While in the traditionalist attitude work was a burden or a means to keep people alive in the spirit of capitalism work becomes sacralized as duty to a vocation: “this peculiar idea of a duty to have a vocational calling, so familiar to us today but actually not at all self-evident, is the idea that is characteristic of the”social ethic" of modern capitalist culture" (p. 73). The other aspect of the spirit of capitalism which breaks with traditionalism is the attitude towards work. In the traditional ethic the accumulation of riches is a means to an end, which is the hedonistic enjoyment of those riches. It is in this respect that the ethic of modern capitalism constitutes an exact reversal of the traditional economic ethic. Weber notes that the key defining feature of the ethic exemplified in Franklyn’s maxims is that the acquisition of money comes to be defined as the supreme good, and as an end in itself here “the acquisition of money, takes place here simultaneously with the strictest avoidance of all spontaneous enjoyment of it” and “the pursuit of riches is fully stripped of all pleasurable, and surely hedonistic, aspects” (p. 72). What makes modern capitalism unique and what makes traditional sorts of capitalism distinct is that “just that peculiar ethic was missing in all these cases” (p. 72). This is the spirit of modern capitalism which must be differentiated from other forms of historically existing capitalisms, which retained a traditionalistic cast. Weber notes that the spirit of capitalism can be thought of as “an ethically-oriented maxim for the organization of life” (p. 71). Here saving money and appearing credit worthy are not just expedient things to do they are the right thing to do: they are a duty. Weber notes that the main difference between Franklyn’s maxims and the idea of “greed” is the obvious moral content of the maxims. Weber then goes on to provide an example of the Spirit of Capitalism in the form of Benjamin Franklyn’s maxims. The reason for this is that the mentality of capitalism is a historically unique object which cannot be defined in the classical manner.
Instead its full definition must be provided piece by piece and can only come at the end of the investigation. Weber begins by noting that the spirit of capitalism cannot be defined before-hand. 7.1 What is the Mentality of Capitalism?.6.3.1 Key features of rational capitalism.6.3 The Uniqueness of Rational Capitalism.6.2.5 Civil service, politics and rational bureaucracy.6.2.4 Literature and the production of knowledge.5.1 Why do people do the things they do?.5 Weber: The Different Roads to Salvation.4.4 Discussion Questions on Commodity Fetishism.
4 Marx: Wage, Labor, Capital, Commodities.3.1 The Bourgeoisie as a Revolutionary Class.3 Marx: The Communist Manifesto, or, From feudalism to capitalism.2.5 Let us look into the future…all the way to the year 2000.2.4.2 The base/superstructure conflict-model of historical change.2.4 An outline of Marx’s Historical Model.
1.4.1 Self-estrangement and estrangement form others.1.3.1 Alienation From the Product of Labor.1 Marx: Estrangement and the Labor Process.