by Max Weber
Since in the case of the crucial concept: “spirit” of (in my case modern) [34] capitalism, we are dealing with a historical, unusually complex phenomenon, any definition of this concept, as with all highly “historical” concepts, is only possible not at the outset but at the conclusion of the investigation, as a result of the step-by-step synthesis that needs to be undertaken. I emphasized this point at the start of my essays.
At the beginning of such an investigation, one can only employ the most graphic illustration possible. The example I chose was drawn from a milieu which was still in many ways a barter economy, or at any rate (relatively speaking) a very uncapitalist milieu, namely, that of Benjamin Franklin. I did this with the express purpose of showing that the capitalist “spirit” could live a life of its own in relation to the capitalist “economic system” adequate to it. I had already pointed out, by way of illustration, the fact that the “spirit” was not without influence on the development of the “economic system” and expressly referred the discussion of the reverse causal relationship to a planned continuation of the essays, which, as I was at pains to stress, were incomplete.
For reasons that I have clearly stated (and repeated above) and which have only grown more weighty in the meantime, those essays have never reached “completion”—to my lasting regret, as I have said. Essentially, the essays deal with only a part of the historical development of the idea of the “calling” [Berufs-Idee] and its effect on commerce [Erwerb]. They claim no more for themselves, and indeed could not do so. All that remained was for a “critical” historian to take it upon himself to anticipate the result of the prospective synthesis in the form of a “definition.” What has emerged from this can be read in column 1236, bottom, namely, that the “capitalist spirit” (that is, for Rachfahl—col. 1238—the motive that is crucial for the origins of a certain amount of capital) consists of a mixture of “acquisitive drive” and “other” motives: “considerations” of “happiness” and “utility,” one’s own or those of others, “especially” of the family, plus the striving for pleasure, honor, power, the finest possible legacy for one’s descendants, and so on. Of course, in this “and so on” are concealed every imaginable kind of other motive, including, for example, charity—to name one “purpose” of “the accumulation of capital” which is of real practical importance. And since Rachfahl is incapable of distinguishing the (subjective) “spirit” of capitalism from the (objective) economic system, equating both with the “acquisitive drive,” he naturally overlooked my statement of what was actually the alpha and omega of the “gospel of avarice” in my example (Franklin; vol. 20, p. 17 [here in this volume]). He also failed to grasp what I said (on the same page) about the antithesis between greed and the duty of the calling. Finally, despite my express reservations, he treated the other antithesis between “traditionalist” and “commercial” economy as the key point of my argument.
And yet, if it is only a question of acquiring more than one’s “needs,” then the savage, in his insatiable greed, unrestrained by any rationalist considerations, for wives and treasure, would be the peak of acquisitive humanity—and the Puritan would be at the opposite end of the scale. True, an economy supported by the “spirit of capitalism” (in my sense of the phrase) is directly opposed to traditionalism—and this is what I wanted to establish first of all; but it is very far removed from the striving for the greatest possible surplus over and above one’s needs. It therefore forms an antithesis, it is true, but not an exhaustive one, to “traditionalist” economy—especially so, as it does not correspond to a (formally) capitalist economy, as I expressly said (vol. 20, p. 23 [here in this volume]) and illustrated with an example (vol. 20, p. 27f. [footnote on page 20 in this volume]).
Finally, that component of the capitalist “spirit” that I analyzed, especially—the idea of the “duty of the calling” with all that depends on it—as it is found within the form of economy supported by the “spirit” of capitalism (in the general sense of the expression), can only be found in one particular historical period, and yet projects out above and beyond the economic sphere into quite varied areas of human activity. My essays expressly and deliberately restricted themselves to the subject of the development of “the calling as a mode of human existence” [Berufsmenschentum] as a significant component of the capitalist “spirit.” If careless readers choose to ignore this, then there is absolutely nothing I can do to prevent them.
I must conclude my remarks here. It has not been possible to expand on particular sections and aspects of my essays, such as that which relates to the importance of the sect—the sect being in an important sense the archetype in the early modern age [werdende Neuzeit] of those social group formations that today determine “public opinion,” “cultural values,” and “individuality.” Neither have I been able to discuss in greater detail the extensive ramifications which have led from the Puritan style of life to that of the present days. [35] It is regrettable that this reply to a quite sterile critique, typical of the worst kind of academic sneering and deliberate misunderstanding, had to turn out to be so sterile itself, but circumstances dictated this and the Archiv had to devote space to it. Everything that has been said here can already be found in my essays. Everything that Rachfahl has said (with a few completely irrelevant exceptions) has been taken from them and “misrepresented.” I would again refer anyone who, after reading the preceding exposition, still does not believe this, to read my essays with an open mind after reading Rachfahl’s critique. In the face of this critique, I would not change a single word.
WEBER’S NOTES
1) Rachfahl simply ignores this essay, even though Troeltsch quoted from it.
2) In doing so, Troeltsch may have been guilty of a few expressions (which were quite irrelevant for his topic) which did not quite reproduce the views I expressed in my essays accurately. This is almost unavoidable when one is forced to attempt to reproduce other people’s views in so very few words.
3) This journal, volume 20, pages 10, 50 (bottom), and 52 (bottom [here, here, here in this volume]). On page 10 [here in this volume], I have stressed that in the case of the ascetic sects (Quakers, Mennonites, etc.) at least the direct connection between “asceticism” and bourgeois [bürgerlich] wealth creation is often “even more striking” than it is in the case of Calvinism. The reason why Calvinism has been treated first and in particular detail (vol. 21, pp. 5–38 [here in this volume]) has also been clearly explained: namely, because in relation to the motives for the methodical way of life [Lebensgestaltung] implicit in its doctrine, it seemed to me to represent the “most consistent” antithesis to (Catholicism and) Lutheranism. It should not be forgotten that the thirty-three pages devoted to Calvinism are immediately followed by an equal number (vol. 21, pp. 39–72 [here in this volume]) on the remaining ascetic denominations.
4) The difference from my text consists merely in the quotation marks added to the word “ascetic.” (We are not talking about a quotation here.)
5) It is an open question whether or not the former may be useful at times. I feel that Knapp deserves credit for having the courage to use this method comprehensively; it is similarly used with evident success in eliminating ambiguity in Alfred Weber’s book on the locations of industry. However, with today’s readers it all too often provokes head shaking, and in particular the vanity of professors prevents the acceptance of any term other than one that they themselves have coined.
6) In column 1249, Rachfahl says: “In contrast to the wealthy businessman, of whom Weber says that he could only be persuaded with difficulty to partake of the oysters that his doctor had prescribed for him . . . anyone could easily point to more than one capitalist, whose ‘capitalist spirit’ in the usual sense of the term (N.B.!) is beyond doubt, . . . but who does not hesitate to savor these delicious shellfish. . . . I am almost tempted to believe that the delicatessen dealers would have to close their doors for lack of custom if ascetic habits suddenly made their presence felt in the sphere
of the capitalist spirit.” Such “criticism” cannot be said to be on a particularly high plane. I was not concerned with the “usual meaning” of “capitalist spirit,” any more than whether the “Tiergarten district” or the “farmers” or lieutenants or other young people with well-stocked wallets consume the most oysters. In referring (quite incidentally!) to this example, I was concerned to illustrate a very specific inner relationship to commerce and wealth: the feeling of “responsibility” toward one’s own wealth, a feeling that not only rejects “irrational” expense, but regards it as a particular kind of “sinfulness” (something that has nothing to do with the usual kind of avarice of which Rachfahl speaks elsewhere). It is an ascetic suspicion of pleasure as such.
6a) Volume 21, page 6, note 5 ([here, note 68 in this volume]).
7) As ever, here again Rachfahl shows that he will happily make flatly contradictory statements if its suits his polemical purpose. The same striving for profit for its own sake that in column 1320 (quoting Fugger) he maintains may very well spring from an “ethical maxim based on the conduct of life” cannot, apparently, in columns 1250 and 1255, be called “ethical” at all, because Rachfahl finds it reprehensible.
8) See the whole passage, columns 1250–51.
9) Column 1257. His argument is feeble, however, as the differences are purely those of terminology, not of substance.
10) Although, when summarizing my essay (col. 1228) and occasionally later, he has no option but to reproduce the relevant passages from my work.
11) The economic reaction of the Poles (which I myself have quoted) rests on a national foundation.
12) Thus Shakespeare, a connoisseur of Puritanism who observed it with the keen eye afforded by hatred, evidently had good reasons to make his caricatured “middle classes” [Mittelklassen] base their caricatured program on the principle: “It is written: labor in your vocation.” [Henry VI, Part 2, Act 4, Scene 2]
13) I have not picked up a work by Petty since the time when I was studying the history of trade, and am grateful to my colleague H. Levy for reminding me of this passage.
14) Incidentally, I should like to mention that, of course, when I contrasted the rigorously intolerant Calvinist New England with the apparently less developed but tolerant Rhode Island with regard to the development of the “capitalist spirit” (see below), I obviously intended to demonstrate that in spite of the lack of toleration in the former and in spite of the toleration in the latter, the intolerant region seems to have emerged more favorably (even though it was far less well endowed by nature), in my view, because in it the “spirit” of Protestant asceticism was dominant. I must add that I only mentioned this in passing by way of conjecture; as I am more than willing to repeat, I might be able to support it with a few further pieces of evidence, but would not claim that I had “proved” anything.
This might be a suitable juncture to clear up some of Rachfahl’s factual “objections.” He seems to have no knowledge, with regard to their influence on style of life and conception of the calling, of the internal development of Pennsylvania, the tragic ethical conflicts with the “world” within Quakerism, or the intensity of the aura of that blend of asceticism and rationalism which is testified to in every reliable older description by European visitors, the remnants of which can be sensed everywhere even now. In New York, too, this aura persisted right to the threshold of the present day (although for some time Manhattan, being a center of immigration, lagged far behind Brooklyn in church membership). Rachfahl seems unaware too of the history of the New Englanders and the character of these people, traces of which still persist to this day. I refer readers to my (admittedly very sketchy) essay in Christliche Welt. As far as my problem is concerned, the agricultural “capitalism” of the Episcopalian Southern states differed in no way from the “capitalist” economy of ancient times. From my own observations when visiting relations living in old plantation houses in the Southern states, I was able to gain a fairly clear picture, including external details, of the seigneurial mixture (in the sharpest contrast with the “spirit” of Puritan Yankeedom) of impoverished neglect and aristocratic ostentation in the economy and in life which dominated this strongly nonbourgeois [unbürgerlich] society. This was in addition to what I learned from the well-known literature, some of which is excellent.
It is a well-known fact that New England was a hairbreadth away from falling into the hands of one of the numerous court favorites who were trying to obtain and exploit colonial land concessions. Even allowing for the fact that the region was not suitable for cotton plantations, no one can tell how different the face of North America might have been in that eventuality—that is to say in the absence of the settlements of the Pilgrim Fathers, together with those of the Baptists, the Dutch, and the Quakers further south. It certainly would not have been determined by the “spirit” of these strata in the way that it was and continues to be so determined right up to the present to a quite significant degree. There has certainly never been any doubt in my mind that a “capitalist” development, indeed, any commercial development, in seventeenth-century New England was not only an anachronism, but almost a geographic impossibility as well. I myself have cited the beginnings of commercial development that, after the Puritan immigration, arose there despite this, as being remarkable for that reason.
At the start of my first essay, I cite Franklin as a representative of the “capitalist spirit.” Everyone knows that this small-time printer was very far from being a “big capitalist” in the style of Fugger, and finally I insisted most emphatically on the fact (so important for my argument) that the “spirit” developed in a region whose economy was still in its infancy, being largely still a barter economy (vol. 20, p. 33 [here in this volume]). So even a critic like Rachfahl ought to have refrained from holding these and similar things against me in the guise of “objections.” Furthermore, the fact that a historian cannot distinguish between the economic circumstances in which commerce existed in a colonial territory like New England and medieval Europe—as the contemptuous, but in my view somewhat ridiculous, comment at the bottom of column 1294 indicates—is bad enough. But it is far more serious that he simply knows nothing of the significance of the Huguenots and their relationship to industry in France.
I am now required to “admit” for the second time7 that the Calvinism of the Hungarian puszta in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was unable to create a capitalist economy, but I stress again that even there it exhibits (in the calling chosen by the Reformed Christians) the typical side effects to which I referred at an early stage of my essay.
With his gaze fixed exclusively on the big money men, who are essentially no different from similar phenomena of all ages and lands, Rachfahl is not even capable of expressing anything other than quite superficial sentiments when it comes to the extremely complex and interesting problem (his own subject, as it happens) of the particular character [Eigenart] of Dutch capitalism and the inward attitude of the people toward it. I therefore doubt whether he knows more about this subject than I do, and I am grateful for his acknowledgment that I am not entirely ignorant of these problems, even though I am still very far from having a thorough grasp of them. Everything that he holds against me regarding the Arminianism of the merchant class, I have—as usual—said myself, as well as having referred to the same phenomena from art history that Rachfahl uses against me. But these are only the outer fringes of the problem—which in any case I had no desire to pursue. To mention just one factor that takes us deeper into the question, the nature of the Dutch “spirit” was undoubtedly determined in part in those days by the fact that the reclaiming of land to form polders was one of the most profitable commercial enterprises available, and that here the cities (to exaggerate a little) largely created the flat land themselves. Alongside colonial business, which was somewhat suspect to the Puritans, the utilization of capital was directed to a large extent into this channel for the creation of a livelihood for the farmers—something which was b
ound to have consequences for the appearance of the land in an inward (amply attested on numerous occasions) as well as an external sense. This was especially true of the way in which the tendency of “ascetic Protestantism” to operate in its characteristic manner was constantly disrupted in important respects—though not in all. It is quite clear that these farmers were very different from the traditional peasantry of the continent, as well as being rather different from the farmers of New England. They even played a part in the art market: they are known to have invested sums of money in pictures amounting to a small fortune for those days—and some of it was certainly speculative in character.
