Weber's claim that Protestantism is more conducive to success than Catholicism and that Calvinism is in particular more successful is widely made and oddly immune to the charges of bigotry which would most often be attached to similar claims. For example, any claim that white culture is more conducive to success than black culture would be immediately attacked despite the fact that this would appear to be identical to the claim being made by Weber and others, specifically that one set of voluntarily chosen ideas is more conducive to success than another set of voluntarily chosen ideas.

So we have two things to examine here. One is the accuracy of the claim and the odd fact that this claim is strangely exempt from the attacks which similar claims draw. Judging the accuracy of the claim is simple, the old rule that the theory which predicts the best is the best should be followed. Determining why the claim is so oddly triumphant is less straightforward and will be dealt with at the end.

The first step is compare Catholic and Protestant incomes. In Weber's original work on the subject "The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism" the only data he presented was for the German state of Baden, for which he presented the average "tax on returns from capital" for 1895.

There is the odd fact that the very data Weber presents shows the Jews as being vastly more wealthy than all others, a fact supported by all the historical research on this time period. This would be odd to anyone familiar to the main theological disputes between Protestants and Catholics and familiar with the fact that Judaism emphasizes more strongly than Catholicism the need to do good deeds, an emphasis which Protestants claim is the main flaw within Catholic belief. With regard to the pivotal dispute Judaism would be in the eyes of Protestants as being an even more intensely wrong form of Catholicism, and therefore much of Weber's arguments regarding the connection between theology and belief would seem to be disproved by the Jewish example. Weber's own position on this is that Jews are wealthy due to being minorities, a status which he claims lifts the performance of all who share it.

Because the data Weber presents is miniscule it is necessary to look further afield. Data on the average incomes and net worth of US ethnic groups are available. According to data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth the average net worth of Catholic Americans is 21% higher than that of Protestants. According to data from the General Social Survey conducted by the National Opinion Research Center Catholic income is 3.7% higher than Protestant income.

A useful comparison is between ethnically similar groups which differ in terms of religion. Those who identified themselves in the GSS as being of Irish ancestry and of the Catholic religion have incomes that are 7% higher than those who identified themselves as being of Irish ancestry and Protestant. Those who identified themselves in the GSS as being of German ancestry and of the Catholic religion have incomes that are 1.7% higher than those who identified themselves as being of German ancestry and Protestant. Ireland and Germany are the only countries which sent enough immigrants of both religions to the US to do a useful comparison.

One could make the argument that current data on Europe is irrelevant due to the decline of religious belief which has occurred in the last few generations. This objection would not apply to US data, as studies consistently show that the US is one of the most religiously devout countries in the world.

The US is a place where Catholics and Protestants live in political equality and in similar circumstances. The theory that Protestant beliefs are more conducive to success does not predict US economic outcomes well.

The next obvious comparison is the one which first caught Weber's interest, the comparison between the Protestant and Catholic countries of Western Europe.

The Protestant countries of Western Europe clearly have higher per capita incomes. The Protestant countries of Western Europe are also clearly different from the Catholic countries in many areas besides religion. Two issues stand out: the Protestants are more Germanic and the Protestants were spared Muslim occupation.

Both the poorest countries and the poorest sub-regions of Europe were once under Muslim rule. One of the eight poorest regions in Europe are the Azores island chain, which is more of a colonial possession than a part of Europe. The other seven poorest regions in Europe were all once under Muslim rule and the absolute poorest region is Iperios in Greece, which contains a large number of Muslims due to bordering on Albania. Perhaps this trend is coincidental. Perhaps not. Of the eight richest regions in Europe five are Catholic. Not one of these wealthy Catholic regions was ever under Muslim rule.

The only country of Western Europe which once had large areas under long term Muslim rule, but was never completely Muslim ruled is Italy. The regions of Italy which were ruled by the Muslims for hundreds of years are 38% poorer than the regions which were never long under Muslim rule.

The two poorest Catholic countries of Western Europe are Portugal and Spain and their input goes a long way towards bringing the Catholic average below the Protestant average.

The correlation between years of Muslim rule and per capita income is -.28 with a slope of -3.17 and an intercept of €13,000. All available evidence points towards Muslim rule being a cause of low incomes and it is fair to say that the Protestants have benefited from the lack of Muslim rule and the Catholics have suffered from this.

No one knows what happens to a Protestant region that is under Muslim rule because they have always been spared this. The Catholics have not had this luck and it is clear that Muslim rule has reduced subsequent economic performance. Rather than going to the great length of trying to estimate how well countries like Spain and Portugal would be doing if they, like the Protestant countries, had never been Muslim ruled, we can simply recalculate the Catholic numbers while excluding the entirely Muslim ruled countries of Portugal and Spain and recalculating Italy's while excluding the Muslim ruled regions within it. By doing this the Catholic and Protestant figures come out to near equality.

The second important difference between Protestant and Catholic Europe is ethnic makeup. The best way to examine this is to look at the performance of ethnic twins with differing religions. The most obvious such ethnic twins are Holland/Belgium, Germany/Austria, and Scotland/Ireland.

These three Catholic/Protestant pairs are as similar to each other as one can find in Western Europe. The Scots are descended from a Celtic tribe which left Ireland and are racially identical to the Irish and slightly different culturally. Austria is not much more than a smaller, Catholic version of Germany. Belgium has a significant French and Latin influence, but is still very close to predominantly germanic Holland in ethnic terms. As one can see the religious difference has not appeared to have made much of an impact on per capita income. It is true that Germany's per capita numbers are reduced by the lingering effect of Communism on 1/4 of the population, but historically Austria and Germany have had similar economic numbers. Examining the economic performance of ethnic twins does not indicate that religion is a factor.

Regional comparisons are useful for comparing the specific impact of Calvinism. There are few Calvinist regions in Europe. The two which are most often cited as proof that this denomination is more conducive to success are Holland and Switzerland, but both these regions were more successful than the rest of Europe before Protestantism first surfaced in 1517 AD. Max Weber himself seemed to refer to this when he said "A number of those sections of the old Empire which were most highly developed economically and most favored by natural resources and situation, in particular a majority of the wealthy towns, went over to Protestantism in the sixteenth century. The results of that circumstance favour the Protestants even today in their struggle for economic existence."¹⁴ So while Switzerland and Holland are wealthy, they have always been wealthy and do not seem to be wealthier than ethnically similar countries. It is also worth noting that Switzerland is half Catholic and that it's most famous achievement, becoming the first democracy since Athens, occurred in 1292 AD long before Luther and Calvin were born.

Because of these issues it might be helpful to look at the Calvinists regions of Europe which are less commonly used as examples. In the UK there are two regions which have traditionally been Calvinist, Scotland and Wales. Neither is wealthier than the UK average.

The theory which predicts the best is the best. The theory that Protestantism and Calvinism in particular is more conducive to success than Catholicism does not predict well. The theory that Muslim rule reduces future economic success does predict well and all of the poorest regions in Europe were once under Muslim rule. One could claim that there is a pattern of Germanic superiority, but I am not inclined to this. I believe that the underlying pattern of European success is that the regions which had the most free towns are the wealthiest and that the Germanic peoples simply had more of these on the whole. After the fall of the Roman Empire there was a period when political organization on the classical model disappeared. This began to change in 800 AD when the city of Amalfi became a democracy. Between then and 1200 AD the phenomena of self-governing and democratic cities spread to: Northern Italy, Switzerland, the Rhine Valley, the Low Countries, and Germany's Baltic coast. These regions quickly became wealthier than the European average and have remained so. It's worth noting that Spain formed a great number of free towns during this period and then removed their right to democratic self-government in 1521 AD. By 1600 Spain was in notable decline, the cause of which is still debated. This pattern extends to generally more backward Eastern Europe. The Czechs, Slovaks and Hungarians are among the few Slavic peoples to have had free towns in the pre-modern era and their current economic performance exceeds that of the rest of Eastern Europe. The Czechs in particular had a greater concentration of free towns than all other Slavs, the most famous of which is Prague, and the Czechs are far and away the most advanced of the Slavs. Evidence does not suggest that this is a coincidence.

"On the side of the production of private wealth, asceticism condemned both dishonesty and impulsive avarice. What was condemned as covetousness, Mammonism, etc., was the pursuit of riches for their own sake. For wealth in itself was a temptation. But here asceticism was the power "which ever seeks the good but ever creates evil"; what was evil in its sense was possession and its temptations. For, in conformity with the Old Testament and in analogy to the ethical valuation of good works, asceticism looked upon the pursuit of wealth as an end in itself as highly reprehensible; but the attainment of it as a fruit of labour in a calling was a sign of God's blessing. And even more important: the religious valuation of restless, continuous, systematic work in a worldly calling, as the highest means to asceticism, and at the same time the surest and most evident proof of rebirth and genuine faith, must have been the most powerful conceivable lever for the expansion of that attitude toward life which we have here called the spirit of capitalism.

When the limitation of consumption is combined with this release of acquisitive activity, the inevitable practical result is obvious: accumulation of capital through ascetic compulsion to save. The restraints which were imposed upon the consumption of wealth naturally served to increase it by making possible the productive investment of capital. How strong this influence was is not, unfortunately, susceptible of exact statistical demonstration."

"The chevaliers d'industrie, however, only succeeded in supplanting the chevaliers of the sword by making use of events of which they themselves were wholly innocent."

"In the face of the habitual mode of life of the old feudal nobility, which, as Hegel rightly says, "consists in consuming what is in hand," and more especially displays itself in the luxury of personal retainers, it was extremely important for bourgeois economy to promulgate the doctrine that accumulation of capital is the first duty of every citizen, and to preach without ceasing, that a man cannot accumulate, if he eats up all his revenue, instead of spending a good part of it in the acquisition of additional productive labourers, who bring in more than they cost."

"Accumulate, accumulate! That is Moses and the prophets! "Industry furnishes the material which saving accumulates." Therefore, save, save, i.e, reconvert the greatest possible portion of surplus-value, or surplus-product into capital! Accumulation for accumulation's sake, production for production's sake: by this formula classical economy expressed the historical mission of the bourgeoisie, and did not for a single instant deceive itself over the birth-throes of wealth."

"Nor does it matter if simple reproduction is replaced by reproduction on an extended scale, by accumulation. In the former case the capitalist squanders the whole surplus-value in dissipation, in the latter he demonstrates his bourgeois virtue by consuming only a portion of it and converting the rest into money."

"But original sin is at work everywhere. As capitalist production, accumulation, and wealth, become developed, the capitalist ceases to be the mere incarnation of capital. He has a fellow-feeling for his own Adam, and his education gradually enables him to smile at the rage for asceticism, as a mere prejudice of the old-fashioned miser. While the capitalist of the classical type brands individual consumption as a sin against his function, and as "abstinence" from accumulating, the modernised capitalist is capable of looking upon accumulation as "abstinence" from pleasure."

The next question is why Weber's claim is so popular and so immune to the attacks which would usually follow such a claim. I believe that the reason for the popularity of Weber's claim is that he recapitulates Karl Marx's version of economic history. As quasi-Marxism Weber's ideas appeal to the same people Marxism appeals to and engenders their support.

One of the key features of Marxism is that it refuses to give credit for the economic explosion it terms capitalism to the bourgeoisie it describes as its inventors. By refusing to give credit I mean that Marx did not believe the bourgeoisie intended to create an economic explosion and did not possess any sort of special competence in worldly affairs which should be associated with the economic explosion. Instead Marx stated that the previously dominant element in society, the Feudals, failed to create capitalism because they spent money as quickly as it was earned. The bourgeoisie then arrived and began to save and invest a portion of their earnings, thus leading to capitalism. This reinvestment of earnings was described as being unintentional and the product of the same shadowy historical forces Marx attributed all things to. This same explanation is recapitulated by Weber in his attribution of the economic explosion termed capitalism to the influence of a small denomination called Calvinism.

Both Weber and Marx repeatedly emphasize that the economic explosion they attribute to either the bourgeoisie or the Calvinists was not intentional. This is a key difference which makes Weber's claim palatable to the same people who would attack any claim that variations in success can be attributed to choices. Weber's system is not direct, it instead attributes great success to one's milieu in a manner which would discourage the individual from believing in his own ability to determine his own fate. This is not surprising, considering that Weber was raised a Calvinist. Because Weber's system does not emphasize the ability to control one's fate, it is acceptable to those who attribute all to shadowy social forces.

Weber manages the trick of both denying and affirming that one's voluntarily chosen beliefs. While on the surface he is claiming that a set of beliefs called Calvinism can produce notable success, he describes the connection between the success and the chosen beliefs as being so indirect and the success so unintended that Weber does not cross certain lines which many do not want crossed.

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