Puritan society and economic progress Essay
According to the English follower of Calvin, W. Perkins, “the true meaning of our life is to serve God by serving people” (Waller 26). For Calvin himself the common people’s duty was to cultivate the garden of God in a manner corresponding, on the one hand, to God-given gifts and man’s abilities, and on the other hand, to the needs of a particular situation. The general obligation to work, according to Calvin, is a great social leveler, a reminder that all men are created equal by God. From the idea of labor as a socially degrading, although practically necessary task that must be a fate of the lower classes, Calvin’s theology led to the perception of labor as a dignified and glorious means of praising and affirmance of God through His creation which even more improves human well-being. It is no coincidence that the regions of Europe which accepted Protestantism soon proved to be economically prosperous – such was an unexpected consequence of the new religious importance attached to labor.
It is known that the pre-Reformation capitalism kept under the control a large part of clergy and even its higher hierarchs. The Medici family managed to completely buy the papacy. The Fuggers controlled virtually every episcopal appointment in Germany, Poland and Hungary; they financed the election of Charles V as the Emperor. Commenting on the significance and weight of work ethics of Protestantism, the best expert on this issue, M. Weber pointed out that capitalism existed long before the Reformation. Capitalist relations are characteristic of both medieval merchant princes, and for traditional peasant societies.
Weber called the capitalism he saw in the medieval period an adventurous capitalism. He argued that this form of capitalism was opportunistic and unprincipled: it assumed spending one’s cash incomes on lavish and corrupt way of life. Although the medieval society was tolerant to financial activity, it nonetheless was regarded as immoral. Weber argued that a new spirit of capitalism emerged in the 16th century. It was not so much capitalism as its new specific form. In contrast to the medieval adventure capitalism, this new version of capitalism had a solid moral foundation. Although it encouraged the acquisition and accumulation of wealth, yet it treated the wealth ascetically. This form of capitalism, according to Weber, was not inclined to hedonism. On the contrary, at times it deliberately avoided direct pleasures of life.
Based on his own researches of Florence of 14-15 cc., Weber came to the conclusion that in the minds of those who acquired capital in that period, a serious conflict occurred between their financial activities on the one hand, and the salvation of their souls on the other. For example, Jakob Fugger was aware of a serious discrepancy between his banking activities and activities traditionally considered by the Catholic Church as leading to salvation. In Protestant societies is 16-17 cc., the acquisition of capital was no longer considered a threat to salvation. Weber associates the new mood with the emergence of Protestantism. Thus, a British historian of Puritanism, C. Hill, summarizes the differences between the Protestant and Catholic attitudes to capital as follows: lucky medieval business people died with the feel of guilt and left all their money to the church, which disposed of it unproductively; lucky Protestant business people were no longer ashamed of their productive work during lifetime and after death, they left their money to others to help them follow their example (Waller 113-14).
Weber argued that Protestantism developed the psychological conditions necessary for the development of modern capitalism. He determined that the fundamental contribution of Calvinism was in the development of the psychological impulses based on its belief system. Weber attached particular importance to the concept of “vocation” which he associated with the Calvinistic idea of predestination. Calvinists, confident of their personal salvation, could participate in worldly activities without worrying about its implications for their salvation. Provided that the capital was acquired by acceptable means and was not spent lavishly, its accumulation was devoid of any moral flaws.
At the stage of the genesis, new capitalism (blessed by the ascetic ethic of the Puritans) had several specificities. First, its carriers were “rising middle classes of craftsmen”, i.e. the representatives of the middle class opposed by the large-scale capitalism of the old type (“capitalist entrepreneurs of trade patriciate circles”), embodied by the noble heirs of merchant capital and the Jewish financial circles: “Jewish capitalism was speculative pariah capitalism, Puritan capitalism – the bourgeois organization of labor activity”. Second, the socio-ethical type of carriers of the emerging capitalism are “people who have passed through the mill of life, circumspect and resolute at the same time, restrained, moderate and persistent in nature, totally dedicated, with strictly bourgeois attitudes and principles” (Weber 57-58).
Weber proceeded from the fact that as much as on rational technology and rational law, economic rationalism depended on the ability and propensity of people to certain kinds of practical rational life conduct. Where certain psychological factors become obstacles, the development of economic-rational life conduct also faces serious internal difficulties. In the past, these psychological factors were formed by the religious ideas and ethical concepts of duty based on them, and therefore, in the focus of the study appears the conditionality of economic thinking, ethos of this form of economy determined by a particular religious orientation.
Illustration of this conditionality, according to Weber, is the relationship of the modern Western economic ethos with rational ethics of ascetic Protestantism. Weber cited statistics which indicated that many faith-based areas of Germany certain types of Protestants possessed the highest percentage of wealth and economically advantageous positions.
The method of study of the relationship of religion and economic behavior is the determining of “selective affinity” (J. Goethe’s term) between forms of religious belief and professional ethics, i.e., the search for non-contradiction of main provisions of Protestant ethics to such economic activities which expresses the spirit of modern capitalism (Chalcraft 208).
It should be noted that Max Weber was far from one-sided understanding of this conditionality. He did not claim or support the doctrine thesis that hat the “capitalist spirit” could only arise as a result of the influence of certain aspects of the Reformation, that capitalism as an economic system was the product of Reformation. Weber sought to establish only the following: whether or not religious influence played a role (and to what kind of extent) in the qualitative formation and quantitative expansion of the “capitalist spirit”, and which specific parts of culture formed on the basis of capitalism go back to this religious influence
Thus, American Puritanism is seen as a contradictory and transitional phenomenon. On the one hand, it retained the medieval social ideals, the value of the community of pastors, and generated the vast theological heritage. On the other hand, Puritanism was an anti-hierarchical and democratic movement and implemented a further review of the Christian tradition from the standpoint of rationalism.
Considering Protestantism in the prism of puritan ethics, Max Weber states that Puritanism contributed much to the development of the bourgeois society which was rational from the view point of economy. Weber’s arguments in favor of this conclusion can be formulated as follows.
1. Puritan Faith (the belief in predeterminacy of salvation or death of, the obligation to work for the glory of God, belief in salvation as a gift from God; strict asceticism, etc.) excludes all kinds of mysticism and bears fully anti-ritual nature, i.e. eliminates the major obstacles on the way of “disenchanting” the world of sober, rational worldview.
2. Puritan worldview allowed the believers to see the sign of their selectness to salvation in the success of their professional career: the understanding of profession as the tireless work for the glory of God and the withdrawal of the stain of avarice sin from the money earned (due to hard labor).
3. Puritan ethic has a clearly expressed ascetic character and minimizes personal consumption, which at constant growth of earnings automatically leads to the constant investment in production and its continuing expansion. In his analysis of asceticism, Weber notes its historical development as a change of two stages: 1) when “austerity moved out of monastic cells into professional life and has gained dominance over the secular morality” (period of capitalism’s inspiration by the ethics of the Reformation); 2) “as soon as austerity began to transform the world, the outer worldly goods increasingly subdued people; and at present stage, the spirit of austerity left its worldly shell. Anyway, victorious capitalism no longer needs such a support since it is resting on a mechanical basis” (characterics of the modern stage) (Chalcraft 210).
Therefore, the ethics of Protestantism (with its notions of professional duty, austerity and frugality, the ideal of personal initiative and personal responsibility) most fully expressed the basic ideological and psychological aspects of spirit of capitalism. The spirit of Protestant ethics has “found in a capitalist enterprise its most adequate form, and capitalist enterprise … has found in Protestantism the most appropriate spiritual driving force” (Weber 234-35) for future development and growth.
