Valuing Weber’s Thought On Origin Of Capitalism From The Perspective Of Marx’s Historical Materialism

The capitalism is a social formation produced in the16-17th century in Europe. Investigating the origin of capitalism is significant to understand capitalism for us. Max Weber put forward the spirit of capitalism referring to civil class’rational life attitude which is necessary to the origin of capitalism.It is completely different from the traditional life attitude. The former aims at success while the latter aims at ease of life.In Max Weber’s view, the rational attitude to life was driven by people’s desire to glorifying God, which is the core concept of Protestant ethic.Calling, predestination and the mundane asceticism in Protestant ethic connect the worldly life and the divine life.Firstly, calling is relevant to both career of people and call of God; secondly, predestination,the core doctrine of Calvinism, means each person’s destiny is predetermined by God, by successful career and accumulated wealth, it can be revealed that a person is chosen by God because career success is the sign of being chosen; finally, asceticism in Catholic doctrine was introduced to worldly life, thus, limiting consumption of luxury led to the accumulation of wealth. In this way, pursuing salvation accumulated wealth and asceticism limited consumption,resulting in the expansion of investment and the development of industry and commerce.Max Weber thought modern capitalism is based on exchange behavior for profits and spirit of accurate calculation with the former as the aim and the latter as the means.The former is based on value, thus it only takes faith into account and neglects means and consequence; the latter is based on fact, fully considering whether the means is effective for realizing value and aim. Max weber called the two value rationality and instrumental rationality respectively and their relationship is dialectical: the development of instrumental rationality can bring high efficiency, thus it is the innate character of modern capitalism. However,it neglects human’s value,resulting in system’s routinization and immobilization,so it cannot cause social change. The development of instrumental rationality in the history depended on advocating value rationality. Glorifying God, the core concept of Protestant ethic, embodies value rationality.Hence, it is the development of value rationality embodied in Protestant ethic that promoted the development of instrumental rationality of capitalism. In Max Weber’s opinion, that is why Protestant ethic can promote the development of capitalism economy.In the view of Karl Marx’s historical materialism which is different from Max Weber, capitalism originated from separation of laborers and labor tools while it is manifested as the development of labor division and the establishment of the world market in the history. In addition, according to the law of economic basis and superstructure, Reformation is not the cause but the result of economic development and Protestant ethic produced in Reformation promoted the development of capitalism.In the view of historical materialism/we deem Max Weber’s interpretation on the origin of capitalism is idealistic.In one hand,he regarded human’s spiritual factors as the motive force of the history;in the other hand,although he realized the crisis of modern capitalism was caused by the division of value rationality and instrumental rationality,but he didn’t find out historical development itself contained the strength of solving this crisis,so he was pessimistic about the prospect of capitalism. Therefore, in the view of historical materialism,Max Weber is a thinker of interpreting the world and not of changing the world.