I came across an interesting article this week in the massive amount of reading I am doing these days. \u00a0I forget the name of the article (not a good research practice) but it took me to a link where a recent speech by U.S. Senator Marco Rubio was given. \u00a0The nature of the article was about how some democrats are field-testing some ideas to see how they might fit into Hillary Clinton\u2019s possible platform for the 2016 Presidential run. \u00a0Rubio\u2019s speech, was referred to as a test-pilot on the issue of \u201cfamily\u201d to get a pulse of people\u2019s receptivity to the issue. \u00a0One of the quotes that caught my attention was when Rubio said,<\/p>\n
\u201cIn America, if you get an education, find a good job, and wait until marriage to have children, your chances of achieving economic security and professional fulfillment are incredibly high. In fact, if everyone in America lived lives that went in this order, in the order I\u2019ve just outlined, some estimates are that the poverty rate would be cut by an estimated 70 percent.\u201d1<\/p>\n
Initially upon reading this, I loved the fact that \u201cChristian values\u201d like family, education, hard work, and an actual prescriptive order of life, have the possibility of actually hitting the radar for the coming 2016 campaigning run. \u00a0Then upon further thinking, I realized these are just \u201cCapitalist values\u201d that produce economic security and success in the world we are living. \u00a0Then finally I started to think about how interrelated our Christian values are to our Capitalist values and our reading for this week began to make sense. \u00a0I believe that Rubio\u2019s quote gives strong evidence that not only did the spirit of Capitalism come from the Protestant ethic, it is very much still alive there today.<\/p>\n
In his book, \u201cThe Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism\u201d, Max Weber brings this tension to the forefront of the causal relationship between spiritual conditioning and the emergence and development of capitalism and a capitalist agenda. \u00a0Weber writes:<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is true that the greater relative participation of Protestants in the ownership of capital, in management, and the upper ranks of labor in greater modern industrial and commercial enterprises, may in part be explained in terms of historical circumstances, which extend far back into the past, and in which religious affiliation is not a cause of the economic conditions, but to a certain extent appears to be a result of them.\u201d2<\/p>\n
What Weber is pointing to here, is the point of the cliche, \u201cNot everything is how it seems.\u201d \u00a0Or maybe better put, \u201cIf things do look a certain way . . . there is probably a reason.\u201d \u00a0Basically Max Weber makes the claim and gives amazing historical evidence for the surfacing and advancing of Capitalism through the development of the Protestant church and the social implications created by a shift away from Traditionalism, a call to a \u201ccalled life\u201d, and the overall psyche a population or society needs if capitalism is going to rise and radically expand. \u00a0The truth unpacked in this book makes a clear case that while not being influenced by the Protestant ethic alone, the fact that most early capitalists were the ones with the capital, the ones with the values, and the ones know-how to see capitalism flourish . . . and oh yes, they were the Protestant ones too.<\/p>\n
Webber gives a strong caution and calls for a balance when pursuing a greater understanding of the influencing factors that shape our culture and history. \u00a0Webber writes,<\/p>\n
\u201cBut it is, of course, not my aim to substitute for a one-sided materialistic an equally one-sided spiritualistic causal interpretation of culture and of history. \u00a0Each is equally possible, but each, if it does not serve as the preparation, but as the conclusion of an investigation, accomplish equally little in the interest of historical truth.\u201d3<\/p>\n
So as we continue to pursue and \u201cprepare\u201d for a greater understanding of the society in which we find ourselves, keeping a healthy, historical perspective that looks at the philosophy, the sociology, the politics, and the religion, seems like the truly most accurate way forward in our investigation.<\/p>\n