The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism

A tight and unmarked copy,-" The Protestant ethic -a moral code stressing hard work, rigorous self-discipline, and the organization of one's life in the service of God was made famous by sociologist and political economist Max Weber. In this brilliant study (his best-known and most controversial), he opposes the Marxist concept of dialectical materialism and its view that change takes place through "the struggle of opposites." Instead, he relates the rise of a capitalist economy to the Puritan determination to work out anxiety over salvation or damnation by performing good deeds an effort that ultimately discouraged belief in predestination and encouraged capitalism. Weber's classic study has long been required reading in college and advanced high school social studies classrooms." From the Publisher: "A brilliant book which studies the psychological conditions which made possible the development of capitalist civilization. The book analyzes the connection between the spread of Calvinism and a new attitude toward the pursuit of wealth in post-Reformation Europe and England, an attitude which permitted, encouraged--even sanctified--the human quest for prosperity."