It is no secret
that the so-called objectivity of all those scholars who subscribe to
it, is primarily influenced by the rampantly subjective, intimately
personal circumstances of their lives. Even when such little private clues are
ostensibly missing, we can safely assume the fact of their actual existence.
But there are also lots of instances when they stare us in the face even from
the most cursory biographies of our authors. Such is, in fact, the case with
the German sociologist and political economist Max Weber. There is
little doubt that his quasi-revolutionary
discovery (actually, he was not the first to surmise a connection between economics
and religion, but he was undoubtedly the first major thinker ever to do so) of
a direct relationship between Protestant, particularly Calvinist, ethics,
and the entrepreneurial spirit of capitalism, has much to do with
the fact that his mother was a devout Calvinist orthodox, and that his own
views were much influenced by the family of his mother’s sister, married to the
celebrated historian Hermann Baumgarten. Weber’s subsequent political activism
in the left-liberal Protestant Social Union, Evangelisch-Soziale Verein, might fill all the remaining
blanks in that first part of the picture.
In his 1895 Freiburg
Address, contemplating the future of Germany, Doktor Weber curiously
chose to follow in Herr Doktor’s* totalitarian footsteps. The ruling Junker
aristocracy was in his view historically obsolete, while the existing
liberal parties not competent enough, and the working class not ready enough,
to assume the responsibilities of national power. Quoting Encyclopedia
Britannica on this (for
some reason, I couldn’t find Weber’s direct quote on the Internet),
“only the nation as a whole educated to maturity by a
conscious policy of overseas imperial expansion, could bring Germany to the
level of maturity previously attained by the French and by the British in the
course of their imperial expansion in the nineteenth century.” (From The
Freiburg Address.)
In his
best-known book The Protestant Ethic And The Spirit Of Capitalism
(1904-1905) Weber comes to the stunning and highly controversial, if not
dubious, conclusion that it is not the Jewish spirit of entrepreneurial
ingenuity, but the patently Gentile Protestant character, which
constitutes the guarantee of capitalist success, at least in so far as Germany
is concerned. He notes the statistical correlation in Germany between
successful business ventures and the Protestant background of the entrepreneurs
in-point. He then attributes this connection to certain accidental consequences
of the notions of predestination and calling in traditional Puritan theology
as developed by Calvin and his followers, which contributes to the emergence of
the workaholic type, religiously committed to his worldly calling,
coupled with ascetic abstinence from the enjoyment of the profits of his labor,
which, in practical terms, is conducive to the swift accumulation of capital.
Unlike Marx,
Weber does not see capitalism as the consequence of changes in the means of production,
but as the unfettering of the entrepreneurial spirit from previous religious
restraints. Capitalism, for Weber, is the most advanced economic system ever
developed in history. Yet, although he defends capitalism against its socialist
critics, he is also able to see its ethical downside, as a potential ‘iron
cage,’ constraining human freedom. This insightful distinction between business
and ethics further serves my general point, expressed on numerous occasions
both in this section and elsewhere.
Weber’s
identification of a positive spirit of capitalism, tied to the Protestant
ethics, coupled with concern about its threat to traditional values, makes
an interesting point, worth delving into. But for now this should do it,
except for the following final tongue-in-cheek observation, which may, perhaps,
turn out to be much more serious thinking than the words “tongue-in-cheek”
might suggest:
If we should
assume that the spirit of capitalism is somehow tied to Calvinist
Protestantism, does that mean that the spirit of socialism is tied to
Italian and Bavarian Catholicism? And on an even more reflective note, it may
perhaps go without a challenge that the spirit of Christian communism is,
likewise, alive in the body of Russian Orthodox Christianity, thus implicitly
supporting its Third Rome historical
destiny...
(*Footnote: Herr Doktor used to be the
semi-jocular appellation of Hegel, hence the wordplay.)
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