The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism

by Max Weber

  Indeed it is striking—to begin with a few purely outward factors—how great is the number of representatives of the most introspective forms of Christian piety who come from commercial circles. In particular, Pietism owes a strikingly large number of its most serious adherents to this background. One might detect here a kind of contrastive effect of “mammonism” on introspective personalities which are unsuited to business careers, and, undoubtedly, as with Francis of Assisi, so with many of those Pietists, the origin of the “conversion” has often presented itself to the converted themselves in this way. And, similarly, one could attempt to explain the strikingly common phenomenon of capitalist entrepreneurs on the grandest scale emerging from parsonages (Cecil Rhodes is an example of this) as a reaction to their ascetic upbringing. However, this explanation ceases to convince when in the same persons and groups of people a virtuoso capitalist commercial sense coincides with the most intense forms of a piety which permeates and regulates the whole of life. Such cases are by no means isolated but are a characteristic feature of whole groups of the historically most important Protestant churches and sects. Calvinism in particular, wherever it has existed, has exhibited this combination. Although in the period of the spread of the Reformation, Calvinism, in common with other Protestant denominations, was not confined to one particular single class, yet it is characteristic and in a sense “typical” that in the French Huguenot churches, for example, monks and industrial workers (merchants and craftsmen) were particularly strongly represented among the proselytes. This continued to be the case, especially in times of persecution. [13] Even the Spanish knew that “heresy” (i.e., the Calvinism of the Dutch) “encouraged the spirit of trade,” and Gothein [14] rightly terms the Calvinist diaspora the “seedbed of the capitalist economy.”5 [15] Here, the decisive factor might appear to be the superiority of the French and Dutch economic culture, from which this diaspora overwhelmingly originated, or perhaps also the powerful influence of exile and of being wrenched from traditional surroundings. [16] But in France itself, as we know from Colbert’s6 struggles, the situation was exactly the same in the seventeenth century. Even Austria—not to mention other countries—occasionally brought in Protestant manufacturers direct from abroad.

  Even more striking, let us not forget, is the combination of religious control of life and an extremely well developed business sense which existed within a number of those sects renowned equally for their detachment from the world and their prosperity: especially the Quakers and the Mennonites. The part played by the former in England and North America was similar to that played by the latter in the Netherlands and Germany. The fact that even Frederick William I, recognizing that the Mennonites in East Prussia were indispensable pillars of industry, left them alone despite their absolute refusal to do military service is just one of many well-known facts that illustrate this. Given the character of this king, however, it is perhaps the most telling. The fact, finally, that the Pietists, too, were able to combine intense piety with business acumen in equal measure [17] is well enough known; one only needs think of Calw.

  There is therefore no need to multiply examples in what are, after all, only provisional remarks. These few examples suffice to demonstrate one thing: the “spirit of labor,” “the spirit of progress,” or whatever one likes to call it, the awakening of which is customarily attributed to Protestantism, must not, as tends to happen today, be understood in an “Enlightenment” sense. The old Protestantism of such men as Luther,7 Calvin,8 Knox,9 or Voët10 had little to do with what is today called “progress.” It was directly hostile to whole aspects of modern life which today even the most extreme sectarian would not wish to do away with. So if an inner affinity between the old Protestant spirit and modern capitalist culture is to be found, we must try, for good or ill, to seek it not in its more or less materialistic or at least antiascetic enjoyment of life (as it is called), but rather in its purely religious features. Montesquieu (Esprit des lois, bk. 20, chap. 7) said of the English: “This is the people in the world who have best known how to take advantage of each of these three great things at the same time: religion, commerce, and liberty.”11 Could it be that their superiority in the field of commerce and, as we shall discuss later in a different context, their aptitude for free political institutions perhaps have some connection with that unrivaled degree of piety that Montesquieu attributed to them?

  When we pose the question in this way, a whole variety of possible relationships, dimly discerned, immediately arise before us. Our task must be to formulate as clearly as possible what we are vaguely aware of, given the inexhaustible complexity of all historical phenomena. In order to be able to do this, however, we must leave the sphere of vague general ideas with which we have hitherto been concerned and grapple with the characteristic nature and variety of those great religious thought worlds which have come down to us in the various historic branches of the Christian religion.

  Beforehand, however, some remarks are necessary, first regarding the particular character of the object for which we are seeking a historical explanation, then regarding the sense in which such an explanation is possible at all in the framework of these investigations.

  2. [THE “SPIRIT” OF CAPITALISM]

  In the title of this study, the somewhat pretentious sounding expression “Spirit of Capitalism” has been used. What are we to understand by this?

  If any object can be found for which the use of this term can have any meaning, then it can only be a “historical individual,” that is, a complex of configurations [Zusammenhänge] in historical reality which we group together conceptually from the point of view of their cultural significance to form a single whole.

  A historical concept like this, however, as it relates to a phenomenon which is significant in terms of its individual characteristics, cannot be defined or demarcated according to the schema: “genus proximum, differentia specifica.”12 It must be composed from its individual elements, taken from historical reality. It will not be possible to arrive at the ultimate definition of the concept at the outset but only at the conclusion of the investigation. To put it another way, only in the course of the discussion and as the essential outcome will it be shown how that which we understand as the “spirit” of capitalism should best—that is, most satisfactorily for the points of view which interest us here—be formulated. These “points of view” (to which we shall come in due course) are, in turn, not at all the only ones possible with which to analyze the historical phenomena we are considering. For a study of different points of view, other features would be the “essential” ones, as for any historical phenomenon. It follows that what we understand by the “spirit” of capitalism in terms of what we deem “essential” from our point of view, is by no means the only possible way of understanding it. This is in the nature of “historical concept-formation,” which for its methodological purposes does not seek to embody historical reality in abstract generic concepts but endeavors to integrate them in concrete configurations [Zusammenhänge], which are always and inevitably individual in character.

  If, then, we are to determine the object with which our analysis and historical explanations are concerned—as we must—then we cannot do this by means of a conceptual “definition” but only by a provisional illustration of what is here meant by the “spirit” of capitalism. Such an illustration is indeed indispensable for the purpose of understanding the object of the investigation, and we therefore propose, to this end, to focus our attention on a document of that “spirit” which encapsulates the essence of the matter in almost classical purity:

  “Remember, that time is money.13 He that can earn ten shillings a day by his labor, and goes abroad, or sits idle, one half of that day, though he spends but sixpence during his diversion or idleness, ought not to reckon that the only expense; he has really spent, or rather thrown away, five shillings besides.

  Remember, that credit is money. If a man lets his money lie in my hands after it is due, he gives me the interest,
or so much as I can make of it during that time. This amounts to a considerable sum where a man has good and large credit, and makes good use of it.

  Remember, that money is of the prolific, generating nature. Money can beget money, and its offspring can beget more, and so on. Five shillings turned is six, turned again it is seven and threepence, and so on, till it becomes a hundred pounds. The more there is of it, the more it produces every turning, so that the profits rise quicker and quicker. He that kills a breeding sow, destroys all her offspring to the thousandth generation. He that murders a crown, destroys all that it might have produced, even scores of pounds.

  Remember this saying, The good paymaster is lord of another man’s purse. He that is known to pay punctually and exactly to the time he promises, may at any time, and on any occasion, raise all the money his friends can spare. This is sometimes of great use. After industry and frugality, nothing contributes more to the raising of a young man in the world than punctuality and justice in all his dealings; therefore, never keep borrowed money an hour beyond the time you promised, lest a disappointment shut up your friend’s purse for ever.

  The most trifling actions that affect a man’s credit are to be regarded. The sound of your hammer at five in the morning, or eight at night, heard by a creditor, makes him easy six months longer; but if he sees you at a billiard table, or hears your voice at a tavern, when you should be at work, he sends for his money the next day; demands it, before he can receive it, in a lump.

  It shows, besides, that you are mindful of what you owe; it makes you appear a careful as well as an honest man, and that still increases your credit.

  Beware of thinking all your own that you possess, and of living accordingly. It is a mistake that many people who have credit fall into. To prevent this, keep an exact account for some time both of your expenses and your income. If you take the pains at first to mention particulars, it will have this good effect: you will discover how wonderfully small, trifling expenses mount up to large sums, and will discern what might have been, and may for the future be saved, without occasioning any great inconvenience.

  For six pounds a year you may have the use of one hundred pounds, provided you are a man of known prudence and honesty.

  He that spends a groat a day idly, spends idly above six pounds a year, which is the price for the use of one hundred pounds.

  He that wastes idly a groat’s worth of his time per day, one day with another, wastes the privilege of using one hundred pounds each day.

  He that idly loses five shillings’ worth of time, loses five shillings, and might as prudently throw five shillings into the sea.

  He that loses five shillings not only loses that sum, but all the advantage that might be made by turning it in dealing, which, by the time that a young man becomes old, will amount to a considerable sum of money.”

  The author of this little sermon is Benjamin Franklin.14 [18] The passage is held up to ridicule as the profession of faith of the Yankee by Ferdinand Kürnberger in his corrosively witty Portrait of American Culture. [19] No one can doubt that this is the characteristic voice of the “spirit of capitalism,” although clearly it does not contain everything that may be understood by the term. Let us pause a little longer to consider this passage. Kürnberger, in his book The Man Tired of America, sums up its philosophy of life thus: “They turn cattle into tallow, and people into money.” The essence of this “philosophy of avarice” is the idea of the duty of the individual to work toward the increase of his wealth, which is assumed to be an end in itself.

  When Jakob Fugger15 was approached by a business colleague who had retired and was trying to persuade him to do the same, as he had “spent enough time making money and should now give others a chance,” Fugger dismissed this suggestion as “pusillanimous,” responding that: “he [Fugger] took a completely different view, and intended to go on making money as long as he could.”16 [20] The “spirit” of this response differs in obvious ways from that of Franklin: what in the case of Fugger expresses commercial daring and a personal inclination, ethically neutral [see Appendix I], has for Franklin the character of an ethically slanted maxim for the conduct of life [Lebensführung]. This is the specific sense in which we propose to use the concept of the “spirit of capitalism.” [21] [See Appendix I, c.]

  All Franklin’s moral precepts, however, have a utilitarian slant. Honesty is useful because it brings credit. So are punctuality, hard work, moderation, etc., and they are only virtues for this reason—from which it would follow that where, for example, the appearance of honesty serves the same purpose, then this would suffice, and any unnecessary surplus of this virtue would inevitably seem, in Franklin’s eyes, like unproductive and reprehensible profligacy. And indeed: anyone reading his autobiography must inevitably come to the same conclusion. It contains an account of his “conversion” to those virtues [22] and, in particular, describes how, by strictly preserving the appearance of modesty, or officiously belittling one’s own merits, it is possible to enhance one’s standing in the community. [23] According to Franklin, these virtues, like all others, are only virtues at all to the extent that they are “useful” to the individual in concrete situations; the mere appearance of virtue is an adequate substitute wherever it serves the same purpose. This is indeed an inescapable conclusion for the strict utilitarian. That which Germans tend to find “hypocritical” in the virtues of Americanism is here exposed for all to see.

  In truth, though, matters are not as simple as that. We are here dealing with something quite other than a case of purely egocentric maxims being dressed up as moral precepts. This is clear both from the character of Benjamin Franklin himself, as revealed in the rare honesty of his autobiography, and the fact that he saw his discovery of the “usefulness” of virtue as a revelation from God, who wished to direct him toward virtue by this means. Instead, the “summum bonum” of this “ethic” is the making of money and yet more money, coupled with a strict avoidance of all uninhibited enjoyment. Indeed, it is so completely devoid of all eudaemonistic,17 let alone hedonist, motives, so much purely thought of as an end in itself18 that it appears as something wholly transcendent and irrational, beyond the “happiness” or the “benefit” of the individual. [See Appendix Id.]

  The aim of a man’s life is indeed moneymaking, but this is no longer merely the means to the end of satisfying the material needs of life. This reversal (incomprehensible to the superficial observer) of what we might call the “natural” state of affairs is a definite leitmotiv of capitalism, although it will always be alien to anyone who is untouched by capitalism’s aura. At the same time it contains a line of thought that comes very close to certain religious ideas. For if one asks the question why “money should be made out of people,” Benjamin Franklin, though a dispassionate and nonsectarian Deist, replies in his autobiography with a Bible text which, he says, his strict Calvinist father constantly drummed into him in his youth: “Seest thou a man active in his calling [Beruf], he shall stand before kings.” [24] Moneymaking—provided it is done legally—is, within the modern economic order, the result and the expression of diligence in one’s calling and this diligence is, it is not difficult to recognize, the real alpha and omega of Franklin’s morality, as we find it in the passage quoted and throughout his writings.19

  The idea, so familiar to us today and yet in reality far from obvious, that one’s duty consists in pursuing one’s calling [Berufspflicht], and that the individual should have a commitment to his “professional” [beruflichen] activity, whatever it may consist of, irrespective of whether it appears to the detached observer as nothing but utilization of his labor or even of his property (as “capital”), this idea is a characteristic feature of the “social ethic” of capitalist culture. Indeed, in a certain sense it constitutes an essential element of it.

  It is not as if it had grown up only in the soil of capitalism: later we shall attempt to follow it further back into the past. Even less, of course, would we maintain that the conti
nued existence of today’s capitalism is conditional on the subjective acquisition of these ethical maxims by its individual bearers, that is, the entrepreneurs or the workers in modern capitalist businesses. Today’s capitalist economic order is a monstrous cosmos, into which the individual is born and which in practice is for him, at least as an individual, simply a given, an immutable shell [Gehäuse], in which he is obliged to live. It forces on the individual, to the extent that he is caught up in the relationships of the “market,” the norms of its economic activity. The manufacturer who consistently defies these norms will just as surely be forced out of business as the worker who cannot or will not conform will be thrown out of work. [25]