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The Weber Thesis Reexamined*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2009

Winthrop S. Hudson
Winthrop S. Hudson
Affiliation:
Colgate-Rochester Divinity School
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Extract

For more than fifty years the Weber thesis, which attributed to Calvinism a decisive influence in the development of modern capitalism, has been vigorously debated. In his celebrated essay, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1904), Max Weber had suggested that Calvinism contributed to the rise of capitalism in various ways—by relaxing the restraints which hitherto had largely served to impede its growth; by fostering the economic virtues of diligence, frugality, honesty, prudence, and sobriety; and, most of all, by providing a psychological, fillip to the development of the “spirit” of capitalism, “the temper of single-minded concentration upon pecuniary gain.” The controversy precipitated by the publication of Weber's essay engendered considerable heat that often served to obscure the points at issue, but over the years the continuing discussion has served to remove many of the issues from the area of debate and to narrow the focus of the central issue that remains.

Type
Research Article
Information
Church History , Volume 30 , Issue 1 , March 1961 , pp. 88 - 99
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Church History 1961

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References

1. Tawney, R. H., Religion and the Rise of Capitatisn, pp. 212, 226, 316.Google Scholar

2. Fisehoff, Ephraim, “The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism: the History of a Controversy,” Social Research, XI (1944)Google Scholar; reprinted in Green, Robert W., Protestantisin and Capitalism: the Weber Thesis and its Critics, pp. 108–09, 113–14.Google Scholar

3. Tawney, op cit., 226.

4. Ibid., 316; Robertson, H. M., Aspects of the Rise of Economic Individualism, pp. 52–56Google Scholar; Fanfani, Amintore, Catholicism, Protestantism, and Capilalism, pp. 160–82.Google Scholar

5. R. W. Green, op. cit., 30–34; Robertson, op. cit., 4–7; Fanfani, op. cit., 196, 200–04.

6. Fanfani, op. cit., 186–87.

7. Weber, Max, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, p. 27.Google Scholar

8. Ibid., 2.

9. Ibid., 3, 160–63, 172.

10. Green, op. cit., 107, 109, 112, 113.

11. A not untypical instance of manipulation is the way in which he handles Cromwell's request for legislation to reform economic abuses. Cromwell, after the battle of Dunbar, had written to the long Parliament: “Be pleased to reform the abuses of all professions:and if there be any one that makes many poor to make a few rich, that suits not a Commonwealth.”Weber then adds the comment: “Nevertheless, we will find Cromwell following a quite specifically capitalistic line of thought,” documenting this assertion by quoting in a footnote Cromwell's words of reproach to the Irish rebels—a reproach which was actually very conventional and might have been spoken by any ruler to rebellious subjects. By this means Cromwell 'a forthright request for legislation to curb an unbridled lust for gain is brushed aside. Weber, op. cit., 82, 213.

12. Ibid., 7, 10–11.

13. Green, op. cit., 111. See also Fanfani, op. cit., 160–82.

14. Weber, op. cit., 155.

15. Tawney, op. cit., 213, 226, 317.

16. Troeltsch, Ernst, The Social Teaching of the Christian Churches, II, 649.Google Scholar

17. Tawney, op. cit., 317.

18. Ibid., 226, 227.

19. Ibid., 240. “The first person to emphasize the way in which the idea of a ‘calling’ was used as an argument for the economic virtues was Weber, to whose conclusions I am largely indebted.” Ibid., 321.

20. Ibid., 230.

21. Ibid., 240. See Troeltsch (op. cit., 645), who also traces “the present-day bourgeois way of life” to the Calvinist doctrine of the calling with its emphasis upon profit and gain as a sign of God's blessing.

22. Robertson, op. cit., 1–7.

23. Fanfani, op. cit., 204.

24. Ibid., 192.

25. Baxter's views have been summarized in Hudson, W. S., “Puritanism and the Spirit of Capitalism,” Church History: Studies in Christianity and Culture, XVIII (1949), 8–14.Google Scholar

26. Fanfani, op. cit., 153–54.

27. Weber, op. cit., 60.

28. Troeltsch, op. cit., 645.

29. Tawney, op. cit., 226.

30. Ibid., 225.

31. Ibid., 103.

32. Fanfani, op. cit., 202.

33. Ibid., 178–79.

34. Ibid., 197–99.

35. Ibid., 210.

36. Tawney, op. cit., 37–38.

37. Robertson, op. cit., 22, 27.

38. Tawney, op. cit., 238.

39. Robertson, op. cit., 210–11.

40. Fanfani, op. cit., 187–88.