Hello!
What's the link between spirituality and worldly success & wealth?
I love the great self-help and motivational books, AND studied capitalism and political economy
... so this question fascinates me.
Is spiritual belief a cause of someone's wealth, or is it just a way of justifying their actions in business?
In a recent Twitter thread on John D. Rockefeller, I wrote how important his Baptist background was to his rise.
He believed he was doing God's work in cleaning up the lawless oilfields of America, where gambling and prostitution were rife... to create a modern, efficient oil industry.
The only way to achieve this was creating a virtual monopoly that could fund R&D to increase quality and lower prices.
By 1907, Rockefeller's Standard Oil company:
▪Refined 87% of US kerosene
▪Had 90% of the domestic market
▪Was 20 times the size of its next competitor
Like many tycoons of his time, Rockefeller was corrupt and bought off politicians to get his way.
But all the while he attended church, taught Sunday school, tithed, and was a teetotaler.
The result? He became:
- Richest American in history $270 billion+
- 3rd richest person in history
- Personal wealth in 1913: 3% of US GDP
“It has seemed as if I was favored and got increase because the Lord knew that I was going to turn around and give it back.”
John D Rockefeller
Meantime, he'd begun thinking how to give away his fortune.
As a good evangelical Baptist he’d always donated 6-10% of his income.
His new Rockefeller Foundation:
▪Funded the new University of Chicago + colleges for Black Americans
▪Built medical schools at Johns Hopkins, Harvard & London School of Tropical Medicine
▪Fueled research that helped wipe out yellow fever and hookworm
A century later, $100m is still gifted each year.
Profit for God
But let's dig deeper:
Is there a link between spiritual belief and capitalism itself?
In his famous "The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism" (1904) Max Weber was careful to say that there was not anything intrinsically better about the theology of Protestantism.
It was just that the early Protestant sects – Calvinists, Methodists, Pietists, Baptists, Quakers - had beliefs which made them very well adapted to a modern capitalist economy.
They believed in:
1) A spirit of progress
2) Love of hard work for its own sake
3) Orderliness, punctuality and honesty
4) Absolute control of self in emotions and body, and aversion to spontaneous enjoyment.
(this sums up John D Rockefeller by the way)
Protestants hated time-wasting through socializing, idle talk, sleep, sex or luxury (“every hour lost is lost to labour for the glory of God”).
They were fixated on the most productive use of resources, which could be measured by profit.
German 1934 edition, "Protestant Ethic and Spirit of Capitalism"
Are you chosen?
The early Protestants believed in the irrational spiritual concept of "predestination".
You did not know if you were among God’s ‘elect’ - whether you would live in eternity or be damned.
So you had to seem to be one of the elect: leading a spotless, well-ordered life of extreme self-control.
Success in business was a sign that you were one of the chosen.
Related to this was the idea of calling or “proving one’s faith in worldly activity”.
One's work was one's duty, and compulsive saving from that work was encouraged.
The outcome? Capital was freed up for systematic investment, making the rich even richer.
Catholics had always had a degree of guilt about business and money making.
Protestants and Puritans, unrestricted by conscience, became known as reliable, trustworthy and eager to please in their business dealings.
This combination of “intense piety with business acumen” became the cornerstone of many great fortunes.
Work was not just about making money, but the glory of God.
And with a ‘calling’, there was no problem in reconciling the spiritual and economic aspects of life.
Max Weber
Of course, the traits of the early Protestants are not unique in humanity, and can be witnessed the world over where economies have taken off.
The highly successful East Asian economies have only minor Protestant populations, but their industrious, conscientious citizens have much in common with the dutiful and self-denying burghers of 17th century Germany.
Today we criticize ourselves from being too much a consumerist society, buying and using instead of saving and creating.
Weber is worth reading to be reminded of the true spirit of capitalism – that it is not about consumption, but ideas and products that improve lives.
Weber admitted:
If you had a ‘calling’, it was a meaningful system which could release all your wonderful potential. If you did not, capitalism could seem soulless and even oppressive, an ‘iron cage’.
If you have a calling or a sense of duty in the work you do then your performance naturally gains an extra, powerful dimension.
Have this, and there's no problem at all in squaring up the spiritual and economic aspects of life.
50 Classics series
Books are big projects.
With the consulting work I've been doing the last four years, I've only had time to put out new editions of older books.
I do intend to write new 50 Classics books, and have plenty of ideas.
But in the meantime, there are brand new editions of:
50 Philosophy Classics
and
50 Economics Classics
...each with half a dozen new chapters and updating of the Introduction and biographies.
So if you have lost your copy or want to get a new one for a friend, the newer versions are the ones to get.
One thing I never expected when starting the 50 Classics series is how many languages the books would go into.
It's currently 27, and I recently got news that some of the titles will go into Bulgarian, Ukrainian, and Mongolian.
The pic is of the Korean edition of 50 Philosophy Classics.
Love how they made an effort with the caricatures of the philosophers... and let Hannah Arendt keep her cigarette!
Between books
Between writing actual books, I publish my new, shorter pieces of writing on Memo'd
Here's a bunch of pieces covering society, philosophy, psychology, business, and economics:
▪Marx's chilling warning: will it come true in our lifetimes?
▪What is History? EH Carr's classic question answered
▪Ayn Rand: capitalist philosopher
▪The brilliant, little known maxims of Balthasar Gracian
▪Machiavelli's 9 traits of a leader
If you follow me, you'll automatically get notifications for these writings.
I've also become more active on Twitter, writing threads on the key messages of people like Jung, Freud, and Adler, plus econ/business figures like Adam Smith and Conrad Hilton.
Some recent Twitter threads:
- Why Jung is more important than Freud long-term
- Why Adler had a better take on human nature than Freud
- Why most men don't start to succeed before they're 40
If you are on Twitter, here I am.
Both Memo'd and Twitter are for short-form writing that can be published quickly.
I love books, but I love the thread/memo structure too. Perhaps it's the future of writing.
Montaigne in his mid-50s
Capstone Classics
Lastly, the last 18-24 months has seen the publication of several new Capstone Classics.
This series is about re-releasing older classic books that are now out of copyright, and putting them into beautiful new hardback format.
As editor, I help choose the works, edit/abridge/modernize the text if needed, and commission an expert to provide an Introduction.
The newer ones:
▪Montaigne's Essays
▪Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra
▪Thomas More's Utopia
▪Virginia Woolf's A Room of One's Own
▪Solomon Northup's Twelve Years a Slave
▪Frederick Douglass's Narrative
▪Elaoudah Equiano's Interesting Narrative
You'll find them with the rest of the series here:
Or just order them wherever you buy your books.
Nassim Taleb, himself as a student
How do you measure the value of books?
But why have a passion for OLD books?
After all, most critics and reviewers - indeed many readers - are focused on new stuff.
Humans tend to privilege the new and shiny over the old.
Well, I lay out my reasoning here:
"How do you judge the value of books (or any cultural products)?"
The essential reason is that time, not experts or critics or peers, is invariably the best judge of everything.
If people are still reading Aristotle’s Ethics or Virgil’s Aeneid today, despite their being a couple of thousand years old, we can expect that human beings will still be reading them in the year 2220.
During a stint teaching, one of Nassim Taleb’s students (who was doing an economics major) asked him for a rule on what to read.
The author of Antifragile and The Black Swan replied:
“As little as feasible from the last twenty years, except history books that are not about the last fifty years.”
After some hesitation about what he might be missing out on, Taleb’s student took the advice, and began reading works by Adam Smith, Karl Marx, and Friedrich Hayek.
He didn't regret it.
All best wishes,
Tom Butler-Bowdon
Enjoy this newsletter?
Share this post now
About Tom
Buy the 50 Classics books or see reviews
Capstone Classics
Book Insights & Book Lounge
Find & Connect
Butler-Bowdon.com
Comments and questions - reply to this email
Twitter
LinkedIn
Instagram