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Is It Really the Protestant Work Ethic?
Why are the United States, England, and northern Europe rich while southern and eastern Europe poor? You will hear many answers, and a popular one cribs from Max Weber — Protestantism. I am a Protestant myself, so one might think that I should like this answer, but as a historian, I believe in studying history to learn from it, not merely have my own biases confirmed. And frankly, I don’t really like this answer.
The argument is that Protestants — by which are normally meant Calvinist lineages, not Lutherans — have several beliefs that encourage hard work, living modestly, and investing. The first is the doctrine of predestination and the elect. At the beginning of the world, God elected who would be saved. One can never know whether is in the elect, but material success was a strong suggestion of it. Thus, financial prudence was encouraged. Second, the iconoclastic tendencies meant that churches did not collect funds from their parishioners for elaborate and ornate decoration, leaving more money in the hands of the people. Going along with that point, virtually every form of wasteful spending — luxurious clothes, food, furniture, entertainments, gambling — was condemned as sinful. Finally, charity to the poor was kept extremely minimal in honor of Paul’s statement that those who will not work will not eat. All this, according to Weber, added up to a society that generated wealth and had nothing to spend it on except more capitalistic investment, and these societal elements continued to encourage wealth creation even as the Calvinist denominations shrunk in favor of Methodists and Baptists who didn’t share the inciting doctrines.
Well, allow me H.L. Mencken: “Explanations exist; they have existed for all time; there is always a well-known solution to every human problem — neat, plausible, and wrong.” Frankly, the “Calvinism makes people rich” theory strikes me as being one of those explanations, because it ignores so many other factors that distinguish Protestant Europe from Catholic and Orthodox Europe.
Let’s start with the most obvious: geography. Being in different locations with different access to seaports, prevailing winds, trade routes, and natural resources like crops, fishing, wood, stone, and ore — of course the people of the British Isles, Scandinavia, and northern Germany are going to have different levels of wealth from those of Portugal, Spain, France, Italy, Austria, and Poland, who in turn are going to have different levels of wealth from Russia, Slovakia, Hungary, and Romania. And not only do the different Christian denomination countries have different levels of wealth, they’ve changed quite dramatically relative to each other. Italy was in an excellent spot to take advantage of the winds and currents on the Mediterranean when most European trade came through Constantinople and so was rich while England was poor; England was in an excellent spot to take advantage of the trade winds and currents going to the Americas and so was rich while Italy was poor.
What about demographic history? Catholic countries were settled by Celts and Romans who preferred large towns and cities; Protestant ones by Germans and their close cousins Scandinavians who preferred to be more independent and isolated. Perhaps what we see is an ancestral preference for liberty that reveals itself in both religious and economic independence, or a preference for more democratic structures. Iceland’s Parliament, after all, is the oldest in the world, with England’s not that much younger, while countries like Ireland, Spain, and Italy have had their current representative democratic governments for less than a century.
Closely related, we have political history. The Reformation occurred as much because the religious leaders had political patrons willing to support them, whether Martin Luther with the Elector of Saxony or John Calvin with the Elector of the Palatinate, as its novel teachings (see Jan Hus for what happened when one taught against the Catholic Church without political patronage). Perhaps the correlation isn’t that Calvinism makes for more successful people but rather than a king or noble willing to defy the Catholic Church also made better political choices to encourage his people to become wealthier.
Or it could be even more random than that — perhaps France, Spain, and Austria just crapped out on their rulers while England, Sweden, and Prussia/Germany lucked out. My historical imagination can’t quite imagine Charles V of Spain/Austria or Louis XIV of France becoming less interested in wars of succession and glittering palaces and more interested in capital investment and business-friendly laws if only they had embraced the TULIP and denied the Real Presence during the Eucharist, after all.
Yes, the Reformation is now half a millennium old, and life in traditionally Protestant countries is wealthier than that in traditionally Catholic ones. In trying to establish a denomination’s effects on economic wealth, however, we cannot ignore the multitude of complicating factors that go into creating a wealthy country, and we certainly don’t have the ability to run a properly scientific experiment to isolate the variables. Let’s not embrace the neat, plausible, and possibly wrong theory just because it tickles our prejudices.
That being said … does anyone know of a critique of Weber’s theory that has some hard data attached to the possibilities I’ve thrown out?
Published in History
Ojibwe culture developed in regions of North America further north than others of the Algonquian language groups. They tended to have less organized and less hierarchical cultures than those further south, not that any of them were very hierarchical. But because of the growing season, they relied less on agriculture and the bands would break up into smaller groups for the winter hunts.
None of these cultures placed much value on capital accumulation; rather they used any wealth that was accumulated to help out their relatives. When the Miami (another Algonquian group) further south, who were a bit less egalitarian and did have more of a tradition of powerful chiefs, were being displaced by the European-Americans, a few of the leaders became very wealthy. But each successive generation lived in poorer homes, having given away much of its wealth to help out family members, and property was often lost,eventually, due to non-payment of taxes and such things.
The point is, cultural values that placed a high priority on using wealth to help out with the immediate needs of family members were very persistent, and made it very difficult for Miami people to do well in the capitalist society in which they found themselves.
You might argue that these cultural values themselves were determined in large part by the environment in which the Algonquian-speaking groups once lived, but they hung on for a long time even when the “environment” changed, and probably persist today, even though the Miami people who resisted deportation and stayed in Indiana are well integrated into the Euro-American societies around them.
It’s complicated. I’m suspicious of simple explanations. Simple explanations sometimes have some explanatory value, but they don’t seem to apply broadly.
The Danelaw in England did a great job of breaking down local barriers to commerce. France was split into many tiny units each with its own set of taxes, tariffs, etc. That had a big effect on early industrial revolution development.
I would really like to hear his evidence, because at the time of the Reformation, Europe actually had less land under cultivation than had been two centuries before, due to the population losses and then population stagnation caused by the Black Death. In fact, it wasn’t until the 1100s or 1200s that Europe had as much land under cultivation as had been during Roman times due to slow population growth, and the pre-plague population high wasn’t exceeded until the 1700s.
Granted, but here we run into the problem of legacies from earlier times. One can make a decent argument that the countries which became Protestant were already less centralized, less controlled, and less dogmatic before the Reformation came along. After all, the Hapsbergs were never forced to sign a Magna Carta, as just one example.
Increased crop yields…
Isn’t Austria actually quite wealthy on a per capita basis? Doesn’t that falsify the Weber theory? What about Japan? Ireland also is doing quite well all things considered. Also is Scotland really that wealthy? What about Wales? Norway was poor until they struck oil, weren’t they? How do you explain Switzerland which is 50/50 religiously speaking (isn’t it?). Also it doesn’t seem to me that France is really all that much worse off economically than Germany or England.
So did growing season length change significantly between 1400 and 1700 to make Dutch merchants more interested in delayed gratification than their Italian counterparts who had been getting rich off of Mediterranean trade routes for millennia?
I’m not saying things like the ease of growing crops can’t have effects on culture — Herodotus was making that point in comparing industrious Greeks to indolent Egyptians 2500 years ago. But it cannot explain massive changes in the wealth of cultures relative to each other unless we also posit massive changes in climate or agricultural knowledge.
Someone did an analysis of why the Spinning Jenny was accepted much more rapidly in Britain than in France. He found that it could be explained in terms of two primary factors: labor costs, and interest rates. If you’re paying your spinsters $X per hour, and can borrow money at 6%, purchase of a Jenny is going to look a lot less attractive than if you’re paying them $2X per hour but can get money for 3%.
Even though correlation isn’t always causation, it strikes me as no mistake that penury lived in the shadow of the Catholic Church – and there were Habsburgs everywhere, even in places where Protestantism caught on.
It’s also no mistake that the nations which took on Protestantism were geographically remote from Rome.
To the contrary, small changes can be at play, particularly once trade gets involved, but also as things compound generation-to-generation. What’s the difference in result between 2% and 2.2% growth compounded over 500 years.
I think a willingness to suffer clearly correlates with poverty.
Maybe, but it probably correlates with things that make a society successful as well, such as military service, and being a good soldier.
My grandparents moved from Ireland to America at the turn of the last century; during their childhoods in Ireland in the very beginning of the 1900’s, they were told by their parents to never marry anyone in the next village over-the only decent people in the world were in their village, or so the thinking seemed to go. The xenophobia was unreal, and like many others, my grandparents escaped it as soon as they could: they were very clear with their own children that they did not agree with the xenophobia exhibited by their parents. In other words, they rebelled.
Not surprisingly, at least one of their children ended up rebelling against them, but for a very good reason: my Grandfather’s hatred of the English was such that he didn’t want America getting involved in WWII. My father spent his teenage years arguing with his father about politics, and then enlisted to fight in WWII against his father’s wishes. His father was livid.
I wonder if some cultures foster an environment where children might be more likely to question their parents’ ideas, and maybe this has something to do with it? Obviously, questioning tradition can be a very mixed bag, but sometimes it is the only way to break out of a failing system. Definitely not claiming that Irish culture does this-I don’t know-but I see it in my own family.
So Greek colonies like Marsailles and Naples were fabulously rich as compared to London for over 2000 years when the industriousness created by the English climate not only caught up but geometrically exceeded them about 200 years ago?
Except the claim was apparently that Europeans needed until 1500 to clear the forests sufficiently. (Though I certainly understand if this was a bad paraphrase from memory; I do that myself far more than I’d like to admit.) Aerial photography and archeology show us that European pre industrial acres under cultivation reached its height 200 years earlier, and that until the 1700s expanding farming acres meant reclaiming abandoned farmland, not clearing virgin forest or draining virgin wetlands.
Well, Catholics have an easy response: “What profit a man if he gain the whole world but lose his soul?” Protestants can use it as a selling point: “We make your life better for today and eternity!”
Personally, as I don’t believe Weber is correct, I’d like us to learn better that correlation is not causation, that history is far too complex to be reduced to a single variable, and that we should be far more aware of the limits of our knowledge. Protestants should be more humble about the role their choice of church plays in their wealth, and Catholics should be less defensive about how fostering wealth does not require turning away from the church.
Changes in attitudes and laws about usury, the gold Spain brought from the Americas, development of finance in Holland and Britain including insurance were all key to being richer and using profits profitably, i.e. not just fighting wars as Spain had done. This in turn required the building of new institutions, e.g. stock market, central banks and ministries of finance. All of this preceded the industrial revolution. Yet neither Holland nor England was entirely a Protestant country. Britain’s military couldn’t function without Catholics. It was a matter of how Spain vs. Britain/Holland made their money. The only part that could be ascribed to religion were usury laws.
Ooooh! Ooooh!
[waves hand]
And unlike Chef, you probably know about the Germanic god, not the Warcraft titan.
What is it with the troll tactics? How about pointing out something you disagree with about an actual assertion I made rather than going full troll and mischaracterizing my mention of some relevant factor or consideration as an assertion that that single factor explains everything, everywhere, every time.
In your attempt at an example, Marseilles and Naples were presumably trading centers, relatively prosperous compared to surrounding areas. For millennia, London was relatively isolated trade-wise. Global shipping made a big difference. But another big difference relates to what happened outside London vs. outside Marseilles or Naples. An industrial revolution occurred throughout Great Britain. The Brits had a culture that put them in a better position to exploit advances in technology.
Or the swimsuit company.
As Megan McArdle pointed out in this excellent lecture, the same dynamic impedes capital formation among the poor today:
All families rely on reciprocal altruism, and that’s a good thing: reciprocal altruism within the family keeps a lot of folks off the public dole. On the other hand, when reciprocal altruism wipes out your wealth, you end up on the public dole.
Fixed it for ya.
The 9700 year history of Eurasia from the development of agriculture up until the Industrial Revolution belies the theory that those people who live at higher latitudes are more prosperous, more industrious, or more successful on the battlefield, even. Whether you want to talk about empires based in Rome, Greece, Constantinople, Persia, or China, they’re all on the latitudes of southern Europe. (which are actually about that of Chicago, so it’s not like they’re all that far south, anyway.) Yes, Marseilles had a better location on the trade routes than London, but it also was surrounded by some of the best cropland in Europe that also made it rich.
If being further north had beneficial effects on northern European cultures, it was because the Gulf stream sent sailing ships from the Americas there, and the weather was so miserable that people were primed to sail south as soon as there were non – monopolized trade routes to exploit.
Goldberg dedicates a chapter to various alternative explanations including protestantism. It’s a key chapter in the “suicide of the west”. Protestantism for a variety of complex notions played some role as did a variety of other accidents including geography.
This is a combination of strawman argument and making my point. The Brits and other northern Europeans were ultimately in a better cultural position to exploit the industrial revolution (however it came).
The reference to Marseilles being surrounded by the best cropland in Europe is again confirming of my points that having bad cropland created pressure that forces the culture to compensate. For many, many, generations they may still be poorer than those with the good cropland. But if they survive, it will likely be because they have developed cultural features that allow them to overcome those disadvantages. Those cultural features alone may help them to better exploit the industrial age. But with trade, other factors come into play. Relative to those with good cropland, they will have a comparative advantage in industrial activity. Initially, that may not make them wealthy, but in the long term it does because there is more of an upside to industry than agriculture (particularly relative to established agriculture).
Thanks for the link. One thing McArdle didn’t explain in her lecture was how it’s so difficult for some people to transition away from systems of social capital, while the Aché made the transition from hunter-gatherers to [prohibited word] farmers in ten years. I would like to have learned more about the latter.
The history of Northern Europe until then can be summarized as “population grows too large so they go invade the south for a while”. Mostly they took over the cushy lands held by the previous wave of northern invaders who had gotten lazy.
Jim – an area can be so bleak that no amount of hard work and foresight can make you successful.
According to Guns, Germs, and Steel the answer would be that the northern climes did not have the same useful domesticable food crops and animals to make permanent settlements viable. It took time for the northern areas to import and adapt domesticated crops giving the areas that had good candidates for domestication to start with a big head start, followed by regions that the domesticated crops were easy to adapt to (similar climates, growing seasons, soil, etc.).
At which point they learn how to farm more productively, live more densely, and take advantage of an organized society to get far more wealthy than they ever managed in Gottland. E.g. Normans, Saxons, Goths, Rus …
Gottland was like the inverse of America — here, everyone does better than their compatriots back home. There, everyone did better by leaving.
Economics is all about the margin. Little differences lead to very different outcomes.