The earth is moving/trembling under our feet. Everything is in (radical) changes, when we are looking around and then back, the landscape is already changed and perhaps we are on the street to search for another job… we are constantly losing our repairs, the North… and do not find our well known milestones in our life… you should be vigilant, you should be cautious and you should doubt everything and be on the alert… really?
What is the system (I mean the capitalism) we are actually living in? Is it the best of of the best? Is there any other system we could search for? Are we understanding & using well all the opportunities we have in this system? Or we simply sc….ing it up and crying quickly for another one? Is it the system being wrong or we ourselves could do better? What on earth could be a good direction to take?
In 1905 a sociologist, one of the first perhaps, Max Weber has written an interesting book about the spirit of capitalism (later he revised the original up to 1930), the title was:
The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (The Book – Published by Routledge in 2005 – originally in 1992 on the base of the 1930 version) - This edition was translated from German by Talcott Parsons (introduced by Anthony Giddens), the last link (Max Weber’s…. in the 21st Century) is just speaking about a new English translation… -
“Weber’s claim is that rational capitalism is the source of the industrial revolution and the growth of capitalism as the preeminent universal economic system. Weber claimed that this rational capitalism came into being by a work ethic rooted in Calvinism.” (quote from the “About Weber” thesis, see the link below).
His thesis was later much criticized but because of his (Weber’s) effect on the later sociology, every bits and pieces of his original works and those of his critics might be a tremendous gisement of valuable information and arguments. However, I admit and I accept that with the speed we are now living it’s hard for the laymen to study such topics in details. Anyhow, I’ve thought I gather together some papers in one lot, if we have time we could read one or two passages from them…
Later this work was named as one of the 10 most influential book in the sociology by the International Sociological Association and listed among the New York Public Library’s Books of the Century (1895–1995).
Some more sources about the author and the work:
Understanding Weber (a book from 2007) –http://58.192.114.227/humanities/sociology/htmledit/uploadfile/system/20100506/20100506140232522.pdf
About Weber (a thesis from 2006) -
http://dspace.uta.edu/bitstream/handle/10106/309/umi-uta-1247.pdf?sequence=1
Max Weber’s Protestant Ethics in the 21st Century (a short chapter of a book - 2002) -
http://www.uvm.edu/~lkaelber/research/KaelberPE.pdf
Szilágyi Miklós - coaching.szm@gmail.com
