Protestant Work Ethic

We are a culture whose history is steeped in the hard work and accomplishments of our pioneering forebears. Our most ingrained cultural constant and our enduring national myth is what Max Weber dubbed the Protestant Work Ethic. At its core, the Protestant Work Ethic is the conviction that all work, any work, is good, noble, and a demonstration of diligence and duty. It is also an active demonstration of religious devotion and piety, as well as commitment to the perfectibility of the “human condition” at both the material and the spiritual level.

Most historians attribute the origin of the work ethic to Martin Luther. According to Luther, one was summoned by God to a secular “calling,” which today we would call a job, profession, or career. Before Luther, most work was looked on as a curse more than a calling. To the ancient Greeks, whose physical labor was in large part done by slaves, work brutalized the mind and made workers unfit for the practice of humanizing virtues. The Greeks regarded work as drudgery, an activity to be conducted with a heavy heart. Work enslaved the workers to the task, corrupted the soul, and impeded the worker's pursuit of “the good life.”

Luther stressed that all work, all callings were necessary to life. No calling was to be recognized as more necessary or blessed than another, and therefore, all callings were of equal worth in the sight of God. For Luther, work was a form of serving God. Thus, the only way to live acceptably before God was through devotion to one's calling.

With John Calvin in the 16th century, we find Luther's ideas extended, systematized, and institutionalized. Work was the will of God, and even ceaseless dumb toil sufficed to please him. Calvin preached the predestination of the elect. He believed that the elect could be recognized by certain outward signs, which included self-denial and devotion to duty, and that God caused the elect to prosper. “To prosper” or “to succeed” meant to enjoy not only wealth and happiness on earth but also eternal salvation. Success was the symbol of selective salvation. Calvin managed, no matter how indirectly, to provide a rationale that linked work and the divine with material success and comfort.

In The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, Max Weber observed that the rise of Protestantism and the rise of capitalism generally coincided in England and throughout most European countries. Weber's explanation was that many basic Protestant ideas encouraged capitalistic activities. For example, Protestantism taught that each person would be individually judged by God and that judgment would be based on one's whole life's work or “calling.” Protestantism also taught that the fruit of one's calling—money—should not be spent frivolously or unnecessarily. According to Weber, these ideas led to a life of hard work, self-discipline, asceticism, and concern with achievement. This ethic helped advance the rise of the private entrepreneur in that it led to the accumulation of money that would not be spent on luxuries but that could and should be put into one's own business.

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