by Max Weber
The level of his argument is no higher when dealing with what I have called the “ascetic compulsion to save,” whose ethical emphasis forms the negative complement to that rationalization and ethical transfiguration of the striving for profit as a calling through innerworldly asceticism. Rachfahl now makes the astonishing discovery that the accumulation of capital (which, by the way—something that he is evidently unaware of, even though any first-year student of Nationalökonomie knows it—is in no way identical to the amassing of great “wealth,” as he seems to think)—in other words, saving, involves the “spirit of thrift.” And since it has always been necessary to “save” in order to accumulate capital, it follows that innerworldly asceticism represents nothing “new” as regards this function either. This follows the pattern of the “acquisitive drive,” which has always existed, and which, we recall, therefore needed no “support” from the ethic of the calling, which I have been analyzing. I do not wish to add anything to the profundity of this argument.
The rather excessively “clumsy paws” of the practitioner of this so-called historical criticism are probably incapable of grasping the simple, but, as I have shown, fundamentally important fact that against the “Thou shalt not lay up treasures on earth,” and thus “Deo placere non potest” of medieval Catholicism, it was the characteristic, and, if you will, paradoxical, achievement of asceticism, to preach precisely that biblical text which is directed against saving, but at the same time, thanks to the conduct of life it promotes, repeatedly to create those abominated “treasures” with a force and continuity never before seen, and to protect them from naively hedonistic consumption (as long as its “spirit” kept the upper hand over “temptation”). [15]
I leave it to the reader’s imagination to judge what one should think of Rachfahl’s assurance, on the one hand, that in his critique he distinguished, “just as I did,” between “the spiritual driving forces and the capitalist spirit in Weber’s sense,” and, on the other, his statement that the characteristics of the capitalist spirit of the modern age are “the same as they have been in all ages” (col. 786). Again, on the one hand, he states that the characteristics emphasized by me are only a “nuance” of that “spirit,” which “also” (sic) belongs to the modern age (and to what other eras?), and that in particular the “influence of the methodical conduct of life [Lebensführung] is quite modest” (col. 762), indeed, in the case of many “capitalist phenomena” (sic), it is “not possible” that the motives analyzed by me could have had any influence (col. 787); of course, not the slightest attempt is made to indicate which phenomena this could apply to. On the other hand, he asserts that no one has any doubt—and thus, he implies, I have said nothing new here—about the existence of an “inner relationship between Calvinism” (which, as we have said, is too narrow) “and capitalism.” Even less (he continues) does anyone doubt the leading role of Puritanism in forming the American style of life. Yet R. in his “critique” had most seriously questioned this role, with regard to the aspects of this style of life specific to this context, namely, the importance of the Puritan ethic of the calling for business life. Even now he disputes this influence—although few support him in this, quite apart from the evidence in my essay in the Christliche Welt, from which I have already frequently quoted, but which R. persists in ignoring.
The very same thing applies, of course, when, without even the flimsiest of reasons, and without so much as an explanation, he simply out of the blue assures his readers in the manner of the “connoisseur” that the capitalist has always been a “man of the calling” (col. 786), that there were no misgivings whatsoever regarding enjoyment in the Calvinist ethic (col. 710), that the “ethical conception of the calling [Beruf] had not been first produced by Reformed (sic) morality” (col. 783), that ascetic misgivings toward enjoyment were “not at all typical of the modern capitalist class,” especially in my sense, as he makes a point of adding (cols. 728, 748), and that “the ethic of the calling, even one which was religious in character,” had existed even before the Reformation. I, however, firstly, have demonstrated that even the name “Beruf” [“calling”] was quite specifically a product of the translation of the Bible, and, originating from purely religious meanings, then became secularized. Secondly, I have analyzed on numerous occasions the differences between both the Thomist and the Lutheran positions toward what since the Reformation has been known as the “Beruf” [“calling”] and that of ascetic Protestantism, without R. making even the slightest vestige of an attempt to question it. Instead, he has had the effrontery to simply affirm that this is nothing but an assertion on my part.
In column 779, and frequently elsewhere, when commenting on what I say about the specific significance of the ascetic Protestantism of the seventeenth century [16] for the bourgeois [bürgerlich] middle classes, which were in the ascendant at precisely the time and place where it flourished, he appears unaware that I had already said this before, for the most part word for word, in my essay. Let the reader be the judge of what one should think of this. He then adds a further twist when he tries to suggest that when I talk about “bourgeois middle classes” [bürgerlich] I am thinking of “mere artisans” [Flickschuster]. [17] Perhaps this example of Rachfahl’s efforts is a good point to conclude the analysis.
We might just add that R. expresses the opinion that if I write an essay on the “spirit of capitalism” and in so doing deal with one particular “nuance” of it, this is as though a writer were to declare in an article about “the horse” that he intended to deal only with the “gray.” I would refer the “critic,” who is as witty (evidently) as he is forgetful (as we have already noted), to the title of my essay, namely: the Protestant ethic and the spirit of capitalism. This of course implies: not the totality of both (otherwise R. could have accused me of only talking about the “gray” because on the subject of ethics, for example, I did not deal with Luther’s sexual ethics or similar matters), but dealt rather with the relationship between the two. From this it follows, of course, that I have only dealt with that which can be considered as either causative of, or caused by, the other. In my experience, it always bodes ill for any controversy when the polemicist, in order to give at least a semblance of being “in the right,” is forced to resort to the tactic of making himself look even more foolish than (as in the present case) he actually is.
II. [POSITIVE RÉSUMÉ]
Enough of all these polemics. I am completely forgetting that R.7 has done me the great kindness of giving me a useful lesson in how I could have done things better. In column 780, bottom, and column 781, top, he informs me that I should have written: “Under the influence of the Reformed ‘ethic of the calling’ a certain subspecies of capitalist spirit developed in the course of the modern age; I propose to investigate its origin, the limits of its expansion, and the nature of its particular quality, that is, to attempt to discover whether the capitalist spirit which has created the capitalist economic system of the present (sic) has received certain characteristics from this source which are of vital importance for its essence.” In other words: firstly, I should have made an assumption that elsewhere R. himself abhors, namely, that some “capitalist spirit” (however defined) had created the capitalist economic system out of itself alone—a purely spiritualist construction that I have expressly rejected in my essays. Secondly, if I understand him rightly, I should have made the assumption (even though this was the very thing that I had set out to prove) that the Reformed ethic of the calling (we will let R.’s “pars pro toto” pass) crucially influenced the formation of a “subspecies of the capitalist spirit” (we will let this expression pass as well). Thirdly, that I should do something that I could definitely not pursue in this essay in its whole conception, in some respects not at all, and in others not yet (that is, not in those parts which are so far the only ones to have been published), namely, that I should investigate the limits of its expansion. Fourthly, that I should have investigated the question (wrongly posed, compare point
1) as to the “qualitative characteristics of the capitalist spirit.” If I had done this, I would have (fifthly) oriented my problem in a manner which simply did not correspond to my intentions: for it was not the promotion of capitalist expansion that primarily interested me, but the development of the type of humanity [Menschentum] that was created by the coincidence of religiously and economically determined components. This I said clearly at the conclusion of my essays.
It has since become clear that, in order to carry out the program he proposes, as far as it is meaningful, it would have been most important to begin my investigations with a definition of everything that the complex concept “spirit of capitalism” can contain, as without this it would be quite impossible to establish the existence of a “subspecies.” I have, however, said in my essay why I have not done this and why I could never do so, if I were not to do violence to history from the outset. A specifically historical formation such as the one that we are positing under that name, and which is at first undefined, can only achieve conceptual clarity—and I see no sign of any attempt to refute these arguments—by means of a synthesis of its individual components such as the reality of history offers. This should happen in such a way that out of the reality of the historically given, we may select the most precise and consistent form of those individual features whose effects are frequently indirect, or refracted, and may be more or less consistent and complete, and more or less mixed with a variety of others. These we then combine where they belong together and thus produce the concept of the “ideal type,” a construction of ideas to which the factual average content of the historical only approaches to varying degrees. In truth, every historian, consciously or (usually) unconsciously, constantly employs concepts of this kind, if he uses clear-cut “concepts” at all. On this subject I have often expressed myself elsewhere, without ever having been contradicted (though of course I do not imagine that this by no means simple problem was somehow finally “solved” by these methodological experiments—on the contrary, I have every reason to consider my previous work along these lines to be extremely modest).
In the present case, at any rate, I could only take as my starting point, given a highly complex historical phenomenon, what was concretely given, and gradually, by eliminating anything “inessential” for the concept (one which is necessarily formed by isolating and abstracting), attempt to grasp this concept.
Accordingly, I proceeded as follows. Firstly, by citing examples I reminded the reader of the fact (which no one has hitherto doubted) of the striking congruence between Protestantism and modern capitalism: for example, capitalist-oriented choice of calling and capitalist “prosperity.” Secondly, by way of illustration, I presented some examples of such ethical maxims of life (Franklin) as we judge to be indubitably generated by the “capitalist spirit,” and posed the question as to how these ethical maxims of life differ from divergent ones, especially those of the Middle Ages. Thirdly, I attempted, again by means of examples, to illustrate the manner in which such mental attitudes related causally to the economic system of modern capitalism. At the same time, fourthly, I arrived at the idea of the “calling” [Beruf], and called to mind the quite specific elective affinity which has long been established (especially by Gothein) between Calvinism (together with Quakerism and similar sects) and capitalism, and at the same time attempted to show that our modern concept of the calling is in some way grounded in religion.
The problem then arose, not for the entire series of essays as originally planned (as I explicitly stated at the end), but for those studies which were to be published in the immediately following numbers of the Archiv, namely, what is the relationship of the various branches of Protestantism to the development of the idea of the calling as regards the specific significance of this idea for the development of those ethical qualities of the individual which influence his suitability for capitalism? Of course, the question only made sense if such religiously determined specific ethical qualities actually existed. The nature of these qualities could, in the first instance, only be illustrated in general by means of examples. In connection with the investigation of the problem itself, I therefore had to find, by probing ever deeper, evidence (complementing what had already been said as the problem unfolded) that such qualities did in fact exist in certain elements of Protestant ethics, what these were, which types of Protestantism were able to develop them to a particularly high level, and in what way they differed from the qualities which were in part taught, in part merely tolerated, by the medieval Church and by other variants of Protestantism.
In dealing with the problem itself, therefore, we had firstly to seek to locate (as far as a theological layman is able) the theoretical and dogmatic anchoring of the ethic in the individual branches of Protestantism, in order to show that we were not talking about purely accessory matters which had no connection with the thought content of the religiosity. Secondly, however (and this is very different), to investigate what practical, psychological motives for real ethical conduct were contained in the character of the religiosity of each of them. Quite apart from all his other distortions and superficialities, Rachfahl has not even been able to grasp the fact that these two questions refer to quite separate matters. It may indeed, from the practical point of view, be important and interesting to discover what kind of ethical ideals the Church doctrine of Catholicism, of Luther, of Calvin, and others contains and to what extent these doctrines agree or conflict with each other, or whether certain kinds of conduct, which were instilled in a practical and psychological manner by ascetic Protestantism, were, as Rachfahl claims, “demanded of the Catholic layman too” (not only of the monk) by the theory of the Church, or “were valid” for him. What he fails to understand, however, is that by establishing such matters, he has told us absolutely nothing about whether the particular type of religiosity was also fitted to create in its followers the psychological vehicles to generate conduct typical of that church doctrine (or conduct that was in fact quite different, or conduct that exaggerated the doctrine in certain unilateral directions). As I myself have demonstrated, there has, of course, at all times been (for example) frequent praise and commendation for conscientious labor performed by the layman in the world, both from theoreticians of ethics and from medieval preachers (Berthold of Regensburg and likewise others), although primitive Christianity essentially shared the view of antiquity regarding “labor” [18]—as Harnack pointed out in a short essay. Luther’s statements along the same lines are well known.
There has certainly been no lack of teaching of the blessings of labor in the world from sources outside ascetic Protestantism. But of what use is this if (as in Lutheranism) there are no premiums—in this case, psychological premiums—for following these theoretical teachings in a methodically consistent manner? Or if (as in Catholicism) far greater rewards are applied to quite different kinds of conduct, and, moreover, in the institution of confession a means is available which permits the individual again and again to unburden himself from absolutely every kind of transgression against the Church’s precepts? [19] By contrast, Calvinism, in its development since the latter part of the sixteenth century (and likewise the Baptist movement), created, in the idea of the necessity of ascetic proof [Bewährung], in life in general and especially in working life [Berufsleben], a very specific and, in its effectiveness in this area, a psychological premium [Prämie] for the ascetic method of life which it demanded, which could scarcely be bettered in this sphere. Such a reward was a subjective guarantee of the certitudo salutis (that is, not as real grounds, but as one of the most important grounds upon which one could recognize one’s election for salvation).
In my essays I felt obliged to demonstrate these facts and to set out the method of life that followed from them. I did this, in accordance with the aim of such an analysis, primarily with regard to its specific characteristics and inner consistency, although it is certainly true that not every individual who grew up in the atmosphere created by these religious power
s was completely conscious of the absolutely unbroken unity of this method of life or fully aware of the connections [Zusammenhang].
Both in my essay in this Archiv, and in the sketch in Christliche Welt (mentioned on numerous occasions), I have briefly attempted to illuminate more graphically what powerful support these motives also found in the social institutions of the Church and in those influenced by the churches and sects. I recapitulate. Firstly, for “ascetic Protestantism” the central ritual act of the Lord’s Supper gained a very specific accent. The idea that anyone who does not belong to God’s invisible church and still participates in this act, “eateth and drinketh damnation to himself,”8 carries an emotional charge whose import, even for the majority of “Christians” among us, has been almost entirely lost, although it can perfectly well be brought back to life through the youthful reminiscences of the generation which is now dying out, and through what remains of that earnest Church attachment which has (from our perspective) been swept to one side.
