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The religious background to Max Weber
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 March 2016
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It is easy to vulgarize Max Weber. His assertion that ‘the Protestant Ethic’ was related to capitalism could be, and was, taken to mean that Protestantism was about money whereas Catholicism was about parasitism. Weber himself stoutly denied that any such vulgarization was legitimate. He himself could not see any sense in going through religious documents of early modern Europe with a view to finding out what the various divines had to say on economic subjects: on the contrary, he stressed that ‘Of course our concern is not with what was officially and theoretically laid down in moral compendia of the age … but rather with something quite different—the secular translation (Ermittlung) of the psychological forces, created by religious beliefs and practices, which gave directions for the conduct of one’s life and held the individual to them’. Did Protestantism and Catholicism vary on the ground, in daily life, and especially in economic affairs? It was a good question, and, for the literature and research it generated, one of the most important ones of this century.
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- Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 1984
References
1 Weber, Max, Die Protestantische Ethik und der Geist des Kapitalismus (München-Hamburg 1973) p 117 Google Scholar.
2 Skinner, Quentin, Foundations of Modern Political Thought (2 vols Cambridge 1978)Google Scholar.
3 See Bosl, Karl, Handbuch der bayerischen Geschichte 4 (München 1976)Google Scholar Huber, E., Deutsche Verfassungsgeschichte 4 (Düsseldorf 1973) and Kossmann, W., The Low Countries (Oxford 1978)Google Scholar.
4 These issues are discussed in Stone, Norman, Europe Transformed 1878–1919 (London 1983)Google Scholar.
5 Larkin, E., The Roman Catholic Church and the Plan of Campaign in Ireland (1886–1888) (Cork 1978)Google Scholar which argues that the bishop’s adhesion to Parnell, and his agreement to give them control of education, made for a one-party ‘de facto Irish state’.
6 Montanelli, Indro, L’Italia di Giolitti (Milan 1975) p 64 Google Scholar.
7 Weber, Marianne, Max Weber. Ein Lebensbild (Heidelberg 1950) pp 441 seq.Google Scholar
8 Mommsen, [Wolfgang J.], Max Weber [und die deutsche Politik 1890–1920 (Tübingen 1959)] p 138 Google Scholar. From this book, and Marianne Weber’s, I take my account of Weber’s life and politics.
9 Herbert Lüthy’s contribution in Constans Seyfarth and W. M. Sprondel eds, Seminar: Religion und gesellschaftliche Entwicklung. Studien zur Protestantismus-Kapitalismus-These Max Webers p 122.
10 The best introduction to this subject is Gordon Craig, German History 1867–1945 (Oxford 1981) but there is an immense list of works on the Prusso-Polish problem generally. H.-U. Wehler, Krisenherde des Kaiserreichs (Göttingen 1970) devotes a lengthy, thorough and well-written essay to this issue.
11 Mommsen p 150.
12 On these questions generally, see J. Winckelmann, Die protestantische Ethik (2 vols Hamburg 1972); E. Shils, The Methodology of the Social Sciences (London 1949); H. Lüthy, Le Passé présent (Paris 1965); K. Samuelson, Religion and Economic Action (London 1961) which strikes me as quite misunderstanding what Weber said—to take Scotland, the homeland of Tennants, Youngers, Runcimans, Carnegies and how many others, as evidence of Weber’s inapplicability requires no little ingenuity; Philippe Besnard ed, Protestantisme et capitalisme. La controverse post-weherienne (Paris 1970); Oskar Lange, Politische Oekonomie (Frankfurt a.M. 1963); P. L. Berger, The Sacred Canopy (Garden City 1967); A. Giddens, Politics and Sociology in the Thought of Max Weber (London 1972); E. Gellner, Thought and Change (Chicago 1964).
13 [Karl] Móckl, [Die Prinzregentenzeit. Gessellschaft und Politik während der Aera des Prinzregenten Luitpold in Bayern (München 1972)]. Hertling, a late but characteristic representative of the Staatskatholiken, who became Bavarian Minister-President and, in 1917–18, Reichskanzler, regarded ‘corn-laws and compulsory guild-co-operatives’ (Innungen) as the (quite wrong-headed) demands of the populist Catholics as distinct from the high-liberal ones like himself (and, later, Brüning) (p. 200).
14 Candeloro, Giorgio Storia dell’Italia moderna 6 (Milano 1979). p 59 Google Scholar displays General Bava-Beccaris at Milan, during the Fatti di maggio of 1898, bombarding the Capucin monastery in the via Malaparte in Milan, on the grounds that Catholics were concealing anarchists there. He had in fact seen some friars doling out soup to a crowd of waiting beggars. 80 people were killed, and 450 wounded, in this affray, during which the ladies of Milan fed cake to the gunners. Murri attacked ‘una borghesia di Formazione anemica e parassitaria, a cui gli avvenimenti d’Europa hanno dato uno sviluppo precoce’… (etc).
15 Sedgwick, A., The Ralliement in French Politics (Cambridge Mass. 1965)Google Scholar and Ozouf, M., L’École, L’Église et la République (Paris 1962)Google Scholar are convenient accounts. For more recent works, see J.-M. Mayeur, Les débuts de la Troisième République (Paris 1976) which has a very good bibliography and which handles the religious issue with much sensitivity. A recent short English work makes a good attempt to survey the clerical and religious aspect of politics: Hugh McLeod, Religion and the People of Western Europe (Oxford 1981). It has a good bibliography.
16 [Helga] Grebing ed, [Deutsches Handbuch der Politik 3 eds W. Gottschalch et al, Ceschichte der sozialen Ideen in Deutschland (München-Wien 1969)] pp 387–8 (this section, by Franz Josef Stegmann, covers Catholic political thought in the modern era, pp 325–561, and also gives a German text of Rerum Novarum).
17 Ibid pp 386 seq. Vogelsang, though by origin a reichsdeutsch Protestant, became very influential in Austria as a Christian Socialist. A recent introduction for the English-language reader is G. Lewis: ‘The Peasantry, Rural Change and Conservative Agrarianism in Lower Austria’ in PP 81 (1978), though it makes the common error of supposing that conservatism and agrarianism are much the same thing. In Central Europe, it has been aptly said, christlich meant ‘anti-semitic’.
18 Grebing p 389.
19 [David] Blackbourn [Class, Religion and Local Politics in] Wilhelmine Germany [(Yale 1980)] pp 28–9.
20 Ibid pp 42, 79–80, 128 seq.
21 C. Cruise O’Brien States of Ireland (London 1972) p 77.
22 Móckl pp 327–8.
23 James Roxburgh The Glasgow School Board (Glasgow 1970) p 44. No doubt similar stories could be told of other religiously-mixed cities in the British Isles (in Glasgow, relations were for some reason better than in Liverpool: their poor state emerges from P. J. Waller, Democracy and Sectarianism. Liverpool 1868–1939 (Liverpool 1981). G. Barnich, Le régime clérical en Belgique (Brussels 1911) is one instance of parallel trends on the Continent. There are a great many others.
24 The development of the European ‘Tammany Hall’ is, for recent-day historians, a new subject. Blackbourn, Wilhelmine Germany is an important beginning. E. N. and P. Anderson, European Political Institutions and Social Change (Berkeley 1967) and Hermann Finer, The Theory and Practice of Modern Government (4 edn New York 1961) may be read with profit.