Introduction to Weber, Ascona and anarchism

Sam Whimster

pp. 1-40

in: Sam Whimster (ed), Max Weber and the culture of anarchy, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 1999

Abstract

It will be recalled that in the final pages of The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism Weber speculates on what sort of future awaits humankind now that the spirit of religious asceticism has escaped from the iron cage of capitalism. Religion in the form of the Protestant sects had played its decisive role in the formation of a frame of mind that would reproduce a new form of capitalism. But having made the succession from early to high modernity, what should be done with this mental and cultural "habitus' — that ingrained disposition that controlled all one's actions in the world? It might haunt us as duty, or it might simply be discarded as in America in favour of the pursuit of wealth as a competitive sport.