In the Library
The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism
Max Weber, 1905
- Form
- Form Philosophy
- Reading time
- Reading time 2.5 hours
- Chapters
- Chapters 5
- Length
- Length 36k words
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About the book
A Calvinist weaver in seventeenth-century Holland counts his profits at the close of day, then sets them aside untouched, because spending them would betray a calling whose proof is in the saving. Max Weber published this sociological essay across 1904 and 1905, tracing the strange affinity between Reformed theology and the rational, accumulative discipline that would become modern capitalism. The doctrine of predestination produced an unbearable anxiety about election, Weber argued, and the believer answered it by reading worldly success and disciplined frugality as signs of grace. Methodical labour became sacred. Calling hardened into vocation, vocation into the iron cage of a system that no longer remembers the faith that made it, and still keeps everyone inside counting.