Study Questions
Benjamin Franklin writes with enthusiasm: "Remember, that money is of the prolific, generating nature. Money can beget money, and its offspring can beget more, and so on" (351). How would Aristotle, Aquinas, Dante, or Pound have greeted this sort of talk? (Also compare Marx, 287). We discussed Marx's concept of the commodity as a fetish, but for Marx the fetish character of the commodity is rooted in the capital fetish. Franklin embraces the capital fetish. What is Franklin's conception of waste? How does it compare with those of Locke and Veblen? Would Franklin have made a good guest lecturer at the Gradgrind school? Do the words of Ferdinand Kuernberger, describing American capitalism ring any bells "They make tallow out of cattle and money out of men" (352)? How about the phrases, "nothing contributes more to the raising of a young man in the world than punctuality and justice in all his dealings" (351)? What notions of justice are implicit in these comments? Are any perspectives, in for example Plato's Republic, related to these ideas?
Why does Weber claim that "it is the spirit of capitalism which here speaks" (352) in Franklin's voice? What is distinctive about such a spirit, according to Weber? Is it business enterprise or the concern with making money that distinguishes capitalism from other forms of economic activity? Why does Weber claim that such a spirit is "ethically coloured" (352)?
Weber argues that the love of money and even capitalism are ancient phenomena, but he quotes Franklin to bring to light what is distinctive regarding the spirit of modern capitalism. How does the following passage relate to Aristotle, Marx, and Steinbeck: "the summum bonum of this ethic, the earning of more and more money...is thought of so purely as an end in itself, that from the point of view of the happiness of, or utility to, the single individual, it appears entirely transcendental and absolutely irrational. Man is dominated by the making of money, by acquisition as the ultimate purpose of his life. Economic acquisition is no longer subordinated to man as the means for the satisfaction of his material needs. This reversal of what we should call the naturalrelationship..." (353).
According to Weber, how does the accumulation of money under capitalism become an end in itself? Why does he suggest such an end is "transcendental and absolutely irrational" from the point of view of happiness or utility? If not comfort and economic security, what does Weber claim underlies the capitalist urge to accumulate money without end?
What is so irrational about the work ethic of capitalism, according to Weber? Be industrious! Work hard! Do a good job!
Weber points to a sort of "bigness fetish" that goes along with commerce: "When the imagination of a whole people has once been turned toward purely quantitative bigness, as in the United States, this romanticism of numbers exercises an irresistible appeal to the poets among business men." What practices does this call to mind? Considerpoetry of Ray Kroc: "billions and billions sold." What of our own marquee urban image, the fountain at the Heartland of America Park?
Recall that Marx said that the labor that produces value is not concrete labor but abstract labor, socially necessary abstract labor, to be exact. How does the "Protestant work ethic," manifest this abstractness of labor under capitalism? Consider Weber's description of this ethic: "this peculiar idea, so familiar to us to-day, but in reality so little a matter of course, of one's duty in a calling, is what is most characteristic of the social ethic of capitalistic culture, and is in a sense the fundamental basis of it. It is an obligation which the individual is supposed to feel and does feel towards the content of his professional activity, no matter in what it consists..." (353). What was the difference between the Pietistic "girls" and others that made the former so flexible and industrious? Recall how the workers of Coketown were called "Hands" and how the Joads were looking for "work."
What attitudes or implicit beliefs are necessary to ensure and sufficiently motivate capitalist accumulation? Is capitalism in a sense a religious calling? What sort of religion would underwrite the endless accumulation of money? Are spiritual goals capable of near absolute identity with pecuniary ones? Why? What could lead to such identifications? What about utility and earthly happiness? How and why might religious and capitalist goals similarly ignore or look beyond utility and happiness? Are Aristotle's comments regarding money accumulation useful in this respect?: "The source of the confusion is the near connexion between the two kinds of wealth-getting; in both, the instrument is the same, although the use is different, an so they pass into one another"(Aristotle 75). Could these comments help explain both capitalism and religious transcendentalism? Are these cases of originally rational ends which end up forgotten and obscured by means and symbols which once pointed to those ends?
Is Weber talking about Steinbeck's "monster" when he writes: "The capitalistic economy of the present day is an immense cosmos into which the individual is born, and which presents itself to him, at least as an individual, as an unalterable order of things in which he must live. It forces the individual, in so far as he is involved in the system of market relationships, to conform to capitalistic rules of action. The manufacturer who in the long run acts counter to these norms, will just as inevitably be eliminated from the economic scene as the worker who cannot or will not adapt himself to them will be thrown into the streets without a job" (354). What import does this have for Aquinas's idea that one could participate in the moneymaking activities of capitalism without subjecting oneself to its mad and boundless goal?
What is Weber's critique of what he calls "naive historical materialism" (354)? Is the year 1632 in Massachusetts necessarily a pre-capitalist situation? What are the implications of Weber acknowledging that "the New England colonies were founded by preachers and seminary graduates with the help of small bourgeois, craftsmen and yeomen, for religious reasons"? Is it possible in such a situation to disentangle the material and the spiritual? Are they necessarily different? Under what conditions may they coincide? So, which one came first? Is religion the result of economic conditions of existence or the other way around? Is this a two-way street?
What does Weber mean by traditionalism, and how did traditionalism foil the strategy of increasing piece-rates in order to speed up harvesting? Low wages seem ideal for the purposes of capitalists--the agricultural capitalists depicted in The Grapes of Wrath were eagerly following the capitalist "low road"--but Weber argues that the low wage strategy may be counterproductive even from a business standpoint. How?
Can there be "traditionalist" capitalism? What would that involve? How well equipped are traditionalist capitalist firms to meet competition from firms animated by the spirit of modern capitalism? Are there any characters from Hard Times of the sort animated by the spirit of modern capitalism and described by Weber as follows: "they were men who had grown up in the hard school of life, calculating and daring at the same time, above all temperate and reliable, shrewd and completely devoted to their business, with strictly bourgeois opinions and principles" (361)? Is the historical process of crowding out traditionalist capitalist enterprises still going on? Consider the case of Wallmart vs. Main Street of small town America.
In Weber's opinion. what has been the main enemy of capitalism and its expansion? Why does he suggest that Franklin's way of thinking "would both in ancient times and in the Middle Ages have been proscribed as the lowest source of avarice and as an attitude entirely lacking in self-respect" (354)? How does this square with Weber's suggestion that absolute unscrupulousness in the pursuit of selfish interests by the making of money has been a specific characteristic of precisely those countries whose bourgeois-capitalistic development ... has remained backward (355)? So, are traditional societies more or less greedy and avaricious than capitalist ones?
According to Weber, how does a capitalist differ from a pirate or a completely unscrupulous business predator? Is Weber's capitalist more similar to Plato's Cephalus or to Thrasymachus? What analogies does Weber perceive between war, piracy, and trade (especially foreign trade)? What is the "double ethic"(355) he speaks of? Is it possible that such a double ethic remains a component of the more advanced forms of capitalism? Could such a doubleness be connected to, for example, the fanatically self-righteous but nevertheless somewhat hypocritical (352-353) mindset of someone like Franklin?
What does Weber claim are the dominant tendencies and interests among laborers in traditional societies? How does he claim capitalism has attempted to overcome such tendencies and increase the productivity of labor? What is necessary to persuade workers to labor longer and harder for the same or even lower wages? How does this square with the common notion that it is selfish interest that motivates economic agents? Is the productivity of capitalism then related to forces beyond self-interest? Is capitalism then an economic system deeply embedded within an ethical system which is crucial to its survival and proper functioning? If so, then, how is capitalism different from a traditional society where economic activity is embedded within and limited by other values? Are we merely looking at variations on a theme rather than radically different situations?
What does Weber claim is lost in the transition from traditionalism to capitalism? Is Weber's picture of traditional life overly idealized? What does he neglect? What may be the causes of his nostalgic view of the leisurely ways of pre-capitalist societies? Was everyone able to enjoy such leisure? What specific interests does Weber seem to be representing in his critical portrayal of middle-class capitalism?
Though Weber argues against historical materialism that the spread of modern capitalism was caused by the sensibilities spread by certain (especially Calvinistic) Protestant sects, he argues that developed capitalism discards religion like a set of training wheels: "One is tempted to think that these personal moral qualities have not the slightest relation to any ethical maxims, to say nothing of religious ideas, but that the essential relation between them is negative. The ability to free oneself from the common tradition, a sort of liberal enlightenment, seems likely to be the most suitable basis for such a business man's success. And to-day that is generally precisely the case" (362). Are American Christian enthusiasts for the free market digging their own grave? Does Weber put his finger on a leading function of higher education in America and other non-traditionalist capitalist countries? Is the social function of higher education to shake bright young people loose from their incoming religious (or other "parochial" beliefs) with a good dose of Enlightenment skepticism and cosmopolitanism, making them sufficiently indifferent that, like Dickens' character James Harthouse, they are ready to "go in for" whatever the market says is "hot"? Is the current popular one-word phrase "Whatever" a perfect expression of the underlying indifference of capitalist producers toward the use value characteristics of what they make? Some years ago the U.S. Steel Corporation changed its name to "USX." What does the "X" stand for?
Given his idea of an intimate connection between capitalism and religion, how does Weber explain the general absence of religious belief in modern business people? Does the spirit of Protestantism continue to live in capitalism in some form, however disguised? What may such form be? What is the modern God? Is this god much different from the old one(s)? What is different when "commercial and social interests ... tend to determine ... opinions and attitudes" (363)? Are things different when religious and ethical values determine such opinions?
Is Catholicism incompatible with capitalism? Why does Protestantism provide a more appropriate foundation for capitalistic enterprise?
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