The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, and: The ProtestantEthic and the Spirit of Capitalism and Other Writings (review)

Philip S. Gorski

Social Forces, Volume 82, Number 2, December 2003, pp. 833-839 (Article)

Published by Oxford University PressDOI: 10.1353/sof.2004.0008

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Book Reviews / 833

© The University of North Carolina Press Social Forces, December 2003, 82(2):833

Book Reviews

The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism.By Max Weber, 3d ed., translated and edited by Stephen Kalberg. Roxbury, 2002.266 pp.

The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism and Other Writings.By Max Weber, translated and edited by Peter Baehr and Gordon C. Wells. Penguin,2002. 392 pp. Paper, $16.00

Reviewer: PHILIP S. GORSKI, Yale University

Nearly a century after its initial publication as a series of journal articles inthe years 1904 and 1905, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism stillremains one of the most influential and widely read works in social science.First translated into English by Talcott Parsons in 1930, Weber’s book has beenreissued by no fewer than nine publishers in at least sixteen separate editions,not including the two new editions under consideration in this review.1 Eventoday, it is one of the biggest-selling books in the field. As of this writing, theParsons translation has an Amazon.com ranking that is well ahead of those forThe Marx-Engels Reader and The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life, thehighest-ranking books by Karl Marx and Émile Durkheim. Indeed, among thesociological classics, only Democracy in America ranks higher (1,573) than TheProtestant Ethic.2

Of course, The Protestant Ethic has been intellectually influential as well ascommercially successful. Phrases like “iron cage” and “elective affinity” are apart of every sociologist’s working vocabulary, and the term Protestant work ethicis often invoked by people who have never even heard of Weber.

In these senses, the Parsons translation has been a remarkable success. Quatranslation, however, it leaves a great deal to be desired. The defects of the trans-lation are not stylistic in nature. Most readers would probably agree thatParson’s prose is actually quite elegant — a good deal more elegant than theoriginal, in fact. And therein lies the problem. For as anyone who has read theProtestant Ethic in the original can attest, Parsons took considerable libertieswith Weber’s language. These liberties have been ably catalogued and analyzed

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by Peter Ghosh.3 Some were relatively harmless, as when Parsons renderedstahlhartes Gehäuse as “iron cage” rather than the more literal — and even moreterrifying — “steel-hard shell.” It is entertaining to think about the numerouschapter headings and book titles that have been affected by this rather arbi-trary choice of words and the reasons Parsons might have had for choosing thistranslation (if, indeed, it really was a conscious choice rather than a momen-tary whim or a failure of vocabulary).4 But it would be hard to argue that muchwas really lost, except perhaps for a few additional shudders on the part ofWeber’s first-time readers.

In other cases, though, something really was lost in translation, as on thoseoccasions when Parsons rendered the term Wahlverwandschaft not as “electiveaffinity,” but as “correlation” or “relationship.”5 Weber clearly chose this un-usual term to denote a very specific type of causal relationship, one involvingan unforeseeable but consequential crossing of two chains of causation that re-sulted in a strengthening of certain “historical individuals” and the weaken-ing of others, in this instance the conjunction of Renaissance capitalism withProtestant asceticism, which gave an “ethical foundation” to capitalism andopened a new field of activity to the Christian ascetic, while weakening thepower of “economic traditionalism” and the Christian devaluation of worldlygain — or so Weber wished to argue.6 An elective affinity is something muchmore specific than a causal relationship, and something rather different froma correlation, especially in the sense that term has now come to be understood(i.e., as a statistical correlation).

In still other instances, Weber’s words are not simply watered down withvague terminology, but twisted around to fit Parsons’s own views, as when hetranslates the word Antriebe as “sanctions” rather than “drives.” This transla-tion leads the reader to understand Calvinism as a repressive force that limitsaction (which may be how Parsons himself experienced it during his upbring-ing) rather than as a dynamic force that impelled action (which is clearly howWeber understood it.)7

Nor are questionable translations of key terms the only problem with theParsons version of the Protestant Ethic. Phrases are reduced and words dropped,sometimes with a considerable loss of meaning. For example, when Weber re-fers to the Quakers as “the most consistent representatives” of the new ethos,Parsons omits this reference.8 If the Parsons translation of the Protestant Ethicoften seems easier to read than, say, the Roth and Wittich translation of Economyand Society, this is not always due to differences in the original texts, but some-times also to Parsons’s overzealous pruning of Weber’s language.

For all these reasons, the two retranslations under consideration here —one by Stephen Kalberg (Roxbury), the other by Gordon C. Wells and PeterBaehr (Penguin) — are very welcome indeed. There are a number of thornyissues that confront any would-be translator, and the two sets of translators havenavigated them rather differently. One is which edition to translate — the first

Book Reviews / 835

edition of 1904–5 or the revised edition of 1920. At first glance, the choicemight appear easy, since the 1920 edition includes additional text and footnotescontaining Weber’s responses to the various points raised by his critics duringthe previous fifteen years. For these reasons, it could be regarded as theauthoritative version of the book. No doubt, this is why Kalberg — and Parsons— preferred it. On further reflection, however, there are also some argumentsto be made for the 1904–5 version. It is less cluttered with allusions andreferences that will be obscure to the nonspecialist. And as Wells and Baehrrightly point out, it is also more tentative and less polemical in tone. Weber’sresponses to his critics were often intemperate, and some of this vitriol seepedinto the 1920 version of the Protestant Ethic. Indeed, there is an unmistakabletension between the bold and confident defense of the Protestant Ethic argumentin the 1920 version and the far more measured and qualified presentation ofit in Weber’s contemporaneous lectures on economic history, known today asGeneral Economic History. Weber has been called an “intellectual street-fighter”who took a no-holds-barred approach to his critics, and he throws plenty ofkidney punches in the revised version of the Protestant Ethic. So there are goodreasons to prefer the 1904–5 version as well, and Wells and Baehr have done agreat service to the discipline in making it available to English-language readers.

A second issue to consider is which supplementary materials to include,and in what order. In the Routledge edition of the Parsons translation — themost popular version of Protestant Ethic in recent years — the main text ispreceded by a brief introduction written by Anthony Giddens, an even briefer“translator’s preface” written by Talcott Parsons, and an “author’s preface” —written by Weber in 1920, not as a preface to Protestant Ethic, but as a prefaceto the Collected Essays on the Sociology of Religion, of which the ProtestantEthic was only the first volume. Both of the new translations include a greatdeal of additional material arranged in a rather different order (see Appendix).The Roxbury edition differs only slightly from the Routledge edition. It includesthe “Protestant Sects” essay as well as the 1920 Preface and places bothimmediately after the main text. Wells and Baehr take a more radical approach.In their volume, the Protestant Ethic proper is followed by Weber’s “ProtestantSects” essay, his replies to his critics, and the 1920 Preface in that order.Organizing the materials in this way allows the reader to follow thedevelopment of Weber’s thought and the broadening of his project from theinitial publication of the Protestant Ethic in 1904–5 to the 1920 reframing ofthe Collected Essays around the concept of “rationalization.” Wells and Baehrdo depart from this chronological schema in one regard, by appending thevoluminous notes to the 1920 edition to the corresponding parts of the 1904–5 text rather than placing them at the end of the text, a somewhat puzzlingdecision that is a bit at odds with an otherwise judicious framework.

As is their right and their duty, both editorial teams have also writtenintroductions to the text and to the translations. (Baehr and Wells also include

836 / Social Forces 82:2, December 2003

suggestions for further reading, and Kalberg a glossary of key terms.) Theirintroductions to the text are quite different in length and substance and bearsome comment. The Baehr-Wells introduction is relatively compact and focusesless on the Weber’s argument per se than on the context in which it was writtenand received and, more specifically, on the cultural and political situation ofthe old Kaisserreich, the biographical background for Weber’s intellectual views,and the different receptions of the Protestant Ethic among German and Anglo-American scholars. This introduction draws on the latest scholarship and goeswell beyond the now-tired comparisons between Marx and Weber. It will beespecially interesting to readers who are already familiar with Weber’sarguments and the controversies it unleashed.

Kalberg’s introduction, by contrast, is quite lengthy and focuses much moreon Weber’s argument. It also includes discussions of the Collected Essays andof Weber’s methodology. It provides a mini introduction, not just to theProtestant Ethic but to Weber’s entire sociology of religion and analysis ofrationalization. The one major flaw in Kalberg’s introduction, if it is one, is thatit is not just a neutral interpretation of the Protestant Ethic that seeks to putthe key issues on the table, but a spirited defense of it that implicitly respondsto recurrent criticisms of “the Weber thesis.” The problem is Kalberg sometimespresents his own elaborations and reconstructions of Weber’s arguments as ifthey were mere summaries. One example: many readers have criticized Weber’suse of Benjamin Franklin as an exemplar of the capitalist spirit and its linksto the Protestant ethic. They point out, quite rightly, that Puritanism was wellpast its apogee by Franklin’s time, and that Franklin himself was religiouslyindifferent at best. If this is so, they ask, then how can Weber plausibly arguethat Franklin’s economic ethic — or the economic ethics of other Anglo-American entrepreneurs — was shaped by ascetic Protestantism? The answer,Kalberg suggests, is to be found in “family socialization,” in the persistence ofPuritan child-rearing practices into the Enlightenment era. This is aninteresting argument, and it may even be correct. But Weber himself did notmake it. Thus, while Kalberg’s introduction provides a long and engaginginterpretation of Weber’s central arguments that students will find quitereadable, instructors should be aware of its somewhat partisan character.

The third and perhaps most important issue the translator faces is how toapproach Weber’s dense and muscular prose. Should one seek to preserve thestylistic tone and syntactical structure of the original? Or should one simplyaim for maximum clarity and readability? To do both is impossible. Generallyspeaking, Wells and Baehr have opted for the former (see Figure). In theirtranslation, Weber’s style is dense and energetic, bristling with encyclopedicknowledge and intellectual impatience; his sentences are long and convoluted,full of the qualifying clauses and brisk asides familiar to readers of Economyand Society. Reading their translation, one feels as if one is listening to Weberspeaking in English. Kalberg, by contrast, has striven mainly for clarity and

Book Reviews / 837

readability. In his translation, Weber’s style is lighter and calmer, his longsentences broken apart into bite-size pieces.

There is also the question of how to translate certain key terms that haveno obvious English equivalent. Wells and Baehr are generally conservative. Forthe most part, they stick to the established translations. (Though there areinevitably a few small misfires, as when they translate Bubkampf as “repentanceexperience” rather than “conversion struggle.”) Kalberg is a good deal bolder.His translations often differ substantially from the established ones. In somecases, these new translations are quite successful, as when he renderspsychologische Prämien as “psychological rewards.” In others, however, the newtranslation does not represent a major improvement, as when he rendersLebensführung as “organization of life” rather than (the more literal) “life-conduct,” and in a few others, Kalberg misfires altogether, as when he translatesGesinnung as “frame.” But all translations are imperfect by nature, and both ofthese new translations are a considerable improvement over Parsons’s.

Having waded through this review, the reader will no doubt want arecommendation about which volume to choose. Each volume has its virtuesand the choice will depend a great deal on the audience. For a graduate seminaror an advanced undergraduate class, composed of students who already havesome prior knowledge of Weber, I would recommend the Wells-Baehr version,since it allows one to follow the first round of the Protestant Ethic controversyand the development of Weber’s thinking and thereby deepen one’sunderstanding of the argument and the issues surrounding it. On the otherhand, someone teaching an undergraduate lecture class, composed of studentsencountering Weber for the first time, might want to use the Kalberg versionbecause of the more extensive treatment of the the Protestant Ethic argumentin the introduction and because the text is much more heavily processed andwill be a good deal easier for novice undergraduates to digest. For one’s personallibrary, though, I would urge readers to buy both translations — and to dispatchtheir copies of the Parsons translation to the dustbin of history, where it nowbelongs.

Notes

1. Based on a search of WorldCat, which turned up the following publishers and editions,listed by date of first edition: Unwin (1930, 1976, 1985), University of Chicago Bookstore(1930, 1946), Scribners (1948, 1958, 1960), Routledge (1976, 1992), Prentice-Hall (1976),P. Smith (1988), HarperCollins (1991), Roxbury (1996, 1998).

2. As of September 8, 2003 the rankings for Weber, Marx, and Durkheim are 2,907, 6,000,and 47,847, respectively. The ranking for Tocqueville is 1,573. These rankings refer to:Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, translated by Talcott Parsons(Routledge 1992); Richard C. Tuck, editor and translator, The Marx-Engels Reader(Norton 1978); Emile Durkheim, The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life, translated

838 / Social Forces 82:2, December 2003

by Karen Fields (Free Press 1995), and Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, editedby Richard D. Heffner (Signet).

3. Peter Ghosh, “Some Problems with Talcott Parsons’ Version of The Protestant Ethic,”Archives européennes de sociologie 35 (1994):104-23.

4. For further details and a somewhat different opinion, see Peter Baehr, “The ‘Iron Cage’and the ‘Shell As Hard As Steel’: Parsons, Weber, and the stahlhartes Gehäuse Metaphorin The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism,” History and Theory 40 (May 2001):153-69.

5. As on Weber, Protestant Ethic, 1992 pp. 91-2. For further discussion and additionalexamples see Ghosh, “Parsons and Weber,” pp. 105-6 and n. 7.

6. Or such at least is the interpretation suggested to me both by the use of this term inchemistry and by the plot-line of Goethe’s novel of the same name.

7. Ghosh, “Parsons and Weber,” p. 107.

8. Ghosh, “Parsons and Weber,” n. 3.

APPENDIX: Sample Translations

1. Opening Paragraph

a. German original (GARS vol. 1, p. 1):

Ein Blick in die Berufsstatistik eines konfessionell gemischten Landes pflegt mitauffallender Häufigkeit eine Erscheinung zu zeigen, welche mehrfach in derkatholischen Presse und Literatur und auf den Katholikentagen Deutschlandslebhaft erörtert worden ist: den ganz vorwiegend protestantischen Charakter desKapitalbesitzes und Unternehmertums sowohl, wie der oberen gelernten Schichtender Arbeiterschaft, namentlich aber des höheren technisch oder kaufmännischvorgebildeten Personals der modernen Unternehmungen.

b. Parsons translation (p. 3)

A glance at the occupational statistics of any country of mixed religious compo-sition brings to light with remarkable frequency a situation which has several timesprovoked discussion in the Catholic press and literature, and in Catholic con-gresses in Germany, namely, the fact that business leaders and owners of capital,as well as the higher grades of skilled labour, and even more the higher techni-cally and commercially trained personnel of modern enterprises, are overwhelm-ingly Protestant.

c. Baehr and Wells translation (p. 1)

With relatively few variations and exceptions, the occupational statistics of adenominationally mixed region reveals a phenomenon which in recent years hasfrequently been the subject of lively debate in the Catholic Press, in Catholicliterature, and at Catholic conventions: business leaders and owners of capital, aswell as the skilled higher strata of the labor force, and especially the highertechnical or commercially trained staff of modern enterprises tend to bepredominantly Protestant.

Book Reviews / 839APPENDIX: Sample Translations (Continued)

d. Kalberg translation (p. 3)

A glance at the occupational statistics for any country in which several religions coexistis revealing. They indicate that people who own capital, employers, more highly educatedskilled workers, and more highly trained technical or business personnel in modern

companies tend to be, with striking frequency, overwhelmingly Protestant.

2. “Iron Cage”

a. German original (GARS vol. 1, p. 203)

Nur wie “ein dünner Mantel, den man jederzeit abwerfen könnte,” sollte nach BaxtersAnsicht die Sorge um die äu�eren Güter um die Schulter seiner Heiligen liegen. Aberaus dem Mantel lie� das Verhängnis ein stahlhartes Gehäuse werden. Indem die Askesedie Welt umzubauen und in der Welt sich auszuwirken unternahm, gewannen die äu�erenGüter dieser Welt zunehmende und schlie�lich unentrinnbare Macht über den Menschen,wie niemals zuvor in der Geschichte. Heute ist ihr Geist — ob endgültig, wer wei� es? —

aus diesem Gehäuse entwichen.

b. Parsons translation (p. 123)

In Baxter’s view the care for external goods should only lie on the shoulders of the “saintlike a light cloak, which can be thrown aside at any moment.” But fate decreed that thecloak should become an iron cage. Since asceticism undertook to remodel the world andto work out its ideals in the world, material goods have gained an increasing and finallyinexorable power over the lives of men as at no previous period in history. To-day thespirit of religious asceticism — whether finally, who knows? — has escaped from the

cage.

c. Baehr and Wells translation (p. 121)

In Baxter’s view, concern for outward possessions should sit lightly on the shoulders ofhis saints “like a thin cloak which can be thrown off at any time.” But fate decreed thatthe cloak should become a shell as hard as steel. As asceticism began to change the worldand endeavored to exercise its influence over it, the outwards goods of this world gainedincreasing and finally inescapable power over men, as never before in history. Today its

spirit has fled this from this shell — whether for all time, who knows?

d. Kalberg translation (p. 123)

According to Baxter, the concern for material goods should lie upon the shoulders ofhis saints like a “lightweight coat that could be thrown off at any time.” Yet fate alloweda steel-hard casing to be forged from this coat. To the extent that asceticism attemptedto transform and influence the world, the world’s material goods acquired an increasingand, in the end, inescapable power over people — as never before in history. Today the

spirit of asceticism has fled from this casing, whether with finality, who knows?