False Economy - Alan Beattie [66]
In fact, there are. Why is the performance of Islamic countries so uneven? Why, despite their relative success over the past fifty years, did they often arrive at the twentieth century poorer than those dominated by other religions? And even more intriguing, why, looking back over the thirteen centuries of Islam's existence, did the economies of its societies initially outperform others before falling behind?
The issue of Islam and growth is really part of a much broader line of inquiry about the effects of religious belief on economic performance: Are some faiths simply better than others for growth? Does Mammon lurk behind the mask of Christ, or Mohammed, or the Buddha? Which prophets are most profitable?
A careful scrutiny of holy books and balance sheets down the centuries suggests that the relationship is complex. The contents of religious dogma or governing philosophies have not by themselves proved to be a systematic impediment to economic success. Faith seems to exercise its influence on growth in a subtler, less deterministic way. Rather than the theology itself, it has more to do with the actions of priests, politicians, monarchs, and bureaucrats exploiting religious doctrine to pursue thoroughly temporal goals of wealth and power.
The argument about which gods are good for growth has built up a fairly lengthy pedigree of its own. The dynastic origin of this debate is The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, a 1905 work by the German sociologist Max Weber. Weber contended that the growth of a modern capitalist economy in early-modern Europe (particularly in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries) was associated with the low-church Calvinist Protestantism that emerged from the sixteenth-century Reformation and created such movements as English Puritanism. He went on to argue that the cultures of India, China, and the Islamic world had proven themselves inimical to capitalism. Weber's writings have spawned such an extended clan of contributions that it is worth examining the paterfamilias in some detail.
Max Weber is often misrepresented, which is not to say he was right. He kicked off with some analyses of the local Grand Duchy of Baden that showed that Protestants were generally more successful than Catholics in business. (They were also rather better represented in the liberal professions and at the higher perches of public life, so it is a bit suspicious from the start that he focused so intently on the private sector, but let that pass.) Having gone back to look at the writings of Puritan thinkers after the Reformation, Weber claimed that Calvinist religious belief, while not causing capitalism in any simplistic way, helped inspire the mind-set that encouraged it to flourish. This, he thought, explained the economic success of Protestant countries like the Netherlands and England.
Weber's account of the emergence of the Protestant ethic is impossible to disprove, as it would mean spending a large amount of time with seventeenth-century Puritans and a psychiatric diagnostic manual. Calvinism taught that entry into heaven was predestined. Those not chosen by God at the outset would never make it. (Not for them the Catholic satisfaction of knowing that following the sacramental cycle of sin, repentance, and atonement, dying with all sins forgiven would ensure entry to heaven.) This, Weber reckoned, created an "unprecedented inner loneliness" within the individual. The followers of Calvinism, he surmised, filled this void with hard work, perhaps nursing subconsciously the belief that wealth and success would be a sign that they were among the saved, however contradictory that was to the essential concept of predestination. And because work was a "calling" that glorified God, not a way of getting more money to spend on themselves, they eschewed conspicuous