>>> I'm not aware of anything fictitious in what I have said. Please
>>> specify, if you can.
Reminds me of Weber;
Weber wrote that capitalism evolved when the Protestant (particularly
Calvinist) ethic influenced large numbers of people to engage in work
in the secular world, developing their own enterprises and engaging in
trade and the accumulation of wealth for investment. In other words,
the Protestant ethic was a force behind an unplanned and uncoordinated
mass action that led to the development of capitalism. This idea is
also known as "the Weber thesis"...
...In The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, Weber argues
that Puritan ethics and ideas influenced the development of
capitalism. Religious devotion, however, usually accompanied a
rejection of worldly affairs, including the pursuit of wealth and
possessions. Why was that not the case with Protestantism? Weber
addresses this apparent paradox in the book.
He defines spirit of capitalism as the ideas and habits that favour
the rational pursuit of economic gain. Weber points out that such a
spirit is not limited to Western culture if one considers it as the
attitude of individuals, but that such individuals -- heroic
entrepreneurs, as he calls them -- could not by themselves establish a
new economic order (capitalism). The most common tendencies were the
greed for profit with minimum effort and the idea that work was a
curse and burden to be avoided especially when it exceeded what was
enough for modest life. As he wrote in his essays:
In order that a manner of life well adapted to the peculiarities of
the capitalism... could come to dominate others, it had to originate
somewhere, and not in isolated individuals alone, but as a way of life
common to the whole groups of man.
After defining the "spirit of capitalism," Weber argues that there are
many reasons to find its origins in the religious ideas of the
Reformation. Many observers like William Petty, Montesquieu, Henry
Thomas Buckle, John Keats, and others have commented on the affinity
between Protestantism and the development of commercialism.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Protestant_Ethic_and_the_Spirit_of_Capitalism
> Leopold's agents were just small-scale greedy thugs. And, in
> the Congo, there was never anyone remotely of the stature of Rhodes or
> Kurtz. Kurtz is Rhodes, but less subtle, and more brutal. Poetic
> license, you know.- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -
