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The Beginnings of Capitalism and the New Mass Morality

Grossman criticizes Max Weber’s argument, recapitulated by Franz Borkenau, about Calvinism’s role in the emergence of capitalism. According to Grossman’s Marxist account, Calvinism emerged as a doctrine neither of the masses nor of the bourgeoisie but of the craft stratum. Capitalism arose two centuries earlier than Calvinism. A crucial aspect of ‘education in labour discipline’, which Borkenau and Weber neglected, was coercion. Religion in general serves as ‘an instrument of mass domestication’. Strands of Catholic thought were better suited to be mass capitalist moralities than was Protestantism.

Key Words: Borkenau • Calvinism • capitalism • Grossman • Grossmann • labour discipline • Marxism • morality • Protestantism • Weber

Journal of Classical Sociology, Vol. 6, No. 2, 201-213 (2006)
DOI: 10.1177/1468795X06064861


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