Protestant Work Ethic: What It Is And How Max Weber Explains It
The United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Germany… all of these countries are nations that are considered economically prosperous. Northern Europeans and the regions of the world colonized by them have in common being quite wealthy societies.
Max Weber, back at the beginning of the 20th century, wanted to understand what made these countries, culturally and geographically different, ideal places for the development of capitalism and, one day, the light bulb lit up: Protestantism.
Could a religion influence how rich and prosperous a nation is? According to Weber, yes, arguing that it was the Protestant work ethic that made the nations we have mentioned so economically developed Let’s see it below.
The Protestant work ethic, a term coined by the German philosopher Max Weber, is a concept used in sociology, economics, and history that is based on the notion that the Calvinist emphasis on the need to work hard As an attractive component it would explain why countries with a Protestant majority have triumphed economically. According to Calvinism, hard work and personal success are signs of having received salvation and grace from God, an idea already present in the ideas of Martin Luther.
Before the emergence of Protestantism and its multiple currents, Western Europe was mostly Catholic. The classic view within Catholicism is that to obtain the grace of God and obtain salvation it is necessary that we do good works in life. Whether helping the disadvantaged or not committing crimes or sins, we will be considered good people deserving of good divine treatment and thus we will enter the kingdom of Heaven when we die.
However, this vision was replaced in several places in Europe when Protestantism appeared. In fact, His theses could be considered rather contrary to the Catholic ones when talking about salvation It is not that Protestantism, or at least its majority, is against good works, but it does consider that it does not matter whether we do them or not, since salvation and divine grace are aspects that are decided by God at the time of birth or even before, not during our lives.
For Protestants, specifically Calvinism, the relationship between salvation and being a generous, kind and successful person in life is reversed It is not that salvation is the consequence of behaving well in life, but rather it is the cause of us being good people. God predestines our salvation and, consequently, our way of being. That is, Protestant theologians, especially Calvinists and Lutherans, preached that we could only be saved if God decided so, not by the works we did.
It is not possible to know if a person has received this salvation, but we can discern whether it has been granted to us or not based on how we behave in life. Protestants defended that you could find out if a person had been chosen by God to be saved if he was attractive, he was successful in business, he was hardworking, faithfully devoted to the Lord, a good person… signs that They attracted the rest of the followers of Protestantism, since they wanted to rub shoulders with those who had been chosen by God
The link between Protestant ethics and capitalism
The reason why Max Weber related Protestantism to economic development makes a lot of sense if you look at the global economic context of his time, at the beginning of the 20th century. The Germanic and Anglo-Saxon world, especially the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany (Prussia) and Scandinavia, was experiencing immense development Furthermore, its people were known for being very hard-working and productive, an aspect that undoubtedly had to have had a positive impact on the economies of those regions.
This hard-working spirit was directly related to the Protestant work ethic, since In all these regions the majority of the population followed some Protestant current, especially Calvinism and Lutheranism. Thus, Max Weber expressed these ideas in his book “The Protestant Work Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism” (1905), a book which, once translated into English, was considered almost an economic Bible in the United States, in addition to being used as an argument in favor of the supremacy of the Protestant religion over the Catholic religion.
It is not surprising that this book has been so successful in North America, since more than half of its inhabitants identify with some Protestant cult. Although today there are rather few Americans who follow Calvinist currents, many of their Puritan ancestors, considered the founders of the United States, did so. The English Calvinists settled in Massachusetts Bay to be able to practice their creed, considered somewhat extreme in Europe. These people greatly influenced the economic and social development of North America.
As we said before, the movement of John Calvin proposed that the destiny of men was already pre-established by God. Our actions are not what decide whether or not we go to heaven, but this has already been decided by God at the moment of birth. Depending on your decision, we will behave in a way more or less associated with that of a person who has been granted salvation. If we are good, successful and triumph in life it is because God has given it to us and, as a result, we are useful people.
There are several external signs that Calvinism considers to be evidence of having received the grace of God If a person strives to have them, Protestant logic will say that it is because he really received salvation as soon as he was born and that, sooner or later, he had to manifest them. Even if the Protestant person has made an effort to have a good body, a successful business or have a profitable life, she will interpret it as God, and not her, who has made it so.
It is this idea that Weber used as an argument for the economic superiority of Protestantism over Catholicism. Protestant believers, with the idea of proving that they have received divine grace, will try harder to make their businesses the most prosperous, since they do not want to accept the idea of not having received God’s grace. Through their efforts they achieve glory and end up having the “certainty” that God has chosen them.
Another interesting aspect of Protestantism that Weber relates to the development of capitalism is his idea about wealth. While in Catholicism it was frowned upon to have a lot of money, this is not the case in Protestantism Yes, you can’t waste money on superfluous luxuries. Protestants see working as an ethical value, something they should thank God for, unlike Catholicism which saw it as a heavenly punishment for original sin. Protestants see working and saving money as a form of devotion to God.
Also related to Calvinism is a rather murky and controversial idea about charity. Many Protestants, on the basis that God predestinedly gives us grace, view beggars as unsaved. As a result, they live a miserable life and that’s how it should be because God has decided it that way. Under the most radical Calvinist perspective, giving money to these beggars in a charitable way goes against God’s designs no matter how much money we have left over.
Since Protestants cannot spend their money on whims for themselves nor should they give it to the weakest, since it goes against God’s designs, the wealthiest believers were forced to save and invest. It was through these two actions that their assets increased, being able to create more powerful businesses and enjoy a more comfortable lifestyle but always with abstinence and moderation.
Criticisms of Max Weber’s ideas
Max Weber’s ideas have been widely debated even at the time he made them known. Claiming that it was the Protestant work ethic that had guaranteed the emergence of capitalism in countries where Protestantism was the majority religion was a fallacious claim. Without going much further, in the Europe of his time there were regions with a Catholic majority where capitalism was thriving: Catalonia, the Basque Country, Padania, Bavaria, the Rhineland, most of France…
One might have thought that these regions were prospering because their businessmen had adopted the Protestant ethic, with or without adopting their religion, but this also seemed to be false. In fact, There is evidence that capitalism could have begun before the Protestant reforms during the Renaissance The Renaissance Catholic states of Lombardy, Genoa and Venice were rich and prosperous regions, with important craft production and unparalleled trade relations.
Max Weber ignored an important detail that, being German, he should have known and that ruined his entire theory. His native Prussia, the predecessor of modern-day Germany, was a rich and prosperous region that he claimed was because he was Protestant, but what about his sister? Austria was the sister and rival nation of Prussia during Germanic unification It was basically a southern Germany where German was also spoken and a rich and prosperous economy was developing. The only thing that differed was that it was a strongly Catholic nation.
Max Weber could have incorporated being German into his hypotheses as the other factor that guarantees that an economy is prosperous, ideas that were coined by several philosophers and economists who supported Nazism decades later. The problem with this is that another great nation, France, was also developing strongly and was neither German nor Protestant. In fact, when the French country was still a kingdom, it became the richest nation in Europe until Louis XIV ascended the throne and ruined the country by spending the budget on all kinds of wars.
And finally we have the current panorama that if Max Weber had seen it he would have been shocked. Not only are there European Catholic countries whose economic development is very high, but there are also those that are neither white nor Christian The Far East shows us that a country can be prosperous without having a philosophy or culture based on Christian values, as is the case of Japan, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore and South Korea, in addition to the People’s Republic of China, which, although theoretically communist, its development is comparable to that of a large capitalist economy.
