Otto Neurath's Distorted Reception of Weber's Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism

Abstract

Abstract: Otto Neurath probably never read Max Weber's The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism , but only perceived it through J.B. Kraus's book Scholasticism, Puritanism, and Capitalism . For Kraus, as a Jesuit, it was important to take a clear position in the conflict between Protestants and Catholics. The goal of his argument was to downplay and limit the importance of Protestantism to modern capitalism. He therefore hardly addresses Weber's particular argumentation. Neurath, in turn, presumably relied on Kraus in order to call upon a Jesuit as a key witness for Marxism. This as well as Neurath's well-known tendency for polemics made him follow Kraus, who with his criticism of Weber by means of Marx wanted to establish, as Neurath called it, a 'Marxism of a Jesuit' as a third way. Kraus's criticism triggered Neurath's misconception that Weber's writing should be understood as an anti-thesis to Marx. Surprisingly, he never realized how closely Weber's approach in the empirically based study corresponded with his own methodological approach of an empirical sociology.