Weber, Max, Baehr, Peter (Ed.), and Wells, Gordon C. (Ed.) (2002). The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism: and Other Writings (Penguin Twentieth-Century Classics) Penguin Classics.

“The Protestant Ethic and the “Spirit” of Capitalism is one of those audacious and robust texts for which the term “classic” could have been invented. Ever since its publication in 1905, the essay has provoked controversy, prompting successive generations of readers to wrestle with the paradox at its core. Many authors might have welcomed such notoriety, but not Max Weber (1864-1920); who bitterly complained that the critics had misunderstood him and that the ensuing debate was both obfuscating and sterile. To prevent further confusion, he revised the essay in 1919, modifying some of its formulations and increasing further an already massive apparatus of footnotes. But all attempts at definitive clarification were to no avail; Weber’s revision, published in 1920, served only to generate new problems and ambiguities. And herein, ironically, lies the secret of The Protestant Ethic’s fame. If Weber’s “thesis” were self-evidently true, simple, or translucent, it would never have engaged a critical audience in the first place or survived to become a classic. “Mere” solutions to a problem impede a text’s ascent to greatness for the simple reason that they offer no challenges for contemporaries to embrace and succes­sors to ponder. Weber’s achievement was not to definitively answer a riddle but to stake out a territory fertile of new puzzles at the heart of which is the claim that religious forces, not simply economic ones, paved the way for the mentality characteristic of modern, Western capitalism. On Weber’s account, our secular and materialistic culture is partly indebted to a spiritual revolution: the Protestant Reforma­tion of the sixteenth century. That Weber’s argument raises—or begs—a hundred questions is inseparable from its eminence and renown.” (From Editors’ Introduction, p. ix)

Weber, Max, Parsons, Talcott, and Tawney, R. H. (2003). The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (Dover Value Editions) Dover Publications.

 This brilliant study opposes the Marxist concept of dialectical materialism and its view that change takes place through the conflict of opposites. Instead, Weber relates the rise of a capitalist economy to the Puritan determination to work out anxiety over salvation or damnation by performing good deeds — an effort that ultimately encouraged capitalism.

Whimster, Sam (Ed.) (2004) The Essential Weber: A Reader, New York: Routledge.

Weber is increasingly being recognized as the theorist of modernity. Avoiding the mistakes of other classical thinkers, his sociological analysis has an increasing validity and relevance. Weber explained the work ethic, impersonal bureaucracy, the criteria for profit maximization, charismatic and legal rulership, the fate of salvation doctrines and the place of science. With the triumph of capitalistic modernity his writings on disenchantment, the force of community, the separation of law and justice, and the reduction of personality to instrumental expertise have a ring of prophecy.

The Essential Weber, selected by one of the world’s leading Weber scholars, introduces the work of this key thinker to a new generation of readers. Central themes highlighted in the collection are: the developmental logic of world religions; the rise of modern capitalism; the multi-dimensionality of power in societies; the dilemmas of modernity; the theory of social action; ideal types and the objectivity of knowledge.

The majority of the readings have been specially translated for this collection both to improve accuracy and to make Weber speak anew in the twenty-first century. Each part opens with a short introduction explaining the sequence of readings, the flow of ideas and their intellectual context, and concludes with a guide to further reading.

Author Sam Whimster is Reader in Sociology at London Metropolitan University and editor of Max Weber Studies.

Furnham, A. (1990). The Protestant Work Ethic: The Psychology of Work-Related Beliefs and Behaviours. New York: Routledge.

Psychologists have long been active in investigating concepts integral to the Protestant work ethic–the topic is a central one in such areas as occupational, industrial, and social psychology. Here, for the first time, is a comprehensive and explicitly psychological account. (From back cover of the book)