Max Weber: Selections in Translation

None of Weber's writings has aroused as much controversy both during his lifetime and after it as his two-part article on ‘The Protestant Ethic and the “Spirit” of Capitalism’, published in 1905, of which the first selection in this section is the concluding part. The extent of the controversy is due partly to the interest of the topic, partly to the complexity of the evidence and partly to the difficulty of specifying precisely the hypothesis which Weber sought to establish. It is clear that he did not claim that Protestantism as such caused the development of industrial capitalism, and that if he had he would have been mistaken. It is also clear that he was right to point out that there is a connexion between Protestantism and capitalism which is not merely coincidental. But what sort of connexion is it? Weber does appear to mean more than that the Reformation was one necessary condition of the emergence in Europe but nowhere else of a form of economic and political organisation which came to transform the rest of the world. He argues that there is a particular affinity between certain of the doctrines of Protestantism implying a conception of salvation through the pursuit of a secular calling and the style of life necessary for the successful accumulation of capital through commercial activity.