#12637 - Hernes The Logic Of The Protestant Ethic - Sociological Theory

Gudmund Hernes - The Logic of The Protestant Ethic

Introduction

• We should appreciate The Protestant Ethic both because of how it is pieced together logically and its dramatic construction

Establishing the Case

• Weber shows that in countries of mixed religious composition, business leaders, skilled labour etc etc are predominantly Protestant

• He eliminates spurious relationships that could account for this by controlling for

  • differences in cultural development

  • inherited wealth predating the Reformation

  • position in the established order (i.e. rulers/ruled, minority/majority)

The Smoking Gun

• What are the peculiarities of Protestant religions than might result in this data?

• Controls for

  • other-worldliness (so regardless of level of Protestant other-worldliness, they are economically successful, and regardless of Catholic other-worldliness, they are less so)

    • this demonstrates the differentiation between success of different Protestant denominations

  • ecological fallacy: at the individual level, there is a direct correlation between piety/asceticism and capitalist success

• So ‘the source of capitalism is found in the ascetic branches of Protestantism’

Rounding up the Usual Suspects

• The spirit of capitalism is an ethos, and consists in:

  • the earning of more and more money

    • this is irrational - money sought as an end rather than a means (really?)

    • Weber sees this as ‘connected’ to the religious idea of a calling

  • the strict avoidance of all spontaneous enjoyment of life

• What is the origin of this idea?

  • if we can identify its origin we have identified the origins of capitalism

    • ‘Once capitalism is established, competition forces men to conform.’

  • is capitalism the origin of the spirit of capitalism? (‘naive’ historical materialism)

    • no because the spirit existed in Massachusetts before the system (terrible argument/research/claim)

    • also capitalism less developed in the Southern USA, despite having been formed by large capitalists for business purposes (what does this prove? how distinc are business motives from the ‘spirit of capitalism’?)

  • greed?

    • no because greed also existed outside capitalism (including in particularly backward societies), so didn’t have a unique effect

  • in finding the origin we must account for how traditionalism was overcome

The Scene of the Crime

• Social theories make two types of assumptions

  • actor assumptions specify what people want/know/believe/can do e.g. microeconomics (essentialism)

  • structure assumptions specify states the actors can be in (roles, positions, choices (whether collective or not - e.g. law), correlates of these states (payoffs/costs) and distribution of actors over states

  • we then try to work out systemic effects of actors acting within the structure

    • do the actors change the structure/does the structure change the actors?

• traditionalist labourers and entrepreneurs do not react to an increase in rewards by increasing output (does this mean that these actors are not changed by structures?)

  • economic motivation and economic organisation vary independently

The Transgression

• New entrepreneurs had both the spirit of capitalism and (rationalised) capitalist organization and this pushed competition, forcing others into the same line

  • these people needed a particular resilient moral constitution, and to see ‘acquisitive activity for its own sake as a calling’

• This also requires a new worker, with better ‘responsibility’ and free from calculations of how the customary wage can be earned with the least effort and most comfort. Labour must become an end in itself, a calling

Hardened Souls

• This new type of worker cannot be created by changing the structure - his preferences must be changed

  • this didn’t happen in traditional groups, but did in Pietistic religious groups that emphasised obligation, self-control, frugality etc

• This is a selection model - at some point a new type of actor penetrates the traditionalist population, and over time newcomers grow in number relative to traditionalists, and generate more successors

  • ‘we are dealing with intentional actors rather than with causally determined genetic processes’

The Astounding Motive

• What’s the origin?

  • not rationalism

    • though an important part of bourgeois society and economic organization, the idea of a calling/earning money for its own sake is irrational ‘from the standpoint of purely eudaemonistic self-interest’ (classical economics)

    • so we are interested in the origin of the irrational belief in a calling

      • (is this the effect of the irrational belief on another belief, or on capitalist practice? is this idea-determining-idea or idea-determining-matter?)

  • nor Luther

    • Luther preached acceptance of position/obedience to authority

  • we’re interested in beliefs in the afterlife, which affect people’s psychological attitude towards life/religion

• Calvinism (as opposed to Lutheranism, Catholicism) preaches predestination - everyone is already selected for heaven (the elect) or eternal damnation (the damned)

  • those with self-confidence are probably elect, and those with doubt are probz damned

  • a member of the elect should fulfil God’s commandments, as a mundane calling, not as a call to monastic seclusion

    • God wills ascetic worldly activity

  • the idea of proof of faith (i.e proof that you are a member of the elect) came into Calvinism, and so ascetic activity became a sign of election

    • unlike in Catholicism, good acts are not a means to salvation, but a sign of salvation. They form a unified whole, not an arithmetic system in which good acts offset bad ones

The Accomplices

• The relationship is the effect of psychological makeups on institutional arrangements, not the effect of institutional arrangements on psychological makeups - i.e. we are interested in the effect of actors upon structures

• As well as Calvinism, Methodism, Baptism and Pietism provide variations on Protestant asceticism and hence are functional alternatives in explaining ascetic conduct in the world

The Prisoners of Success

• Coleman argues that the problem with empirical research and with theories that treat macrolevel relations through methodological individualism is moving from the micro assumptions to the actual social structure - how individuals generate a social system. Coleman claims Weber fails on this point

  • how do ‘these individual values...produce the structure of economic organization that we call capitalism’ (how is this idealism plausible?)

• Coleman is wrong, and Weber is right(!!!!)

  • Weber doesn’t just start with methodological individualism, but with social isolation as well, because Calvinists are isolated from their neighbours etc (is this anything but methodological individualism?)

• How did the calling motivate capitalism?

  • God designed the universe to serve the utility of the human race

    • so the divine can be measured ‘in terms of the importance of the goods produced for the community. But a further, and, above all, in practice the most important, criterion is found in private profitableness’ because it allows you to measure your salvation against the next person’s

      • so success is relative

      • and success must be measured in terms of economic achievement (WHY? why not in terms of other kinds of achievement?)

      • is Weber talking about demonstrative success given capitalism, or demonstrative success that created capitalism?

    • the competitiveness of the relative measure of success meant that Protestants forced each other to work harder

    • ‘Since capital accumulated but not capital consumed can be measured’ asceticism moved against capital consumed, and hence the spontaneous enjoyment of life. This...