Max Weber, labour and the new spirituality
Let us now turn to Max Weber’s analyses - particularly his Protestant Ethics and the Spirit of Capitalism - which provide valuable conceptual elements for a better understanding of the process of recognition of labour.
Weber expends great effort to conceptualize the modern attitude of the European individual regarding labour. He describes and analyses the radical transformation of the ethical and practical experience of labour in modern times.The “spirit of capitalism” could not in any way be described by what in Latin is called auri sacra fames, “the greed for gold” (Weber 1904-05 [1958]: 56). On the contrary, the thirst for wealth is a human tendency, as old as humanity itself.
Capitalism requires rather a self-discipline to master this unlimited thirst of wealth, this “universal reign of absolute unscrupulousness” (Weber 1904-05 [1958]: 57). Weber starts his inquiry by quoting large extracts of Benjamin Franklin’s Advice to a Young Tradesman (1748), where the American scientist and entrepreneur pronounces his famous advice: “Remember that time is money”. However, even if the young tradesman is expressly invited to make money grow indefinitely, it is essential that this resolute will to earn “more and more money” be done in the frame of “legality”, that is, under a strict ethical discipline. Earning money becomes one of the ultimate ends of ethical action and in this sense the Aristotelian perspective is radically reversed. However, this reversal is in no way a transgression of all ethical principles, in no way a complaisant settling in the “absolute reign of unscrupulousness”. A new ethos governs human behaviour: an ethos which is neither “eudaemonistic” nor “hedonistic” (ibid.: 53). The major Weberian concept is Beruf which, as the word “calling”, also relates back to the concept of vocation. Weber recalls that Luther preferred Beruf in his translation of the Bible, as an equivalent to the Hebraic word “work” - prior to Luther, in German versions of the Bible the same word was consistently translated as Arbeit.
In his careful translation of Weber’s book, Jean-Pierre Grossein proposed the term “profession-vocation” as equivalent to the concept of Beruf (Grossein 2002: 657).Understanding Lutheran choice requires a reference to the well-known Protestant dogma of predestination (Gnadenwahl). According to this dogma, the destiny of the believer, that is his state of election beside the divinity, is decided independently of his will and his actions, even before his coming into the world. There is no possibility for a Protestant believer to have an influence on this decision: he has no chance to charm the divinity in order to obtain his benevolence or his favour. In such a religious context, the sacrifice, that is, all “techniques of salvation”, the hope to “buy” his felicity through sacraments, becomes pure illusion, the “vanity of vanities”; this is a world of “disenchantment” (Entzauberung). Predestination pushes the believer necessarily into an “unprecedented pessimism”. Therefore, in such an existence marked by vanity the only mode of non-illusory behaviour appears to be asceticism.
However, Weber distinguishes two types of asceticism: an otherworldly asceticism (ausserweltliche Askese) and a “worldly asceticism” (innerweltliche Askese) of a Protestant type. The former corresponds to the classical monastic type of asceticism, which is an asceticism that leads the believer to leave the world and to devote himself to meditation, avoiding as much as possible any worldly enjoyment or pleasure. Capitalism could not form and develop with such a passive and unproductive behaviour. The second type of asceticism is as rigorous as the first but the believer stays in the world and exercises a profession, a Beruf, that is, he produces while refraining from immediate enjoyment of the fruits of his labour. At first sight it is difficult to understand the reason why the individual would choose such a way in so far as he knows perfectly well that no possibility is granted to him to have any influence on the decision of the divinity.
However, the work realized through his labour might bring another type of satisfaction to the believer: the more I perfect, develop and increase my work, the more it could function as the mirror of my state of election. If the work I undertake succeeds, this may be interpreted as the proof that my state of election is recognized by God since He is obviously helping me in my enterprise, and so the more I experience the good feeling of the divinity towards me. According to Weber the concept of “worldly asceticism” refers to this kind of ethical attitude: “the summum bonum of [this] ethics [is]: earning more and more money, combined with the strict avoidance of all spontaneous enjoyment of life” (1904-05 [1958]: 53). Franklin invites his young tradesman to adopt this ethic while reminding him expressly of one of the fundamental principles: “Beware of thinking all your own that you possess, and of living accordingly” (ibid.: 50). Weber recognizes in this “worldly asceticism” an ethical attitude ideally favourable to the development of capitalism.Weberian analyses of the relations between Protestantism and capitalism clearly include certain idealistic, exaggerated, and even simplistic elements regarding the infinite complexity of what is called “capitalism” as a political, economic, sociological, scientific and technological phenomenon. The privilege conferred on the theological concepts of Protestantism particularly creates perplexity. Could not the same type of concepts or intuitions be found in other religions or value systems? The fundamental problem of Weber is in fact the genesis, that is, the conditions of the new vision of labour in modern society, the new relationship of the modern individual with labour. The Protestant concepts are appropriate analytical instruments in order to study this problem. In modern society labour is no longer a painful effort, a constraint, an unhappy necessity, a misfortune which descends upon man and tortures him. It is even less a degrading, demeaning, disgraceful condition than in the ancient world.
From then on, labour as Beruf is conceived and lived as a calling, as an appeal originating from the divinity. It is conceived and lived as a duty, as a “categorical imperative”, to employ Kantian terminology. This “categorical” character of labour became so oppressive, so absolute in the modern world that the modern individual assimilates it as a second nature: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... In order that a manner of life so well adapted to the peculiarities of capitalism could be selected at all, that is, should come to dominate others, it had to originate somewhere, and not in isolated individuals alone, but as a way of life common to whole groups of men. (Weber 1904-05 [1958]: 54-5)
The necessity of working is settled in our unconscious, and becomes a “mass phenomenon” (ibid.: 57): each of us should work but nobody knows why and to what end. The more the ontological value of labour increases, the more the modern man lives and practices it as a natural necessity, the more individual actions are liberated from their ancient chains: all these issues give rise to further questions.