Hard Work and Its Reward
“Hard work pays off.” my band director would say time and time again to us. “Hard work is its own reward,” my parents and grandparents would repeat over and over to me and my sisters. Even in our deeply Catholic community the remnants of the faith system of the Puritans who founded our city could be found in the mindset of nearly every adult I knew. Work hard, go to church, and enjoy your family were the shared values of our community and in spite of many of our best efforts it became part of our mentality as well.
Max Weber’s The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism attempts to dig into why Capitalism had taken off more with Protestants than Catholics or other religious groups in the nineteenth century. His conclusion that it is the belief systems of Protestant that made them ideal counterparts to the growth of capitalism. The desire for progress, the love of hard work for its own sake, orderliness, and several other characteristics helped the Protestants of northwestern Europe and the Americas become successful. Along with these things came the reality that for many of them the money was not the purpose for work, it was rather the natural outcome of people dedicated (or called) to their work.
While I have no doubt that the Protestant work ethic played into the building of these economies, Polanyi’s points about markets and capitalism need to be weighed against Weber’s thesis. Polanyi saw the success of markets (and capitalism in general) as a false narrative propped up by those whose interests it served and did not think that religion played into it at all. As I am weighing the two views together it is almost as if the protestants were duped into working hard for those who were actually making all the money, which is pretty much what Marx saw when he looked at the same history as Weber. I am not about to argue that Marx was right that “religion is the opiate of the masses,” but it does seem that he was on to something there. To Weber’s point though, the protestants did not care if they were being duped, they were working to honor God and family and that work was a reward unto itself.
It seems that in my little community’s attitudes are shifting among those in the generation following mine. There is less of a sense that hard work is its own reward and more of a desire to find work that is rewarding and meaningful. This shift was starting to happen as I grew up, but it had not found a full footing in our working class town yet. Now that the mills have shutdown and the shipyard is hiring fewer people the work a person does seems less predestined and almost limitless. I wonder if the rise of decentralized work is going to see the demise of the part of protestant work ethic that caused us to value the work for itself and not its reward. The shift toward finding work that is fulfilling rather than just time consuming feels like an appropriate evolution of the protestant work ethic and probably where we should have headed a long time ago. Perhaps this is the direction the Pietists, Methodists, Puritans, and Calvinists were heading in the first place and it was simply not possible given the limited types of work available in a particular area. I do wonder what this means for how “grunt” work gets done, it is not really meaningful or rewarding, but it does need to be done.
Weber’s book more than anything fills me with questions about the past and the future and culture and how this works into our attitudes about each other. I have no answers, but life is found more in the questions than the answers and perhaps that is the real value of Weber’s work, at least for me right now.
About the Author
Sean Dean
An expat of the great state of Maine where the lobster is cheap and the winters are brutal I've settled in as a web developer in Tacoma, Washington. As a foster-adoptive parent of 3 beautiful boys, I have deep questions about the American church's response to the public health crisis that is our foster system.6 responses to “Hard Work and Its Reward”
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
These are really interesting thoughts, Sean, especially as I consider my own research interests on vocation and work. I am intrigued by your futuristic projections about work. Will decentralized work really cause the demise of the Protestant work ethic? Or will the whole thing blow up, as Polanyi mentioned and then we just start over again from scratch, build to the same point, and blow up again. It’s like an endless cycle. What do you think?
I think that in our lifetime we will see the nature of work change immensely. Automation is already changing how work is done in factories and will continue to change things like farming. More and better AI models are going to replace call centers and a lot of technical services. With less jobs based on drudgery that will give people an opportunity to find work that fulfills them. As for whether or not the PWE gets demolished by this, I’m not sure. There are people now who love what they do and they’d do it for any amount of money and there are those who only do what they do because of the amount of money they’re paid. I hope that in the new economy we see more of the former and less of the latter, which is I think what the PWE folks were going for. So while it may not be ‘hard’ work, it’ll be ‘honest’ work with its own reward. Perhaps that is the epitome of the PWE, honest, enjoyable work done for its own reward.
Not sure if you’re reading this comment or not, because wordpress, but you might checkout Shop Class as Soulcraft for your work on vocation.
Sean, you are right that the more recent generations, like the Millennials, are making sure they enjoy their jobs and have more of a work life balance. I do not see how they can keep the capitalist machine going. It does not seem that they will be able to support our growing economy. Perhaps they will be the ones to get the spending under control. I also agree that growing up Catholic, we still believed in hard work, especially in a company town like Detroit. We can see how Weber came up with these ideas, and it is interesting how he differed from Polanyi and Marx. Perhaps they were all right, looking at the same problem from different angles. All of these have some truth and provide a warning for us to heed.
Mary, I think you’re right about how Marx, Polayni, and Weber looked at the same things from different angles and were to some degree right given the angle they were looking from. I’d be curious to see what effect the Protestant Work Ethic has in a less working class Catholic community. I suspect that it has ingrained itself into our culture so much that it’s no longer explicitly Protestant, that’s just the descriptor of where it comes from.
Sean, You have such rich thought processes. Your statement, “and it was simply not possible given the limited types of work available in a particular area.” has tapped into my own thinking of what came first or what formed what. That is, that available (or perhaps unavailable) economic opportunities drive what types of work one does. Then, how much of that informs one’s faith or how much does one’s faith inform one’s work? I really appreciated your thoughts on comparing Polayni and Weber. It seems like economic and sociological theorists can be like unskilled preachers, where their mind is already made up and now they are trying to back into their proofs. Thanks again, great post.
Thank you for this Sean. I appreciate you pulling in Polanyi and Marx. I know there is concern among older generations that I know about where the young are headed. I seem to be somewhere in the middle. I don’t like entitlement and yet want them to find fulfilling vocations. Maybe my perception of seeing our generation caught somewhere in the middle isn’t accurate but it’s been my experience. Or maybe it’s just being in the middle of life and being able to appreciate both perspectives?