Ethic and Spirit of Capitalism

Ethic and Spirit of Capitalism

The German economist and sociologist Max Weber developed a series of theories based on the idea that religion, particularly the Protestantism, is the source of the economic growth beginning with the 18th Century, in many western countries. The economy of the countries in Western Europe and in the United States took an unprecedented swung not only compared to the economic growth before the 18th Century, but also compared to the rest of the world. This era of rapid and positive development of the economy coincides with the rise of the Protestantism in these countries.

His book, "The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism" is developing and explaining his theory through a study of the Protestantism vs. other religions, epically compared to Catholicism. Weber's vision of how capitalism was influenced and sustained by the reformism, as a generator of the Protestantism is based on the contradiction with the Catholic dogma relying on the rejection of everything that is worldly. In Chapter three of his book, entitled "Luther's Conception of the Calling," "Task of the Investigation," Weber uses a key word in the Reformation, first appeared in Luther's Bible translation as such: "the calling," Beruf in German. "Now it is unmistakable that even in the German word Beruf, and perhaps still more clearly in the English calling, a religious conception, that of a task set by God, is at least suggested." he writes in the opening of this chapter. Further in his analysis of the concept of calling first detected in the Bible by Luther, he continues that..."the valuation of the fulfillment of duty in worldly affairs as the highest form which the moral activity of the individual could assume. This it was which inevitably gave every-day worldly activity a religious significance, and which first created the conception of a calling in this sense"... Weber finds a logical explanation of the "worldly activity" as he calls it, from the Protestant religious point-of-view. Looking at Benjamin Franklin's preaching for the American people, Weber finds further similarities between the spirit of capitalism and the Ethic of Protestantism. He uses Franklin's words to support his theory regarding the religious thrive to making fortunes: "If we thus ask, why should "money be made out of men," Benjamin Franklin himself"... "answers in his autobiography with a quotation from the Bible: "Seest thou a man diligent in his business? He shall stand before kings. (Proverbs 22:29)."