[lbo-talk] Fw: Deer Hunting With Jesus

Wojtek Sokolowski sokol at jhu.edu
Mon Nov 19 07:26:03 PST 2007


Marvin Gandall:

It's generally the economic conjuncture rather than any inherent religious or other cultural values which affects attitudes to capitalism, and equally so among different racial, religious, and ethnic groups. The analyses of capitalist ideology by Weber, Sombart, Tawney, Hoftstader, Bell and others are extremely valuable, but they err in viewing ideology as a cause rather than a reflection of economic and social development. Their own writings, in fact, were at least in part an ideological reaction to developments in their own times - aimed at the burgeoning influence of Marx and the historical materialists, and the threatening social movements which they inspired.

[WS:] I think this is a misrepresentation of Weber - which is probably intentional on this side of the pond (Talcott Parsons influence, I suppose). I do not think that Weber argued that religious beliefs "cause" economic development. His views are more sophisticated than that.

In a nutshell, Weber argued that religion legitimizes economic developments rather than causing them. Thus, the bourgeoisie who grew rich thanks to the expanding global influence of Western Europe found Catholicism too constraining to their newly acquired social status, and thus adopted "heresies" - which have always been a dime a dozen in the Christian world - to legitimate their own status. In other world, the relationship between Protestantism and capitalism was more symbiotic, Protestantism gained recognition as the religion of choice of the economically ascending class, and in turn provided legitimacy for the economic interests of that class. Stated differently, there is "elective affinity" between religion and class interests - those beliefs that can effectively legitimate economic interests of a dominant class become the dominant religion whose main function is to legitimate economic interests of the dominant class.

I do not think that it is that much different from Marx's position on the subject, but it is free of primitive economic determinism that often plagues Marxist thought. The "superstructure" is not a mere byproduct of property relations but an active ingredient in the legitimation and social reproduction of those relations.

This view does a fairly good job explaining why some people "voluntarily" opt for what seems to be against their own economic interests, which vulgar economic determinism cannot do without falling into primitive psychologism attributing some form of "false consciousness" to human actors.

Wojtek



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