The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism

Martin Luther was a German theologian who lived from 1483 to 1546. He is well-known for his Ninety-Five Theses, a critique of the Catholic Church’s practice of selling indulgences. Luther’s act of nailing his theses to the door of a German church is largely seen as the start of the Protestant Reformation, a Christian religious movement that broke off from Catholicism and was critical of Catholicism’s emphasis on rituals (such as confession) and its strict clerical hierarchy. Luther’s teachings became the basis for the Protestant sect of Lutheranism.

Weber discusses Luther’s teachings in Chapter 3 of The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. In connection to his analysis of the Protestant ethic, Weber is primarily concerned with Luther’s emphasis on having a “vocational calling.” Whereas Catholicism saw the practice of monks as the highest form of morality believers could aspire to, Luther aimed to bring the monk’s asceticism into everyday life. He advocated that his followers focus on “this-worldly work” (40), imbuing one’s labor with a religious significance that it had previously lacked. Luther believed that each individual was given a calling by God and that work within such a calling was in turn a manifestation of God’s will. Followers of Luther sought to organize their entire lives around living morally and around their work, and they believed that focusing themselves on their calling was a manifestation of brotherly love. However, Luther also believed that individuals should not seek to earn more money than they needed, a belief that kept Lutherans aligned with the values of economic traditionalism.

John Calvin was a 16th-century French theologian whose teachings became the basis for the Protestant sect of Calvinism. Weber discusses Calvinism in Chapter 4 and argues that Calvinism’s teachings, particularly in relation to work and money, helped to spur the spirit of capitalism that would later take hold in Western European countries. At the core of Calvinism was the concept of predestination, which held that God had already determined who would be chosen for salvation and who would be sent to hell. As a result, Calvinism believed that individuals’ actions during their lives had no influence over their fate in the afterlife. Instead, Calvinists believed that they had to have faith that they were among those “elect few” chosen by God “and [had] to repel every doubt about their state of grace” (65). One of the principal ways Calvinists aimed to develop this certainty was to devote themselves to their vocational calling and create a rational organization of their entire lives that would ensure that they lived according to God’s wishes in every moment. Weber argues that this ascetic system of living and emphasis on one’s work would create a population uniquely suited to excelling within the economic system of capitalism.

Benjamin Franklin was one of the American founding fathers, living from 1706 to 1790. Weber discusses Benjamin Franklin in Chapter 2, using an excerpt from his writings as a prime example of the spirit of capitalism. In the excerpt, Franklin advises the reader to devote himself to earning money, presenting it as an ethical duty to accumulate wealth and not to waste it. Weber sees within Franklin’s writings the idea that one should create an “organization of life” that is devoted to maximizing one’s ability to earn money—a notion that Weber sees as being the heart of “the spirit of modern capitalism” (16).