What,according to Weber, is the“Spirit of Capitalism”? How does it differ from the“traditionaleconomics spirit?
What, according to Weber, is the “Spirit of Capitalism”? How does it differ from the “traditional economic spirit”?
Weber used Richard Baxter and his 17th century sermons to represent ‘the Protestant Ethic’ and Benjamin Franklin’s 18th century advice to young men as ‘the Spirit of Capitalism’ and showed howed their separate writings perfectly complemented each other.
The Protestant focus on one’s day to day work and success in trade, as the demonstration of their religiousness and their way to be favoured in the after life as one of the ‘elect’, fits well Franklin’s description of how to succeed by seeing ‘time as money’,, never wasting time from the moment of waking and regarding both time and money as capital, ie having the potential to beget more wealth.
Inner wordliness, hard work and worldy success represesent religious grace and
‘Time as money’ and’ wealth as capital’ as the top values of captialism.,
In contrast with the traditional spirit that top religion grace was gained not as part of daily work life but of outer wordly monasticism and prayer. Thus being lazy, having many holidays throughout the year, having liitle awareness of time, being careless with money, having no commitment to investing money-to-make-money, was not in traditons terms a religious problem
This then compemented the different concepts of ‘wealth’
In capitalism ‘wealth’ comes from investing wisely(money begets money through wise investments) The wealthiest are the most valued.
In feudalism ‘wealth’ is represented by your hoards of gold and jewels and you increase wealth by conquering or by exploring. Wealth has little to do with religous esteem.
From a conflict theory perspective:
In the early stages of capitalism the most religious grace came from approriating the land of the peasant so you acquire the two important components of capitalism:
a) Capital – your individual ownership of the agricultural land (that you’ve stolen from the peasants) to produce wool.(the main trading commodity)
b) a labour force (the dispossessed peasants)who can only exist by selling you their labour
….and thus you accrue more and more capital from trading the wool produced from the capital assets and the labour taken by theft from the labourers.
Protestantism sanctioned this appropriation and exploitatation as by making your workers work as hard as possible to make you wealth you demonstrate your success in the world and thus your religous grace.
November 17th, 2009 at 4:34 pm
Weber used Richard Baxter and his 17th century sermons to represent ‘the Protestant Ethic’ and Benjamin Franklin’s 18th century advice to young men as ‘the Spirit of Capitalism’ and showed howed their separate writings perfectly complemented each other.
The Protestant focus on one’s day to day work and success in trade, as the demonstration of their religiousness and their way to be favoured in the after life as one of the ‘elect’, fits well Franklin’s description of how to succeed by seeing ‘time as money’,, never wasting time from the moment of waking and regarding both time and money as capital, ie having the potential to beget more wealth.
Inner wordliness, hard work and worldy success represesent religious grace and
‘Time as money’ and’ wealth as capital’ as the top values of captialism.,
In contrast with the traditional spirit that top religion grace was gained not as part of daily work life but of outer wordly monasticism and prayer. Thus being lazy, having many holidays throughout the year, having liitle awareness of time, being careless with money, having no commitment to investing money-to-make-money, was not in traditons terms a religious problem
This then compemented the different concepts of ‘wealth’
In capitalism ‘wealth’ comes from investing wisely(money begets money through wise investments) The wealthiest are the most valued.
In feudalism ‘wealth’ is represented by your hoards of gold and jewels and you increase wealth by conquering or by exploring. Wealth has little to do with religous esteem.
From a conflict theory perspective:
In the early stages of capitalism the most religious grace came from approriating the land of the peasant so you acquire the two important components of capitalism:
a) Capital – your individual ownership of the agricultural land (that you’ve stolen from the peasants) to produce wool.(the main trading commodity)
b) a labour force (the dispossessed peasants)who can only exist by selling you their labour
….and thus you accrue more and more capital from trading the wool produced from the capital assets and the labour taken by theft from the labourers.
Protestantism sanctioned this appropriation and exploitatation as by making your workers work as hard as possible to make you wealth you demonstrate your success in the world and thus your religous grace.
References :
Max Weber’s classic text itself or the several commentaries on it