Max Weber Enters The Ring (Having A Goat In The Fight)

"...And the same is true of the most fateful force in our modern life, capitalism. The impulse to acquisition, pursuit of gain, of money, of the greatest possible amount of money, has in itself nothing to do with capitalism. This impulse exists and has existed among waiters, physicians, coachmen, artists, prostitutes, dishonest officials, soldiers, nobles, crusaders, gamblers, and beggars. One may say that it has been common to all sorts and conditions of men at all times and in all countries of the earth, wherever the objective possibility of it is or has been given. It should be taught in the kindergarten of cultural history that this naive idea of capitalism must be given up once and for all. Unlimited greed for gain is not in the least identical with capitalism, and is still less its spirit. Capitalism may even be identical with the restraint, or at least a rational tempering, of this irrational impulse. But capitalism is identical with the pursuit of profit, and forever renewed profit, by means of continuous, rational, capitalistic order of society, an individual capitalistic enterprise which did not take advantage of its opportunities for profit-making would be doomed to extinction."

(Max Weber, Introduction to The Protestant Ethic and The Spirit of Capitalism)



Writing, too, becomes almost compulsive,

like tending tiny rows


of crops, or children.



Max 2000: Is it your goal to plant a compulsive kindness in this?

Me: I am not sure I have any goal.

Max 2000: being dead and all?



Max 1900 said that the spirit of capitalism was the Protestant work ethic.

I say now: the spirit of capitalism is codependence.


This is what the characters of Jersey Shore infect me with;

not the desire to rationally turn profit and get ahead of others


(to work hard in this life, and prove myself already among the chosen ahead of others)


but to magically, as if not working,

get a private place for myself created by others


(an air-conditioned Wonderland of ice cream...)

an air-conditioned Smush Room of ice cream.