Chapter 17: The Protestant ethic and the spirit of Capitalism.

Chapter 17 describes the history of capitalism as it relates to religion. Weber points out, when comparing religious affiliation and capital in the very first paragraph, that the business leaders and owners of capital are overwhelming Protestant. He mentions that, at least in the time he wrote this, that this was true pretty much everywhere capitalism spread.


Weber says that the reason for these Protestant leaders being can be explained by historical circumstances, “In which religious affiliation is not a cause of the economic conditions, but to a certain extent appears to be a result of them.” The reason for Protestant ownership of businesses and trade skills, Weber says, is that two important things were needed, wealth and education. In the 16th century he says that the majority of wealthy towns belonged to Protestantism. That brought him to asking the question, of why the rich Protestant towns were favorable to a revolution in the church at the same time as they were rising in power financially.

From what I understood from Weber’s point of view, the problem was the control the Catholic Church had. Depending on where you were at in the world at this time, it seems that some places thought they had too much control, some thought they didn’t have enough, but either way the general consensus was that some form of reform was needed.

As for the Protestants of todays society, (which for Weber would be early 1900s) Weber sees the Protestant control of many businesses as being a function of inheriting wealth. They apparently, in the past, have out proportioned Catholics in attaining higher education, compared to the general population. As confusing as that may be to read, basically it means in terms of the proportion of Protestants and Catholics furthering their educations, Protestants in the past won that fight and was able to pass down more material wealth.

Weber next starts to get into what he calls the spirit of capitalism. This phrase being in the title of the article one might expect a clear cut definition, but none is given. Weber instead points out how he feels the spirit of capitalism can only be built out of looking into the past, and makes an excellent point that other researchers, or just people in general, when looking at the same phrase, might analyze it in a completely different way and find different points they find important.

After quoting Benjamin Franklin for awhile, he finally gets to what I feel is a good description of how people feel about capitalism today. People work to get money, and they will do so for as long as they can. Weber points this out in the story about the retiree trying to convince his friend to retire as well, and his friend simply replies that “he wanted to make money as long as he could.” This is the difference Weber thinks, between the old capitalism, and modern capitalism. “Man is dominated by the making of money,” which is a great example, I think, of modern capitalism and according to Weber is actually an irrational and backwards way of looking at the “natural relationship.” Weber’s modern capitalism still stands today I think, as he points out, it is “economic survival of the fittest.”

Weber next gets into the idea of trying to maximize efficiency which overall should maximize profits. He makes an interesting point using agriculture, that in general when raising the wage of workers, efficiency actually goes down. Which makes sense if you think now that the wage is increased; the worker can make the same amount of money that he was before by actually working less. Weber calls this an example of traditionalism. As opposed to his modern capitalism idea, that people just want to make as much money as possible, in traditionalism people only want to make as much as they need to live on.

Later in the chapter, Weber starts talking about female workers. He basically calls them stubborn and points out that once they learn how to do something, they are resistant to changing their ways, even if the newer method is more efficient. He even takes a stab at intelligence and says that it is hard for females to “concentrate their intelligence, or even use it at all.” After belittling female workers, he gets to the point that females of this time were particularly religious and states the idea that “the chances of overcoming traditionalism are greatest on account of the religious upbringing.”

Asceticism and the spirit of capitalism is a different twist from the rest of the chapter. It starts to point out that as capitalism became more modernized, that luxury and “irrational use of wealth,” became more common and accepted. Weber uses the idea that capital is accumulated by saving money basically, which led to “productive investment of capital.” From what I get from this part of the chapter is that using traditionalism-like methods, such as saving money and not splurging on irrational things, led to accumulating wealth, which in turn led to investments and modern capitalism arising.

Although this was rushed a little because I thought it was due tonight and not last night, what I got out of this chapter, which obviously may be entirely different from other people, is that religious practices and traditionalism go hand in hand with capitalism. What I mean by that is what I understood from the chapter is, that the need for religious reform was caused by people wanting to be able to accumulate more capital. On that same note, the ways of traditionalism in the end, led to attaining more capital by saving all the money, and eventually changing mind sets and deciding to spend some of the wealth they accumulated which helps fuel capitalism to begin with. So although capitalism and religion have roots far in the past, through reform, and capital accumulation itself, it ends up just being a big circle where one affects the other and around and around it goes.