was no longer just a Catholic Church guarantee; instead
now you needed to be a
Laborer to show that
you pleased God!
Capitalism in Northern Europe evolved when the Protestant ethic influenced large numbers of people to engage in work in the secular world, developing their own enterprises and engaging in trade and the accumulation of wealth for investment.In other words, the Protestant work ethic was an important force behind the unplanned and uncoordinated mass action that influenced the development of capitalism. This idea is also known as the "Protestant Ethic thesis."
The interaction between various religious ideas and economics allowed Puritan ethics and ideas to influence the development of capitalism.
Though religious devotion is usually accompanied by a rejection of worldly affairs, including the pursuit of wealth and possessions, the Reformation profoundly affected the view of work, dignifying even the most mundane professions as adding to the common good and thus blessed by God, as much as any "sacred" calling.
The Roman Catholic Church assured salvation to individuals who accepted the church's sacraments and submitted to the clerical authority. However, the Reformation had effectively removed such assurances.
From a psychological viewpoint, the average person had difficulty adjusting to this new worldview, and only the most devout believers or "religious geniuses" within Protestantism, such as Martin Luther, were able to make this adjustment.
In the absence of such assurances from religious authority,
Protestants began to look for
other "signs" that they were saved. Since in Calvinism a lack of self-confidence was evidence of
insufficient faith and a sign of damnation,
self-confidence took the place of priestly assurance
of God's grace.
- Worldly success became one measure of that self-confidence.
- Luther made an early endorsement of Europe's emerging divisions.
- A "vocation" from God was no longer limited to the clergy or church, but applied to any occupation or trade.
However the fulfillment of the Protestant ethic was not in Lutheranism, which was too concerned with the reception of divine spirit in the soul, but in Calvinistic forms of Christianity. The trend was carried further still in Pietism. The Baptists diluted the concept of the calling relative to Calvinists, but other aspects made its congregants fertile soil for the development of capitalism - namely,
- a lack of paralyzing ascetism, the refusal to accept state office and thereby develop unpolitically, and the doctrine of control by conscience which caused rigorous honesty...
What Weber argued, in simple terms: According to the new Protestant religions,
- An individual was religiously compelled to follow a secular vocation (German: Beruf) with as much zeal as possible.
- A person living according to this world view was more likely to accumulate money.
The new religions (in particular, Calvinism and other more austere Protestant sects) effectively forbade wastefully using hard earned money and identified the purchase of -luxuries- as a sin. -Donations- to an individual's church or congregation were limited due to the rejection by certain Protestant sects of icons.
Finally, donation of money to the -poor- or to -charity- was generally frowned on as it was seen as furthering beggary. This social condition was perceived as laziness, burdening their fellow man, and an affront to God; by not working, one failed to glorify God.
The manner in which this (dilemma was resolved) Weber argued, was the (investment) of this money, which gave an extreme boost to nascent (capitalism).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Protestant_Ethic_and_the_Spirit_of_Capitalism
Max Weber's - Iron Cage
In sociology, the iron cage is a concept introduced by Max Weber to describe the increased rationalization inherent in social life, particularly in Western capitalist societies. The "iron cage" thus traps individuals in systems based purely on teleological efficiency, rational calculation and control. Weber also described the bureaucratization of social order as "the polar night of icy darkness".
The original German term is stahlhartes Gehäuse (steel-hard casing); this was translated into "iron cage", an expression made familiar to English-speakers by Talcott Parsons in his 1930 translation of Weber's The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. This choice has been questioned recently by scholars who prefer the more direct translation: "shell as hard as steel".
Weber (in Parsons' translation) wrote:
In Baxter's view the care for external goods should only lie on
the shoulders of the 'saint like a light cloak, which can be thrown
aside at any moment.' But fate decreed that the cloak should become an
iron cage.
Iron Cage of Capitalism
In his famous 1904 work on "The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism,"[5] Weber concludes by invoking an "iron cage." His meaning can best be understood by quoting the relevant paragraph:
“The Puritan wanted to work in a calling; we are forced to do so. For when asceticism was carried out of monastic cells into everyday life, and began to dominate worldly morality, it did its part in building the tremendous cosmos of the modern economic order. This order is now bound to the technical and economic conditions of machine production which to-day determine the lives of all the individuals who are born into this mechanism, not only those directly concerned with economic acquisition, with irresistible force. Perhaps it will so determine them until the last ton of fossilized coal is burnt. In Baxter’s view the care for external goods should only lie on the shoulders of the “saint like a light cloak, which can be thrown aside at any moment”. But fate decreed that the cloak should become an iron cage.”
Our modern market-dominated economic order was created by innovative, disciplined, religiously motivated economic action, says Weber. But the individual today can no longer engage in such creative action. Instead we are condemned to work for a living, often in narrowly defined specializations. And economic enterprises must continually strive to maximize profits and rationalize their production for the sake of efficiency or else fail. This is the present-day iron cage of institutionalized capitalism.
Weber presents his argument in an ironic form. Religion of a particular sort was necessary to revolutionize the economy and the world. A protestant ethic drove the reorganization of traditional economic life to become a calculating efficient system. But now such religious views are no longer needed to sustain capitalism. Moreover, the systematic efficient calculations of capitalism help propel the secularization of the world and the decline in religious belief. "The course of development," Weber argues, "involves... the bringing in of calculation into the traditional brotherhood, displacing the old religious relationship."
Iron cage of Bureaucracy
Because of these aforementioned reasons, there will be an evolution
of an iron cage, which will be a technically ordered, rigid,
dehumanized society. The iron cage is the one set of rules and
laws that we are all subjected and must adhere to. Bureaucracy
puts us in an iron cage, which limits individual human freedom and
potential instead of a "technological utopia" that should set us free.
It is the way of the institution, where we do not have a choice
anymore. Once capitalism came about, it was like a machine
that you were being pulled into without an alternative option.
