Max Weber wrote the book in 1905, describing how the Protestant Ethic led to the rise of Capitalism. I chewed through the concept, and realized that rather than move from Mercantilism to Capitalism, Spain had moved into becoming a pirate empire (much like Rome) with her conquistadores bringing in gobs of loot from the Americas and the Philippines. At about the same time, I read the Koran – and noticed that the wealthy Muslim states were based on natural resource extraction developed by European and US heirs of the Protestant Ethic.
Now, I’m looking at Robert Spencer’s article “Before Oil, How Did Islamic States Get Rich”. https://www.frontpagemag.com/before-oil-how-did-islamic-states-get-rich/ Spencer describes a group that (obviously) lacks what Max Weber termed ‘the Protestant Ethic’ as he describes how the rich Islamic states developed: “The wealthy and powerful Islamic states of the past, including the great caliphates as well as the Mughal empire in India and others, weren’t great centers of manufacturing or agriculture, or of mercantile acumen. Rather, they gained their wealth and power through jihad.” Fits in with Weber’s premise – pirate empires, funded on loot. Spencer continues with this harsh observation: ” As The Tragedy of Islam: Failure and Excuses explains in detail, Islam has no work ethic. Its ideal society features non-Muslims working and supporting the Muslims, who do not work.”
His conclusion, about the Ottoman Empire, is: “However, high taxes can have catastrophic consequences. The Ottoman Empire grew great and powerful on the confiscated wealth of the subjugated Jews and Christians, but once those taxes had rendered the Jewish and Christian communities impoverished, the empire went into an irreversible decline. By the seventeenth century, the jizya was no longer the empire’s principal source of income, and no revenue source could replace it entirely or revive the faltering empire.“
So I begin to look at the combination of Islam and Socialism – in the streets and in city hall – as viewed by Max Weber. Capitalism, in its crude, disinterested way, has lifted most of the world from abject poverty. It has not lifted all equally, but a lack of capital has kind of became the main identifier of abject poverty.
As I pondered back through Weber, I was listening to either Rubio or Vance, explaining how the US has resources ready to deliver to Cuba – but we will not let the Cuban regime pass out the food, or take the credit for providing it. And I realize that we are seeing thegreat difference between humanitarian aid that supports totalitarian regimes and humanitarian aid that undermines those regimes.
The Cold War ended in a long economic battle that the US won. The half-century of Iranian conflict has been funded by oil. And I am realizing that Max Weber is relevant on today’s battlefields – whether against the Twelver Islamic Republic or the statist communists of Cuba.
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