Let me first congratulate you for the strength of your head. No, really, you have one of the strongest heads ever to grace the pages of this website.

I have no idea why you persist in rubbishing Weber. I’d understand it if you didn’t agree with his theories; I myself haven’t made up my mind whether his observations of German 19th century society can be applied to other countries and periods. Sociology is not my field however so I have to rely on the opinion of others more knowledgeable than me.

Speaking of which, since you’ve reminded us that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing and I hate to see you in danger, let me try to make you safer by pointing out a study by Godfrey Baldacchino about the protestant ethic. Unlike you, Baldacchino doesn’t despise Weber for he even includes him in his Social Studies textbook for secondary schools (Ninvestigaw is-Soċjeta. PEG 1995)

In 2006 Baldacchino co-published a paper: “The Impact of Public Policy on Entrepreneurship: A Critical Investigation of the Protestant Ethic on a Divided Island Jurisdiction” (the divided island is not Malta, for once, but St Martin, in the Caribbean). You can read it here http://www.mang.canterbury.ac.nz/docs/dana/Protestant%20Ethic.pdf. The study concluded that there is a marked difference between the Dutch and French sectors of the small island. The authors also refer to notable differences in the attitude towards work in European Catholic and Protestant regions, though they do say that “it would be nothing less than a caricature to explain European labour law differences as arising simply from a religious practice that may hardly resonate today in a largely secularised Europe.“

At any rate, my purpose is not to prove whether Weber was right or not but to point out that one of the foremost Maltese sociologists, who certainly cannot be accused of harbouring right-wing sympathies, considers Weber’s thesis worthy of serious research and is not at all demeaning.

I’ve quoted Baldacchino because he’s Maltese and you’ve probably heard of him but I could have quoted scores of other reputable scholars who do not think Weber is one of the founders of Nazism.

So there.

P.S. You’re always going on about my choice to use a pseudonym, a choice many of your contributors make. Yet my email address contains my initial, last name, profession and place of residence.

[Daphne – Siiiiiiiggggghhhhh.]

[Daphne – Now I have to work out why the Protestant work ethic theory annoys you so profoundly. You must have been loved and left by a Protestant….]

I haven’t commented about this topic yet because, although fascinating, it’s a very complex one and I’m still looking things up, including reading Weber’s ‘Protestant Ethic’ which started the whole debate. Your dogmatic assertions, however, expressed rather angrily, draw me into the fray.

I can say that, first of all, the sociology of Weber, which is what is relevant for this discussion, is generally considered quite distinct from his political thought. After reading your post, however, I sought to learn what modern scholars think of his political convictions as well and looked for the Freiburg Address you mention (but only found a synopsis).

Weber did promote German expansionism but that was typical for the mid/late-19th century and many European intellectuals were imperialist in outlook. He is nonetheless widely considered a liberal and a democrat, albeit within the context in which he lived. I haven’t found a single author who associates him with Nazism (one of his students did become a Nazi but that has no bearing on Weber himself). In the Freiburg Address, he advocated “liberal imperialism” and strengthening the eastern border of Germany by breaking up the estates of the German aristocracy, which he despised, and parceling the land into smallholdings.

He also propounded a strong leadership for the state and some say that this is what could have been used by the Nazis to justify their dictatorship but it’s an unfair and unreasonable criticism. Even Darwin’s theory of natural selection was used to justify extreme class distinctions and racism but that was hardly Darwin’s fault and does not discredit him as a scientist.

In his ‘Protestant Ethic’ Weber doesn’t talk at all like a Nazi. Looking at the population of Baden, for example, he says that, although Protestants were more prosperous than Catholics, Jews had an even better work ethic and were infinitely more successful than everybody else. I can’t see Hitler smacking his lederhosen in joy at that little snippet of information.

In conclusion, accusing Weber of being “one of the intellectual fathers of National Socialism” is pure, unadulterated nonsense.

[Daphne – I have a problem with people who wear a mask to bicker with me, but if it’s as you say, then fine. Those ideas are not discredited. They are still being evaluated and re-evaluated: Niall Fergusson, probably the most interesting historian around at the moment, just four years ago evaluated the decline of capitalism in Europe and the continued strength of capitalism in the US (current crisis apart) in the light of Weber’s thesis. You can download his paper over the internet, against payment.]

[Daphne – Lots of comments go straight to spam, though that isn’t a verdict on them, of course. What astonishes me is that you are using this, clearly, as an excuse to pick an anonymous fight. If you’ve got a bone to pick with me about something, and are using this instead, have the decency to declare yourself. As for the rest, I have pointed out several times already that this isn’t ‘my’ opinion, but an opinion I share with many others far more notable than myself.]

‘Uncle Fester’ insists that the Protestant work ethic theory is outdated. It is actually the idea that he and Baxxter propose, that climate, “lifestyle” (whatever that means) and natural resources had anything to do with success that is actually outdated.

Environmental determinism fell out of favour, at least in academia if not in popular uneducated thought as demonstrated here, in the 1930s – before World War II. It was used to legitimise British imperialism, Nazi Fascism and ‘Manifest Destiny’.

When you believe that people are shaped by their climate and environment, it becomes very easy to suppress them, and even to dehumanise them as incapable of autonomous achievement. Besides, natural resources are such because they are culturally determined, by religion or otherwise. Nature doesn’t wittingly create resources for our benefit. So the argument that a culture succeeded because it had access to resources is illogical.

[Daphne – Thank you for that. You can give a people all the natural resources in the world, and it doesn’t mean they’re going to do anything with them. Conversely, you can give them next to no natural resources, like the Swiss and the Dutch, or very hostile and inhospitable terrain, like the Scandinavians, and just watch them go and never look back.]

I mean, you’re comparing Poland and, and Switzerland. Apples and bleeding oranges.

[Daphne – Why are they apples and oranges? If anything, the Polish had far greater natural resources and much vaster territory than the Swiss, who had only their human capital and still do. The people of both countries were farmers operating in an agriculture-based ‘economy’ before the advent of Calvinism, then they went their separate ways. Why did the Dutch and the English turn their access to the colonies into mercantile success and economic prosperity while the Portuguese and the Spanish, with access to far greater wealth and more extensive colonies, did not? Why was there a Dutch East India Company, an English East India Company and no Portuguese or Spanish equivalent? All things were equal in Europe for centuries. It was only after the development of capitalism in the Protestant countries – and in those that formed a cultural part of overwhelmingly Protestant regions, like the Protestant/Catholic Low Countries, and what became Austria and Bavaria – that things became unequal, until there developed a gulf between rich and poor, socially advanced and socially backward. It’s not only about the work ethic, but about the fact that Protestant cultures encouraged literacy and education, primarily because people had to read their own bible. In Catholicism, meanwhile, the bible was interpreted for ordinary people by intermediaries, who discouraged them from reading it, so they had ‘no reason’ to learn how to read, and they didn’t. You can’t have failed to notice that the literacy rates and the habit of reading for pleasure are still much, much higher in those countries that were under the Protestant influence (past tense) than they are in the countries that were (past tense) under Catholic influence. This is a historic legacy, and not a strange phenomenon that cropped up out of nowhere. Now academics are studying what seems to be the reversal of the fortunes of European capitalism, which is in decline, and linking this decline to the increasing secularisation of European society. Meanwhile, in the US which remains fiercely Protestant – the so-called Christian Right – capitalism is going strong. There’s a good essay by Niall Ferguson, based on a talk he gave in 2004, on the subject.]