Methodology
Weber's causal claim that the Protestant ethic led to capitalism has been criticized for endogeneity problems and case selection problems.[10][11] Rather than Protestantism leading to capitalism, it may be the case that individuals and communities who were more prone to capitalism were also more likely to adopt Protestantism.[11]
Economic criticism
The economist and historian Henryk Grossman criticises Weber's analysis on two fronts, firstly with reference to Marx's extensive work which showed that the stringent legal measures taken against poverty and vagabondage was a reaction to the massive population shifts caused by factors such as the enclosure of the commons. And, secondly, in Grossman's own work showing how this "bloody legislation" against those who had been put off their land was effected across Europe and especially in France. For Grossman this legislation, the outlawing of idleness and the poorhouses they instituted physically forced people from serfdom into wage-labor. For him, this general fact was not related to Protestantism and so capitalism came largely by force and not by any vocational training regarding an inner-worldliness of Protestantism.[12] However, it is possible that the Protestant "work ethic" reinforced or legitimized these legal measures within a larger cultural context.
In a 2015 study, Davide Cantoni tested Weber's Protestant hypothesis on German cities over the period 1300–1900, finding no effects of Protestantism on economic growth.[13]
Historian Laurence R. Iannaccone has written that "Ironically, the most noteworthy feature of the Protestant Ethic thesis is its absence of empirical support", citing the work of Swedish economic historian Kurt Samuelsson[14] that "economic progress was uncorrelated with religion, or was temporally incompatible with Weber's thesis, or actually reversed the pattern claimed by Weber."[15]
Other recent scholarship has found some valid Protestant ethic effects both in historical and contemporary development patterns. Dudley and Blum, using city growth as a proxy for wages growth, write:
Evidence of falling wages in Catholic cities and rising wages in Protestant cities between 1500 and 1750, during the spread of literacy in the vernacular, is inconsistent with most theoretical models of economic growth. In The Protestant Ethic, Weber suggested an alternative explanation based on culture. Here, a theoretical model confirms that a small change in the subjective cost of cooperating with strangers can generate a profound transformation in trading networks. … A re-examination of Weber’s Protestant Ethic indicates that what was important for long-term economic growth was not a greater propensity to save and work of individual Protestants but rather the manner in which a group of Protestants interacted compared with a group of Catholics.[16]
— Ulrich Blum, Leonard Dudley, Religion and Economic Growth: Was Weber Right? – Journal of Evolutionary Economics, Vol 11, issue 2, pp. 207–230
Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson in their book Why Nations Fail reject the relationship between economic progress and Protestantism writing:
What about Max Weber’s Protestant ethic? Though it may be true that predominantly Protestant countries, such as the Netherlands and England, were the first economic successes of the modern era, there is little relationship between religion and economic success. France, a predominantly Catholic country, quickly mimicked the economic performance of the Dutch and English in the nineteenth century, and Italy is as prosperous as any of these nations today. Looking farther east, you’ll see that none of the economic successes of East Asia have anything to do with any form of Christian religion, so there is not much support for a special relationship between Protestantism and economic success there, either.[17]
Revisionist criticism
Hector Menteith Robertson, in his book Aspects of Economic Individualism (1933), argued against the historical and religious claims of Weber. Robertson pointed out that capitalism began to flourish not in Britain, but in 14th century Italy, so the rise of capitalism cannot be attributed to Adam Smith, the Protestant Reformation, etc. Robertson goes further, and states that what happened in Britain was rather a retrogression from what was achieved in Italy centuries earlier.
Robertson shows that Adam Smith and David Ricardo did not found economic science de novo. In fact, liberal economic theory was developed by French and Italian Catholics, who were influenced by the Scholastics. The British economic thought was rather a step backwards since it espoused the labor theory of value, which had already been proved incorrect by the School of Salamanca.[18]
Other criticism
It has recently been suggested that Protestantism has indeed influenced positively the capitalist development of respective social systems not so much through the "Protestant ethics" but rather through the promotion of literacy.[19] Sascha Becker and Ludger Wossmann of the University of Munich[20] showed that literacy levels differing in religious areas can sufficiently explain the economic gaps cited by Weber. The results were supported even under a concentric diffusion model of Protestantism using distance from Wittenberg as a model.[20]
Weber's conclusion has also been criticized for ignoring the ethnic dimensions. Weber focused on religion, but ignored the fact that Germany contained a large Polish minority (due to the partitions of Poland); and Poles were primarily Catholic and Germans, Protestant. As such, scholars have suggested that what Weber observed was in fact "anti-Polish discrimination" visible in the different levels of income, savings and literacy between Germans and Poles.[21]
The noted French historian Fernand Braudel, considered one of the greatest of the modern historians, vigorously criticized Weber's theory, noting its lack of foundation and veracity, stating:
All historians have opposed this tenuous theory, although they have not managed to be rid of it once and for all. Yet it is clearly false. The northern countries took over the place that earlier had so long and so brilliantly been occupied by the old capitalist centers of the Mediterranean. They invented nothing, either in technology or in business management. Amsterdam copied Venice, as London would subsequently copy Amsterdam, and as New York would one day copy London.[22]
