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The Protestant Ethic — Revisited*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 June 2009

Reinhard Bendix
Reinhard Bendix
Affiliation:
University of California, Berkeley
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Extract

In his article on “Respect for Work and Cleanliness,” Nikolai A. Mel'gunov touches on themes which are largely associated in our minds with the work of Max Weber. The aristocratic contempt for manual work and more broadly for any kind of specialization, the association of industriousness with religious dissent and with Protestant dissent particularly, the general view that labor is a burden which in Russian culture as in Catholicism is related to the frequency of holidays, the observable differences between Protestants and Catholics in the Rhineland — these and other themes can be found in Weber's work. Yet Weber himself considered these notions a commonplace in the literature. He believed that his own study offered a more probing analysis of the relation between the Protestant Ethic and that complex of attitudes towards economic activities which he designated as “innerworldly asceticism”.

Type
Religion and Economic Behavior
Information
Comparative Studies in Society and History , Volume 9 , Issue 3 , April 1967 , pp. 266 - 273
Copyright
Copyright © Society for the Comparative Study of Society and History 1967

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References

1 Weber, Max, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1958), p. 191, n. 23Google Scholar. See also p. 280, n. 96.

2 Laveleye, Emile de, Elements of Political Economy (New York, G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1889), p. 44Google Scholar. The book was published originally in 1882.

3 See Laveleye, Emile von, Protestantismus und Katholizismus in Ihren Beziehungen zur Freiheit und Wohlfahrt der Völker (Noerdlingen, C. H. Beck'sche Buchhandlung, 1875)Google Scholar, passim and pp. iv-v of Bluntschli's preface.

4 From the essay on “Equality” (1878) in Trilling, Lionel, ed., The Portable Matthew Arnold (New York, The Viking Press, 1949), p. 595Google Scholar.

5 Keats, John, Complete Poetical Works and Letters (Cambridge, Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 1899), p. 310Google Scholar. The quotation is from a letter, written in July 1818, to Keats' brother Thomas.

6 Buckle, Henry Thomas, Civilization in England (New York, D. Appleton & Co., 1861), II, p. 153Google Scholar.

7 Ibid.

8 Ibid., U, pp. 260–261.

9 Ibid., II, pp. 236ff.

10 Ibid., II, p. 314.

11 Cf. ibid., II, p. 313, where Buckle specifically identifies thoughts about the future as incompatible with complete resignation to the Divine will.

12 Cf. Weber's own stress on the importance of this consideration in his “Kritische Bemerkungen zu den vorstehenden ‘kritischen Beitragen’”, Archiv für Sozialwissenschaft, XXV (1907), 248Google Scholar and passim.

13 Weber, Protestant Ethic, p. 42.

14 See Mannhardt, W., Die Wehrfreiheit der Altpreussischen Mennoniten (Marienburg, B. Hermann Hemmpels WWe., 1863), pp. 118–120Google Scholar. I have no evidence that Weber used this particular publication, but it is the one dealing most specifically with the incident to which he referred.

15 See Hull, Charles H., ed., The Economic Writings of Sir William Petty (Cambridge, The University Press, 1899), I, pp. 261–264Google Scholar and passim.

16 See Gothein, Eberhard, Wirtschaftsgeschichte des Schwarzwaldes (Strassburg, Karl J. Trübner, 1892), pp. 673–714Google Scholar.

17 See Rogers, J. E. T., Holland (New York, G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1900), p. 51Google Scholar (originally published in 1888); the same author's The Economic Interpretation of History (New York, G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1889), pp. 74–84Google Scholar and The Industrial and Commercial History of England (New York, G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1892), pp. 35ffGoogle Scholar.

18 Weber, Protestant Ethic, p. 43. In a footnote Weber adds: “The migration of exiles of all the religions of the earth, Indian, Arabian, Chinese, Syrian, Phoenecian, Greek, Lombard, to other countries as bearers of the commercial lore of highly developed areas, has been of universal occurrence and has nothing to do with our problem.” Ibid., p. 189, n. 13.

19 Ibid., pp. 39–40.

20 There is a relevant passage, for example, in Alfred Marshall which is among the more perceptive of these earlier commentaries. It links the “isolation of each person's religious responsibility” among Puritans with the “sturdy thoroughness of work in the manufacturing arts”. See Marshall, Alfred, Principles of Economics (New York, Macmillan & Co., 1895), I, pp. 36–39Google Scholar. The book was originally published in 1890. My colleague Neil Smelser informs me that similar comments occur rather frequently among English writers of the early nineteenth century who discussed the development of trade and industry.

21 That it might be weak on occasion was clear not only from Buckle's discussion, among others, but was explicitly stated by Weber himself. After emphasizing the combination of “capitalistic business sense” and the “most intensive forms of piety” especially in the case of Calvinism, Weber adds the footnote: “This, of course, was true [of Calvinism] only when some possibility of capitalistic development in the area in question was present.” See Protestant Ethic, p. 190, n. 16.

22 Ibid., pp. 97–98. Note also Weber's statements on pp. 90–92 where the purpose of his study is carefully delimited. Not many of Weber's critics have been nearly as careful in this respect.

23 For this aspect of Weber's methodology in a comparative context cf. Bendix, Reinhard, “Cultural-Educational Mobility and Development: Japan and the Protestant Ethic”, in Lipset, S. M. and Smelser, Neil, eds., Social Structure and Social Mobility in Economic Development (Chicago, The Aldine Press, 1966), pp. 262–279Google Scholar.