The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, Third Edition

Rating:
Summary: Interesting but not really scholarship
Review: There are so many problems with Weber's idea that it is hard to know where to begin. First of all, there are no examples anywhere in the text of statements of purpose from capitalists reflecting on the Protestant Ethic. The closest Weber comes is Benjamin Franklin, but Franklin was an American who lived several generations after the origin of capitalism in Europe. Franklin better reflects the "can do" spirit of a new continent, the "American Adam," than he is a "secularization" of Calvin. Couldn't Weber find a European Ben Franklin?

Moreover, Weber's thesis fails the Ockham rule. As Adam Smith argues, the reason people chose to play rather than work is because work offered such paltry returns. Why invent this complicated "secularization thesis" when "greed" is a sufficient explanation?

Third, as one astute reviewer noted below, Weber inherits a Kantian ethics that he was never able to lose. Why must the capitalist pursue money or success "for its own sake"? Are there not perfectly rational reasons for working hard, including greed?
Why must the capitalist adhere to a Kantian ethics of "wealth for its own sake" without any ulterior motives? No one before the Objectivist wackos ever argued that unlimited accumulation of wealth is an "end in itself," or argued that the pursuit of unlimited wealth is a right independent of the good it may do for society.

It should also be understood that Marx is not the only target of Weber's polemical thrusts. He considered his primary target to be Werner Sombart, but Sombart has never been taken seriously in the US because he was a conservative and briefly a Nazi. Sombart's books are in fact much more plausible than Weber's. Luxury and Capitalism is in fact a very "Smithian" account of the origin of capitalism in the seigneurial lord's fascination with luxury goods, and his gradual displacement by the urban manufacturer.

All of that said, Weber tells a very interesting story that is more about the "rationalisation" of "demagification" (Entzauberung) of society than it is about capitalism. By equating capitalism with "efficiency" or "rationalization," however, Weber obscures the basic issues.

Rating:
Summary: Modern capitalism and its origins
Review: What Weber's ideas most clearly demonstrate is not capitalism as it is seen by the the devout protestant or any derivation thereof, he clearly proposes that capitalism itself is founded and practiced solely on the moral and ethical teachings of the protestant refromation. Furthurmore, the continued presence of God or any other religious influence is secondary to the overall implications of their socio-political indoctronation.
Weber essentially argues, that it is protestantism's continued comitment to a vocational calling as compared to traditional catholic virtue of church commitment, that is the essential method of spiritual distinguishemnt.
It is aided by the virtualy simultanious growth of both capitalism and Protestantism that enabled capitalism to extend beyond simply a seclar practise and over-all "necissary evil," into a fully encompassing and consuming reflection of an individual's spiritual right of passage.
Evidence of Weber's theory is distributed widely through contemporary polotics, fully 20 of the top 30 industrailized nations are predominantly protestant. Even countries such as Japan that seemingly have had no protestant influence and have had success with a capitalist economy, inevitably, must submit themselves to Weber's theory because, Weber is not concerned pervasiveness protestant traditions, only with the occurence of protestant ideals.
This book, though highly debated and controversial, is a must read for anyone with the slightest interest in global context or concerned with capitalism metioric rise to power. With a growing Globalized capitalist system, Webers ideas undoubtedly will become increasingly more apperent as capitalism invades every nook and cranny of an increasingly shrinking world; will cultures with otherwise foreign or dissimilar beliefs and practices every really be able to accept the merits of capitalism if they must equally reconcile themselves with the ethical premises of protestantism?