Lessons of Protestant Ethics under Post-Capitalism Conditions
This paper presents a reflection of the values of Protestant ethics singled out by M. Weber that have been transformed under the conditions of modern post-capitalism. The reasons for repeated changes in the attitude to labor during the history of the West European civilization are identified. Labor...
| Main Authors: | , |
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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Kazan Federal University
2016-08-01
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| Series: | Ученые записки Казанского университета: Серия Гуманитарные науки |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://kpfu.ru/portal/docs/F1944606945/158_4_gum_24.pdf |
| Summary: | This paper presents a reflection of the values of Protestant ethics singled out by M. Weber that have been transformed under the conditions of modern post-capitalism. The reasons for repeated changes in the attitude to labor during the history of the West European civilization are identified. Labor used to be treated as either curse or divine punishment in the Middle Ages. Protestant ethics defined labor as an important value of the human life. Hegel and Marx understood labor as the source of human life, abstract thinking, as well as aesthetic and moral feelings. In the late 20th 21st centuries, the scornful and hostile attitude to labor as to shameful and even criminal occupation has developed in Western Europe and Russia. This attitude is addressed to the cumulative activity of workers creating the mass productive force of society rather than to the individual taken separately. This ideological move hides the bumper profit source of modern corporations from the naive researcher. Therefore, three questions arise: What influence does the returned hostile attitude to labor have on the prospects of capitalistic society? How does the economic and social experience of the Soviet history and economy, which was extremely successful under the conditions of industrial society, integrate with the modern situation? What are the prospects of modern society taken as a whole with this attitude to labor? The following conclusions are made in search for answers to the above questions: 1) The hostile attitude to labor arouses negative characteristics in workers, which deepens the crisis phenomena of capitalism; 2) Organization of the modern production process demands cooperation of real producers as of labor-inspired people having equal rights to the result of labor, i.e., to the use of the socialist experience; 3) The prospects for development of the modern society are considerably determined by continuation of the history of consciousness of the Europeans, who must decide again on their attitude to labor and whether it should be the genuine subject of history. |
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| ISSN: | 2541-7738 2500-2171 |