The View From 1776

In his widely influential 1904 study, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, Max Weber asked why countries like England and the United States had far outstripped other Western nations in economic productivity from the 17th through the 20th centuries.  What had led to their capitalistic individualism, while Continental Europe, with the notable exception of Holland, had remained statist economies with tightly centralized controls and state business monopolies?

His hypothesis was that capitalism was implicit within Protestant Christianity.  The Protestant ethic led its adherents to work harder and more efficiently and to save more of what they produced in order that it might be reinvested to produce more useful products, more efficiently.  Such an ethic led to accumulation of great amounts of capital for productive reinvestment, which in turn led to rapid economic growth.

Weber uses as an illustration the teachings of Richard Baxter, a Puritan Protestant clergyman who served both as chaplain to Oliver Cromwell’s army (1645-47) and as one of Charles II’s royal chaplains after the Restoration in 1660.  Baxter, wrote Weber, noted the dual nature of wealth.  It was both a temptation to sin and a source of betterment for society.

Jesus had said, Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal.  But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal.  For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. (Matthew 6:19-21)

But later, in Matthew 25:19-21, Jesus also said, After a long time the master of those servants returned and settled accounts with them.  The man who had received five bags of gold brought the other five. ‘Master,’ he said, ‘you entrusted me with five bags of gold. See, I have gained five more.’ “His master replied, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant! You have been faithful with a few things; I will put you in charge of many things. Come and share your master’s happiness!’

Weber summarizes Baxter’s view: The real moral objection is to relaxation in the security of possession, the enjoyment of wealth with consequent idleness and the temptations of the flesh, above all of distraction from the pursuit of a righteous life....Not leisure and enjoyment, but only activity serves to increase the glory of God, according to the definite manifestations of His will.....

“St. Paul’s “He who will not work shall not eat” holds unconditionally for everyone.  Unwillingness to work is symptomatic of the lack of grace."

Here we have, in a nutshell, the conflict between Protestant evangelical Christians’ antipathy for the welfare state and the liberals’ love for it. 

The individualism implicit in Protestant evangelicalism mandates hard work, limited personal consumer spending, and maximum savings for the future.  Each person is responsible to God for the industriousness with which he works and for the righteousness of his conduct.

The liberal welfare state encourages both the dissolute idleness of gambling in state lotteries, and consumer spending with easy-credit policies and inflation.

Under liberal-socialism, the people are educated to look to the political state for satisfaction of their needs.  This breeds the passivity and inability for self-help that was evident in heavily welfare-dependant New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina.  That city’s motto is, not “work for the night is coming,” but “let the good times roll.”

Liberal leaders want a dependent population that will vote for them to get more welfare handouts.  As Bismarck said when he instituted the world’s first organized welfare state in the 1880s, it would enable him to herd the German people like cattle. 

Liberal-progressivism’s Marxian collectivism is overlaid with John Maynard Keynes’s hypothesis that economic downturns are caused by too much saving.  In Keynes’s prescription for Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal, economic prosperity is dependent upon government spending, hence the welfare state. 

The welfare state, however, produces nothing of value.  It merely transfers income from hard-working people to those made dependent upon the political state.  By penalizing hard work and thrift, it lowers standards of living for everyone. 

The point is proved by the huge surges in national productivity when presidents Kennedy, Reagan, and George W. Bush cuts taxes.  In contrast, the Great Depression of the 1930s was prolonged for eight years after President Roosevelt instituted the welfare state and tripled income tax rates.

Protestant evangelicalism leads believers to govern their actions by anticipating their effect upon future generations.  It leads to chastity, marriage, and support for families and children. 

Liberal-progressivism leads to sexual promiscuity, an explosion of illegitimate children and single-parent families, and irresponsible behavior by men.  The future of families, children, and society isn’t even on the radar screen.  We are inundated with filth on TV, in the movies, and in popular literature, and sabotaged by an education system that teaches students to hate the United States and the Christian ethos upon which it was founded.

From the vantage point of liberal-progressivism, Christians are enemies of the political state, because their moral ethic stands in the way of the collectivized, socialistic state.

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