Lesson One - Society and Social Interaction

Making Connections: Sociological Research

The Protestant Work Ethic

In a series of essays in 1904, Weber presented the idea of the Protestant work ethic, a new attitude toward work based on the Calvinist principle of predestination. In the 16th century, Europe was shaken by the Protestant Revolution. Religious leaders such as Martin Luther and John Calvin argued against the Catholic Church’s belief in salvation through obedience. While Catholicism, in principle at least, emphasized nonmaterialistic values—the importance of poverty, humility, chastity, and performance of good deeds—as a gateway to heaven, the new Protestant sects began to emphasize outward displays of hard work and self-discipline to “prove oneself” before God. The idea that one must “work hard in one’s calling” combined the materialist value of work (rewarded by fortune and standing in the community), with the spiritual value of attaining salvation.

John Calvin in particular popularized the Christian concept of predestination, the idea that all events—including salvation—have already been decided by God. Because followers were never sure whether they had been chosen to enter Heaven or Hell, they looked for signs in their everyday lives. People lived on a kind of permanent ethical probation. If a person was hard-working and successful, he or she was likely to be one of the chosen. If a person was lazy or simply indifferent, he or she was likely to be one of the damned.

Weber argued that this ethic provided the basis for a rationalized approach to life: “rational conduct on the basis of the idea of the calling” (Weber 1904). It encouraged people to work hard in a disciplined, methodical way for personal gain. Emphasis was placed on proving one’s state of inner grace to God and on proving one’s state of “election” to the wider community. “The God of Calvinism demanded of his believers not single good works, but a life of good works united into a unified system” (Weber 1904).

The irrational component of this, however, was that the spiritual goal of attaining salvation was gradually forgotten as the Protestant ethic was absorbed into the way of life of capitalism, and all that was left was the compulsion to work for work’s sake. As Weber famously put it at the end of The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, “The Puritan wanted to work in a calling; we are forced to do so,” (Weber 1904 ).