by Max Weber
But he has also completely misrepresented the significance of the ban on interest. The significance of this ban cannot be examined in detail here. It often used to be overestimated, then it was greatly underestimated, and now, in an era when there are even Catholic multimillionaires, it has been practically reversed—for apologetic purposes. It is well known that it was only in the last century that the Congregation of the Holy Office issued the instruction for the ban to be annulled—despite biblical support for this—and then only temporum ratione habita and indirectly, namely, by prohibiting father confessors from causing anxiety to those making their confession by inquiring after usuraria pravitas, provided always that the priest could be confident of their obedience if the ban should be reintroduced. The doctrine gave rise to endless controversies, for example, about whether or not the purchase of bonds, discounting of bills of exchange, and all kinds of other contracts were permissible. Consequently (and especially in view of the fact that the above-mentioned decree of the Congregation of the Holy Office was occasioned by a municipal loan), no one who has studied in any detail the extremely complex history of the Church’s doctrine of usury can possibly maintain (here) that the ban on taking interest on loans referred solely to emergency credit, or that it pursued the aim of “capital maintenance,” let alone that it was “conducive to capitalist enterprise” (here).
The truth is that it was only at a rather late stage that the Church again focused its attention on the ban on interest, and that, when it did so, the forms of capital investment customary for business were not fixed-interest loans, but foenus nauticum, commenda, societas maris, and dare ad proficuum de mari (loans in which—inevitably, given the nature of the entrepreneur’s loan interest—the investor shared profit or loss in proportion to the class of risk). None of these was affected (except in a few cases where canon law was particularly rigorously applied). Then, however, when fixed-interest capital investments as well as discounting became possible and customary, major difficulties were experienced (and continued to be experienced) as a result of the ban on interest. These difficulties led the merchant guilds to apply all kinds of stringent disciplinary measures (blacklists!). However, the canon lawyers normally treated the interest ban in a purely legal and formal way, and certainly without the slightest tendency to “protect capital,” as suggested by Keller. Finally, to the extent that attitudes toward capitalism as such were expressed, these were predominantly of a rather vague, traditionalist distaste for the increasing power of capital, which because of its impersonal charac-ter was largely impervious to ethical influences. (Such attitudes were exemplified by what Luther said about the Fuggers and financial transactions.) At the same time, the need for accommodation was recognized. However, these matters are not relevant here, for, as we have said: the interest ban and what happened to it has no more than symptomatic significance, and even this only to a limited degree.
The economic ethic of the Scotists and in particular of certain fifteenth-century mendicant theologians, especially Bernardine of Siena and Antoninus of Florence, specifically rationally and ascetically directed monastic authors, undoubtedly merits special attention and cannot be dealt with in the context of this essay. I should be obliged to respond to my critics by anticipating what I have to say about the Catholic economic ethic and its positive relationship to capitalism. These writers endeavor to show—and in this they prefigure some of the Jesuits—that profit for the merchant is ethically justifiable as recompense for his “industria” (even Keller cannot claim more, of course).
The concept of “industria” and the value attached to it is, of course, ultimately derived from monastic asceticism, and probably, as stated by himself through the mouth of Gianozzo, from the concept of mazzeria, which Alberti took over from the language of the clerics. Later we shall be looking more closely at monastic asceticism as a precursor of the innerworldly ascetic denominations of Protestantism. (The beginnings of similar conceptions can also be found in antiquity among the Cynics, on late Hellenistic tomb inscriptions, and—in quite different circumstances—in Egypt.) What is completely lacking (just as it is in the case of Alberti) is precisely what is decisive for us. That is, as we shall see later, the characteristic feature of ascetic Protestantism, namely, the conception of the proof of one’s own salvation, the certitudo salutis, to be found in the calling, in other words, the psychological premiums that this religiosity offered for “industria” and that Catholicism inevitably lacked, since its means of salvation were simply different.
In effect, these authors are concerned with ethical doctrine, not with practical individual impulses that derive from an interest in gaining salvation. They are also concerned with accommodation (as we can very easily see), and not, as in the case of innerworldly asceticism, with arguments arising out of central religious convictions. (Incidentally, far better commentaries exist on Antoninus and Bernardine than those provided by F. Keller.) And even these proposed accommodations have remained controversial right up to the present. Nevertheless, the significance of these monastic ethical conceptions is by no means negligible when seen as symptomatic. The true “beginnings” of a religious ethic leading to the modern concept of the calling, however, lay with the sects and with heterodoxy, especially with Wycliffe, although his importance has been greatly exaggerated by Brodnitz (Englische Wirtschaftsgeschichte), who thought that his influence had such a powerful effect that there was nothing left for Puritanism to do. We cannot (and must not) deal with any of this in any greater detail here. For we cannot explore here, alongside our main thesis, the extent to which the medieval Christian ethic actually contributed to the creation of the preconditions for the capitalist spirit.
EDITORS’ NOTES
1. The term refers to clerks or bookkeepers.
2. Eigengesetzlichkeit is one of the key concepts of Weber’s sociology of modern culture. It denotes the manner in which the various life spheres or life orders (sexuality, politics, science, commerce, art, religion, ethics) take on an inherent, separate logic of their own, no longer subordinated to one religious cosmology or worldview, and each claiming that its own axioms are fundamental, irreducible, and compelling. See “Religious Rejections of the World and Their Directions” in Hans. H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills, From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology (London: Routledge, 1970), pp. 323–59. For a superb analysis of Weber’s argument, see Lawrence A. Scaff, Fleeing the Iron Cage: Culture, Politics, and Modernity in the Thought of Max Weber (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989), pp. 93–120.
3. Salmasius was a sixteenth-century French Calvinist scholar.
APPENDIX II: PREFATORY REMARKS TO COLLECTED ESSAYS IN THE SOCIOLOGY OF RELIGION1
The child of modern European civilization [Kulturwelt] will inevitably and justifiably approach problems of universal history from the standpoint of the following problematic [Fragestellung]: What chain of circumstances led to the appearance in the West, and only in the West, of cultural phenomena which—or so at least we like to think—came to have universal significance and validity?
Only in the West2 do we find “science” at the stage of development that we today recognize as “valid.” Other parts of the world have known empirical knowledge, reflection on the problems of the world and of life, philosophical wisdom, even theological wisdom of the profoundest kind—although a fully developed systematic theology is peculiar to Christianity, with its Hellenist influences (only in Islam and in a few Indian sects can the beginnings of it be found). Knowledge and observation of extraordinary refinement have existed in India, China, Babylon, and Egypt, and in other regions. However, Babylonian astronomy, and that found elsewhere, lacked the mathematical foundation that only the Greeks were able to give it, which only makes the development of astronomy in Babylon, in particular, all the more astonishing. Indian geometry lacked rational “proof,” which was again a product of the Hellenist spirit, and this in turn also first created mechanics and physics. Indian natural science, which was well developed in the field of
observation, lacked rational experimentation, which was essentially a product of the Renaissance, though there were classical precedents; it lacked also the modern laboratory, which explains why the empirically and technically highly developed medicine of India was built on a biological and especially biochemical foundation. A rational science of chemistry is absent from all cultural regions apart from the West.
The highly developed Chinese historiography lacks the Thucydidean pragmatism. Machiavelli has precursors in India, but all Asiatic political science lacks a systematic approach like that of Aristotle, and lacks rational concepts entirely. Regarding the law, there are embryonic forms in India (Mimamsa School), there is extensive codification, especially in the Near East, and there are plenty of books of laws in India and elsewhere, but outside the West there is an absence of the strictly juridical schemata and forms of thought needed for rational jurisprudence found in the Roman law, and in the Western law that grew out of it. Moreover, only the West has a structure like canon law.
It is similar with art. Other peoples apparently had a more finely de-veloped musical sensibility than we do today, or at least no less finely developed. Polyphony of various kinds was known throughout the world, ensemble playing of a number of instruments and descant can be found elsewhere. All our rational tonal intervals were calculated and known elsewhere also. But only in the West could one find rational harmonic music, consisting of both counterpoint and chordal harmony; tonal material formed on the basis of the three triads with the harmonic third; chromatics and enharmonics (harmonically interpreted since the Renaissance, not on the basis of distance, but in rational form); the orchestra with the string quartet at its heart and with the wind section organized as an ensemble; the basso continuo; the notation, which alone makes possible the composition and practice of modern musical works, indeed their whole permanent existence; our sonatas, symphonies, and operas (program music, tone painting, tonal change, and chromaticism have admittedly always existed as a means of expression in various other musical traditions). Finally, as a means to achieve this, we have all our basic instruments: organ, piano, violin. All this could only be found in the West.
There have been Gothic arches as decorative features elsewhere, in the ancient world and in Asia; apparently even Gothic cross-vaulting was not unknown in the East. But what is lacking elsewhere is the rational use of the Gothic vault as a means of distribution of thrust, as a means of roofing differently shaped spaces, and, especially, as a construction principle of great monumental buildings. It also serves as the basis of a style embracing sculpture and painting, like that created in the Middle Ages. Also, although the technical foundations were derived from the East, only the West has solved the problem of the dome, and achieved the kind of “classical” rationalization of the whole of art that the Renaissance created here. In painting this was attained through the rational use of linear and aerial perspective. Products of the art of printing existed in China. But a printed literature, which was designed for printing alone and which could only live by this means, the “press” and “periodicals” especially, came into being only in the West. Institutions of higher education of every possible kind, including some that were outwardly similar to our universities, or at least to our academies, could be found elsewhere (China, Islamic countries). But only in the West could there be found the rational and systematic pursuit of science by trained specialists in any sense approaching the culturally dominant position it enjoys today. Especially the specialist official, the cornerstone of the modern state and of the modern economy of the West. Only the first signs of this type can be found, and these never in any sense became a constitutive part of the social order as they did in the West. Of course, the “official,” even the official who specializes in one particular branch of work, has existed from ancient times in the most varied cultures. But apart from the modern West, no country and no period has quite known the absolutely inescapable confinement3 [Gebanntheit] of the fundamental political, technical, and economic conditions of our life and of our whole existence in the shell [Gehäuse] of an organization of specially trained officials, nor the technical, commercial, and especially the legally trained state official as the bearer of the most important everyday functions of social life.
The organization of political and social associations on the basis of estates has been widespread. But the polity of estates [Ständestaat],4 the “rex et regnum,” in the Western sense, was known only to the West. And even more important, only the West has produced parliaments consisting of periodically elected “representatives of the people,” demagogues and the rule [Herrschaft] of party leaders as “ministers” responsible to parliament—although, of course, all over the world there have been “parties” in the sense of organizations for gaining political power and exercising political influence. The “state” in general, in the sense of a political institution, with a vital combination of essential characteristics comprising a rational “constitution,” rationally constituted law, and an administration carried out by specialist officials according to rational constitutional rules (that is, “laws”), is known only in the West; however, many embryonic forms of it may exist elsewhere.
So it is too with the most fateful force of our modern life, capitalism.
In itself, the “acquisitive drive” [Erwerbstrieb], “striving for profit,” for monetary gain, indeed for the greatest possible monetary gain, has nothing to do with capitalism in itself. This striving has been found at all times and in every country in the world among waiters, doctors, coachmen, artists, courtesans, corrupt officials, soldiers, robbers, crusaders, those who frequent gambling dens, and beggars—we may say, among “all sorts and conditions of men,”5 wherever it has been objectively possible to pursue it. It should be one of the first principles of cultural history that we abandon this naive conceptual definition once and for all. Totally unrestrained greed for acquisition cannot in the least be equated with capitalism, less still with its “spirit.” Capitalism can be virtually identical to the taming, or at least with the rational tempering, of this irrational instinct. Capitalism is, however, identical to the striving for profit, in the course of continuous, rational, capitalist enterprise, for more and more profits, and for “profitability.” It must be. When the entire economy is organized on capitalist principles, an individual capitalist business that did not aim to achieve profitability would be doomed.
Let us define our terms a little more precisely than is usual. A “capitalist” act we take to mean firstly one that rests upon the expectation of profit through the exploitation of opportunities for exchange, that is, on (formally) peaceful opportunities for acquisition. Acquisition by force (formal and actual) follows its own particular laws, and it is not helpful (although no one can be prevented from doing so) to place it in the same category as actions that are (ultimately) oriented toward opportunities for profit through exchange. [1]
Where capitalist acquisition is rationally pursued, the corresponding action [Handeln] is oriented toward the calculation of capital. In other words, such action takes place within a planned utilization of material or personal output (used as a means of acquisition) in such a way that in the final calculation the ultimate yield of the individual enterprise, calculated in terms of the balance (or, in the case of a continuously operated enterprise, the estimated money value of the property, periodically calculated in terms of the balance), exceeds the “capital,” that is, the money value of the property, or the estimated balance value of the material means of acquisition employed for acquisition through exchange. This means that in the case of a permanent enterprise, the balance value should constantly exceed the capital.
It may be a question of payment in kind given to a traveling merchant in commenda,6 the final yield of which may again consist of other goods in kind obtained by trade. Or it may consist of a factory, the component parts of which consist of buildings, machines, supplies of money, raw materials, semifinished and finished products, and credit, while on the other hand there
may be liabilities. Whatever it may be, the decisive point is that a capital calculation in terms of money is made, whether this be in a modern form of bookkeeping or in some primitive and superficial form.
At the outset of the enterprise, there must be a starting balance sheet. Before each individual action, there must be calculation. At the stage of applying controls and checks on appropriateness of procedure, there must be postcalculation, and at the conclusion, when the “profit” is assessed, there must be a final balance sheet. For example, the starting balance sheet for a commenda is based on the establishment of the monetary value (to be agreed on between the parties) of the goods handed over—unless they are already in the form of money. The final balance is that of the assessment which underlies the distribution of profit or loss at the conclusion. Where rationality prevails, calculation is the foundation for every single action of those partners. In every kind of capitalist enterprise, to this very day, wherever the circumstances do not require precise calculation, it can be the case that there is no precise calculation and assessment, and that one proceeds on the basis of estimates, or simply in a traditional and conventional manner. But these are points that only affect the degree of rationality of the capitalist enterprise.
What is crucial for the concept is simply this: that economic action is decisively determined by the actual comparison of the assessment of financial success with the assessed financial input, in however primitive a form. In this sense, “capitalism” and “capitalist” enterprises, even some with a degree of rationalization of capital calculation, have existed in every civilized country [Kulturländer], for as far back as economic documentation extends: in China, India, Babylon, Egypt, and the ancient world of the Mediterranean, as much in the Middle Ages as in modern times. This applies not only to quite isolated individual enterprises, but also to economies that were entirely based upon constantly changing individual capitalist enterprises, as well as to continuously operating “businesses.” For a long time, of course, trade did not have the character of our permanent businesses, but essentially that of a series of individual enterprises, and it was only gradually that an internal cohesion (based on different “branches”) began to typify the behavior of, in particular, the wholesale traders. At any rate, both the capitalist entrepreneur, and not only the casual but also the permanent entrepreneur, are ancient phenomena and were absolutely universal.
