At 07:50 AM 9/29/99 -0700, Jim Devine wrote: > >yours truly) have made several times. If one believes in the Weberian >"Protestantism caused capitalism" theory (which I do not), the Catholics Jim, I think that is a rather distorted view of Weber's theory, which is much more subtle. It deals with the issue of the relationship between political/economic power and cultural institutions. Rather than saying that cultural instituions (religions, value systems) cause certain economic development (like capitalism), Weber treats them as instruments of that development. That is, social groups or classes that gain economic or political power try to legitimate their power by using cultural institutions as instruments to that end. That instrumentality, in turn, depends on "elective affinity" that is, certain values, beliefs, or behaviors embedded in a particular cultural institution that are particularly useful for the interests of the power group in question. Thus, the usefulness of protestantism over catholicism was differences in work ethic - while catholicism stressed the concern with wordly affairs should be limited to the level necessary to surivive, protestantism anxiety and the need to 'prove' oneself in the material world. That made protestant ethic useful to instill behavioral traits that were desirable from a point of view of those profited of the labor of others. That is, there was and elective affinity between protestant "arbeit macht frei" ethics and capitalist insterests which explains the popularity of protestantism among nascent capitalists. In essence I interpret Weber's view of cultural institutions as an extnsion of Marx's idea of linking the class interest of those who control the means of material production to the regulation and distribution of the production of ideas. wojtek
