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The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism
Max Weber
New York: Scribner's Press,
1958, pp. 13-31.
Author's Introduction
AUTHOR'S INTRODUCTION
A PRODUCT of modem European civilization, studying any
problem of universal history, is bound to ask himself to
what combination of circumstances the fact should be
attributed that in Western civilization, and in Western
civilization only, cultural phenomena have appeared which
(as we like to think) lie in a line of development having
universal significance and value. Only in the West
does science exist at a stage of development which we
recognize today as valid. Empirical knowledge, reflection on
problems of the cosmos and of life, philosophical and
theological wisdom of the most profound sort, are not
confined to it, though in the case of the last the full
development of a systematic theology must be credited to
Christianity under the influence of Hellenism, since there
were only fragments in Islam and in a few Indian sects. In
short, knowledge and observation of great refinement have
existed elsewhere, above all in India, China, Babylonia,
Egypt. But in Babylonia and elsewhere astronomy lacked-which
makes its development all the more astounding-the
mathematical foundation which it first received from the
Greeks. The Indian geometry had no rational proof ; that was
another product of the Greek intellect, also the creator of
mechanics and physics. The Indian natural sciences, though
well developed in observation, lacked the method of
experiment, which was, apart from beginnings in antiquity,
essentially a product of the Renaissance, as was the modem
laboratory. Hence medicine, especially in India, though
highly developed [End of page 13] in empirical
technique, lacked a biological and particularly a
biochemical foundation. A rational chemistry has been absent
from all areas of culture except the West.
The highly developed historical scholarship of China did
not have the method of Thucydides. Machiavelli, it is true,
had predecessors in India; but all Indian. political thought
was lacking in a systematic method comparable to that of
Aristotle, and, indeed, in the possession of rational
concepts. Not all the anticipations in India (School of
Mimamsa ), nor the extensive codification especially in the
Near East, nor all the Indian and other books of law, had
the strictly systematic forms of thought, so essential to a
rational jurisprudence, of the Roman law and of the Western
law Under its influence. A structure like the canon law is
known only to the West.
A similar statement is true of art. The musical ear of
other peoples has probably been even more sensitively
developed than our own, certainly not less so. Polyphonic
music of various kinds has been widely distributed over the
earth. The co-operation of a number of instruments and also
the singing of parts have existed elsewhere. All our
rational tone intervals have been known and calculated. But
rational harmonious music, both counterpoint and harmony,
formation of the tone material on the basis. of three triads
with the harmonic third; our chromatics and enharmonics, not
interpreted in terms of space, but, since the Renaissance,
of harmony; our orchestra, with its string quartet as a
nucleus, and the organization of ensembles of wind
instruments; our bass [End of page 14]
accompaniment; our system of notation, which has made
possible the composition and production of modem musical
works, and thus their very survival; our sonatas,
symphonies, operas; and finally, as means to all these, our
fundamental instruments, the organ, piano, violin, etc.; all
these things are known only in the Occident, although
programme music, tone poetry, alteration of tones and
chromatics, have existed in various musical traditions as
means of expression.
In architecture, pointed arches have been used elsewhere
as a means of decoration, in antiquity and in Asia;
presumably the combination of pointed arch and cross-arched
vault was not unknown in the Orient. But the rational use of
the Gothic vault as a means of distributing pressure and of
roofing spaces of all forms, and above all as the
constructive principle of great monumental building and the
foundation of a style extending to sculpture and
painting, such as that created by our Middle Ages, does not
occur elsewhere. The technical basis of our architecture
came from the Orient. But the Orient lacked that solution of
the problem of the dome and that type of classic
rationalization of all art-in painting by the rational
utilization of lines and spatial perspective-which the
Renaissance created for us. There was printing in China. But
a printed literature, designed only for print and
only possible through it, and, above all, the Press and
periodicals, have appeared only in the Occident.
Institutions of higher education of all possible types, even
some superficially similar to our universities, or at least
academies, have existed (China, Islam). But a rational,
systematic, and specialized pursuit of science, [End of
page 15] with trained and specialized personnel, has
only existed in the West in a sense at all approaching its
present dominant place in our culture. Above an is this true
of the trained official,' the pillar of both the modem
State. and of the economic life of the West. He forms a type
of which there have heretofore only been -suggestions, which
have never remotely approached its present importance for
the social order. Of course the. official, even the
specialized official, is a very old constituent of the most
various societies. But no country and no age has ever
experienced, in the same sense as the modern Occident, the
absolute and complete dependence of its whole existence, of
the political, technical and economic conditions of its
life, on a specially trained organization of
officials. The most important functions of the everyday life
of society have come to be in the hands of technically,
commercially, and above an legally trained government
officials.
Organization of political and social groups in feudal
classes has been common. But even the feudal1
state of rex et regnum in the Western sense has
only been known to our culture. Even more are parliaments of
periodically elected representatives, with. government by
demagogues and party leaders as ministers responsible to the
parliaments, peculiar to us, although there have, of course,
been parties, in the sense of organizations for exerting
influence and gaining control of political power, all over
the world. In fact, the State itself, in the sense of a
political association with a rational, written constitution,
rationally ordained law, and an administration bound to
rational rules or laws, [End of page 16]
administered by trained officials, is known, in this
combination of characteristics, only in the Occident,
despite all other approaches to it.
And the same is true of the most fateful force in our
modem life, capitalism. The, impulse to acquisition, pursuit
of gain, of money, of the greatest possible amount of money,
has in itself nothing to do with capitalism. This impulse
exists and has existed among waiters, physicians, coachmen,
artists, prostitutes, dishonest officials, soldiers, nobles,
crusaders, gamblers, and beggars. One may say that it has
been common to all sorts and conditions of men at all times
and in all countries of the earth, wherever the objective
possibility of it is or has been given. It should be taught
in the kindergarten of cultural history that this naive idea
of capitalism must be given. up once and for all. Unlimited
greed for gain is not in the least identical with
capitalism, and is still less its spirit. Capitalism may
even be identical with the restraint, or at least a
rational tempering, of this irrational impulse. But
capitalism is identical with the pursuit of profit, and
forever renewed profit, by means of conscious,
rational, capitalistic enterprise. For it must be so in a
wholly capitalistic order of society, an individual
capitalistic enterprise which did not take advantage of its
opportunities for profit-making would be doomed to
extinction.
Let us now define our terms somewhat more carefully than
is generally done. We will define a capitalistic economic
action as one which rests on the expectation of profit by
the utilization of opportunities for exchange, that is on
(formally) peaceful chances of profit. Acquisition by force
(formally and actually) follows its own [End of page
17] particular laws, and it is not expedient, however
little one can forbid this, to place it in the same category
with action which is, in the last analysis, oriented to
profits from exchange.2 Where capitalistic acquisition is
rationally pursued, the corresponding action is adjusted to
calculations in terms of capital. This means that the action
is adapted to a systematic utilization of goods or personal
services as means of acquisition in such a way that, at the
close of a business period, the balance of the enterprise in
money assets ( or, in the case of a continuous enterprise,
the periodically estimated money value of assets) exceeds
the capital, i.e. the estimated value of the material means
of production used for acquisition in exchange. It makes no
difference whether it involves a quantity of goods entrusted
in natura to a traveling merchant, the proceeds of
which may consist in other goods in natura acquired
by trade, or whether it involves a manufacturing enterprise,
the,assets of which consist of buildings, machinery, cash,
raw materials, partly and wholly manufactured goods, which
are balanced against liabilities. The important fact is
always that a calculation of capital in terms of money is
made, whether by modern book-keeping methods or in any other
way, however primitive and crude. Everything is done in
terms of balances: at the beginning of the enterprise an
initial balance, before every individual decision a
calculation to ascertain its probable profitableness, and at
the end a final balance to ascertain how much profit has
been made. For instance, the initial balance of a
commenda3 transaction would determine an
agreed money value of the assets put into [End of page
18] it (so far as they were not in money form
already), and a final balance would form the estimate on
which to base the distribution of profit and loss at the
end. So far as the transactions are rational, calculation
underlies every single action of the partners. That a really
accurate calculation or estimate may not exist, that the
procedure is pure guess-work, or simply traditional and
conventional, happens even today in every form of
capitalistic enterprise where the circumstances do not
demand strict accuracy. But these are points affecting only
the degree of rationality of capitalistic
acquisition.
For the purpose of this conception all that matters is
that an actual adaptation of economic action to a comparison
of money income with money expenses takes place, no matter
how primitive the form. Now in this sense capitalism and
capitalistic enterprises, even with a considerable
rationalization of capitalistic calculation, have existed in
all civilized countries of the earth, so far as economic'
documents permit us to judge. In China, India, Babylon,
Egypt, Mediterranean antiquity, and the Middle Ages, as well
as in modem times. These were not merely isolated ventures,
but economic enterprises which were entirely dependent on
the continual renewal of capitalistic undertakings, and even
continuous operations. However, trade especially was for a
long time not continuous like our own, but consisted
essentially in a series of individual undertakings. Only
gradually did the activities of even the large merchants
acquire an inner cohesion (with branch organizations, etc.).
In any case, the capitalistic enterprise and the
capitalistic entrepreneur, not only [End of page 19]
as occasional but as regular entrepreneurs; are very old and
were very widespread.
Now, however, the Occident has developed capitalism both
to a quantitative extent, and (carrying this quantitative
development) in types, forms, and directions which
have never existed elsewhere. All over the world
there have been merchants, wholesale and retail,
local and engaged in foreign trade. Loans of all
kinds have been made, and there have been banks with the
most various functions, at least comparable to ours
of, say, the sixteenth century. Sea loans,4
commenda, and transactions and associations similar
to the Kommanditgesellschaft,5 have all
been widespread, even as continuous businesses. Whenever
money finances of public bodies have existed, money-lenders
have appeared, as in Babylon, Hellas, India, China, Rome.
They have financed wars and piracy, contracts and building
operations of all sorts. In overseas policy they have
functioned as colonial entrepreneurs, as planters with
slaves, or directly or indirectly forced labour, and have
farmed domains, offices, and, above all, taxes. They have
financed party leaders in elections and condottieri
in civil wars. And, finally, they have been speculators
in chances for pecuniary gain of all kinds. This
kind of entrepreneur, the capitalistic adventurer, has
existed everywhere. With the exception of trade and credit
and banking transactions, their activities were
predominantly of an irrational and speculative character, or
directed to acquisition by force, above all the acquisition
of booty, whether directly in war or in the form of
continuous fiscal booty by exploitation of subjects.
[End of page 20]
The capitalism of promoters, large-scale speculators,
concession hunters, and much modern financial capitalism
even in peace time, but, above all, the capitalism
especially concerned with exploiting wars, bears this stamp
even in modern Western countries, and some, but
only some, parts of large-scale international trade
are closely related to it, today as always.
But in modern times the Occident has developed, in
addition to this, a very different form of capitalism which
has appeared nowhere else: the rational capitalistic
organization of ( formally) free labour. Only suggestions of
it are found elsewhere. Even the organization of unfree
labour reached a considerable degree of rationality only on
plantations and to a very limited extent in the
Ergasteria of antiquity. In the manors, manorial
workshops, and domestic industries on estates with serf
labour it was probably somewhat less developed. Even real
domestic industries with free labour have definitely been
proved to have existed in only a few isolated cases outside
the Occident. The frequent use of day labourers led in a
very few cases----especially state monopolies, which are,
however, very different from modern industrial
organization--to manufacturing organizations, but never to a
rational organization of apprenticeship in the handicrafts
like that of our Middle Ages. Rational industrial
organization, attuned to a regular market, and neither to
political nor irrationally speculative opportunities for
profit, is not, however, the only peculiarity of Western
capitalism. The modern rational organization of the
capitalistic enterprise would not have been possible without
two other important factors in its development: the
separation of business from [End of page 21] the
household, which completely dominates modem economic life,
and closely connected with it) rational book-keeping. A
spatial separation of places of work from those of residence
exists elsewhere, as in the Oriental bazaar and in the
ergasteria of other. cultures.
The development of capitalistic. associations with their
own accounts is also found in the Far East, the Near East,
and in antiquity. But compared to the modern independence of
business enterprises, those are only small beginnings. The
reason for this was particularly that the indispensable
requisites for this independence, our rational business
book-keeping and our legal separation of corporate from
personal property, were entirely lacking, or had only begun
to develop.6 The tendency everywhere else was for
acquisitive enterprises to arise as parts of a royal or
manorial household (of the oikos), which
is, as Rodbertus has perceived, with all its superficial
similarity, a fundamentally different, even opposite,
development However, all these peculiarities of Western
capitalism have derived their significance in the last
analysis only from their association with the capitalistic
organization of labour. Even what is generally called
commercialization, the development of negotiable securities
and the rationalization of speculation, the exchanges, etc.,
is connected with it. For without the rational
capitalistic,organization of labour, all this, so far as it
was possible at all, would have nothing like the same
significance, above all for the social structure and all the
specific problems of the modern Occident connected with it.
Exact calculation--the basis of every thing else--is only
possible on a basis of free labour.7 [End of
page 22]
And just as, or rather because, the world has known no
rational organization of labour outside the modern Occident,
it has known no rational socialism. Of course, there has
been civic economy, a civic food-supply policy, mercantilism
and welfare policies of princes, rationing, regulation of
economic life, protectionism, and laissez-faire theories (as
in China). The world has also known socialistic and
communistic experiments of various sorts: family, religious,
or military communism, State socialism (in Egypt),
monopolistic cartels, and consumers' organizations. But
although there have everywhere been civic market privileges,
companies, guilds, and all sorts of legal differences
between town and country, the concept of the citizen has not
existed outside the Occident, and that of the bourgeoisie
outside the modern Occident. Similarly, the proletariat as a
class could not exist, because there was no rational
organization of free labour under regular discipline. Class
struggles between creditor and debtor classes; landowners
and the landless, serfs, or tenants; trading interests and
consumers or landlord, have existed everywhere in various
combinations. But even the Western mediaeval struggles
between putters-out and their workers exist elsewhere only
in beginnings. The modern conflict of the large-scale
industrial entrepreneur and free-wage labourers was entirely
lacking. And thus there could be no such problems as those
of socialism.
Hence in a universal history of culture the central
problem for us is not, in the last analysis, even from a
purely economic view-point, the development of capitalistic
activity as such, differing in different cultures only
[End of page 23] in form: the adventurer type, or
capitalism in trade, war, politics, or administration as
sources of gain. It is rather the origin of this sober
bourgeois capitalism with its rational organization of free
labour. Or in terms of cultural history, the problem is that
of the origin of the Western bourgeois class and of its
peculiarities, a problem which is certainly closely
connected with that of the origin of the capitalistic
organization of labour, but is not quite the same thing. For
the bourgeois as a class existed prior to the development o
f the peculiar modern form of capitalism, though, it is
true, only in the Western hemisphere.
Now the peculiar modern Western form of capitalism has.
been,. at first sight, strongly influenced by the
development of technical possibilities. Its rationality is
to-day essentially dependent on the calculability of the
most "important technical factors. But this means
fundamentally that it is dependent on the peculiarities of
modern science, especially the natural sciences based on
mathematics and exact and rational experiment. On the other
hand, the development of these sciences and of the technique
resting upon them now receives important stimulation from
these capitalistic interests in its practical economic
application. It is true that the origin of Western science
cannot be attributed to such interests. Calculation, even
with decimals, and algebra have been carried on in India,
where the decimal system was invented. But it was only made
use of by developing capitalism in the West, while in India
it led to no modem arithmetic or book-keeping. Neither was
the origin of mathematics and mechanics deter mined by
capitalistic interests. But the technical [End of page
24] utilization of scientific knowledge, so important
for the living conditions of the mass of people, was
certainly encouraged by economic considerations, which were
extremely favourable to it in the Occident. But this
encouragement was derived from the peculiarities of the
social structure of the Occident. We must hence ask, from
what parts of that structure was it derived, since not all
of them have been of equal importance?
Among those of undoubted importance are the rational
structures of law and of administration. For modern rational
capitalism has need, not only of the technical means of
production, but of a calculable legal system and of
administration in terms of formal rules. Without it
adventurous and speculative trading capital ism and all
sorts of politically determined capitalisms are possible,
but no rational enterprise under individual initiative, with
fixed capital and certainty of calculations. Such a legal
system and such administration have been available for
economic activity in a comparative state of legal and
formalistic perfection only in the Occident. We must hence
inquire where that law came from. Among other circumstances,
capitalistic interests have in turn undoubtedly also helped,
but by no means alone nor even principally, to prepare the
way for the pre dominance in law and administration of a
class of jurists specially trained in rational law. But
these interests did not themselves create that law. Quite
different forces were at work in this development. And why
did not the capitalistic interests do the same in China or
India ? Why did not the scientific, the artistic, the
political, or the economic development there enter upon that
path of rationalization which is peculiar to the Occident ?
[End of page 25]
For in all the above cases it is a question of the
specific and peculiar rationalism of Western culture. N ow
by this term very different things may be under stood, as
the following discussion will repeatedly show. There is, for
example, rationalization of mystical contemplation, that is
of an attitude which, viewed from other departments of life,
is specifically irrational, just as much as there are
rationalizations of economic life, of technique, of
scientific research, of military training, of law and
administration. Furthermore, each one of these fields may be
rationalized in terms of very different ultimate values and
ends, and what is rational from one point of view may well
be irrational from another. Hence rationalizations of the
most varied character have existed in various departments of
life and in all areas of culture. T o characterize their
differences from the view-point of cultural history it is
necessary to know what departments are rationalized, and in
what direction. It is hence our first concern to work out
and to explain genetically the special peculiarity of
Occidental rationalism, and within this field that of the
modern Occidental form. Every such attempt at explanation
must, recognizing the fundamental importance of the economic
factor, above all take account of the economic conditions.
But at the same time the opposite correlation must not be
left out of consideration. For though the development of
economic rationalism is partly dependent on rational
technique and law, it is at the same time determined by the
ability and disposition of men to adopt certain types of
practical rational conduct. When these types have been
obstructed by spiritual obstacles, the [End of page
26] development Of rational economic conduct has also
met serious inner resistance. The magical and religious
forces, and the ethical ideas of duty based upon them, have
in the past always been among the most important formative
influences on conduct. In the studies collected here we
shall be concerned with these forces.8
Two older essays have been placed at the beginning which
attempt, at one important point, to approach the side of the
problem which is generally most difficult to grasp: the
influence of certain religious ideas on the development of
an economic spirit, or the ethos of an economic system. In
this case we are dealing with the connection of the spirit
of modern economic life with the rational ethics of ascetic
Protestantism. Thus we treat here only one side .Off the
causal chain. The later studies on the Economic Ethics of
the World Religions attempt, in the form of a survey of the
relations of the most important religions to economic life
and to the social stratification of their environment, to
follow out both causal relationships, so far as it is
necessary in order to find points of comparison with the
Occidental development. For only in this way is it possible
to attempt a causal evaluation of those. elements of the
economic ethics of the Western religions which differentiate
them from others, with a hope of attaining even a tolerable
degree of approximation. Hence these studies do not claim to
be complete analyses of cultures, however brief. On the
contrary, in every culture they quite deliberately emphasize
the elements in which it differs from Western civilization.
They are, hence, definitely oriented to the problems which
seem important for the understanding of Western culture from
[End of page 27] this view-point. With our object in
view, any other procedure did not seem possible. But to
avoid misunderstanding we must here lay special emphasis on
the limitation of our purpose.
In another respect the uninitiated at least must be
warned against exaggerating the importance of these
investigations. The Sinologist, the Indologist, the
Semitist, or the Egyptologist, will of course find no facts
unknown to him. We only hope that he will find nothing
definitely wrong in points that are essential. How far it
has been possible to come as near this ideal as a
non-specialist is able to do, the author cannot know. It is
quite evident that anyone who is forced to rely on
translations, and furthermore on the use and evaluation of
monumental, documentary, or literary sources, has to rely
himself on a specialist literature which is often highly
controversial, and the merits of which he is unable to judge
accurately. Such a writer must make modest claims for the
value of his work. All the more so since the number of
available translations of real sources (that is,
inscriptions and documents) is, especially for China, still
very small in comparison with what exists and is important.
From all this follows the definitely provisional character
of these studies, and especially of the parts dealing with
Asia.9 Only the specialist is entitled to a final
judgment. And, naturally, it is only because expert studies
with this special purpose and from this particular
view-point have not hitherto been made, that the present
ones have been written at all. They are destined to be
superseded in a much more important sense than this can be
said, as it can be, of all scientific work. But however
objection [End of page 28] able it may be, such
trespassing on other. special fields cannot be avoided in
comparative work. But one must take the consequences by
resigning oneself to considerable doubts regarding the
degree of one's success.
Fashion and the zeal of the literati would have
us think that the specialist can today be spared, or
degraded to a position subordinate to that of the seer.
Almost all sciences owe something to dilettantes, often very
valuable view-points. But dilettantism as a leading
principle would be the end of science. He who yearns for
seeing should go to the cinema, though it will be offered to
him copiously today in literary form in the present field of
investigation also.10 Nothing is farther from the
intent of these thoroughly serious studies than such an
attitude. And, I might add, whoever wants a sermon should go
to a conventicle. The question of the relative value of the
cultures which are compared here will not receive a single
word. It is true that the path of human destiny cannot but
appall him who surveys a section of it. But he will do well
to keep his small personal commentaries to himself, as one
does at the sight of the sea or of majestic mountains,
unless he knows himself to be called and gifted to give them
expression in artistic or prophetic form. In most other
cases the voluminous talk about intuition does nothing but
conceal a lack of perspective toward the object .
which merits the same judgment as a similar lack of
perspective toward men.
Some justification is needed for the fact that
ethnographical material has not been utilized to anything
like the extent which the value of its contributions
naturally demands in any really thorough investigation,
[End of page 29] especially of Asiatic religions.
This limitation has not only been imposed because human
powers of work are restricted. This omission has also seemed
to be permissible because we are here necessarily dealing
with the religious ethics of the classes which were the
culture bearers of their respective countries. We are
concerned with the influence which their conduct has had.
Now it is quite true that this can only be completely known
in all its details when the facts from ethnography and
folk-lore have been compared with it. Hence we must
expressly admit and emphasize that this is a gap to which
the ethnographer will legitimately object. I
hope to contribute something to the closing of this gap
in a systematic study of the Sociology of
Religion.11 But such an undertaking would have
transcended the limits of this investigation with its
closely circumscribed purpose. It has been necessary to be
content with bringing out the points of comparison with our
Occidental religions as well as possible.
Finally, we may make a reference to the anthropological
side of the problem. When we find again and again that, even
in departments of life apparently mutually independent,
certain types of rationalization have developed in the
Occident, and only there, it would be natural to suspect
that the most important reason lay in differences of
heredity. The author admits that he is inclined to think the
importance of biological heredity very great. But in spite
of the notable achievements of anthropological research, I
see up to the present no way of exactly or even
approximately measuring either the extent or, above all, the
form of its influence on the development investigated here.
[End of page 30]
It must be one of the tasks of sociological and
historical investigation first to analyse all the influences
and causal relationships which can satisfactorily be
explained in terms of reactions to environmental conditions.
Only then, and when comparative racial neurology and
psychology shall have progressed beyond their present and in
many ways very promising beginnings, can we hope for even
the probability of a satisfactory answer to that
problem.12 In the meantime that condition seems
to me not to exist, and an appeal to heredity would
therefore involve a premature renunciation of the
possibility of knowledge attainable now, and would shift the
problem to factors (at present) still unknown. [End of
page 31]
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