Max Weber started by citing circumstances that manifested Western civilization as the source of various developments with significant value and recognition as valid today. Some of these developments were the codification of books, rational jurisprudence, harmonious music, perspective in art, rise of a modern state with written constitution, laws and administration, among other things that had to do with astronomy, architecture, view of history, literature, etc. Included in these developments was the "most fateful force in our modern life, capitalism." He asserted that capitalism is not in any way identical with unlimited greed for gain; rather it is identical with continuous renewal of profit through continuous capitalistic enterprise. The economic action through capitalistic undertakings of continuous operations of an enterprise was differentiated from the speculative acquisition of profit from wars, piracy, exploitation of subjects, election, etc. The former was being the legal and systematic pursuit of profit. There were other things that brought about this Western capitalism such as the organization of free labor, the separation of business from the household, rational bookkeeping, the notion of personal property, rational structures of law and administration by trained officials or bureaucracy, and the utilization of scientific knowledge in modern science particularly mathematics.
Then the question as to why in the West did this exacting capitalism emerge remains unsettled to a large extent. For example, the opening of a public library, the offering of scholarships, the introduction of new
business courses in a local university, the passage of a resolution increasing the subsidy for education would not greatly explain satisfactorily the growing number of entrepreneurs in a certain town. There must be the fundamental shift in the disposition of the town folks toward business engagements to be able to explain the phenomenon and this new conduct. And Weber recognized that the magical and religious forces and the ethical ideas of duty had been the most essential influences on conduct of men/women, on the "development of economic spirit or ethos of economic system." With this, the spirit of capitalism was associated with the "rational ethics of ascetic Protestantism especially Calvinism."
Certain religious ideas such as proficiency in a calling as work, expression of virtues of honesty, frugality, punctuality, and industry, avoidance of life's pleasures, and gaining wealth as a sign of an election of the saved were informing this ethic of capitalistic culture. Weber identified traditionalism in both the laborers and entrepreneur as anti-spirit of capitalism. Traditional laborers were those of pre-capitalistic labor that was interested in earning the usual rate no matter how attractive the opportunity to earn more. The employer's wish of efficiency and high productivity by means of increased labor rate went to naught in the arms of traditional laborers. As compared with capitalistic labor, workers were responsible and released from counting the rates and income with maximum comfort and minimum effort. In this case, labor is performed as a calling. However, the traditional entrepreneurs, on one hand, were concerned with the satisfaction of needs, that is acquisition of goods necessary to meet the needs. Capitalistic entrepreneurs on the other hand acquired goods and profit untied by the limits set by needs. They sought to gain profit rationally and systematically. Traditionalism persisted for a while but the process of rationalization of areas of life destroyed it. Some features of modern economic life were the extended the productivity of labor, labor for a rational organization providing service and goods for humanity, calculated future, and direction with foresight.
While Weber's capitalism was seen as a response to Marx's analysis of capitalism and both were interested in discovering the historical causal relationship that had resulted to the current state of modern society, he however refused to consider that the materialistic view could explain every aspect of social phenomenon. In Weber's view, ideas especially religious ideas were critical aspects of action. Protestant ethic as an idea system was linked with another system of ideas, the spirit of capitalism. But he failed to link the rational action with this idea system.
Unlike Marx andDurkheim who are both optimistic in the transition to modernity, Weber rejects the Enlightenment's view of evolutionary progress and happiness. Instead, he projects a highly rational and bureaucratically organized social order, an 'iron cage' in which people are trapped. Sadly, we are supposed to be liberated by reason, Weber saw the opposite.
