Letters of a Voyage

I can't speak exactly for the specific Ethic, as I haven't read very much of it. But if you think about how, historically, Calvinists (and most other Protestants) react to that crazy predestination: they work incredibly hard. Almost across the board (Warning! Vague Generalization with No Quoted Sources! Beep! Beep!)Protestants are very hard workers. Even if you disagree with their politics or their religion, they are pretty determined to be the change they wish to see. Martin Luther wrote out, by hand, 95 Theses. Most of the work that was done for Abolition and Temperance and Suffrage was Protestant (and UU and Society of Friends, I'm still not sure where they stand on the Protestant line). Even in the extreme (and this may be the last time you here me defend Evangelicalism) look at the extreme, and fairly efficient, effort the Evangelicals put into their proselytizing and politics. And I think "think" that is the ethic that Weber is looking at, hard work tempered by some sort of morals. The hard work is what keeps it from becoming Durkheim (who saw society as an external force acting on unconscious individuals who were unconsciously shaping society) and the morals that keep it from becoming Marx (who was driven but no necessarily by more moral motives that the Bourgeois, in my humble opinion).