The most significant advice Ben Franklin had was, “Remember that time is money” (quoted in Weber, p.14). Franklin’s advice is to the young tradesman regarding the importance of time and money based on the spirit of capitalism. Weber also mentions how Franklin discusses the importance of honesty because it leads to the availability of credit (Weber, p.16). Also, punctuality, frugality and industry are useful and therefore are virtues (Weber, p.16). Ben Franklin’s writings illustrate the spirit of capitalism through his words mentioned in Weber’s Protestant Ethic.
It is illustrated through his advice on work and money and how the young tradesman could earn a certain amount of money in a day by his labor and sits back for the second half of the day when he really could be doubling that amount of money. He actually loses the portion of money that could have been made from the labor lost from sitting around (Weber, p.14). Basically, in Franklin’s view, the spirit of capitalism is to work in order to gain profit. If one does not work, then one does not gain the profit that you could possibly have. Also a particular ethic of duty is brought up where this is violated not just out of foolishness but also because a forgetfulness of duty (Weber, p. 16).
Modern capitalism, because Weber explained, is how a person consumes less and equally wants more, and in doing this saves more to gain more, rises to the top of the economy; rather than those who acquire and spend because it is earned (Weber, p.29). One example Weber uses is the man that moves out of the city into the countryside where he ‘transformed’ peasant into workers. He began to increase markets and took retailing into his own hands figuring out that lower prices would equal larger sales (Weber, pp. 28-29).
Merchants had to advance with society in the marketplace otherwise they would fall behind. a businessman should properly invest in his company’s earnings and not continuously spend the profit (Weber, p.29). Adventure capitalism is, because Weber describes it, “the intrusion of an unrestrained quest for gain only tolerated because a new reality. It was treated with ethical indifference or because a disagreeable but unavoidable presence” (Weber, p.21). Traditionalism, the other end of the spectrum, is when a person takes because long because necessary to reach a certain standard or target in their lives. Weber explains it because people not wishing by nature to earn more money. Instead they wish to simply live, because they have been accustomed and to earn because much because it is acquired to do so (Weber, p. 23).
Discussion
The world’s historical significance of the way that monks in the West led their lives was in an organized manner based on western monasticism’s asceticism” (Weber, p 71) He also mentions that this methodical-rational organization of life is sought to train the monk objectively to become a worker under God’s service, and, in this manner, subjectively in order to guarantee the salvation of his soul (Weber, p. 72). Asceticism, the elimination of magic, played a crucial role of how the medieval monks and nuns reflected the importance of their loyalty to your lifestyle can result in rewards.
Medieval Catholicism shaped conduct among the laity through isolated actions or behaviors of Catholics, not just on their life long duties. It was based on their life sins, and following the advice of their priest. Furthermore, one’s isolated actions, good or bad, according to the believer, influenced the destiny of their life on earth and eternal destiny in the afterlife (Weber, pp.69-70). One of the innovations brought forth by Lutheranism was the concept of the “calling”. This is derived from a German word: Beruf, which, in English is defined by Weber because “one’s task is given by God” (Weber, p. 39).
Weber also states that Luther emphasizes how “the fulfillment of one’s duties in the world constitutes, under all circumstances, the only way to please God. This fulfillment, and only this, is God’s will. It is believed that one’s calling is the one or only task given to a person by God himself (Weber, p. 44). One cannot be saved until these tasks were completed. Although God desired work, it was no more significant than eating or drinking. However, with the clearer realization of “salvation through the single believer’s faith” also referred to because sola fide, which contrasted the Catholic’s evangelical councils for monks and friars, the meaning of the calling became more significant to him.
Analysis
The ethical doctrines of Calvinism are referred to because the doctrines of predestination and were seen because the most characteristic dogma (Weber, p. 55). Predestination is the already decided fate of a person’s life. Someone is decided to go to heaven and the other to go to hell, regardless of what they do during their life. Also according to Weber, the fathers of Calvinism took a firm stand on this doctrine and believe that salvation can be lost but gained back through humility through faithful trust in God and his sacraments (Weber, p. 58).
One of the consequences, whether logical or practical, resulting from the doctrine of predestination was that “there would be no salvation outside the church. Whoever stayed apart from the church could not belong to the elect and the damned belonged to the external church” (Weber, p.60). Basically, if you were condemned or not, you should still belong to the church because membership was valuable in order to serve God and his commandments (Weber, p.60).
Ascetic Protestantism has four main carriers to it. They are Calvinism, Pietism, Methodism, and the baptizing sects (Weber, p.53). Ascetic Protestantism is expression of ones religion to achieve a certain life goal. Asceticism struggled against greed during the production of capitalism’s wealth. Its formation of capital through compulsive saving is also an impact outside the realm of religion (Weber, pp.116-117). Also, asceticism struggled with salvation through magic in order to protect its sacraments (Weber, p. 70). It reflected the hard work that Protestants did in order to complete the belief of the Protestant Ethic; if they do their work because told, they will go to heaven. Protestantism also shattered the bonds of economic ethic and legalizing profit because desired by God (Weber, p. 115).
The Protestant Ethic can be described in an instance when a person works hard for the motivation to secure themselves a place with God. Protestants have this religious belief that if they work hard, complete their destined tasks assigned to him or herself by God, they will have a reserved spot in heaven. It is the overall belief of this theory that creates Ascetic Protestantism. Two concepts come into play here. First work is the attempted and proven mechanism for the practice of asceticism. And second, the purpose of life itself is to work, because intended by God with his assigned tasks to each of us (Weber, pp.105-106).
In the modern era, the Protestant Ethic lost its importance through time because of people forgetting how valuable the beliefs used to be in creating our society today. Religion was the base of the development of our culture that exists today (Weber, p.125). In the past, it was religiously and socially faithful to work and follow the calling that God has destined you. Today, it seems that people try to do what they can to work less, if it means to call in or wish to be sick or poor to the point of almost begging. This would not only be considered sinful but also opposed to the concept of “brotherly love” mentioned earlier in the book (Weber, p. 109).
Therefore, the community because a whole seems to have forgotten the significant background that society has which allows us to be where we are today. In the modern era of Ascetic Protestantism, the modern person even with the best will, because I had mentioned in the previous question, “could not imagine how large a significance these components of our religious beliefs had on society, culture, and national character” (Weber, p. 125). Today, most cannot comprehend how significant the religious background is to our society and its development. The legacy of Ascetic Protestantism seems to have faded out with the Protestant Ethic because well. Wants and needs prevailed over necessities creating an impulsive character and evil based on asceticism’s temptations (Weber, p. 116).
Weber refers to the new prophecies when describing the possible future of society after the source of the meaning of religion expires. It is not his intention here to “set a one-sided spiritualistic analysis of the causes of culture and history in a place of equally one-sided materialistic analysis” (Weber, p.125). He mentions that the pursuit of gain in the most prominent region, the United States, where it has become the most stripped of its ethical and religious meaning, tends to be associated with purely competitive passions. Most commonly, this is referred to in sporting competitions (Weber, p.124). Weber also mentions that no one really knows if we will live to allow a rebirth of old ideas or entirely new prophets will be allowed to create. Weber does not believe the human race, especially in the United States is capable of lasting long enough to really understand where our society comes from and for it to create new long-lasting concepts of life (Weber, p.124).
Weber believed that bureaucracy was the most significant characteristics of modern rationality. Due to the shear size of modern communities, some sort of heavily organised system was necessary to maintain the efficiency demanded by a rational environment. Thus we have bureaucracy, the main points of which Weber dominated in an ‘ideal type’: hierarchy of authority, impersonality, written rules of conduct, promotion based on achievement, specialised division of labour, and last but not least, efficiency. Weber argued that the combination of these characteristics created an environment, in which people lost their humanity, became ‘specialists without spirit, sensualists without heart’. Bureaucracy entailed an oligarchy, having a few people at the top of a community with an immense amount of power–according to Robert Michels, ‘who say organisation say oligarchy’. By nature, the men at the top of a hierarchy have more information than their subordinates, and the power to grant or deny raises, hire and fire employees and to grant promotions.
These factors give create a strong divide between the boss and his subordinate; in a hierarchy these relationships continue all the way down the scale, thus everyman is both responsible to and for another man and divisions are made through out. Therefore bureaucracy creates isolationism. This argument parallels Marx’ interest in the isolationism of modern society, though with a key difference. Marx believed that isolation was caused by capitalism and thus would end with the rise of Socialism. Weber on the other hand, believed that isolationism would be because, if not more, predominant in a Socialist society because it would remain a highly bureaucratised culture.
Weber argued that there was a paradox to rational thinking because it often led to irrationality. He claimed that men became to obsessed by efficiency and production that they lost track of their humanity, this is exemplified by the well known crises of the Chevrolet Corvair which was made so badly, in the name of economising and efficiency, that the car was highly unsafe and caused widespread accidents. Therefore, Weber believed that the rational desire for efficiency inevitably led to bureaucratisation, which in turn meant the dehumanisation of mankind: the Western man became no more than ‘a cog in the bureaucratic machine’.
Conclusion
Weber believed that this rationality was visible on all levels of society. He took, for example, great interest in the running of the state and the characteristics of authority. According to Weber, there were three kinds of authority: Traditional, Rational-Legal, and Charismatic. He believed that the Rational-Legal had come to predominate; there was no longer because much power in personal ties, that leaders were anchored in impersonal rules that had been legally established. This further emphasises the dehumanisation of bureaucracy. Weber looked at an interesting aspect of rationalisation in his book ‘The Sociology of Music’ in which he noted that the Western 12-tone octave was designed in a very ‘rational manner’. Western society also developed orchestras in which music became a mass, organised activity and people had specific roles and positions; in a sense, even the orchestra became bureaucratised. Thus Weber gives us an idea of how rationality and bureaucratisation has infiltrated into every strata of society, leaving us in very much dehumanised and isolated world.
The contagious obsession with rationality had spread to every level of society, and from a modern viewpoint its effects had been highly successful: huge material gain, increased standards of living, tight controls, the list go on. However, Weber believed that with this ‘success’ had huge drawbacks–ultimately it had trapped people in a debased and inhuman society. Weber saw no escape from this ‘polar night of icy darkness’ because he called it, claiming that we had gone too far down the road of bureaucratisation and capitalism to go back, his idea is very significant for modern world but the reason for not following him is because theorist believes that modernism changes with the span of time and Weber has written theories in his time so it seems not applicable for modern world.
References
Weber, Max, 1864-1920. The Protestant ethic and the spirit of capitalism /Max Weber; translated by Talcott Parsons. 2nd ed. / introduction by Anthony Giddens, London: Allen and Unwin, 1976, 292 p.
