The Beginnings of Capitalism and the New Mass Morality*

At first one is inclined is to conceive of the problem of mass morality as one of a generally valid norm. ‘The construction of norms for the regulation of social life and individual behaviour is a compelling need of capitalism, so long as it wishes to proclaim itself as a universal form of social life,’ says B. (Borkenau, 1971: 96). Consequently, the new morality had to be a mass morality, based on a universal norm. With the dissolution and disappearance of the ‘natural’, that is, the traditional social order of corporate estates, it became necessary for capitalism to maximise the moral demands to which an individual subjects himself. For, ‘as Max Weber has shown’, the functioning of capitalism ‘requires of the masses a completely new ascetic attitude to the labour process’, one which ‘cannot be achieved through a legal compulsion to labour in the form of serfdom’. Accordingly, ‘it becomes necessary to supplement the legally established moral minimum with a religious or other form (!G.) of normative moral maximum’ (Borkenau, 1971: 152). This task is performed by Calvinism, which educates the masses in labour discipline. Which ‘masses’ does B. mean when he speaks of the new ‘mass morality’ and of a ‘completely new ascetic attitude of the masses towards the labour process’? The working masses come to mind. On occasion, B. states that ‘Calvinism [was] an instrument of mass domestication for the bourgeoisie’ (1971: 169), that ‘religion is an indispensable means of mass domestication’ (1971: 208). He speaks of the ‘compulsion for the labouring strata to adapt to capital’ (1971: 161) and of the ‘new ascetic attitude’ which could not be ‘achieved by means of a legal compulsion to labour in the form of serfdom’ (1971: 152). For that reason, legal means had to be replaced by a religious norm for the maximum performance of labour. And he speaks of an ‘exertion which becomes boundless’ (1971: 161).