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Weber found that the rise in capitalism is where the "Protestant Ethic" was the highest, and that no other religion resulted in the rise of capitalism. All other religions did not stress work as a means to get into heaven. If we take the Muslim faith, we see that dying for ones religion is considered as a means to get into heaven. The Protestant Ethic is the only faith where wealth reinvested is a means to get into heaven. Weber says that what this "protestant Ethic" has really done is force the individual to embrace capitalism and the morals which surround it as a way of life. Society has dedicated that in order to succeed we must be employed and we must earn as much money as possible, even if it does not coincide with our own happiness.
Weber concludes that the Protestant Ethic that society has enveloped has succeeded today in reducing employment to strictly a means of acquisition. "specialists without spirit, sensualists without heart, this nullity imagines that it attained a level of civilization never before archive. " Capitalism has been absorbed into the mainstream of society and accepted not only as a norm, but the only acceptable mode of acquisition. Weber was concerned about how highly impersonal the capitalist system had become. Weber called this system bureaucracy. He saw that this system even existed in a democratic society. This system was efficient. It was a highly organized way of doing work.
Weber was bureaucracy as a necessary evil. For Weber, the power of a capitalistic society comes from bureaucracy. This bureaucratic power is legitimized by the use of rational-legal authority. This authority is a set of impersonal rules that regulate an anonymous individual. In the feudal society, it was not the group that had power, but the person who has economic wealth. It is traditional authority which legitimizes this power.
This authority is is based on tradition and trust. In feudal society, it was the tradition to listen to the power of the king and all his subjects put all their trust into the king. This type of authority, that of the King, was not as impersonal as the rational-legal authority. If a king needs to borrow something from his subjects, the king is able to get it. In the United States, if the government asked to borrow ones car, one would not give it to them, because one does not personally know and trust the United States government. Bureaucracy, may be necessary because of its Rational-legal authority.
Weber felt that once feudalism had been abolished, so was the class system. Class in the feudal era was determined by one's blood line. If one was a serf, then one's son or daughter would be born into the same class status. The next in linear the throne of the king is his first born son. With the rise of capitalism, this distinct line between classes vanished.
Weber, rather saw class in capitalist society mainly in terms of monopoly. Weber viewed a monopoly as those who had power to bargain. Those who have a monopoly are less eager to exchange goods. One's "class situation" and "life chances" is defined by their situation in the exchange market. The possibilities of classes consists of ability to exchange the kind of capital to be exchanged. This leaves the possibility of more than one class rather than two.
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Research essay sample on Protestant Ethic Feudal Society
