in direct, materially manifested ways—such as by giving miracle cures or financial success.
Drawing from the Protestant ethic: It’s your duty to work hard and faithfully for God.
Together, these ideas produce the belief that if you work hard and believe you’ll get rich, God will reward you with great wealth. This has been used to justify inequality; it implies that if you aren’t rich, it’s your own fault.
Donald Trump is a notable adherent of this message. He was raised Presbyterian (a Protestant sect) in a church ministered to by Norman Vincent Peale, author of The Power of Positive Thinking, and who Trump has praised as being influential in his life. Peale admired and supported American businessmen, such as Fred Trump, and preached a practical (rather than spiritual) message.
With the moral confusion around wealth resolved, one problem remained: What should people do with their accumulating wealth? Since the Puritans’ rational, ascetic lifestyles prohibited “instinctive” or “animal” indulgences, many pastors advised reinvestment. So, Weber says, wealthy Protestants would put the money back into their own businesses and invest in others through the early stock markets.
In turn, this allowed them to expand their businesses. The more they reinvested, the more they accumulated capital—such as money, property, and goods. More capital meant more ability to expand, and so on in a self-reinforcing feedback loop. This, Weber argues, was the beginning of the capital accumulation and investment activity that was necessary to the onset of modern capitalism.
(Shortform note: Investment activity didn’t originate with the Protestants; rather, they expanded upon previous financial practices with meticulous, systematic work and investment. Stock exchanges appeared in the United States toward the end of the 1700s—in 1790, the Philadelphia Stock Exchange was founded, and 1792 saw the New York Stock Exchange come into being. Even earlier, Belgium had a stock exchange in Antwerp that dealt primarily in government bonds, and Venetian moneylenders bought and sold debts in the 1300s.)
Since these Puritans saw themselves as working for God’s glory, they felt morally justified in building large enterprises. Further, they saw themselves as upstanding contributors to the wealth and prosperity of God’s community on Earth.
(Shortform note: Weber doesn’t mention the role of slavery in powering the American colonial economy. New England had a high concentration of slaves—both Native Americans and Africans—who were integral to the construction of cities and powered most economic activity. Colonists also invested in the slave trade. In leaving out this detail, Weber’s argument misses the historical reality that European colonists exploited other humans to build their wealth and didn’t do it through sheer work ethic.)
To recap, Weber characterizes the ideal Protestant as someone who rose early, lived simply, and worked systematically throughout the day. He ate simply and rested just enough to maintain his health and get back to work. He followed strict routines, and he constantly examined his conduct to see whether he was living up to Biblical ideals.
The ideal Protestant wouldn’t drink, play sports, or socialize idly; he saw time not used to glorify God as time wasted. He contributed practically to his secular community, faithfully attended church, and reinvested any profits from his calling. In essence, he became a prosperous, religious, middle-class citizen. This way of life is what Weber calls “the Protestant ethic.”
(Shortform note: The description above illustrates one of Weber’s famous concepts: his notion of “ideal types.” An ideal type is an abstract, logically consistent version of something that is, in reality, more complicated. For instance, you could posit an ideal type for a millennial American tech entrepreneur—think of the stereotype of “tech bros.” In reality, nobody would fit that model perfectly; Weber’s point is that it’s a useful shorthand when you need to quickly refer to something complex within a larger argument.)
Now that we’ve described the Protestant ethic and where it came from, we’ll turn to its influence on early capitalism. In this section, we’ll explain how the Protestants’ way of life influenced the rise of a full-fledged capitalist economy. We’ll cover the following three ways in which, according to Weber, Protestantism influenced capitalism:
Weber suggests that all of these changes had taken hold by the late 1700s and early 1800s.
(Shortform note: Scholars have debated Weber’s precise thesis for decades. Some believe that Weber is saying that Protestantism created capitalism, and others point out that he never explicitly states this. Weber instead makes a heavily qualified argument that Protestantism did, in some ways, contribute to the development of certain aspects of the attitudes and lifestyles necessary to the onset of modern capitalism. This nuance is often lost in looking to distill and simplify his works.)
The first way that Protestantism influenced capitalism took place in the divide between the wealthy and the common person. When some Protestants began to get wealthy, they became more confident in their status as the elect. Over time, Weber says, those wealthy Protestants who succeeded in their callings drew themselves apart from those who didn’t. The successful saw themselves as morally superior to the unsuccessful, who God evidently didn’t favor.
This led to divisions in the church. The elect created sects entirely apart from the reprobate; you could only get in if you’d proved yourself before God and community. In other words, if you’d become successful in your calling.
(Shortform note: The theological position for these divisions was the notion of the “visible” versus the “invisible” church. The visible church is the physical, outward expression of the church—physical buildings, ceremonial robes, altars, and so on. The invisible church, according to Protestantism, is composed only of true believers who have been “born again” through genuine faith. As a result, divisions arose between the elect, who felt themselves to be the only genuine Christians, and those they perceived as reprobate, who attended the visible church but weren’t considered members of the invisible church.)
As this occurred, the successful elect determined that it was morally appropriate for them to use the labor of the reprobate. Since God gave everyone their station in life, the elect felt it was only right that, as God’s chosen people, they could exploit the reprobate. At the same time, the reprobate Protestants also felt that it was their place to work long and hard hours. After all, that was God’s will for them. Even if God didn’t seem to have chosen them, they still felt compelled to serve and glorify him.
This dynamic, Weber argues, presaged the economic divide between the capitalists, who own the means of production, and the workers, who trade their labor for wages. He implies that it provided the moral justification that allowed capitalists to exploit the labor of the poor and underprivileged. It also allowed them to view economic inequality as morally just, since it was God’s will that some succeed and some fail.
(Shortform note: Marx would argue that Weber isn’t telling the full story of labor exploitation. Specifically, he doesn’t account for the phenomenon of “primitive accumulation,” a concept that denotes how violent force allowed the powerful to take land and resources from the common people. Nobility and those with physical power made this land private property, forcing the common people to work for them or look for a living in emerging cities. This “enclosure of the commons” was, according to Marxist thought, a main factor in the onset of labor exploitation and class struggle in the modern era.)
In a related vein, the Protestants’ willingness to work for its own sake also created a distinct morality: Whether something was good depended on whether it was useful to glorify God. This attitude was passed on to capitalism, minus the emphasis on God.
Weber says that as the successful Protestants began to get wealthy, they also became more secularized. Into the 18th century, the religious zeal that fueled the earliest Protestants began to lessen. As serving God in every moment became less of an immediate imperative, people lost the association between “usefulness” and “glorifying God.”
(Shortform note: As a formal moral system, utilitarianism was first articulated by Jeremy Bentham in the late 1700s, though earlier thinkers laid the groundwork in the 1600s. Put simply, utilitarianism holds that moral actions are those that produce the greatest good for the greatest number of people. Early thinkers reasoned that what is good is human happiness, and that because God wants humans to be happy, we should maximize happiness. This view isn’t explicitly Calvinist, but it may have contributed to the later secular position that we should maximize the productivity of our actions. In this view, a business that solves a problem for many people is doing something good—which would’ve helped business owners feel morally upright.)
At the same time, these wealthy Protestants retained their systematic, rigorous lifestyles. They began to focus more on money than God; money took God’s place in their moral equations. What qualified as useful became what helped them earn money, rather than what glorified God. Weber argues that this led to the utilitarian capitalist attitude that “time is money,” which was common by the time of Benjamin Franklin (mid to late 1700s).
(Shortform note: Franklin is credited with having said “remember that time is money” in his letter “Advice to a Young Tradesman.” This short passage was published in the 1770 book The American Instructor, which contains contributions concerning mathematics, writing, basic business and accounting strategies, as well as advice about medicine and personal health—making it one of the earliest American business and self-help titles. Note also that while Weber takes Franklin’s ideas as characteristic of the American business spirit, others argue that they shouldn’t be taken as a bellwether for the age, and that Franklin was simply offering advice rather than espousing moral imperatives.)
Weber acknowledges that people did engage in capitalist activity before the Protestant Reformation. However, they did so unsystematically. As we discussed in “The Protestants Became Rational Economic Actors” section of this guide, the traditional economic style was to earn only as much money as you needed to maintain your life. This changed with the Protestants, who pioneered the unique blend of beliefs, morals, and habits that resulted in a lifestyle of systematically pursuing wealth.
(Shortform note: Some argue that the Protestants were not the first people to operate a capitalist economy. Ferdinand Braudel, a 20th-century French historian, described the development of commerce and capitalist patterns throughout European history and says that 13th- and 14th-century Italy and France were capitalist. These areas had complex systems of credit, banking, and commerce well before the Protestants’ time. Here, though, note that Weber edits the second version of his argument to acknowledge that he describes the origins of modern capitalism, rather than capitalism in general.)
As the early Protestants’ religious zeal faded, Weber suggests that pursuing wealth for God’s glory became the notion that wealth was the end in itself. In turn, the systematic way of life pioneered by the Protestants lent itself to economic success. As such, the increasingly secularized Protestants inherited the methodical, meticulous, and frugal way of life that became the modern capitalist’s lifestyle: Wake early, stay healthy, work hard. Waste no time; be productive and efficient. Account for all your wealth, and reinvest to grow it.
Most importantly, the Protestants’ asceticism led to the accumulation of capital that was necessary for capitalism to become a full-fledged economic system. Whereas previous classes of wealthy people would purchase land and seek to become nobles, the Protestants invested. Instead of spending money on something that wouldn’t give a return, they put the money back into their own businesses and the stock market. Weber implies that this investment activity gave the early capitalist economy the kick-start it needed to gain momentum in America and western Europe.
(Shortform note: While Weber wrote The Protestant Ethic in 1905, this economic way of life echoes still today, especially in the life philosophies espoused by figures such as Warren Buffett and other investing giants. Buffett is a more modern example of the “spirit of capitalism,” having worked for decades, sticking to a systematic strategy for life and investing, and living frugally despite becoming wealthy. Weber might say this isn’t a coincidence, given that Buffett was raised Presbyterian, one of the main Calvinist sects.)
To end, Weber laments the state of the modern world. He notes that while the Protestants chose to live as they did, we now all have to. The capitalist world system has become so large that we now must submit to its pressures. Either you live a rational, systematic life, or you’ll end up on the bottom of the economic ladder.
In Weber’s view, we’ve also lost the magic of earlier ages. The world has become a “disenchanted” place, and everyone lives mechanically and without wonder. Our concern for material possessions rather than rich inner lives has become what Weber refers to as an “iron cage,” and he laments that we’ll be trapped in a drab capitalist world until we run out of fossil fuels and the whole system is forced to change.
Have Things Gone as Poorly as Weber Predicted?
Weber’s prognosis for the capitalist world system was decidedly bleak. Here, it’s important to note that Weber was a member of a wealthy and well-connected family, so his position as an educated and powerful member of society likely colored his view. This is evident in his final words, where he expresses nostalgia for the end of an age—but an age that, for many, was marked by a much lower quality of life than Weber enjoyed.
Today, some would say that the world is doing better than ever before. That’s the argument that Steven Pinker makes in Enlightenment Now, where he cites data to support his view that life is getting better for humans around the world. Pinker makes the following claims:
The European Enlightenment has spread rationality, science, and humanism throughout the world. These values create better societies than old, superstitious values.
The human brain has a “negativity bias” that causes us to see things in a negative light. This, as well as negativity-focused media, makes us think the world is worse off than it actually is.
Various markers of human well-being have improved, such as longevity, child mortality, and the rate of poverty. Additionally, modern technologies have given people more leisure time and more opportunities to learn, travel, and enjoy life.
So while materialism abounds and some people do build their lives around possessions, standards of living have improved around the world, allowing for the spread of education, and leading to new forms of work and play. Here, a Chinese proverb sums up the situation: Sai Weng lost his horse / who can say whether good or bad (塞翁失马 / 焉知非福). In essence, this saying suggests that we can’t know quite what’s coming next, and that it’s no use to make absolute judgments about the goodness or badness of a situation.
According to Weber, the Protestant ethic gave rise to the lifestyle and moral beliefs of 20th-century capitalists. While that lifestyle has continued to change in the time since Weber wrote The Protestant Ethic, its core features still show up throughout life today. Below, reflect and draw connections to your own experience.
According to Weber, part of the spirit of capitalism is adherence to a rigorous and systematic way of life. How does your own relationship to work and productivity relate to these ideas? (For instance, you might put a lot of effort into building good habits in order to be more efficient.)
Weber notes that to the early Protestants, idleness meant waste and sin because that time could be spent glorifying God instead of relaxing. Today, many people struggle to feel okay with time spent unproductively. On a usual day, how do you tend to feel about being unproductive?
If you struggle with taking downtime and being unproductive, it might help to know that it’s in part because you’ve inherited the echoes of a zealous, centuries-old religious doctrine. Knowing this, what specific action could you take to change how you relate to idle time? (For instance, you might remind yourself that rest is just as important as work, if you want a balanced life.)
Another major influence of the spirit of capitalism is our modern-day fixation on habits and systematic living. It’s easy to feel bad when we’re being less-than-perfect with our daily routines. However, people only started living like this in the last few hundred years. Knowing this, what specific mantra or reminder could you give yourself when you come up short with your habits? (For example, you might note that today, many of us build habits alone, while the Protestants had the pressure of an entire religious community to push them along.)