lenin, socialism and religion (1905)

[ah...] The proletariat of today takes the side of socialism, which enlists science in the battle against the fog of religion, and frees the workers from their belief in life after death by welding them together to fight in the present for a better life on earth.
(...) We demand that religion be held a private affair so far as the state is concerned. But by no means can we consider religion a private affair so far as our Party is concerned. Religion must be of no concern to the state, and religious societies must have no connection with governmental authority. Everyone must be absolutely free to profess any religion he pleases, or no religion whatever, i.e., to be an atheist, which every socialist is, as a rule. Discrimination among citizens on account of their religious convictions is wholly intolerable. Even the bare mention of a citizen’s religion in official documents should unquestionably be eliminated. No subsidies should be granted to the established church nor state allowances made to ecclesiastical and religious societies... Complete separation of Church and State is what the socialist proletariat demands of the modern state and the modern church.
(...) Even they are joining in the demand for freedom, are protesting against bureaucratic practices and officialism, against the spying for the police imposed on the “servants of God”. We socialists must lend this movement our support, carrying the demands of honest and sincere members of the clergy to their conclusion, making them stick to their words about freedom, demanding that they should resolutely break all ties between religion and the police. Either you are sincere, in which case you must stand for the complete separation of Church and State and of School and Church, for religion to be declared wholly and absolutely a private affair. Or you do not accept these consistent demands for freedom, in which case you evidently are still held captive by the traditions of the inquisition...
(...) So far as the party of the socialist proletariat is concerned, religion is not a private affair. Our Party is an association of class-conscious, advanced fighters for the emancipation of the working class. Such an association cannot and must not be indifferent to lack of class-consciousness, ignorance or obscurantism in the shape of religious beliefs. We demand complete disestablishment of the Church so as to be able to combat the religious fog with purely ideo logical and solely ideological weapons, by means of our press and by word of mouth. But we founded our association, the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party, precisely for such a struggle against every religious bamboozling of the workers. And to us the ideological struggle is not a private affair, but the affair of the whole Party, of the whole proletariat.
(...) If that is so, why do we not declare in our Programme that we are atheists? Why do we not forbid Christians and other believers in God to join our Party? The answer to this question will serve to explain the very important difference in the way the question of religion is presented by the bourgeois democrats and the Social-Democrats. Our Programme is based entirely on the scientific, and moreover the materialist, world-outlook. An explanation of our Programme, therefore, necessarily includes an explanation of the true historical and economic roots of the religious fog.
(...) [absolutely right] But under no circumstances ought we to fall into the error of posing the religious question in an abstract, idealistic fashion, as an “intellectual” question unconnected with the class struggle, as is not infrequently done by the radical-democrats from among the bourgeoisie. It would be stupid to think that, in a society based on the endless oppression and coarsening of the worker masses, religious prejudices could be dispelled by purely propaganda methods. It would be bourgeois narrow-mindedness to forget that the yoke of religion that weighs upon mankind is merely a product and reflection of the economic yoke within society. No number of pamphlets and no amount of preaching can enlighten the proletariat, if it is not enlightened by its own struggle against the dark forces of capitalism. Unity in this really revolutionary struggle of the oppressed class for the creation of a paradise on earth is more important to us than unity of proletarian opinion on paradise in heaven.

luxemburg, socialism and the churches (1905)

It is true that we do meet churchmen of another kind. There exist some who are full of goodness and pity and who do not seek gain; these are always ready to help the poor. But we must admit these are indeed uncommon and that they can be regarded in the same way as white blackbirds. The majority of priests, with beaming faces, bow and scrape to the rich and powerful, silently pardoning them for every depravity, every iniquity. With the workers the clergy behave quite otherwise: they think only of squeezing them pity; in harsh sermons they condemn the “covetess” of the workers when these latter do no more than defend themselves against the wrongs of capitalism.
(...) The Social-Democrats want to bring about the state of “communism”; that is chiefly what the clergy have against them. First of all, it is striking to notice that the priests of today who fight against “Communism” condemn in reality first Christian Apostles. For these latter were nothing else than ardent communists.
(...) Further, to make the people forget their hardships it offered them free circus shows. Unlike the proletariat of our time, which maintains the whole of society by its labours, the enormous proletariat of Rome existed on charity.
(...) In this crumbling society, where there existed no way out of their tragic situation for the people, no hope of a better life, the wretched turned to Heaven to seek salvation there. The Christian religion appeared to these unhappy beings as a life-belt, a consolation and an encouragement, and became, right from the beginning, the religion of the Roman proletarians. In conformity with the material position of the men belonging to this class, the first Christians put forward the demand for property in common - communism. What could be more natural?
(...) [institutionalization] In the beginning, when the number of Christians was small, the clergy did not exist in the proper sense of the word. The faithful, who formed an independent religious community, united together in each city. They elected a member responsible for conducting the service of God and carrying out the religious rites. Every Christian could become the bishop or prelate. These functions were elective, subject to recall, honorary and carried no power other than that which the community gave of its own free will.^[9] In proportion as the number of the faithful increased and the communities became more numerous and richer, to run the business of the community and to hold office became an occupation which demanded a great deal of time and full concentration. As the office-bearers could not carry out these tasks at the same time as following their private employment, the custom grew up of electing from among the members of the community, an ecclesiastic who was exclusively entrusted with these functions. Therefore, these employees of the community had to be paid for their exclusive devotion to its affairs. Thus there formed within the Church a new order of employees of the Church, which separated itself from the main body of the faithful, the clergy. Parallel with the inequality between rich and poor, there arose another inequality, that between the clergy and the people. The ecclesiastics, at first elected among equals with a view to performing a temporary function raised themselves to form a caste which ruled over the people... . From the 4th Century, the ecclesiastics of the communities met together in Councils. The first council took place at Nicaea in 325. In this way there was formed the clergy, an order apart and separated from the people. The bishops of the stronger and richer communities took the lead at the Councils. That is why the Bishop of Rome soon placed himself at the head of the whole of Christianity and became the Pope. Thus an abyss separated the clergy, divided up in the hierarchy, from the people. At the same time, the economic relations between the people and the clergy underwent a great change. the clergy and running the Church. Before the formation of this order, all that the rich members of the Church offered to the common property belonged to the poor people. Afterwards, a great part of the funds was spent on paying
(...) From the 6th century, the clergy imposed a special tax, the tithe (tenth part of the crops), which had to be paid to the Church.
(...) Ecclesiastical positions therefore offered the best opportunities to obtain large revenue. Each ecclesiastic disposed of the property of the Church as if it were his own and largely endowed from it his relatives, sons and grandsons. By this means the goods of the Church were pillaged and disappeared into the hands of the families of the clergy. For that reason, the Popes declared themselves to be the sovereign proprietors of the fortunes of the Church and ordained the celibacy of the clergy, in order to keep it intact and to prevent their patrimony from being dispersed. Celibacy was decreed in the 11th Century, but it was not put into practice until the 13th Century, in view of the opposition of the clergy.
(...) When the country and town proletariat rose up against oppression and serfdom, it found in the clergy a ferocious opponent. It is also true even within the Church itself there existed two classes: the higher clergy who engulfed all the wealth and the great mass of the country parsons whose modest livings brought in no more than 500 francs to 2,000 francs a year. Therefore this unprivileged class revolted against the superior clergy and in 1789, during the Great Revolution, it joined up with the people to fight against the power of the lay and ecclesiastical nobility.
(...) In fact the cloisters profited considerably from this benevolence; having the reputation of opening their doors to the poor, they received large gifts and legacies from the rich and powerful. With the appearance of capitalism and production for exchange, every object acquired a price and became exchangeable. At this moment the convents, the houses of the lords, and the ecclesiastics ceased their benefactions. The people found no refuge anywhere. Here is one reason, among others, why at the beginning of capitalism, in the 18th Century, when the workers were not yet organised to defend their interests, there appeared poverty so appalling that humanity seemed to have gone back to the days of the decades of the Roman Empire. But while the Catholic Church in former times undertook to bring help to the Roman proletariat by the preaching of communism, equality and fraternity, in the capitalist period it acted in a wholly different fashion. It sought above all to profit from the poverty of the people; to put cheap labour to work. The convents became literally hells of capitalist exploitation, all the worse because they took in the labour of women and children. The law case against the Convent of the Good Shepherd in France in 1903 gave a resounding example of these abuses. Little girls, 12, 10 and 9 years old were compelled to work in abominable conditions, without rest, ruining their eyes and their health, and were badly nourished and subjected to prison discipline.
(...) To sum up, it is the labour of millions of exploited people, which assures the existence of the Church, the government, and the capitalist class. The statistics concerning the revenue of the Church in Austria give an idea of the considerable wealth of the Church, which was formerly the refuge of the poor. Five years ago (that is, in 1900) its annual revenues amounted to 60 million crowns, and its expenditure did not exceed 35 million. Thus, in the course of a single year, it “put aside” 25 million – at the cost of the sweat and blood shed by the workers.
(...) Your cruelties and your calumnies in former times could not prevent the victory of the Christian idea, the idea which you have sacrificed to the Golden Calf; today your efforts will raise no obstacle to the coming of Socialism. Today it is you, in your lies and your teachings, who are pagans, and it is we who bring to the poor, to the exploited the tidings of fraternity and equality. It is we who are marching to the conquest of the world as he did formerly who proclaimed that it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven.
(...)[the key in understanding this entire text, though, is that the 'priest' represents a very specific representative of institutionalized christianity, and not religion writ large] And here is the answer to all the attacks of the clergy: the Social-Democracy in no way fights against religious beliefs. On the contrary, it demands complete freedom of conscience for every individual and the widest possible toleration for every faith and every opinion. But, from the moment when the priests use the pulpit as a means of political struggle against the working classes, the workers must fight against the enemies of their rights and their liberation. For he who defends the exploiters and who helps to prolong this present regime of misery, he is the mortal enemy of the proletariat, whether he be in a cassock or in the uniform of the police.

gilbert achcar, religion and politics today from a marxian perspective (socialist register 2006)

(60): "it is this 'elective affinity' between Christianity in its charismatic phase and a communistic social programme that explains the ability of a Thomas Muntzer in the early 16^th century to formulate in Christian terms a programme that Friedrich Engels described, in 1850, as an 'anticipation of communism by fantasty.'" [this makes no analytical sense, whatsoever. The implication here, then, is that other traditions would not have made this 'programme' available to Muntzer (who, remember, was a radical cleric that justified Peasant rebellions that were already underway; not a leader of the rebellions themselves). Is that really a Marxist claim? The notion that more than a thousand years later, the ideology he mobilized still bore the imprint of its origins? It seems to me that this fundamentally misunderstands ideology. millenarian peasant revolts abound through history--the fact of their millenarianism is hardly enabled or explained by Christianity (throughout chinese history, most notably)]

(64): "it is this same 'elective affinity' between original Christianity and communistic utopianism that explains why the worldwide wave of leftwing political radicalization that started in the 1960s... could partly take on a Christian dimension..." [very odd. (1) surely you will admit the fact that leftwing demands can be expressed through alternative religious registers, a la shi'ism? (2) if the claim is that this gets co-opted, then this claim obviously applies to christianity as an ideology of left-wing latin american movements, a la nicaragua? i just cant' make sense of the argument]

(64-65): pointing out facts that seem to explain the necessarily co-opted character of islam (its integration into juridical/political networks; the fact it wasn't touched by colonial powers; the fact it wasn't challenged by rebellions against western domination (really? nasser?); etc., etc.); the whole discussion is thoroughly ungrounded and unconvincing. and in fact it suggests an extraordinarily stagnant conception of the middle east that makes the non-islamic into an aberration, which is quite confusing, since he would not want to say that otherwise.

(66): the central problem of the article is that he compares christianity's best-foot forward, to islam's worst-foot forward, in essence. why not reverse the situation, compare shariati (or somebody else, for goodness' sake) to ratzinger, or something? would we still be screeching about 'elective affinities', then? the notion that the 'fundamentalist' affinity of the two traditions in his model (muntzer and islamic 'fundamentalism' writ large) can tell us anything, at all, and that the notion of stripping away accumulated superfluity is unique to these two, is nonsense of the highest order.

(66): "by no stretch of the imagination..." he wants to argue, could islamic fundamentalists want to return us to a society where class differences no longer exist. fine, but islamic fundamentalists do not, at all, monopolize the islamist tradition; you could very easily imagine many islamic thinkers that would mobilize islam to make that case. what's more, if you asked ratzinger to go to the basics, you think that would give us communism? this is just so nonsensical.

in sum, really: the idea that his notion of 'elective affinity' has any analytical purchase seems a classic example of assuming that ideologies can do work outside of material context and practice. it is categorically not marxist.

the elementary forms of religious life, emile durkheim

translator's introduction (karen fields)

(xix): "for durkheim, religions exist because human beings exist only as social beings and in a humanly shaped world. religion is 'an eminently social thing.'"

(xxiiii): "...the Durkheimian pedigree of Michel Foucault."

(xxv): "religion is the steady, day-in-day-out reality of millions, their routine framework of everyday activity..."

(xxxiii): "to exist at all, all communities must be imagined. what his intellectual descendant benedict anderson has so well shown for large-scale twentieth-century anticolonial nationalism is also true of any face-to-face community and of the smallest Australian clan."

(xxxiv): in sum--"bear three points in mind. first, religion is not defined in terms of anything that would turn a man of science positive away from observable phenomena, or the real--not divinity, the otherworldly... second, the phrase 'unified system' postulates that religius beliefs and rites are not hodgeppodges but are internally ordered. third, the objects of those rites and beliefs acquire their religious status as sacred, or 'set apart and forbidden,' as a result of joint action by people who set them apart and who, by the same stroke, constitute themselves a 'moral community' or 'a Church.' once again, then, religion is social, social, social."

(xxxviii): "...he assumes the Australians to be rationally constituted humans, as are their Parisian contemporaries. there is no question of one's being civilized and the other not, or of the two groups' having different mental constitutions."

(xliii): "...sacredness is eminently a representation collective... as a quality of things--or, rather, as Durkheim insists, a quality superadded to things--sacredness can come to be its real self only within the domain of collective consciousness... sacredness is an aspect of the real that exists only in the mind but cannot possibly exist as the real in only one mind."

(xlvi): "sacredness is not merely a set of peculiar relationships between people and certain designated objects. the very act that constitues those peculiar relationships also relates a designated group of people to one another and sets them apart from others to whom they are not bound and who do not have the same relationship to designated physical objects."

(li): "if durkheim's analysis is right, it suggests that this century's monstrosities in collecitve life arise not from aberrations in human reason but from what is fundamental to it. that analysis also leads to a disturbing suggestion: that the ordinary human agents who serve as raw material for extraordinary abusers of human dignity are, in vast majority, the normal and the the socially responsible... it suggests, finally, that the human nature on which we depend, our social nature, is our uplift and our downfall. the only exit from this dilemma appears to be individualism. but the incompatibility of individualist assumptions with human nature as it can be observed in the real world was chief among Durkheim's discovereies in Formes and throughout his work. what we see, through his theoretical lens of conscience collective, is present in a social world of the real that coannot be arrived at with notions of individual conscience alone... thus, in the end, there is a deep and tragic tension in Durkheim's discoveries."

introduction (1-18)

(1): "i have made a very archaic religion the subject of my research because it seems better suited than any other to help us comprehend the religious nature of man, that is, to reveal a fundamental and permanent aspect of humanity."

(2): "fundamentally, then, there are no religions that are false. all are true after their own fashion: all fulfill given conditions of human existence, though in different ways. granted it is not impossible to rank them hierarchically..." [this last point seems different from what karen fields argued earlier--and generally incommensurate with the thrust of durkheim's move, here.]

(8): "if philosophy and the sciences were born in religion, it is because religion itself began by serving as science and philosophy. further, and less often noted, religion has not merely enriched a human intellect already formed but in fact has helped to form it. men owe to religion not only the content of their knowledge, in significant part, but also the form in which that knowledge is elaborated." [form/content -- here begins the rejoinder to kant and the empiricists]

(9): critical--"the principal categories... are born in and from religion. they are a product of religious thought. this is a point that i will make again and again in the course of this book... the general conclusion of the chapters to follow is that religion is an eminently social thing. religious representations are collective representations that express collective realities; rites are ways of acting that are born only in the midst of assembled groups and whose purpose is to evoke, maintain, or recreate certain mental states of those groups..."

(10): "it is not my time that is organized in this way. it is time that is conceived of objectively by all men of the same civilization. this by itself is enough to make us begin to see that any such organization would have to be collective. and indeed, observation establishes that these indispensable points, in reference to which all things are arranged temporally, are taken from social life. the division into days, weeks, months, ears, etc., corresponds to the recurrence of rites, festivals and public ceremonies at regular intervals."

(12-14): where he makes the rejoinder to kant and the empiricists: "faced with these opposite objections, the intellect remains uncertain. but if the social origin of the categories is accepted, a new stance becomes possible, one that should enable us, i believe, to avoid these opposite difficulties."

(16-17): key--"society cannot leave the categories up to the free choice of individuals without abandoning itself... we feel that we cannot abandon ourselves to them without our thought's ceasing to be really human... thus the necessit with which the categories press themselves is not merely the effect of habits whose yoke we could slip with little effort; nor is that necessity a habit or a physical or metaphysical need, since the categories change with place and time; it is a special sort of moral necessity that is to intellectual life what obligation is to the will."

book one

(24): religion cannot be sought in the supernatural, because the supernatural/natural antinomy is emphatically modern. "to be able to call certain facts supernatural, one must already have an awareness that there is a natural order of things, in other words, that the phenomena of the universe are internally linked according to necessary relationships called laws."

(27): neither can it be defined by the idea of divinity (see buddhism discussion on next page)

(33-34): important--definition of religion as a "system", which consists of beliefs and rites and a sacred/profane classification, of them [here it is appropriate to raise the concerns about how religions ossify and are cast off--how, in other words, there is development? since this, as a classically structuralist position, explains everything in a state of stasis...]

(38): "sacred things are things protected and isolated by prohibitions; profane things are those things to which the prohibitions are applied and that must keep at a distance from what is sacred."

(41): the Church--"...a society whose members are united because they imagine the sacred world and its relations with the profane world in the same way, and because they translate this common representation into identical practices, is what is called a Church..."

(42): important--"a Church is not simply a priestly brotherhood; it is a moral community made up of all the faithful, both laity and priests..."

(44): definition--"a religion is a unified system of beliefs and practices relative to sacred things, that is to say, things set apart and forbidden--beliefs and practices which unite into on e single moral community called a Church, all those who adhere to them."

(44): "the second element thus holds a place in my definition that is no less essential than the first: in showing that the idea of religion is inseparable from the idea of a Church, it conveys the notion that religion must be an eminently collective thing."

(45-67): not animism, as a theory for why religion emerges

(68-83): not naturism

(84-85): "since, in themselves, neither man nor nature is inherently sacred, both acquire sacredness elsewhere."

(91): "first, for the sociologist as for the historian, social facts exist in relationship with the social system to which they belong; hence they cannot be understood apart from it..."

(91-92): "the comaprative method would be impossible if social types did not exist, and it cannot be usefully applied except within the same type." [the place to ask, again, about the 'social type' vs. 'ideal type' method]

book two

(100): two essential traits of the clam: 1. a bond of a particular sort, because they bear the same name. 2. the name it bears is also that of a definites species of material things with which it thinks it has a special relationship...

(118): "thus, while the totem is a collective label, it also has a religious character. in fact, things are classified as sacred and profane by reference to the totem. it is the very archetype of sacred things."

(124): "this sacredness stems from one cause: it is a material representation of the clan..." [even if he means 'literally material' here, this still gives us an opportunity to ask about how his position here, and in general, resembles historical materialism.]

(145-146): e.g., how the idea of 'genus', or 'class' is born as a result of clan organization--"thus we have our first opportunity to test the proposition put forward at the beginning of this work and to assure ourselves that the fundamental notions of the intellect, the basic categories of thought, can be the product of social factors. the preceding shows that this is indeed the case for the notion of category itself."

(148): "in all probability, then, we would never have thought of gathering the beings of the universe into homogeneous groups, called genera, if we had not had the example of human societies before our eyes--if, indeed, we had not at first gone so far in making things members of the society of men..."

(156): "in sum, totemic organization as just described clearly must result from a sort of consensus among all the members of the tribe, without distinction. each clan cannot possibly have developed its beliefs in an absolutely independent manner; the cults of the various totems complement one another exactly, and so they must necessarily have been in some sense adjusted to one another." [here, must interrogate what work is being done by the notion of "consensus" -- this, again, is durkheim's strong (methodological-philosophical) bias in favor of non-contradiction, resolved tensions, etc.]

(191): the 'force'--"totemism is not the religion of certain animals, certain men, or certain images; it is the religion of a kind of anonymous and impersonal force that is identifiable in each of these beings but identical to none of them."

(192): "when i speak of these principles as forces, i do not use the word in a metaphorical sense; they behave like real forces."

(202): "that way of imagining religious things is by no means inherent in their nature. at the origin and basis of religious thought, we find not definite and distinct objects or beings that in themselves possess sacredness but indefinite powers and anonymous forces."

(208): key--"it follows from the same analysis that the totem expresses and symbolizes two different kinds of things. from one point of view, it is the outward and visible form of what i have called the totemic principle or god; and from another, it is also the symbol of a particular society that is called the clan. it is the flag of the clan, the sign by which each clan is distinguished from the others... thus, if the totem is the symbol of both the god and the society, is this not because the god and the society are one and the same?... thus the god of the clan, the totemic principle, can be none other than the clan itself, but the clan transfigured and imagined in the physical form of the plant or animal that serves as totem." [here we have the loose contours of an important contribution, definitely--but i want to know much more about the nature of the link. what kind of a totemic principle is produced by different kinds of society? and isn't it unavoidable that this principle is produced by specific sectors of society? where is the consensus, emile? the fact that people reproduce something does not mean that they produced it? of course he will no accept this as an intelligible question. partly, of course, this entire line of questioning is complicated by his methodology--he is using 'primitive communism' to explain highly stratified societies. surely, stratification will begin to matter as we interrogate the notion of 'consensus'?]

(208): "society in general, simply be its effect on men's minds, undoubtedly has all that is required to arouse the sensation of the divine. a society is to its members of what a god is to its faithful."

(209-211): notion of 'moral authority' -- which we attribute to the 'divine' but is, in actual fact, something that society exerts upon us.

(214): "because we feel the weight of them, we have no choice but to locate them outside ourselves..."

(215): "just as society consecrates men, so it also consecrates things, including ideas..." [what is the nature of this agency?]

(223): "because the religious force is none other than the collective and anonymous force of the clan..."

(224): "such moral powers do not express the manner in which natural things affect our senses but the manner in which the collective consciousness affects individual consciousness."

(226): important--again, an exceedingly strong, stable conception of hegemony (and, then, where to for resistance?) -- "each individual carries the whole in himself. it is part of him, so when he yields to its promptings, he does not think he is yielding to coercion but instead doing what his own nature tells him to do." [this is what craig was saying--durkheim will not be helpful if we want to understand rebellion. but if we want to understand restraint/passivity, he's our man. to an extent, of course]

(227): "religion is first and foremost a system of ideas by means of which individuals imagine the society of which they are members and the obscure yet intimate relations they have with it. such is its paramount role."

(229): important, and demonstrates his interesting insistence on seeing the modern and primitive together--"even though purely ideal, the powers thereby conferred on the object behave as if they were real. they determine man's conduct with the same necessity as phsycial forces. the Arunta who has properly rubbed himself with his churinga feels stronger; he is stronger... the soldier who falls defending his flag certainly does not believe he has sacrificed himself to a piece of cloth. such things happen because social thought, with its imperative authority, has a power that individual thought cannot possibly have. by acting on our minds, it can make us see things in the light that suits it..." [there is, perhaps, a positive project here, in deconstruction of this social (arbitrary?) authority? though, in durkheim, the tragic would re-assert itself, no doubt.]

(230): "the sacredness exhibited by the thing is not implicated in the intrinsic properties of the thing. it is added to them. the world of the religious is not a special aspect of empirical nature. it is superimposed upon nature."

(233): "we know, in fact, that social phenomena are born not in the individual but in the group. no matter what part we may play in their genesis, each of us receives them from without." [what would it mean to introduce the notion of class, here?]

(238): "we know furthermore that these religious ideas are the outcome of definite social causes... thus, it is social requirements that have fused together ideas that at first seem distinct..." [again, this is society in the abstract, not class society in the concrete. what would it mean to perform that transformation?]

(240): "...there is no gulf between the logic of religious thought and the logic of scientific thought..."

(242-275): inquiring after the soul -- see 265, where he writes, "the idea of the soul is a particular application of the bleifs relative to sacred things. in this way may be explained the religious character this idea has displayed ever since it appeared in history and that it still has today. the soul has always been considered a sacred thing; in this respect it is opposed to the body, which in itself is profane."

(276-279): inquiring after spirits and gods, beginning to track religion as it becomes steadily more complex

book three

(303): role of rites--"by definition, sacred beings are beings set apart. what distinguishes them is a discontinuity between them and profane beings. normally, the two sorts of beings are separate from one another. a whole complex of rites seeks to bring about that separation, which is essential..."

(304): introducing the notion of 'taboo'--"the institution in accordance with which certain things are withdrawn from ordinary use."

(312-313): generally-speaking, we see that sacred and profane life cannot exist at the same time, or same space

(316): asceticism

(400): taking it too far? -- "there is no relationship between the feelings felt and the actions done by those who take part in the rite." [here discussing funeral rites, which seems a classic overstatement]

conclusion

(418): seeing the study of primitive society as the opening phase of an inductive investigation

(420): "the cult is not merely a system of signs by which the faith is outwardly expressed; it is the sum total of means by which that faith is created and recreated periodically."

(420): footnote william james -- "like a recent apologist of faith, i accept that religious belief rests on a definite experience, whose demonstrative value is, in a sense, not inferior to that of scientific experiments..."

(421): "i have shown what moral forces it develops and how it awakens that feeling of support, safety, and protective guidance which binds the man of faith to its cult." [here we are deepening the arg re: consensus -- does it serve a personal need, also, and not just a social need?]

(421): "as i have shown, even collective ideas and feelings are possible only through the overt movements that symbolize them. thus it is action that dominates religious life, for the very reason that society is its source."

(421): "along the way, i have established that the fundamental categories of thought, and thus science itself, have religious origins... in short, then, we can say that nearly all the great social institutions were born in religion. for the principal features of collective life to have begun as none other than various features of religious life it is evident that religious life must necessarily have been the eminent form and, as it were, the epitome of collective life."

(422): interesting--echoes of discipline and punish, without any of the political implications--"in the end, the point is not to exert a kind of physical constraint upon blind, and, more than that, imaginary forces but to reach, fortify, and discipline consciousness."

(424): quite ambitious--the distinction between the real and the ideal can only be explained by my framework, he's arguing--"since what defines the sacred is that the sacred is added to the real. and since the ideal is defined in the same way, we cannot explain the one without explaining the other."

(424): "thus the formation of an ideal is by no means an irreducible datum that eludes science. it rests on conditions that can be uncovered through observation. it is a natural product of social life."

(425): "it is in the school of collective life that the individual has learned to form ideals. it is by assimilating the ideals worked out by society that the individual is able to conceive of the ideal."

(426): key, why my theory is not historical materialism--"in pointing out an essentially social thing in religion, i in no way mean to say that religion simply translates the material forms and immediate vital necessities of society into another language. i do indeed take it to be obvious that social life depends on and bears the mark of its material base, just as the mental life of the individual depends on the brain... but collective consiocusness is something other than a mere epiphenomenon of its morphological base, just as individual consciousness is something other than a mere product of thenervous system. if collective consciousness is to appear, a sui generis synthesis of individual consciousness must occur... they mutually attract one another... none of these combinations is directly commanded and necessitated by the state of the underlying reality.." [unless i am misinterpreting, this seems at odds with the presentation, earlier. isn't he giving an unreasonable autonomy to the individual, here? and anyway this is theoretical very unsatisfactory--the collective consciousness emerging more-or-less randomly, as product? doesn't make any scientific sense. why is it that, confronted with marxism, these people are afraid to defend themselves properly? he has eschewed the possibility of generalization, neglecting that this is what his study has done, throughout.]

(427): "we can now judge the worth of the radical individualism that is intent on making religion out to be a purely individual thing: it misconceives the fundamental conditions of religious life... the only hearth at whcih we can warm ourselves morally is the hearth made by the company of our fellow men."

(429): "there can be no society that does not experience the need at regular intervals to maintain and stregnthen the collective feelings and ideas that provide its coherence and its distinct individuality." [this opens up grounds for a study of 'nationalism' as a durkheimian study of religion, certainly--he does this and more throughout his work]

(429): speaking of unjust inequalities. my my (remember, this is his last work)

(430): french revolution, and why "it instituted a whole cycle of celebrations in order to keep the principles that inspired it eternally young."

(430): "religion is not only a system of practices but also a system of ideas whose object is to express the world..."

(431): science, and religion; the same goal, hence a (limited) incompatibility (see below, also) -- "in this regard, both pursue the same goal; scientific thought is only a more perfected form of religious thought. hence it seems natural that religion should lose ground as science becomes better at performing its task... although the offspring of religion, science tends to replace religion in everything that involves the cognitive and intellectual functions."

(432): science and religion, con't -- "science is said to deny religion in principle. but religion exist; it is a system of given facts; in short, it is a reality. how could science deny a reality? furthermore, insofar as religion is action and insofar as it is a means of making men live, science cannot possibly take its place. although science expresses life, it does not create life, and science can very well seek to explain faigh but by that very fact presupposes faith. hence there is conflict on only a limited point."

(434): "the basic material of logical thought is concepts. to try to discover how society could have played a role in the genesis of logical thought therefore amounts to asking how it can have taken part in the formation of concepts."

(435): change, in concepts (when there is some imperfection) -- can this take us away from what is otherwise a theory of stasis?

(435): the 'concept' is always an emphatically social thing -- "it is common to all because it is the work of the community."

(436): moreover, "concepts are not abstract things that have reality only in particular circumstances. they are [collective] representations just as concrete as any the individual can make of his own environment, for they correspond to the way in which the special being that is society thinks about the things of its own experience..." [again the question of society's agency]

(437): thus, "we can now begin to see society's share in the origin of logical thought. logical thought is possible only when man has managed to go beyond the fleeting representations he owes to sense experience and in the end to conceive a whole world of stable ideals, the common ground of intelligences..." (conditions for truth, he adds are two--impersonality and stability)

(438): here, oddly, a narrative of primitive-to-civilized is re-asserting itself (but it is sort of a meta- realm, so more forgivable, perhaps)

(440): "to say that concepts express the manner in which society conceives of things is also to say that conceptual thought is contemporaneous with humanity."

(441-442): key, answering why and how the categories are social, in origin, through the notion of totality--"above all, there is no individual experience, no matter how broad or prolonged, that could make us even suspect the existence of a whole genus embracing the universality of beings, and in which the other genera would be only species coordinated among, or subordinated to, one another. this notion of the whole, which lies at the basis of the classifications i have cited, cannot come to us from the individual himself, who is only a part of the whole and never comes in contact with more than an infinitesmal part of oreality... since the role of the categories is to encompass all the other concepts, the category par excellence would indeed seem to be the very concept of totality."

(443): "the concept of totality is but the concept of society in abstract form."

(443-444): "there is another reason... the relationships they express could not become conscious relationships except in and through society..."

(444): "society is possible only if the individuals and things that make it up are divided among different groups... and if those groups themeselves are classified in relation to one another..."

(445): "to summarize, society is by no means the illogical or alogical, inconsistent, and changeable being that people too often like to imagine. quite the contrary, the collective consciousness is the highest form of psychic life, for it is a consciousness of consciousness. being outside and above individual and local contingencies, collective consciousness sees things only in their permanent and fundamental aspect..."

(446): important--to the extent that there is dynamism in his picture, it is geometric--in other words, society will grow grow grow, until these concepts are stretched and need to be re-fit. it is not, though, that there is conflict.

(447): "the mystery dissolves once we have acknowledged that impersonal reason is but collective thought by another name. collective thought is possible only through the coming together of individuals..."

(448): "a new way of explaining man becomes possible as soon as we recognize that above the individual there is society, and that society is a system of active forces--not a nominal being, and not a creation of the mind..."

max weber, the protestant ethic and the spirit of capitalism

I--THE PROBLEM

(1-8): DOMINATION AND SOCIAL STRATIFICATION

(2): KEY--weber here suggests that casting off the fetters of the catholic church not be read as a casting off of 'authority'--but, in fact, the "replacement of the previous form of authority with a different one." in fact, a more strict one--protestants cast off the diktats of pope and priest, only to submit their will to an ethic that was more taxing and more severe.

(3,4): protestants more likely to pursue technical/commercial education, more likely to move from craftwork to skilled work/management (whereas catholics prefer to become master craftsmen)

(4): weber mentions that he would have expected them to, as a minority, have a greater proportion of their leaders in business (since the State is closed to them).

(4): in observing that jews and poles and others have done precisely what catholics are proving unable to do, it seems like this is becoming an argument about protestantism, only implicitly. even though it is early going, yet, this ought to say something about the contingency of the thesis?

(5-6): not 'unworldliness' of one vs. 'worldliness' of other -- too meaningless

(7): KEY--the ethic is not connected to the "enlightenment" or "progress," he wants to stress. as such, "if an inner affinity is... found..., we must try... to seek it not in its more or less materialistic... enjoyment of life, but rather in its purely religious features." [in other words, to 'fit' the modern world it has been adapted, in a sense; it is not marked with 'modernity,' at all]

(8-28): THE SPIRIT OF CAPITALISM

(8-9): this is important and interesting--he is committed, explicitly, to a methodology soaked in history. absolutely anti-positivist, in this sense [a "definition" is not possible, but only a "provisional illustration"]

(11): here we see the first mention of 'instrumental rationality'--"the increase of his wealth... is assumed to be an end in itself." appended to this, then, is also a sense in the ethical correctness of this position, though only in an unapologetically "utilitarian" sense (wherein "the appearence of virtue" is an appropriate substitute for "virtue," because it is all about the result and effect obtained)

(12): but note: this is entirely detached from hedonism or whatever else. it is so "purely thought of as an end in itself."

(12-13): the concept of diligence "in one's calling" makes an appearance, as an "essential element"--weber is even pointing out its familiar but non-obvious nature. important.

(13): important--not so concerned with the re-generation of this kind of an 'ethic', today (as in, it is not even an option if you'd like to compete on a market). this is, primarily it seems, an inquiry into its origins ("it obviously first had to come into being... as an attitude held in common") (see also 18)

(13): first mention of "naive historical materialism."

(14): here, a point to hang a critique on--in MA, the spirit of capitalism preceded "capitalist development." [for one, it's not clear that the spirit of capitalism need only exist in fully-fledged capitalism for historical materialism to be helpful--it seems like it would be might helpful for the yeomanry]

(14): it's not greed that is the explanandum, he's reminding us -- this he sees everywhere. it's something much more specific.

(16): already, we are specifying the object of study, further than the term itself implies (for Weber here is seeing persistent 'precapitalist' modes of behaviour amongst laborers; an alternative, of course, is that these are their own kind of spirits of capitalism)

(18): here the nature of evidence is downright pathetic ("a relative told me" that pietist girls are more conscientious, "as a result of a religious upbringing").

(19): specifying what exactly "traditionalism" means in this narrative--something like werner sombardt's argument, but different. roughly, here, a subsistence economy oriented to "traditional needs."

(19): a provisional definition--"We shall nevertheless provisionally use the expression 'spirit of capitalism' for that attitude which, in the pursuit of a calling, strives systematically for profit for its own sake in the manner exemplified by Benjamin Franklin."

(19-20): a summary passage, of sorts: "We do this [i.e., the above] for the historical reason that this attitude has found its most adequate expression in the capitalist enterprise, and conversely the capitalist enterprise has found in this attitude its most adequate spiritual motivation."

(20): a point to interrogate, here--what does he mean when he says that 'big banks' and businesses, in general, can be run in a 'traditionalist' spirit? it must be historically-specific, since he has earlier discussed the sink or swim character of the economy.

(20): the "peasants" were the craftsman's principal clients?

(21): this is CRUCIAL, to his argument (this history)--he is depicting a capitalist 'form' of organization (the craftshop, and the putter-out), but run in a thoroughly 'traditionalist' spirit (easy working hours, amount of work, the traditional clientele). in other words, here we have capitalism, weber thinks, without the spirit of capitalism. the key change that he wants to to document, then, is not the formal changes that he admits will come later--but before those formal changes, a change in spirit [but isn't the objection obvious?]

(21-22): here one person is the catalyst--it is strange, because the 'spirit of capitalism' is only necessary in the way in which he wants it to be, at one very critical moment' (at a turning point). from there, everything works itself out, without it.

(22): KEY--the thesis: "In such cases (and this is the main point), it was not normally an influx of new money that brought about this revolution--in a number of cases known to me as the entire 'revolutionizing process' was set in motion with a few thousand marks capital borrowed from relatives: it was the new spirit at work--the 'spirit of capitalism.'"

(23): anticipates one of my objections, which is that this new 'spirit' is defined more by what is not (i.e., a loss of respect for the Church, etc.), though he is here only acknowledging its importance.

(24): irrationality of this spirit--"whereby a man exists for his business, not vice versa."

(24): the capitalist entrepreneur "ideal type" (marked, in particular, by asceticism)

(25): Ben Franklin would have been unthinkable, as an ethical ideal, in early years

(26): here, again, noting that Ben Franlkin ideal type emerged in a virtually non-commercial economy (this takes us back to the question of evolution of capitalist 'form')

(26): "To speak of a 'reflection' of the 'material' conditions in the 'superstructure of ideas' would be sheer nonsense here." [but (a) the evidence is shaky; (b) this is not really the proposition of historical materialism (fields and 'propaganda')]

(27): not as simple as seeing development of this 'spirit' as part of the total development of 'rationalist' spirit (this seems to be part of the larger re-reading of the role of the Enlightenment)

(27): this is critical to the argument--we must speak of different forms that rationalism can take ("It is possible to 'rationalize' life from extremely varied ultimate standpoints and in very different dirctions.")

(28-36): LUTHER'S CONCEPTION OF THE CALLING

(29): KEY--"What was definitely new was the estimation of fulfillment of duty within secular callings as being of the absolutely highest level possible for moral activity" (i.e., with the Reformation)

(29-33): exposition of Luther's views within larger theological context starts here. and importantly here it is made clear that Luther, himself, did not deliver a 'rational'/modern reading of the Bible--his was traditionalist. it's only the concept of the 'calling' which gets picked up on, that is potentially anti-traditional. to be clear, though, the calling as deployed by Luther is traditional, insofar as it accepts 'destiny.'

(33): "What we are looking for... cannot be directly derived from Luther's position..."

(33): on to Calvin--the "real enemy" of Catholicism (the "ethical pecularity" of Calvinism)

(35): an important note, which has been made before--we are not looking for an intentional exposition of the spirit of capitalism (indeed, what it became was largely 'unforseen' and even 'unwished for', he says--obviously for Luther but also for Calvin)

(36): another jibe at the materialist doctrine.

(36): here, KEY clarification of the bounds of his investigation: "We have no intention of defending any such foolishly doctrinaire thesis asthat the 'capitalist spirit)... let alone capitalism itslf, could only arise as a result of certain influences of the Reformation. The very fact that certain important forms of capitalist business are considerably older than the Reformation would invalidate such a thesis. We intend, rather, to establish whether and to what extent religious influences have in fact been partially responsible for the qualitative shaping and the quantitative expansion of that 'spirit' across the world, and what concrete aspects of capitalist culture originate from them." ["elective affinities" -- (1) this parsing of the object of analysis is important, but is it sufficient? it gives Weber an all-too-easy theoretical escape point, where his objective, now, is essentially to closely investigate the somewhat 'banal'; (2) there is an important investigation to be conducted into the nature of the capitalist 'form' -- here he speaks about old, 'capitalist' business preceding the spirit of capitalism. but what does this term mean, exactly? he has not yet given us a clear definition]

(46): tsk, tsk -- again, anectodal evidence

(48): not just in dialogue with Marxist materialism (Sombardt claims this ethical aspect is a 'product')

(49): overheard at SDP conferences ('anyone who doesn't toe the line will be kicked out')--"Party discipline is the reflection of factory discipline."

(50): alluding to need for 'discipline' (this is explicitly different, though, from the sense of the calling as it exists in the entrepreneur. we should in fact inquire more closely into the precise class position of the explanandum--see pg. 51: "it was the rising petite bourgeoisie... who were the 'typical' bearers of capitalist and Calvinist church polity.")

(61): Cromwell and the Irish--justified invasion on basis of English Capital having educated Irish in the habits of work(!)

II--THE IDEA OF THE CALLING IN ASCETIC PROTESTANTISM

(67-69): THE RELIGIOUS FOUNDATIONS OF INNERWORLDLY ASCETICISM

(67): the four historical bearers of "ascetic protestantism": 1. Calvinism; 2. Pietism; 3. Methodism; 4. Bapitst sects

(69): not looking so much for explicit moral imperatives--but, rather, the "pyschological drives" which led people to behave in a certain way (this obviously relates to the discussion of rational/irrational)

(69): 'ideal type' technique as dialectical?

(69-87): CALVINISM

(69-70): the docrine of 'election by grace', whose importance consists in its 'effects' on cultural history. "it was primarily this aspect of Ca;vonism which was felt to be a danger to the state and was attacked by the authorities."

(72): first of two paths to this doctrine consists in knowledge of our total impotence and sinfulness. thus, it is only by god's grace that i could be redeemed, and not through my own action (i am insignificant, again) [Weber is noting that this doctrine faded from Luther, but was amplified in Calvin)

(72): "God was not there for the sake of men, but men were there for the sake of God... only a small proportion of humanity was called to salvation..."

(73): "...his decrees could only be understood or known in any way to the extent that he had seen fit to reveal them to us."

(73): goodness!--"For every creature was separated from God by an unbridgeable gulf and deserved only eternal death except in so far as he, for the greater glory of his majesty, had willed differently." [and it can't be that you can do good deeds and be saved--for that would mean humans had influenced God!]

(73): important--the principal consequence of this doctrine, weber's arguing, was to engender a profound sense of "loneliness" ("no one and nothing could help him.")

(74): this, he adds, was the basis "for the absolutely negative attitude of Puritanism towards all sensual and emotional elements in culture and subjective religiosity" [the asceticism--rejection of "every kind of culture of the senses"]

(74): here, a contrast between the "individualism" this engeders, and the Englightenment's view of men (which was decidedly more optimistic). "The Calvinist's relationship with his God was carried on in profound inner isolation."

(75): important--tracing how we get to the "calling," from this condition of "inner isolation." "The world was desinted to serve the self-glorification of God, and the Christian existed to do his part to increase the praise of God in the world..." more or less, then, because you find yourself in a vocation that God has willed, for you.

(76): "...labor in the service of this social usefulness furthers the divine glory and is willed by God."

(76-77): here arises the question re: 'my' election--how will i know? this, for the ordinary believer, became the question of "overriding importance."

(77): KEY: aside from belieiving in one's state of grace as 'duty', "tireless labor in a calling was urged as the best possible means of attaining this self-assurance."

(78): "The communion of God with the recipients of his grace cnan only take place and be consciously experienced by God's working in them and by their becoming conscious of this..."

(79): and thus, by being sure that his conduct is "based on a strength dwelling within him which is capable of increasing the glory of God... he attains that supreme prize... the certainty of grace." works, even if not sufficient, are still 'indispensable for salvation.'

(79): this means, then, that God will only help those who help themselves; the Calvinist 'creates' the certainty of salvation himself.

(79-80): KEY--elucidating the difference with catholicism: "It further means that what he crates cannot consist, as in Catholicism, in a gradual storing up of meritorious individual achievements; instead, it consists in a form of systematic self-examination which is constantly faced with the question: elect or reprobate?" in other words, it is not 'individual, atypical good works' that are desired by God--but a kind of 'santctification by works' that is being "raised up to the level of a system"

(80-82): the ascetic character of Reformed sects comes in this domination of life by the quest for certainty of salvation (this, he describes as its rationalization)--"the goal of asceticism was... to be able to lead a watchful, aware, alert life."

(82): the key difference between this asceticism and Catholic monastic asceticism consists in the fact that the former leads you into the world (into "secular everyday life"), whereas the latter takes you out of it.

(83): Calvinism contributes, also, a positive motive to this asceticism: the idea that one must "put one's faith to the test." And this, for the larger discussion, will be key, Weber's saying (see 86)

(83): weber is suggesting that this fervent commitment leads Calvinists to view others as God's enemies (yet it is unclear, really, why this follows, uniquely)

(84): importance of Old, and not New, Testament to the formation of these beliefs.

(85-87): KEY--Calvinism takes the "systematization of the ethical conduct of life" to a new level--Christianity permeates the "whole of existence." The key point, then, is that Lutheranism could not do this--it's doctrine of 'faith alone' could not provide the powerful psychological impulse "to be systematic in the conduct of life, and thus to enforce the methodical rationalization of life." Calvin's doctrine of predestination was only one of a number of ways in which this psychological impulse was generated. Now we move to the others.

(87-95): PIETISM

(88):"The movement aims to draw the invisible church of the 'saints' visibly together on earth... to lead a life which is dead to the influences of the world and based on the will of God in every detail, so that the daily outward signs manifest in their conduct may make them sure of their regenerate state."

(88-89): but the key difference between Pietism and Calvinism consists in the former's view of the "emotional side"--it "directs the practice of religion toward the enjoyment of bliss in this world instead of the ascetic struggle to secure a future in the next."

(89): however, this is not practically manifested, he's arguing (i am not following the argument for why, exactly--seems contingent, see 90). rather, "the practical effect of Pietist principles is merely an even stricter ascetic control of morality in the calling than that which is provided by the mere worldly 'respectability' of the normal Reformed Christian..."

(93): nonetheless, the basis of Pietism's asceticism "falls well short of the iron consistency of Calvinism."

(93): a summary passage of Calvinist spirit--useful.

(95-98): METHODISM

(95-96): anglo-american equivalent to continental pietism--a similar emphasis on the 'emotional', on the 'feeling of being certain of grace and God.

(96): "joyful assurance" in place of the "morose" anxiety of the Calvinists

(97): important--at the same time, however, something less than Pietism is going on: "The emotional act of conversion was brought about methodically, but its achievement was not followed by a pious enjoyment of communion with God in the style of the emotional Pietism... instead, the emotion thereby awakened was immediately directd into the path of the rational striving for perfection."

(98): BUT--he concludes by identifying its irrelevance wrt to the establishment of the idea of the calling; methodism will only be important for the "manner of its organization," which is where its particularity lies.

(98-105): THE BAPTIST MOVEMENT

(98): this has a more important place in our argument, since the middle two were sort of secondary, derived phenomena: "A second autonomous bearer of Protestant asceticism alongside Calvinism is the Baptist movement."

(99-100): the church as tightly-knit group--as "sect" -- the 'old' baptist attitude, then, consists in 'shunning' the world. this entails, like the Calvinists, a renunciation of all the pleasures of the world, too.

(101): important--entails, as well, "absolute subordination to the authority of God... the corresponding manner of life is thus a condition of salvation." they reject predestination--and thus, the "specifically methodical character of Baptist morality rests above all on the idea of 'waiitng' upon the working of the spirit..." effected practically, this translates into a "supremely conscientious character."

(103): summary passage: Bapitist and Quaker asceticism manifests itself in capitalist ethics of 'honesty is best policy' a la benjamin franklin. for the Calvinists, we see more he "unleashing of the individual's economic energy in the pursuit of private gain." but these will be systematized more clearly in the next section.

(103): we are interested, here, not in Church discipline--but in "the effects of the subjective appropriation of ascetic religiosity on the conduct of the individual."

(103): we are speaking of a kind of regulation, yes (as was argued at the outset) -- but a regulation that is eminently individual (not State or Church-mediated)

(104): best summary of the argument, thus far--"The consequence for the individual was the drive to keep a methodical check on his state of grace as shown in how he conducted his life and thus to ensure that his life was imbued with asceticism. This ascetic style of life, however... meant a rational shaping of one's whole existence in obedience to God's will... This rationalization of the conduct of life in the world with a view to the beyond is the idea of the calling characteristic of ascetic Protestantism."

(105-122): ASCETICISM AND THE CAPITALIST SPIRIT

(106): Calvin (vs. Baxter), on wealth. But, he's arguing, that Baxter despises wealth only insofar as it is correlated to a kind sloth--"What is really reprehensible is resting on one's posessions... to be sure of his state of grace, man must 'do the works of him who sent him...'"

(107): "every lost hour means one less hour devoted to labor in the service of God's glory."

(107): "Above and beyond this, however, work is the end and purpose of life commanded by God" (entirely different interpretation of the Pauline Principle--as compared to Thomas Aquinas, see 108)

(108): "the calling" as a "command of God to the individual to work to his glory" (as against Lutheranism, which sees it more as a destiny to which one must submit)

(108-109): but here, is this not evidence for the flimsiness of the thesis, in general? for lots of things can be deduced from the 'idea of a calling,' including a deeply anti-capitalist ethic that my station now is, and ought to be, my station forever. is this not symbolic of the kind of reading that is being done, throughout? perhaps the defense, though, would be that the preceding is particularly true of Lutheranism, but not so much in this ascetic Protestantism, where work is not a destiny but a proving-ground. though is that sufficient (see 110, addressed there)? ("The Puritan idea of the calling always emphasizes the methodical character of the asceticisim of the calling, and not, as with Luther, submission to the destiny which God apportions.")

(110): threefold usefulness of a 'calling'--(1) its morality; (2) its usefulness to the community; (3) its profitability

(110): "striving for riches is only dangerous when it is done with the aim of later leading a carefree life of pleasure... to want to be poor, it was often argued, was the same as wanting to be ill."

(111): "and thus, the plain middle-class self-made man enjoys ethical approval in full pressure" (but lots of confusion lies behind this middle-class moniker--are we talking principally of the petit bourgesoisie? or big bourgeoisie as well?)

(111-112): bringing Old Testament norms, back

(112-113): honing in on the argument--"We shall now highlight those particular points in which the Puritan concept of the calling and the insistence on an ascetic conduct of life directly influenced the development of the capitalist style of life."

(113): asceticism, of course, "turns all its force against one thing in particular: the uninhibited enjoyment of life and of the pleasures it has to offer" (Puritans vs. sports on Sunday--'sports' can be tolerated insofar as they "serve the rational purpose of providing sufficient recreation to maintain physical fitness" -- an excellent example of rationalization)

(115): and the spiritual foundation of being a scrooge: "Man was merely the steward of the gifts granted him by God's grace; he, like the wicked servant in the Bible, must give an account of every penny, and it is as the very least dubious whether he should expend any of this money for a purpose which serves not God's glory, but his own pleasure."

(115): summary passage, again: "If we may sum up what has been said so far..." innerworldly Protestant asceticism (1) prohibits enjoyment of posessions, (2) discourages consumption, and (3) liberates the aquisition of wealth from the inhibitions of traditionalist ethics.

(116): opposed, though, to the "striving for wealth for the ultimate purpose of being wealthy." and that is important.

(116-117): KEY--"a religious value was placed on ceaseless, constant, systematic labor in a secular calling as the very highest ascetic path... This was inevitably the most powerful lever imaginable with which to bring about hte spread of that philosophy of life which we have here termed the 'spirit' of capitalism." the restraint on consumption combines with the freedom to pursue profit to produced the creation of capital through the ascetic compulsion to save. [just a note: is a necessary corollary the idea that feelings that are 'spiritual' in nature are also more durable 'psychological drives,' than those that are secular?]

(117): Puritans and the birth of the rational, anti-feudal farmer.

(118): here, he is noting the fact that the wealthier got, the more they were tempted (and prepared) to break with the asceticism of their old ideals--it "...only developed [its] full economic effect after the pinnacle of religious enthusiasm had been left behind..." its principal virtue seems to have been the granting of a clear conscience to the money-maker. "A specifically middle-class ethic of the calling arose."

(119): are we talking about the man's workers, too? this is where I think the explanandum is poorly specified (strategically so).

(119): "he was given the comforting assurance that the unequal distribution of this world's goods was the special work of the providence of God..." interesting--he adds that this, eventually, becomes secularized into the economic doctrine of the "productivity" of low wages (that people will be compelled to work harder if they are poorer)

(119-120): he is answering directly the question about the working-class disciple--that he is content with low-wage work because God has made it so (but this is precisely what i was asking earlier? there is an ambiguity about the ascetic ethic that allows him to explain both the unceasing, instrumental pursuit of wealth and this resignation to low wages. he is having his cake and eating it to). in his defense, i suppose, he adds that this latter phenomenon is not produced by protestantism, but is a feature of the broader ascetic doctrine. though he still maintains that protestantism reinforces this resignation with the idea of the "calling."

(120): IMPORTANT--Weber, and Goethe: here we see the coded lament, I think (as in, he is letting Goethe speak for him). Goethe noted "the basic ascetic motive of hte middle-class style of life," which signaled the 'abandonment of the Faustian universality of humankind..." 'Deed' and 'renunciation' are bound together. "For him this recognition meant a resigned farewell to a period of full and fine humanity, the likes of which we shall not see again in the course of our cultural development..."

(120): "The Puritans wanted to be men of the calling--we, on the other hand, must be."

(121): Weber and Peak Oil!?

(121): important--in a sense, asceticism ended in its opposite: a doctrine which shunned goods (and accepted them only as fruits of God's will; as evidence of God's will, of salvation), has long left us. we now see the dominance of the "outward goods of this world." "Today its spirit ahas fled from this shell... Certainly, victorious capitalism has no further need for this support..."

(121): Weber's clear lament--these people are the pinnacles of cultural development?

(121): and he stops himself, for this historical study was meant to be valueless. interesting relationship to positivism, perhaps--his, at least, is not the standard critique of positivism which foregrounds the necessary subjectivity of the observer, even though his method is certainly anti-positivist.

(122): interesting--what was ostensibly, at the outset, an 'attack' on the materialist doctrine ends up ambivalently (clearly, as he admits, he never purported to replace that reading with a 'spiritual' doctrine). he puts the decision down to future work--it will not be possible, he argues, to begin with the conclusion of the investigation. but here we see the positivist fallacy: "Neither will serve historical truth if they claim to be the conclusion of the investigation rather than merely the preliminary work for it."

the glorious imperial legacy of the papacy and the catholic church:
There are three bulls (edicts, or executive orders, if you will) issued by the Papacy with which we should concern ourselves. The Dum Diversas, issued by Pope Nicholas V in 1452, authorized King Alfonso V of Portugal to reduce any "Saracens (Muslims) and pagans and any other unbelievers" to perpetual slavery, thereby ushering in the West African slave trade.
(...) The Romanus Pontifex, also issued by Pope Nicholas V in 1455, sanctioned the seizure of non-Christian lands, and encouraged the enslavement of non-Christian people in Africa and the Americas. Specifically, it gave the green light to "invade, search out, capture, vanquish, and subdue all Saracens and pagans whatsoever, and other enemies of Christ wheresoever placed," all for profit, and in the name of Jesus Christ.
(...) The Inter Caetera, signed by Pope Alexander VI in 1493, states, "... we (the Papacy) command you (Spain) ... to instruct the aforesaid inhabitants and residents and dwellers therein in the Catholic faith, and train them in good morals." This papal law sanctioned and paved the way for European colonization and Catholic missions in the New World.
(...) These three edicts opened the floodgates for everything that followed, the raping, pillaging, kidnapping, genocide and enslavement of millions. They established the groundwork for the global slave trade of the 15th and 16th centuries, and the Age of Imperialism.
(...) In Brazil, Pentecostalismism is on the rise. There have been efforts to incorporate African rites and drums into Catholic services, in an effort to become more dynamic and more relevant. Yet, in the most African nation outside of Africa, and the world's largest Roman Catholic nation, there are only 11 Black bishops out of 400.
(...) This school of theology, which focuses on social justice and political activism for the poor, challenges people in high places, and views Jesus as liberator of the oppressed, is rejected by the Vatican. In fact, Pope Benedict has devoted his career to eradicating liberation theology and its supporters, which he rejects as Marxist-inspired, and "a threat to the faith of the church."
(...) What we are witnessing is the ancient struggle between imperial religion—the arrogant manipulation of God to endorse the powerful, protect the rich and maintain the status quo—and the use of faith as a force for social change. Look at the Christian Right's endorsement of Bush as "God's President," as he presides over the largest transfer of wealth in the nation's history, turns his back on New Orleans, appoints Christian Right attorneys to suppress the voting rights of African Americans, and sponsors the carnage taking place in Iraq. And on the other hand, remember Gandhi, who used Hindu spirituality and civil disobedience to liberate India from the British Empire. Remember Dr. King, who condemned Jim Crow segregation, poverty at home and an immoral war in Vietnam, as conservative Christians met him with brutality and death threats and moderate Christian clergy urged him to slow down. This is nothing new.

papal decline:
The Roman Catholic pope's arrival in Brazil has been marred by controversy over his remarks on abortion and a poor turnout of the faithful, indicating growing discontent with the church.