PDF Summary:The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, by Max Weber

Have you ever wondered why American culture is so focused on “hustle” and productivity, in contrast to many European nations’ laid-back attitudes? As far back as the 1600s, Anglo-American Protestants broke away from the traditional economic lifestyle—working just enough to sustain their lives, then relaxing—and began to work harder, longer, and more systematically than anyone had before.

Max Weber argued in this 1905 classic that the early Protestants in western Europe and America pioneered the way of life that became the modern capitalist’s lifestyle—the productive, rigorous, and systematic pursuit of wealth. And in doing so, they provided the cultural and financial impetus for capitalism to become a full-fledged economic system.

In our guide to The Protestant Ethic, we’ll break down Weber’s argument about the origins and effects of the Protestant way of life and its connection to capitalism. In commentary, we’ll discuss how Weber’s argument relates to Marxism, dive into the theological and historical details, and highlight related arguments about the origins of capitalism.

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In practice, Calvin’s answer didn’t do much to assuage people’s anxieties, so Calvinist pastors tried to give better answers. Weber says that they gave two main pieces of advice:

• #1: You must regard yourself as elect—it’s your moral duty to have faith. Doubts come from the devil, and they mean that grace (God’s favor) isn’t active in your life.
• #2: You must work tirelessly in your calling. Building on Luther’s notion of the calling, Calvinist pastors taught that you could develop self-assurance in your status as elect by working faithfully in your calling. God gave you your calling, and to work in it tirelessly was to bring glory to him. This echoed Luther’s teaching that to honor your God-given calling was your highest moral duty.

Acting on this advice, the everyday Calvinist began to live his life in complete service to God’s will for him. Calvinist pastors taught that when you work tirelessly in your calling and faithfully regard yourself as elect, God’s favor will manifest in your life as grace. Practically, grace looked like success in your calling and the complete cessation of doubt or worry about your status. According to Weber, everyone wanted to achieve this state.

The Notion of Grace in Christianity

Grace is a central concept in both Protestantism and Catholicism; it broadly refers to a freely given gift from God that takes the form of divine favor and an experience of the divine nature. The question of the means by which an individual obtains grace is a primary schism between Protestantism and Catholicism:

• Protestants generally believe that grace comes through faith alone, and it’s given by God alone. Upon receiving grace, you are “born again” into the true Christian faith.

• Catholics hold that you receive grace over time through participation in the sacraments of the church, as well as through works and faith.

In Weber’s argument above, then, Calvinist Protestants were looking for a definitive moment upon which God gave them grace. The various sects disagreed about specifics—whether it was an internal, emotional experience of God entering your soul, or an outward sign such as social and financial success—but all looked for that “born again” moment.

How Protestants Pursued the State of Grace

Weber explains that since achieving grace meant you were (probably) saved, the most important thing in a Protestant’s life became proving their state of grace. They wanted to prove this to themselves and their community. To prove it to themselves was to end their existential anxiety; to prove it to the community was to secure high social standing.

To achieve this, Weber argues that Protestants began to live ascetic, systematic lives in order to attain the state of grace (following the example of Catholic monks, except in the secular world). In plain language, the ideal Protestant had strict daily routines, habits, and standards of moral conduct.

(Shortform note: Protestants distinguished between two concepts surrounding the idea of grace: “sanctification” and “justification.” Justification referred to God’s gift of grace when given to the elect, and it was what Protestants sought. Sanctification referred to the purified, holy behavior that an individual was thought to demonstrate once they were justified. Proving grace, then, meant experiencing justification and proving it to your church community through sanctified behavior—hence the rigorous, methodical lifestyles lived in utter devotion to God’s will.)

The ideal Protestant systematized two main areas of life: his internal relationship with God, and his external work in a calling.

• Internally, the ideal Protestant constantly monitored his state of grace. While Weber doesn’t explain exactly how, he suggests that Protestants kept records of their inner religious lives and compared themselves to Bible ideals for saints and holy men.
• Externally, the ideal Protestant conducted his life in a methodical, rigorous way. To maximize his chances of attaining grace, he built his whole life around his calling. He rose early, ate simply, and worked diligently through the day. He was scrupulous, honest, and hardworking to the extreme.

As a result of this intense, methodical focus on attaining the state of grace, Protestants had no room in their lives for anything superfluous. Idle talk, drinking and feasting, and other “instinctive” pleasures were all off-limits. Anything that took away from working in your calling to glorify God was a waste of time. Weber calls this way of life “innerworldly asceticism,” which refers to the Protestant’s way of working in the secular world but not for it (rather, they worked for God).

(Shortform note: Weber termed this process of systemizing life “rationalization.” By this, he meant that people began to use reason to find more efficient ways of conducting their practical affairs. Thus as above, rational thought had merged with religiosity to produce a thoroughly optimized, systematized way of life. Outside of The Protestant Ethic, Weber discusses rationalization in relation to bureaucracy, explaining that bureaucracy is the form of administration that arises when people systematize and optimize the functions of government.)

The Protestants Became Rational Economic Actors (Late 1500s-1600s)

Fueled by existential anxiety, Calvinist Protestants became the first rational, systematic middle class of skilled workers and entrepreneurs. Specifically, Weber focuses on the lifestyles of the Puritans, the main sect of Anglo-American Calvinists in the 1600s.

(Shortform note: The Puritans were a sect of Protestants who originated in England in the 1600s. They split into two groups: non-separatists and separatists. Non-separatist Puritans wanted to reform the Church of England by removing any remaining vestiges of Catholicism and to spread their way of life throughout the nation. Separatist Puritans—also known as the Pilgrims—established settlements in the American colony of New England. Lacking any opposition to their way of life, these American Puritans successfully built religious communities that gave the elect exclusive power to vote and rule the church.)

Weber emphasizes that the ambition of the Calvinists was a big break from tradition. Previously, people worked only as long as they needed to earn enough money for food and housing. People considered it immoral to chase more money than you needed, and early entrepreneurs had a hard time getting workers to labor for longer hours. Offer higher wages, and they’d work less to earn the same amount. Impose lower wages, and you’d cut productivity and hurt your own business.

According to Weber, this was not the case with the Calvinists. They saw tireless work in their callings as the highest moral good: Work was the end in itself. Consequently, they made better business owners and better workers. They would work longer and do a better job, because they saw their every action as serving to glorify God. This shift was one key to the rise of the “spirit of capitalism”: People became willing to work for the work itself.

(Shortform note: Because the Protestant ethic induced people to feel that they should work hard, it was useful to those who owned the means of production. Thus, the wealthy had an incentive to maintain the belief that more labor means more good. In the past, this may have been true—an industrializing society does need large amounts of raw labor to develop. More recently, however, some argue that more labor no longer produces more good: In a post-industrial society, we no longer need to labor constantly to procure enough food, shelter, and material comfort for everyone.)

Richard Baxter and the Question of Wealth

Weber goes on to explain that through this ambition, some Puritans became wealthy: Since they were hardworking, diligent, and frugal, they naturally made money. However, Christians traditionally saw the pursuit of wealth as immoral, so the financial success of these Puritans conflicted with their religious ideals. Part of their solution to this issue was to avoid indulging in material pleasures—food, drink, and luxury goods—and to give to the church.

(Shortform note: In the Middle Ages, Christians believed in a demon called Mammon, who had fallen from heaven due to his immense greed. Superstitions around Mammon held that he tempted men with promises of wealth, preying on people prone to greed. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus is said to have taught that “no man can serve two masters… Ye cannot serve God and Mammon.” This declaration shaped the Christian view of material wealth as unimportant compared to spiritual obedience to God.)

According to Weber, the full solution to the question of wealth came from Richard Baxter, a prominent English and Puritan theologian. Baxter taught that becoming wealthy was justified under the right conditions, reasoning as follows:

• If you became wealthy in the course of working your calling for God’s glory, that meant that God favored you.
• Further, if God presented you with the chance to profit, it was your moral duty to take advantage of the opportunity.

So long as your wealth was a byproduct of your faithful work for God, it was okay. In other words, it became morally acceptable—even encouraged—to get wealthy for God’s glory. In this way, Weber argued that wealth became associated with the state of grace (God’s favor).

Seeing that God favored them, the wealthy now considered themselves elect (saved). This further reinforced the idea that pursuing wealth was a morally upright act, though the wealthy remained ascetic and avoided indulging.

The Prosperity Gospel: Modern Christians on Wealth

Today, some Christian teachings on wealth are enmeshed with capitalist ideals of material success. Namely, some evangelical church leaders, such as Joel Osteen, preach the “prosperity gospel,” a loosely Bible-based ideology that says God wants to make his followers wealthy. These teachings lose much of the religious foundations explained above in favor of an easy, feel-good stance that reconciles God and wealth as follows:

• You can believe yourself into positive changes—your mind and thoughts influence your material reality.

• God rewards his faithful in direct, materially manifested ways—such as by giving miracle cures or financial success.

• Drawing from the Protestant ethic: It’s your duty to work hard and faithfully for God.

Together, these ideas produce the belief that if you work hard and believe you’ll get rich, God will reward you with great wealth. This has been used to justify inequality; it implies that if you aren’t rich, it’s your own fault.

Donald Trump is a notable adherent of this message. He was raised Presbyterian (a Protestant sect) in a church ministered to by Norman Vincent Peale, author of The Power of Positive Thinking, and who Trump has praised as being influential in his life. Peale admired and supported American businessmen, such as Fred Trump, and preached a practical (rather than spiritual) message.

Wealthy Puritans Began to Accumulate Capital

With the moral confusion around wealth resolved, one problem remained: What should people do with their accumulating wealth? Since the Puritans’ rational, ascetic lifestyles prohibited “instinctive” or “animal” indulgences, many pastors advised reinvestment. So, Weber says, wealthy Protestants would put the money back into their own businesses and invest in others through the early stock markets.

In turn, this allowed them to expand their businesses. The more they reinvested, the more they accumulated capital—such as money, property, and goods. More capital meant more ability to expand, and so on in a self-reinforcing feedback loop. This, Weber argues, was the beginning of the capital accumulation and investment activity that was necessary to the onset of modern capitalism.

(Shortform note: Investment activity didn’t originate with the Protestants; rather, they expanded upon previous financial practices with meticulous, systematic work and investment. Stock exchanges appeared in the United States toward the end of the 1700s—in 1790, the Philadelphia Stock Exchange was founded, and 1792 saw the New York Stock Exchange come into being. Even earlier, Belgium had a stock exchange in Antwerp that dealt primarily in government bonds, and Venetian moneylenders bought and sold debts in the 1300s.)

Since these Puritans saw themselves as working for God’s glory, they felt morally justified in building large enterprises. Further, they saw themselves as upstanding contributors to the wealth and prosperity of God’s community on Earth.

(Shortform note: Weber doesn’t mention the role of slavery in powering the American colonial economy. New England had a high concentration of slaves—both Native Americans and Africans—who were integral to the construction of cities and powered most economic activity. Colonists also invested in the slave trade. In leaving out this detail, Weber’s argument misses the historical reality that European colonists exploited other humans to build their wealth and didn’t do it through sheer work ethic.)

Weber’s Ideal Protestant

To recap, Weber characterizes the ideal Protestant as someone who rose early, lived simply, and worked systematically throughout the day. He ate simply and rested just enough to maintain his health and get back to work. He followed strict routines, and he constantly examined his conduct to see whether he was living up to Biblical ideals.

The ideal Protestant wouldn’t drink, play sports, or socialize idly; he saw time not used to glorify God as time wasted. He contributed practically to his secular community, faithfully attended church, and reinvested any profits from his calling. In essence, he became a prosperous, religious, middle-class citizen. This way of life is what Weber calls “the Protestant ethic.”

(Shortform note: The description above illustrates one of Weber’s famous concepts: his notion of “ideal types.” An ideal type is an abstract, logically consistent version of something that is, in reality, more complicated. For instance, you could posit an ideal type for a millennial American tech entrepreneur—think of the stereotype of “tech bros.” In reality, nobody would fit that model perfectly; Weber’s point is that it’s a useful shorthand when you need to quickly refer to something complex within a larger argument.)

How the Spirit of Capitalism Arose From the Protestant Ethic

Now that we’ve described the Protestant ethic and where it came from, we’ll turn to its influence on early capitalism. In this section, we’ll explain how the Protestants’ way of life influenced the rise of a full-fledged capitalist economy. We’ll cover the following three ways in which, according to Weber, Protestantism influenced capitalism:

• Influence #1: Church divisions between elect (saved) and reprobate (damned) provided the moral justification for the exploitation of labor. Further, the Protestants’ beliefs created people who were willing to work longer and harder hours.
• Influence #2: The Protestants’ “waste no time” attitude created the “morality of usefulness” that characterizes modern capitalism.
• Influence #3: The Protestant’s systematic pursuit of his calling became the modern capitalist’s systematic pursuit of wealth as an end in itself.

Weber suggests that all of these changes had taken hold by the late 1700s and early 1800s.

(Shortform note: Scholars have debated Weber’s precise thesis for decades. Some believe that Weber is saying that Protestantism created capitalism, and others point out that he never explicitly states this. Weber instead makes a heavily qualified argument that Protestantism did, in some ways, contribute to the development of certain aspects of the attitudes and lifestyles necessary to the onset of modern capitalism. This nuance is often lost in looking to distill and simplify his works.)

Influence #1: Church Divisions Justify Labor Exploitation

The first way that Protestantism influenced capitalism took place in the divide between the wealthy and the common person. When some Protestants began to get wealthy, they became more confident in their status as the elect. Over time, Weber says, those wealthy Protestants who succeeded in their callings drew themselves apart from those who didn’t. The successful saw themselves as morally superior to the unsuccessful, who God evidently didn’t favor.

This led to divisions in the church. The elect created sects entirely apart from the reprobate; you could only get in if you’d proved yourself before God and community. In other words, if you’d become successful in your calling.

(Shortform note: The theological position for these divisions was the notion of the “visible” versus the “invisible” church. The visible church is the physical, outward expression of the church—physical buildings, ceremonial robes, altars, and so on. The invisible church, according to Protestantism, is composed only of true believers who have been “born again” through genuine faith. As a result, divisions arose between the elect, who felt themselves to be the only genuine Christians, and those they perceived as reprobate, who attended the visible church but weren’t considered members of the invisible church.)

As this occurred, the successful elect determined that it was morally appropriate for them to use the labor of the reprobate. Since God gave everyone their station in life, the elect felt it was only right that, as God’s chosen people, they could exploit the reprobate. At the same time, the reprobate Protestants also felt that it was their place to work long and hard hours. After all, that was God’s will for them. Even if God didn’t seem to have chosen them, they still felt compelled to serve and glorify him.

This dynamic, Weber argues, presaged the economic divide between the capitalists, who own the means of production, and the workers, who trade their labor for wages. He implies that it provided the moral justification that allowed capitalists to exploit the labor of the poor and underprivileged. It also allowed them to view economic inequality as morally just, since it was God’s will that some succeed and some fail.

(Shortform note: Marx would argue that Weber isn’t telling the full story of labor exploitation. Specifically, he doesn’t account for the phenomenon of “primitive accumulation,” a concept that denotes how violent force allowed the powerful to take land and resources from the common people. Nobility and those with physical power made this land private property, forcing the common people to work for them or look for a living in emerging cities. This “enclosure of the commons” was, according to Marxist thought, a main factor in the onset of labor exploitation and class struggle in the modern era.)

Influence #2: Protestant Morality Gives Way to Utilitarianism

In a related vein, the Protestants’ willingness to work for its own sake also created a distinct morality: Whether something was good depended on whether it was useful to glorify God. This attitude was passed on to capitalism, minus the emphasis on God.

Weber says that as the successful Protestants began to get wealthy, they also became more secularized. Into the 18th century, the religious zeal that fueled the earliest Protestants began to lessen. As serving God in every moment became less of an immediate imperative, people lost the association between “usefulness” and “glorifying God.”

(Shortform note: As a formal moral system, utilitarianism was first articulated by Jeremy Bentham in the late 1700s, though earlier thinkers laid the groundwork in the 1600s. Put simply, utilitarianism holds that moral actions are those that produce the greatest good for the greatest number of people. Early thinkers reasoned that what is good is human happiness, and that because God wants humans to be happy, we should maximize happiness. This view isn’t explicitly Calvinist, but it may have contributed to the later secular position that we should maximize the productivity of our actions. In this view, a business that solves a problem for many people is doing something good—which would’ve helped business owners feel morally upright.)

At the same time, these wealthy Protestants retained their systematic, rigorous lifestyles. They began to focus more on money than God; money took God’s place in their moral equations. What qualified as useful became what helped them earn money, rather than what glorified God. Weber argues that this led to the utilitarian capitalist attitude that “time is money,” which was common by the time of Benjamin Franklin (mid to late 1700s).

(Shortform note: Franklin is credited with having said “remember that time is money” in his letter “Advice to a Young Tradesman.” This short passage was published in the 1770 book The American Instructor, which contains contributions concerning mathematics, writing, basic business and accounting strategies, as well as advice about medicine and personal health—making it one of the earliest American business and self-help titles. Note also that while Weber takes Franklin’s ideas as characteristic of the American business spirit, others argue that they shouldn’t be taken as a bellwether for the age, and that Franklin was simply offering advice rather than espousing moral imperatives.)

Influence #3: People Begin to Systematically Pursue Wealth

Weber acknowledges that people did engage in capitalist activity before the Protestant Reformation. However, they did so unsystematically. As we discussed in “The Protestants Became Rational Economic Actors” section of this guide, the traditional economic style was to earn only as much money as you needed to maintain your life. This changed with the Protestants, who pioneered the unique blend of beliefs, morals, and habits that resulted in a lifestyle of systematically pursuing wealth.

(Shortform note: Some argue that the Protestants were not the first people to operate a capitalist economy. Ferdinand Braudel, a 20th-century French historian, described the development of commerce and capitalist patterns throughout European history and says that 13th- and 14th-century Italy and France were capitalist. These areas had complex systems of credit, banking, and commerce well before the Protestants’ time. Here, though, note that Weber edits the second version of his argument to acknowledge that he describes the origins of modern capitalism, rather than capitalism in general.)

As the early Protestants’ religious zeal faded, Weber suggests that pursuing wealth for God’s glory became the notion that wealth was the end in itself. In turn, the systematic way of life pioneered by the Protestants lent itself to economic success. As such, the increasingly secularized Protestants inherited the methodical, meticulous, and frugal way of life that became the modern capitalist’s lifestyle: Wake early, stay healthy, work hard. Waste no time; be productive and efficient. Account for all your wealth, and reinvest to grow it.

Most importantly, the Protestants’ asceticism led to the accumulation of capital that was necessary for capitalism to become a full-fledged economic system. Whereas previous classes of wealthy people would purchase land and seek to become nobles, the Protestants invested. Instead of spending money on something that wouldn’t give a return, they put the money back into their own businesses and the stock market. Weber implies that this investment activity gave the early capitalist economy the kick-start it needed to gain momentum in America and western Europe.

(Shortform note: While Weber wrote The Protestant Ethic in 1905, this economic way of life echoes still today, especially in the life philosophies espoused by figures such as Warren Buffett and other investing giants. Buffett is a more modern example of the “spirit of capitalism,” having worked for decades, sticking to a systematic strategy for life and investing, and living frugally despite becoming wealthy. Weber might say this isn’t a coincidence, given that Buffett was raised Presbyterian, one of the main Calvinist sects.)

The Disenchantment of the World

To end, Weber laments the state of the modern world. He notes that while the Protestants chose to live as they did, we now all have to. The capitalist world system has become so large that we now must submit to its pressures. Either you live a rational, systematic life, or you’ll end up on the bottom of the economic ladder.

In Weber’s view, we’ve also lost the magic of earlier ages. The world has become a “disenchanted” place, and everyone lives mechanically and without wonder. Our concern for material possessions rather than rich inner lives has become what Weber refers to as an “iron cage,” and he laments that we’ll be trapped in a drab capitalist world until we run out of fossil fuels and the whole system is forced to change.

Have Things Gone as Poorly as Weber Predicted?

Weber’s prognosis for the capitalist world system was decidedly bleak. Here, it’s important to note that Weber was a member of a wealthy and well-connected family, so his position as an educated and powerful member of society likely colored his view. This is evident in his final words, where he expresses nostalgia for the end of an age—but an age that, for many, was marked by a much lower quality of life than Weber enjoyed.

Today, some would say that the world is doing better than ever before. That’s the argument that Steven Pinker makes in Enlightenment Now, where he cites data to support his view that life is getting better for humans around the world. Pinker makes the following claims:

• The European Enlightenment has spread rationality, science, and humanism throughout the world. These values create better societies than old, superstitious values.

• The human brain has a “negativity bias” that causes us to see things in a negative light. This, as well as negativity-focused media, makes us think the world is worse off than it actually is.

• Various markers of human well-being have improved, such as longevity, child mortality, and the rate of poverty. Additionally, modern technologies have given people more leisure time and more opportunities to learn, travel, and enjoy life.

So while materialism abounds and some people do build their lives around possessions, standards of living have improved around the world, allowing for the spread of education, and leading to new forms of work and play. Here, a Chinese proverb sums up the situation: Sai Weng lost his horse / who can say whether good or bad (塞翁失马 / 焉知非福). In essence, this saying suggests that we can’t know quite what’s coming next, and that it’s no use to make absolute judgments about the goodness or badness of a situation.