“This naive manner of conceptualizing capitalism by reference to a “pursuit of gain” must be relegated to the kindergarten of cultural history methodology and abandoned once and for all. A fully unconstrained compulsion to acquire goods cannot be understood as synonymous with capitalism, and even less as its “spirit.” On the contrary, capitalism can be identical with the taming of this irrational motivation, or at least with its rational tempering. Nonetheless, capitalism is distinguished by the striving for profit, indeed, profit is pursued in a rational, continuous manner in companies and firms, and then pursued again and again, as is profitability. There are no choices. If the entire economy is organized according to the rules of the open market, any company that fails to orient its activities toward the chance of attaining profit is condemned to bankruptcy.
Let us begin by defining terms in a manner more precise than often occurs. For us, a "capitalist" economic act involves first of all an expectation of profit based on the utilization of opportunities for exchange; that is of (formally) peaceful opportunities for acquisition. Formal and actual acquisition through violence follows its own special laws and hence should best be placed, as much as one may recommend doing so, in a different category. Wherever capitalist acquisition is rationally pursued, action is oriented to calculation in terms of capital. What does this mean?”

— Max Weber

Prefatory Remarks to Collected Essays in the Sociology of Religion (1920)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "This naive manner of conceptualizing capitalism by reference to a “pursuit of gain” must be relegated to the kindergart…" by Max Weber?

Max Weber 41

German sociologist, philosopher, and political economist 1864–1920

Related quotes

“There are more idealized definitions of capitalism, but I refer to the real capitalism—the kind we are living with. This capitalism is grounded in an elitist ideology of individualism supported by an institutional system devoted to the concentration and abuse of wealth for the exclusive benefit of a private ruling oligarchy. It is the capitalism that claims to champion democracy and markets even as it destroys them. The capitalism that claims to bring universal prosperity even wile denying it to all but its most favored servants. The capitalism that destroys life to make money and organizes as a suicide economy that destroys the foundations of its own existence—and ours.”

David Korten book When Corporations Rule the World

Source: When Corporations Rule the World (1995,2015), pp. 20-21

“Capital' is not what capital is called, it is what its name is called.”

Joan Robinson (1903–1983) English economist

Source: Contributions to Modern Economics (1978), Chapter 8, Production Function and Theory of Capital, p. 79

“Without need any longer of religious backing, capitalism may now have the power to shape people in its own image. Its conduct-forming spirit may be its own production. … Capitalism brings along with it, as part of its normal functioning, cultural forms affecting how subjects relate to themselves and to others. Capitalism has cultural concomitants—beliefs, values and norms—that help direct conduct—that get people to do willingly what capitalism requires of them—by encouraging them to see what they are doing and what they must do to get ahead as meaningful, valuable, or simply inevitable.”

Kathryn Tanner (1957) American theologian

"Christianity and the New Spirit of Capitalism" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yg6hztuaw2k&t=1002, Gifford Lecture, University of Edinburgh

“In its literal meaning, capitalism means rule by capital, more specifically rule by the owners of capital for their exclusive private benefit.”

David Korten book When Corporations Rule the World

Source: When Corporations Rule the World (1995,2015), p. 20

“I was guilty of judging capitalism by its operations and socialism by its hopes and aspirations; capitalism by its works and socialism by its literature.”

Sidney Hook (1902–1989) American philosopher

Out of Step (1985)

“For the West, the enemy was not "socialism" but capitalism. How to tame and subdue the polar bear, how to take over the talent, the science, the technology, how to buy out the human capital, how to acquire the intellectual property rights?”

Michel Chossudovsky (1946) Canadian economist

Source: The Globalization of Poverty and the New World Order - Second Edition - (2003), Chapter 16, The "Thirdworldization" of the Russian Federation, p. 240