“The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism” by Max Weber

Note: This was a fantastic read and I would highly recommend. It helped make sense of so many American cultural oddities. I would highly recommend, especially in conjunction with study of early American history or other mid-millennial study.

• “Piece rate” does not always improve performance because some people just want enough money to survive
• “The Calling” was introduced with Protestantism and pushes religion into daily life
  • Protestantism pushed for people to be confident in the “specialism” or it would be a lack of faith
• Judaism introduced “ethical prophesier” in which the leader needs to exemplify the teachings
  • (Christianity extended this with notion of the leader being in a pseudo-perfected or divine state)
• Eastern kinship helped reduce individual “excellence”
• Double-entry bookkeeping was invited in Europe, allowing Capitalism to have accounting
• (In many monarch-controlled, European countries, it was taboo for Christians to charge interest, but Jews were encouraged to fill this monetary gap; even to the point where the Crown would provide funds, assuming they got a cut of the earnings)
• Only Europe had chemistry
  • (Probably a progression of all the obsession over alchemy)
• Capitalism: “Expectation for profit by the utilization of opportunities for exchange”
• There has to be a comparison between operations and earnings; something more than “I walked in with 100 coins and walked out with 110”
• Separation of business from residence helped deepen roots business-centered roots
• The West has a rational contemplation that the East did not; there were very few patronized philosophers
• Western society had lots of unique layers (peasants, serfs, indentured servants, slaves) to make class changes a possibility
• Protestants replaced Catholic’s absolute rule with the looser rule of smaller, less organized churches
• “Either eat well or sleep well”
  • Catholics prefer to eat well (immediate reward) where protestants prefer to sleep well (delay reward)
• The Inquisition noted that the heretics strongly encouraged trade
  • (When you are small, you have to trade to stay alive. Also, the Catholic church help drive trade across the realms)
• Capitalism cannot make use the labor of those who practice arbitrary labor, it needs them to have direction and purpose
• “The people only work so long as they are poor”
  • (or at least feel poor)
• The notion of a calling (a life work) was new to language in general and so more strongly embraced by protestants
• The Old Testament enforces the notion of letting each live their own life
• An economic emphasis was in part a reality of the reformation
• Fore-ordination helped to enforce both the specialness of each person and the inevitability of success
  • ‘God made me special and has fore-ordained my success, so I might as well try’
• Social activity is commanded because God values it
  • “Brotherly love” can only be used for God’s will, not for pleasure
  • There is value is doing work that you do not love… enter “employment”
• One must hold fast to the notion that they are Called
• Salvation can either be through being a vessel of the Holy Spirit (mysticism; Luther) or the Tool of the Divine Will (ascetic action; Calvin)
  • “Works rid us of the fear of damnation” rather than “buy our way into heaven”
  • Labor is for the purpose of being known by its work
• Calvin believed it was the Members’ charge to bring all into compliance with the law
  • Works are not the cause but the evidence of conversion and blessing
• The Saints’ rest is in the next life, not this one (delayed gratification)
• Idleness is the most offensive sin
  • (This was particularly relevant in small communities that abandoned the Catholic church, think American colonies, where idleness could lead to the whole community dying)