The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism

“A glance at the occupational statistics for any country in which several religions coexist is revealing. They indicate that people who own capital, employers, more highly educated skilled workers, and more highly trained technical or business personnel in modern companies tend to be, with striking frequency, overwhelmingly Protestant.” 

This quote opens Chapter 1 and thus is Weber’s first statement in The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. According to Weber, statistics from a number of different countries reveal that Protestantism is highly common among those individuals who are the bosses and owners of industries and businesses—in other words, those individuals who have excelled within a capitalist economic system. While not making any judgments yet about the reason for this pattern, Weber believes this fact makes it prudent to investigate to what extent Protestantism and capitalism might be connected to each other.

“Hardly any examples could demonstrate more vividly than these parallels that vague ideas, such as Catholicism’s (alleged!) ‘estrangement from the world’ and Protestantism’s (alleged!) materialistic ‘enjoyment of life’s pleasures,’ remain at too high a level of generality to be helpful.” 

In the modern era, Catholics are generally seen to be less concerned with material goods and worldly affairs than Protestants. This typically unsubstantiated claim about Catholics and Protestants is often used to explain why Protestants are more successful within capitalism than Catholics. However, Weber argues that while such statements might be true in contemporary times, the opposite was often the case historically, with Protestants following an extremely ascetic lifestyle. As such, Weber believes that a deeper and more nuanced investigation is necessary.