the actions of a social system or a social organization. Germany under Hitler or Russia under Stalin is indistinguishable as a nation-state from Switzerland in any evaluative sense and Charles Manson’s and Jim Jones’s communes, which were directed toward death, are morally indistinguishable from an Israeli kibbutz, which is directed toward life. This is especially curious, since many sociologists hold values that sharply distinguish among social organizations on the basis of humanitarianism yet are content with social theory that blinds them to these very values―a stance which probably derives more from intellectual superficiality than from any lack of moral righteousness.
[…]
The Major Problem
The major problem for explanations of system behavior based on actions and orientations at a level below that of the system is that of moving from the lower level to the system level. This has been called the micro-to-macro problem, and it is pervasive throughout the social sciences. In economics, for example, there is microeconomic theory and there is macroeconomic theory; and one of the central deficiencies in economic theory is the weakness of the linkage between them, a weakness papered over with the idea of “aggregation” and with a ubiquitous concept in macroeconomic theory, that of the “representative agent.” […]
Max Weber and the Spirit of Capitalism
To show something about what is involved in making a proper micro-to-macro transition, I will turn first to an instance in which it was not made properly. This example is a classic in sociology. Max Weber’s The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1958 [1904]).
At one degree of detail, Weber is simply expressing a macrosocial proposition: The religious ethic which characterized those societies that became Protestant in the Reformation (and particularly those that were Calvinistic) contained values that facilitated the growth of capitalist economic organization. Diagrammatically, the proposition can be put as shown in Figure 5.1. This proposition, if there were nothing more, would exemplify the first mode of explanation described earlier, which remains at the level of the system. For any degree of confirmation the proposition would require one of two kinds of evidential basis. One would be a systematic comparison of the economic systems of Protestant and non-Protestant societies to determine if the former were more likely to be capitalist. A second basis would be an examination over time of the economic organization of societies which became Protestant, to determine whether capitalism developed shortly after the advent of Protestantism. Weber presents evidence of both these sorts, comparing countries according to their religious composition and the degree and timing of their capitalist development. This evidence, however, is far from conclusive, and Weber does not base most of his effort on it.
Figure 5.1 Macrosocial proposition: Calvinism encourages capitalism.
The deficiencies of this approach are among the points described earlier as favoring internal analysis. The empirical deficiencies (point I given earlier) are probably the most glaring: The societies that can be compared are few in number, and those in which capitalism developed most rapidly differed not only in religion but in many other ways as well. Statistical comparisons would be subject to many different interpretations, even if the association between Protestantism and capitalism was high.
But Weber does not remain with this proposition alone. He examines the content of Calvinist doctrine, in particular, the kind of moral prescriptions it imposes on its adherents. Then he examines the “spirit” of modern capitalism and, using a number of other periods and other economic institutions for comparison and contrast, singles out the idea of diligence in performing one’s duty in a calling (p.54) and opposition to traditionalism (pp. 58–63) as the central elements which distinguish it. Finding the same antitraditionalist orientation and the same precept of diligence toward one’s calling in Calvinist doctrine, he uses this as evidence that the growth of this religious doctrine provided the value system which allowed capitalism to develop. This second kind of evidence allows further specification of the relation shown in Figure 5.1. The content of the Protestant ethic can be described as values deriving from the religious beliefs of a society, and the content of what Weber calls the spirit of capitalism can be described as values governing the economic activities of the society. These values are two components of the value system of a society, governing activities in two different institutional areas. […]
Part of Weber’s discussion in support of his argument goes far beyond comparisons between nations to include comparisons between regions within nations, religious subgroups within regions, and even individuals in families (see especially his footnotes in chapter 1). For example, he quotes extensively from the writings of Benjamin Franklin to express the essence of the spirit of capitalism and points to the religioethical precepts taught to Franklin by his Calvinist father. Weber also compares the taxable wealth of Protestants and Catholics in a region in Germany.
The use of this material raises further questions about just what kind of proposition Weber was attempting to demonstrate and, in particular, what unit or units were involved in the proposition. Did he really mean to specify the proposition at the individual level? It appears, from his use of this individual-level evidence and from some of his statements, that this is exactly what he intended. If so, then the proposition of Figure 5.1 must be revised. The single proposition breaks into three: one with an independent variable characterizing the society and a dependent variable characterizing the individual; a second with both independent and dependent variables characterizing the individual; and a third with the independent variable characterizing the individual and the dependent variable characterizing the society. Thus the proposition system begins and ends at macro levels, but in between it dips to the level of the individual. The three propositions may be put, somewhat crudely, as follows:
1 Protestant religious doctrine generates certain values in its adherents.
2 Individuals with certain values (referred to in proposition 1) adopt certain kinds of orientations to economic behavior. (The central orientations to economic behavior are characterized by Weber as antitraditionalism and duty to one’s calling.)
3 Certain orientations to economic behavior (referred to in proposition 2) on the part of individuals help bring about capitalist economic organization in a society.
Figure 5.2 shows a way of diagramming such multilevel systems of propositions. The upper horizontal arrow represents the macro-level proposition. The three connected arrows―of which the first begins at the same point as the macro-level proposition and goes down to a lower level and the third goes back up to the final point of the macro-level proposition―represent the three linked propositions.
Figure 5.2 Marco- and micro-level propositions: effects of religious doctrine on economic organization.
In this set of propositions, the third is of most interest, because it moves back up from the individual level to the societal level. The independent variable characterizes an individual, and the dependent variable characterizes a social unit, in this case the society. Obviously, a proposition of this sort, unless it is one of those historical propositions which attribute major social changes to particular individual leaders, is not suggesting that a single individual’s attributes are effective in bringing about social change. Rather, some sort of combined or joint or aggregate effect of the economic behavior of many individuals in bringing about capitalistic development is being
