Max Weber’s best-known and most controversial work, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, first published in 1904, remains to this day a powerful and fascinating read. Weber’s highly accessible style is just one of many reasons for his continuing popularity. The book contends that the Protestant ethic made possible and encouraged the development of capitalism in the West. Widely considered as the most informed work ever written on the social effects of advanced capitalism, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism holds its own as one of the most significant books of the twentieth century. The book is one of those rare works of scholarship which no informed citizen can afford to ignore.
Customer Reviews
The definitive introductory text in Modernization theory:
Weber is the definitive introductory text in Modernization theory. Although somewhat western-centric, this book is essential reading for any college student, as it gave rise to many theories in every branch of social science, and still has more influence on theoretical thought than most social scientists would like to admit.
Great theory, but not always an easy read:
Max Weber’s thesis that the Protestant work-ethic helped give rise to the spirit of modern capitalism is well known, but how true is it? Weber goes into an impressive review of historical details on how Luther’s concept of the calling became the Calvinist concept of labor to glorify God, and finally the Puritan concept that is applied to business as well as anything else. In short, the Protestant hard-work ethic, intended to be a sign of election and to glorify god, inadvertently (at least in part) gave birth to the spirit of capitalism, of sustained, planned, methodical profit-making. Though capitalism is no longer dependent upon religion for maintaining its ethos (we are all caught in the rat race), it is fascinating how Weber makes a compelling case that a once anti-materialist Protestant Christianity came to affirm the capitalist spirit by way of a hard-working ethic. Many of Weber’s themes are persuasive, if also controversial. Weber has by no means isolated the final or full cause of the take-off of capitalism in modern times, but he has made a good case for one contributing factor. Would that his style of writing had been a bit more direct - Weber’s insights are at least worth careful reading.
Value edition for the budget minded:
The “reviews” about Weber’s thesis could fill libraries. Ooops! They actually have!
So let’s ignore that.
The focus here is on value, and this Dover value edition is perfectly fine for the thrifty college student on a limited budget who needs to read this work for an assignment but doesn’t want to be at the mercy of the University Library.
This is a seminal work that reaches far into other fields of inquiry, so it is likely you will need it no matter what your field.
The binding is an el-cheap-o slab of glue, so it won’t lie flat on your desk when you are transcribing a quote for a citation…..but since you’ve downloaded the text file you’ll just cut and paste anyway.
Academic citations to this edition are perfectly acceptable in scholarly papers and under MLA, ASA, APA, ACS, APSA, “Turabian” and MHRA style guidelines (and perhaps others).
A Very Standard Economic Postulate:
Assuming Max Weber’s thesis to be true proves useful. By assuming it as a postulate, one gains a potential way of understanding the beliefs of the western-world’s upper pareto boundary and the typical ressentiments / bad faith (bad-tempered, difficult mental traps everyone who tries to create something can’t help but fall into from time to time, mea culpa!) of the lower.
Max Scheler (who advised Karol Wojtyla as a Ph.D. student) seems to have done something similar to what Max Weber describes the upper pareto boundary (somewhere over the rainbow as the song goes) as having done. Max Scheler “attempted to reconcile Nietzsche’s ideas of master-slave morality and ressentiment with the Christian ideals of love and humility.”
Anyway, just projecting a few of my other readings onto this one a bit. Naturally, Weber’s ideas can and probably should be taken with the R.H.-Tawney grain of salt.
Don’t buy the Dover edition of this book.:
The Dover edition of the book has been bound so tightly that it’s difficult to turn the pages–and to read the words, which are nearly swallowed up by the binding. It feels like if you force it at all, the whole binding will come unglued.
It may be cheap, but it *feels* so extremely cheap that it’s just not worth the money saved. Buy yourself another edition–or for that matter, just get the text free online. Anything’s better than trying to read this edition.
