The Beloved Myth: Protestantism and the Rise of Industrial Capitalism in Nineteenth- Century Europe Author(s): Jacques Delacroix and François Nielsen Source: Social Forces, Vol. 80, No. 2 (Dec., 2001), pp. 509-553 Published by: Oxford University Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2675588 Accessed: 26-09-2016 13:37 UTC JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at http://about.jstor.org/terms Oxford University Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Social Forces This content downloaded from 137.224.11.139 on Mon, 26 Sep 2016 13:37:17 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms The Beloved Myth: Protestantism and the Rise of Industrial Capitalism in Nineteenth-Century Europe JACQUES DELACROIX, Santa Clara University FRANCoIs NIELSEN, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Abstract We investigate the thesis widely credited to Max Weber that Protestantism contributed to the rise of industrial capitalism by estimating the associations between the percentage of Protestants and the development of industrial capitalism in European countries in the mid- to late nineteenth century. Development is measured usingfive sets of variables, including measures of wealth and savings, the founding date of the principal stock exchange, extension of the railroads network, distribution of the male laborforce in agriculture and in industry, and infant mortality. On the basis of this evidence, there is little empirical supportfor what we call the "Common Interpretation" of Weber's The Protestant Ethic, namely the idea that the strength of Protestantism in a country was associated with the early development of industrial capitalism. The origin of the Common Interpretation and its popular success are probably derived largelyfrom selected anecdotal evidence fortified, through retrospective imputation, by the perceived well-being of contemporary Protestant countries. Max Weber's thesis in The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1958) on the relationship between Protestant religious ethic and economic outcomes has been the object of endless exegesis and multiple re-interpretations (George & * This article was presented at the annual meeting of the Southern Sociological Society in New Orleans, Louisiana, in April 1997. Timothy Stearns played a central role - a long time ago - in the early data gathering and conceptual formulation of this research, initiated with a small grantfrom Indiana University. We are grateful to Martin Calkins S.J., Larry Iannacone, Richard Lachmann, Charles Ragin, and several anonymous reviewers for useful advice. We are especially indebted to Rodney Stark for providing encouragement at a crucial juncture. Please direct correspondence to Jacques Delacroix, Leavey School of Business, Santa Clara University, 500 El Camino Real, Santa Clara, CA 95053. E-mail: [email protected] [email protected]. ? The University of North Carolina Press Social Forces, December 2001, 80(2):509-553 This content downloaded from 137.224.11.139 on Mon, 26 Sep 2016 13:37:17 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 510 / Social Forces 80:2, December 2001 George 1961; Glock & Hammond 1973; Green 1959; Hagen 1962; Hudson 1961; Lowy 1989; Luthy 1970; MacKinnon 1994; McClelland 1961; Nelson 1969,1973; Swanson 1967; Trevor-Roper 1968; Troeltsch 1958; Warner 1970; Zaret 1992). This exegesis sometimes takes exotic turns - disputes by modern-day scholars with the ghosts of Marx, Sombart, and Weber (e.g., Fishman 1989); a contrario demonstrations of the existence of the Protestant ethic among such dubious prospects as the Cajuns of Louisiana (Gramling, Forsyth & Mooney 1987); and even attacks on Weber's grasp of Protestantism based on esoteric theological grounds (MacKinnon 1988; Tawney [ 1922] 1962). In other words, Weber's thesis has been served with every kind of sauce. The task of discovering what Weber really meant may be hopeless for several reasons: the subtlety of his argumentation, his sometimes idiosyncratic expository style (Fischoff 1968; MacKinnon 1988), obscurities resulting from Talcott Parsons' translation, the complex relationships between this comparatively self-contained essay and the rest of Weber's massive and junglelike work on religion (see Talcott Parsons' preface to Weber 1958), and, last but not least, the quasi-sacred status that Weber's opus in general and Protestant Ethic in particular have acquired in the contemporary social sciences. Despite the lack of resolution on its deeper issues of meaning, the main thesis in Protestant Ethic, in a simplified form, maintains a high level of currency in American academic discourse while it also continues to influence significantly the mainstream culture of English-speaking countries. Surprisingly, this strong influence has been and continues to be exercised without benefit of overwhelming, or even of moderately strong, empirical evidence for the postulated relationship between Protestantism and the development of industrial capitalism. In this paper, we deliberately eschew further exegesis of Protestant Ethic. We do not propose a new "true" rendition of Max Weber's thinking. We argue instead that, irrespective of what Max Weber may have himself believed or written, there is a dominant interpretation of Protestant Ethic that has taken a life of its own. This is the belief that the rise of industrial capitalism was facilitated in predominantly Protestant countries and occurred earlier there as a consequence. We call this dominant view the Common Interpretation; its pervasive influence on social commentary and academic culture is sketched here. Using simple graphical displays and bivariate measures of association with European countries as units of analysis, we examine the credibility of the Common Interpretation by estimating the associations between Protestantism and the development of industrial capitalism, as expressed by five sets of indicators. Our results suggest that the Common Interpretation, despite its widespread acceptance, does not have much factual validity. We propose that the Common Interpretation of Weber's thesis, and its popular appeal, may be based on an illusion based on the strong relationships between certain aspects of industrial capitalist development and Protestantism that This content downloaded from 137.224.11.139 on Mon, 26 Sep 2016 13:37:17 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms Protestantism and Industrial Capitalism / 511 became established at the time of Weber's writing and afterward, but did not hold earlier, as the causal argument inherent in the Common Interpretation requires. The Common Interpretation A FORMULATION OF THE COMMON INTERPRETATION For purposes of empirical testing, we would like to derive a summary formulation of the Common Interpretation combining three features: It has empirically test- able implications; it represents a fair rendition of the thinking of real people (in other words, it is not a straw man); and it is intelligent and thus avoids obvious inconsistencies that are easy targets for attack. Versions of the Common Interpre- tation fulfilling these desiderata can be found in such contemporary sociological writings as Goldstone (1987) or Martinelli and Smelser (1990), among others. Rather than assembling a composite from several sources, we use as our summary formulation a moderate version of Weber's thesis that is also influential, as it is contained in a popular macrosociology textbook (Lenski, Nolan & Lenski 1995:244-45).' All quoted passages below are from this source. The Common Interpretation decomposes the relationship between the Protestant religious ethic and the rise of industrial capitalism into three steps. 1. The Protestant Reformation fostered new attitudes. " [A] number of the new Protestant doctrines substantially altered the thinking of many members of agrarian societies [in three areas]." The new Protestant doctrines: a. "[T] aught that work is an important form of service to God" and "supported the efforts of merchants and craftsmen to upgrade their status," challenging "both the medieval Catholic view of work as a punishment for sin and the traditional aristocratic view of work as degrading and beneath the dignity of a gentleman." b. "[U]ndermined fatalism and trust in magic and, in the long run, stimulated the spread of rationalism." c. "[E] mphasized the value of denying the pleasures of this world and living frugally, a practice that enabled those who became economically successful to accumulate capital." 2. The new attitudes (the "Protestant ethic") affected behaviors. "To the extent that people followed these teachings, they developed a new outlook on life: they worked harder, acted more rationally, and lived more thriftily." 3. The new attitudes and behaviorsfavored economic development and contributed to the Industrial Revolution. This content downloaded from 137.224.11.139 on Mon, 26 Sep 2016 13:37:17 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 512 / Social Forces 80:2, December 2001 " [T] he Reformation remolded the attitudes, beliefs, and values of countless people in ways that undermined the traditional agrarian