Max Weber revisited Peter Lumsden asks, could a New Reformation deliver a just economic order?
Max Weber’s influential work, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, maintains that religious ideas have effected economic change. Could a fully humanised Christianity provide a valuable critique of capitalism and a positive vision for the antiglobalisation movement?
Max Weber (1863-1919) was one of the founders of sociology. He offered a diagnosis of the modern condition, but unlike Marx did not prescribe a cure. In his foreword to Weber’s book, R.H. Tawney, a distinguished disciple of both Marx and Weber, says, the question which Weber attempts to answer is simple and fundamental. It is that of the psychological conditions which made possible the development of capitalist civilisation. Capitalism, in the sense of great individual undertakings involving the control of large financial resources, and yielding riches to their masters as a result of speculation, money-lending commercial enterprise, buccaneering and war, is as old as history. Capitalism, as an economic system, resting on the organisation of legally free wage earners, for the purpose of pecuniary profit, by the owner of capital or his agents, and setting its stamp on every aspect of society, is a modern phenomenon.’ But, of course, the truly modern phenomenon is scientific progress. What strikes us first when we look at societies that are not deemed to be ‘modern’ is the lower level of technology. One response to this disparity is the simple racist view that we are clever and they are stupid, a typical example being the recent statement by former Archbishop, George Carey, that Islam didn’t invent anything. A more sensible view is that they have reverence for tradition, which we don’t. Were we to ask why some Muslim cultures live the traditional way they do they would reply to the effect that their traditions and cultures are of divine origin and therefore it would be wrong to do things differently. But of course, in the Reformation it was this very idea of a divinely given social order, that of Catholic feudalism, that was smashed. What then was to be the guiding principle of the new social order? Reason, rationalism, efficiency, and ‘a bigger bang for a buck’ was to be the basis of modern society. Weber found this rather depressing.
However, the main influence informing the spirit of capitalism, according to Weber, is Calvin. Calvin's idea of God is distant from the anthropomorphism of the Hebrew Scriptures. His God is totally unconcerned with human wishes:
God’s agenda or Divine Plan for the world is perfect, laid down before the Max Weber beginning of time, and therefore necessarily can admit no deviation. Such an idea in its determinism, sober realism, and indifference to humanity approaches the idea of the given laws of Nature which, I shall show, supplanted it. This meant that attempts to gain God’s favour were useless, traditional religious practices could have no effect and salvation was a pure gift from God. However, there was one area of human life in which the operation of the Divine Plan could be observed— economic life. If you were successful in your secular calling, it was evidence that you were one of the saved:
The Calvinist also wanted to be saved ‘sola fide’...
Thus however useless good works might be as a means of obtaining salvation for ever, the elect remain beings of the flesh, and everything they do falls infinitely short of divine standards.
Nevertheless, they are indispensable as a sign of election.” Sof 66 july 2004 Obviously, if we wish to change our society we need to understand it. This is why Marx created his sociology. But the principal voice calling for change in our times, the anti-globalisation movement (which can be seen as a Marxist successor) makes a fundamental mistake in thinking that modern society is secular. While most people in the West still admit to believing in God, this has little effect on their conduct.
In reality the Enlightenment, with its scientific outlook, has changed religious belief, but it did not overcome belief in God. Rather, the will of God became understood in terms of given laws, the laws of Nature, gravity and genetics. Conformity to the will of God became understood not in terms of following scripture, but of following Nature. While this theism does not say that Nature is God, it affirms that Nature is the only credible expression of the Divine Will, the only path to a knowledge of Ultimate Reality. The alltoo-human origin of religious scriptures, exposed since the days of Voltaire, has led to a belief that the meaning and purpose of life is now to be found in conformity to Nature and not, as for Marx, in human emancipation within history.
So what do we find in Nature? The survival of the fittest. Thus capitalism is able to present itself as obvious, ‘Natural’, inevitable, the laws of economics as compelling as the law of gravity. This explains our shocking indifference to the sufferings of the poor. To think we could change their situation is like saying we could change the law of gravity. Watching nature programmes on TV we may be disturbed by seeing pictures of lions killing antelopes but we know that our distress is foolish. Similarly, we are distressed by the death of cockle-pickers in Morecambe Bay or of immigrants in container lorries, but we know we can do nothing about it: it is part of the natural order of things. We know that the labour market would not function without unemployment, or the housing market without homelessness; we know that our comfort is based on their misery. Anyone doubting the religious basis of capitalism should consider how faith in the divine order of Nature is the basis of such supposed knowledge. For the modern world, Nature is the measure of all things.
A fully humanised Christianity would rather say, with Protagoras, that man is the measure of all things.
If this dictum were to be accepted it would reverse the direction of our whole culture. It would require us to practise voluntary poverty, almost an oxymoron to the modern mind. We would find that the love of humanity—to misquote Peguy—is a harsh and dreadful thing. Charity requires that all should have sof 66 July 2004 necessities, before any have luxuries. Poor Tolstoy attempted voluntary poverty and got himself into ridiculous and humiliating situations. He succeeded in the end but the effort killed him. The best expression of this element of a New Reformation in the present day is the Catholic Worker Movement in the USA, in which I spent my youth and fortune!
Personal experience of another sort showed me how this change could return the actual church building to the centre of community, a place now inadequately occupied by the ‘local’ or pub. I referred briefly in SOF49 to St Mary’s in Hornsey, London, where most of the building is now a community centre. It provides a real & haven for the poor. Here they can socialise, eat and drink, be washed and clothed at no expense to themselves save minimal politeness (a real struggle for some).
A further element in this metanoia, this change of heart, is the Fair Trade Movement. Consumer power has the ability to transform capitalism into a just economic order, but this power will not be mobilised without a transformation of our understanding of the central figure of Western culture, Jesus of Nazareth.
Humanity needs to set its own agenda, to free itself from submitting to an external Ultimate Reaiity, be it Nature, or History, or God. This calls us to a faith centred on Jesus, rather than on God; the Jesus of history, that is, not the Christ of the scriptural canon; the historical Jesus of modern scholarship, the peasant calling for land and freedom.
According to Madeline Buntin (Guardian, 26 Apr 2004) the anti-globalisation movement has lost its way. But, were a reformed faith to show how a certain Christianity legitimises capitalism, there could be collaboration between the reformers of religion and the anti-globalisation protestors, with the energy that brought so many onto the streets of Seattle and elsewhere, that could truly challenge the hegemony of capitalism and lay the foundations for justice and peace.
Peter Lumsden is a retired social worker who spent a formative time working with the Catholic Worker Movement in the United States of America. He is a regular attendee at Sea of Faith conferences. ' R.H. Tawney, ‘Preface’, in M. Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, (Unwin, 1974) p.1(6). > M. Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, pp.114-115.