{"id":247,"date":"2008-04-03T19:43:44","date_gmt":"2008-04-03T19:43:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chriscurnow.com\/index.php\/2008\/04\/03\/max_weber_and_t\/"},"modified":"2008-04-03T19:43:44","modified_gmt":"2008-04-03T19:43:44","slug":"max_weber_and_t","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/chriscurnow.com\/?p=247","title":{"rendered":"Max Weber and the Spirit of Capitalism"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’ve come across the work of the sociologist, Max
\nWeber<\/a>, a couple
\nof times recently.<\/p>\n

Firstly, in their book, Why
\nShould Anyone be Led by You?<\/em><\/a>, Rob
\nGoffee<\/a> and Gareth
\nJones<\/a> talk about the implications of Weber’s thinking
\nfor Leadership in business. I hope to write a piece on this book
\nin the near future. <\/p>\n

However, the catalyst for this post is this thought provoking piece,
\nby Lorin Loverde<\/a>.
\nLoverde discusses Weber’s book The
\nProtestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism<\/em><\/a>. I am fascinated by Loverde’s
\nanalysis which is that the development of capitalism only became possible
\nwith the widespread influence of the ‘Protestant
\nEthic<\/a>’.<\/p>\n

According to Loverde, there is a vast contradiction inherent in capitalism<\/a> — we
\nseek to gain wealth but when we do we are immediately tempted to spend
\nit on ourselves. So previous societies over millennia created great
\nedifices to themselves or lived in debauchery, but there was nothing
\nleft to invest in future investment for wealth creation. So the civilisation
\ncollapsed only to start the process over again.<\/p>\n

But then came the Reformation<\/a> and the Protestant Age. The capitalist
\ncontradiction was held by a ‘transcendent
\npurpose<\/a>.’ Our
\nwordly life was but a preparation for a future life. In this life our
\npurpose was to serve God and deny ourselves. Loverde puts it this way:<\/p>\n

“…we demonstrated on earth by our economic success that we
\nwere predestined to go to heaven after death; thus, our success was
\na sign of goodness, but we still had to avoid being extremely selfish
\nwith extravagant spending and conspicuous consumption to typical of
\nnon-Protestant cultures.”<\/p>\n

Having a “Reformed
\nBaptist”<\/a> background myself, I would
\ncontest Loverde’s theological interpretation but the end result
\nis the same. The Protestant ethic was one of self discipline (as opposed
\nto the self-denial of the pre-reformation
\nChristian Church<\/a>.) This involved
\nenjoyment but avoidance of the wordly pleasures or ‘sins of the
\nflesh’. In Wesley’s<\/a> Methodism<\/a>,
\nthis developed into avoiding anything that was thought to be worldly — including dancing,
\ndrinking alcohol, anything that had a sexual association, the theatre
\nand even reading ‘wordly’ (ie non-religious) books.<\/p>\n

Most “Protestant” christians today would regard this methodism
\nas extreme but would still aspire to some notion of avoiding ‘wordliness’ – that
\nis that their ultimate purpose in this life is in preparation for the
\nnext.<\/p>\n

The point Loverde is making is that this live view — that of
\nhaving a transcendent purpose — made, and to some extent continues
\nto make, capitalism possible. Without it, previous generations would
\nhave spent all the wealth they created and we would not now be enjoying
\nthe benefits of the ‘great industrial west.’ There would
\nbe no infrastructure, no large industrialised capacity.<\/p>\n

The problem now is we have capitalism but have lost the Protestant
\nEthic.<\/p>\n

It reminds of the RAF’s<\/a> Bomber
\nCommand<\/a> during
\nWorld War
\nII.<\/a> It was formed during the darkest days of the Battle
\nof Britain<\/a> in an attempt
\nto strike at the German war machine at its source. From it’s
\norigins as a cobbled together unit with hopelessly inadequate and out
\nof date machinery, it became itself an efficient and ruthless machine
\nthat could ‘take out’ any city in Germany on any night
\nit chose. And, in the end, it did for no other reason than because
\nit could. It had been set up in the dire need to defend Great
\nBritain<\/a> but when the hour of desperation had passed it continued to bomb cities
\nbecause that’s what it did – with devastating impact and
\nlittle military gain as we say in Dresden<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Perhaps that’s the point we have reached in capitalism. We make
\nwealth because we can. We’ve forgotten why. We just do it. For
\nourselves we could say this is no problem, except that our continuing
\nto make wealth threatens our very ability to make wealth.<\/p>\n

We have become so efficient at extracting and using the Earth’s
\nresources that we can, for the first time in our history, envision
\nthe day when we have used all there is to use. Again our efficiency
\nat using resources has created daunting problems of waste and impact
\non the world’s environment. It has gone well past the stage where
\nthe West can live without regard to the pollution we create in the
\nThird
\nWorld<\/a>. The world is now just too small.<\/p>\n

Finally, continuing to create and concentrate wealth while at the
\nsame time making communications technology easily available to almost
\nevery square millimetre of our planet, we have allowed the world’s
\npoorest peoples to know about our affluence and, many would say, decadence.
\nThere can be little doubt that this is a major driving force towards
\nglobal terrorism<\/a>.
\nThis has perhaps always been the case, as long as there has been a
\ndivide between rich and poor. What is driving, and makes so threatening,
\nthe extremism in the terrorism of the “fundamentalists”<\/a> is
\nthe juxtaposition of this divide with what they see as the purposelessness
\nof the West<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Loverde’s response is to propose the need for a transcendent
\npurpose.<\/p>\n

For better or worse we have left behind the Protestant Ethic and now,
\nlike Bomber
\nHarris<\/a>, we build bigger businesses because we can. We have
\nforgotten why. The catch cry is that business exists to make a profit.
\nIf we believe this, we are sounding the death knell of capitalism as
\nwe know it for there will be nothing left to invest. That is if the
\nearth’s resources don’t run out first or fundamentalist
\nextremist terrorism doesn’t make it impossible to continue to
\noperate business on a global scale.<\/p>\n

So what might a viable transcendent purpose be? How about you tell
\nme?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ve come across the work of the sociologist, Max Weber, a couple of times recently. Firstly, in their book, Why Should Anyone be Led by You?, Rob Goffee and Gareth Jones talk about the implications of Weber’s thinking for Leadership in business. I hope to write a piece on this book in the near future. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20,8],"tags":[21,22],"class_list":["post-247","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-future","category-purpose","tag-goffee","tag-protestant-work-ethic"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/chriscurnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/247","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/chriscurnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/chriscurnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chriscurnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chriscurnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=247"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/chriscurnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/247\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/chriscurnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=247"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chriscurnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=247"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chriscurnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=247"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}