The Protestant Ethic, the Spirit of Capitalism and the Inherent Flaw in the American Dream and Why It Has Become a National Nightmare. (Part One)

I came across my college thesis a while back and it stirred up some old feelings I had harbored, not about my faith, but about the basic presuppositions about the true origins of the United States’ value system, particularly as it pertained to the accumulation of wealth and the endemic belief in self determination and self justification in matters of foreign policy. The paper was called “A Tale of Two Countries: A Comparative History of the United States and France.” I was interested in comparing the theories of Max Weber and Karl Marx with respect to the development of both countries, and where those theories intersected, so to speak. It is clear that both men had a lot to say about religion, particularly Weber who concluded it was the Protestant countries that made the most advances during the industrial revolution, primarily fueled by a belief system based on an inherent belief that God had pre-determined that they were blessed by God and therefore could do no wrong. Where I insert the paper, it will be in italics. All footnotes are taken verbatim from the paper. Part Two will follow shortly. Stay Tuned!

Martin Luther did not intend to start a revolution in the sixteenth century. His dissatisfactions with the workings of the Roman Catholic Church; to wit the obvious corruption of Papal indulgences and tithing, the retreat of monks into monasteries and the inability of the Church to reach out to the "common man," were not meant to be seen as divisive or disrespectful of Rome, even if they were interpreted as such. The Protestant Reformation which ensued Luther's excommunication by the Pope was to have a profound impact not only on the religious affairs of the European continent, but on its political and social affairs as well.

However, the Protestant revolution, which "swept" through Europe in the sixteenth century, was to have, in many respects, its most profound and lasting impression not on Europe, but in the American colonies. It was here that Pilgrim settlers, escaping from the religious and social persecutions they suffered in England, and longing for the freedom to worship God in their own way, first exhibited signs of what Max Weber would later refer to as the Protestant ethic. Those early Puritans forged an identity for themselves, which might be loosely described as opportunistic. Faced with illness and death, they met the odds with uncommon bravery and faith. It does not much matter for our purposes whether their faith was influenced by their circumstances or vice versa; such horse and cart sagas are better left for other theorists and other arguments. From an historical perspective, it is sufficient to say that how they lived and behaved was intrinsic to their way of life and the shaping of their belief systems, and, in turn, their belief systems shaped our history.

Central to Protestantism, especially Calvinism, of which the Puritans were an offshoot, was the doctrine of predestination. In the Westminster Confession of 1647, three pertinent points are worth noting about the doctrine: first, that man, by his fall into a state of sin, was unable to attain grace on his own merits; secondly, that since the beginning of time, God had predetermined who among men would be granted salvation and who would be condemned to hell; and lastly, that those whom God had chosen for eternal grace "before the foundation of the world was laid," would forever be in His favor and could never fall from it.[1]

Of principle concern to Calvinists was the matter of who was chosen for salvation and who wasn't. Since there was not only no magical means of attaining the grace of God for those to whom God had decided to deny it, but no means whatsoever,[2] it later became necessary to extract some sign of proof of grace. It was impossible, at least so far as the question of a man's own state of grace arose, to be satisfied with Calvin's trust in the testimony of the expectant faith resulting from grace;[3] his followers, therefore, looked for more tangible evidence.

The doctrine of proof that later Calvinists developed provided at least potential sources for such evidence. The first of these sources was based on conduct. To live as a saint through arduous times or to be frugal in matters of money was interpreted as a sign of God's grace. On the other hand, to succumb to the temptations of the flesh or to be wasteful in matters of money was seen as a sign of damnation. The second, and perhaps, most determinant source of evidence rested on one's personal wealth. To be successful and possess tremendous personal wealth was a necessary by-product of hard work and was evidence of God's favor. To be unsuccessful and poor, or to be unwilling to work hard was a sure sign of God's disfavor. It was this doctrine of proof among the Calvinists and Puritans that was to play a crucial role in the development of the philosophical approaches of the founding fathers, especially men like Benjamin Franklin.

In his autobiography, Franklin intimates a direct correlation to Calvinism when he discusses his thirteen virtues. Chief among these virtues was temperance and frugality. With respect to the latter, he wrote, "Make no expense but to do good to others or yourself; i.e., waste nothing."[4] In other writings, Franklin admonished his readers to work hard and to be seen as working hard, to pay back all debts punctually, and to not waste time idly as time was money.

Thomas Jefferson, in his first inaugural address to the nation, likewise was influenced by this ethic when he referred to the United States as a "chosen country, enlightened by a benign religion," whose Providence "delights in the happiness of man here and his greater happiness hereafter." He further added, "With all these blessings, what more is necessary? Still one thing more, fellow citizens: a wise and frugal government . . . which shall leave [men] otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned."[5]

Both of these men, to put it mildly, were instrumental in the building of the United States as a nation. Like the men of their time, they were well bred and well spoken. They were also Protestant and were beholden to an ethic, which had as its cornerstone an overriding belief in the superior man of wealth and stature being in the good graces of God. And since that grace was irrevocable, such a man could do no wrong.

It was this arrogance - this overriding belief that it could do no wrong and that Providence was on its side - which became the primary impetus behind the United States' imperialistic splurges in the nineteenth century. Manifest destiny was more than just a foreign policy of wanton thievery - though certainly such a charge would have been sufficient for most nations - it was born out of an innate need to justify not only the right of the United States to expand, but to provide the justification that such an expansion fulfilled the will of God.

Nor can this ethic be confined merely to the expansion of the United States westward. The expropriation of territories, which belonged to sovereign countries in Latin America, likewise, reiterated the inherent gall of such a mind set. The taking of Cuba from Spain and the supporting of a revolution against Colombia which gave the United States the right of way to build the Panama Canal are perhaps the most prevalent examples. Theodore Roosevelt, when asked years later about the Canal, boastfully declared, "I just took it!"[6]

The series of foreign policy successes, which the United States enjoyed only facilitated the justification of America's righteousness and, moreover, the belief that it could do no wrong. The spectacle of Teddy Roosevelt marching up San Juan Hill with the Rough Riders - so indelibly etched in the hearts of many Americans as representative of their nation's yearning for justice and equality - presented a far different image to the citizens of Puerto Rico. To them, America's actions were those of an imperialist nation bent, not on justice, but on colonization.

The life of the western settler in many ways paralleled the nation's beliefs, or perhaps it is better to say the government paralleled the beliefs of the settler. By the mid-1800s, the eastern United States was severely overcrowded. Not even the Gold Rush could ease the region's burden, though it undoubtedly provided the impetus for many an adventurer to risk the trip westward. The federal government needed to provide an incentive for its citizens to migrate westward, not only to reduce the overpopulated eastern half of the country, but to stimulate the growth of the western economy, which all agreed would hold the key to the nation's future.

With the secession of the South during the Civil War, northern Republicans in Congress were able to pass the Homestead Act. It provided 160 acres of free land to any settler who paid a small filing fee and resided on and improved the land for five years. If after six months of residency the settler wished to buy the land for $1.25 an acre, he could do so. Advocates of the Homestead Act believed that it would diminish the number of paupers or squatters and increase the proportion of working, independent, self-sufficient farmers in the region. In reality, however, the Act did little to spur migration for two reasons. First of all, speculators bought most of the good property at the below-market rates and held onto it until they could sell it at a profit, usually 100 to 150 percent of cost. More importantly, the government severely overestimated the value 160 acres had to a farmer in the West. Such an amount of land was simply not adequate for agricultural needs in the arid regions.[7]

In the late nineteenth century Congress attempted to face up to the problems that the West presented to farmers. But regardless of what measures were passed to aid in the producing of crops successfully on the Great Plains, on western deserts, and on heavily timbered lands, each proved to be instructive failures, revealing western environmental realities.[8]

Cattle Ranching proved a viable option to farming and, for a while, such ranchers enjoyed a boom. But the harsh winters of the late 1880s, combined with overgrazing, brought about both ecological and economic disasters, as countless thousands of cattle either starved or froze to death. With the country entering a depression and prices dropping, creditors, frightened by the losses, began calling in their loans. The ranchers, both to pay back their creditors and to reduce pressure on their denuded ranges, had to sell on a falling market. They succeeded only in driving prices down even lower and driving themselves into bankruptcy.[9]

Those farmers and cattle ranchers who did manage to survive the harsh western environment, were hardened by their experiences like no other American could possibly have imagined. Such people persevered in spite of the elements and with virtually little, if any, help from the federal government. When such help did arrive, it was either too little as in the Desert Land Act, which called for the irrigation of desert lands for the expressed purpose of aiding the farmer, or too late as in the bailouts of the cattle ranchers, who collectively lost over 50 percent of their herds.

Like the early Puritans of Plymouth, the settlers of the West endured hardships unique to the rest of the country. They lived in one room log cabins which offered little protection from the elements, relied on no one but themselves, and learned to adjust to the norms of their environment with uncommon alacrity. Above all, they were driven by a set of principles, which compelled them to persevere in the face of such hardships. While they may or may not have been cognizant of the role in history they were playing, they were, nonetheless, resolute in their belief that the land they were living on, indeed the lives they were living, were the gifts of divine Providence. Surely the hardships they were enduring were but a prelude to the greater joys, which would be found with God in eternal salvation.

The French experience was vastly different from the American. While the revolutionists of colonial America were well-educated Protestants, the revolutionary tradition of France was rooted in the egalitarian and primitivist communitarian ideals of the French peasantry and petty bourgeois artisans, most of whom were Catholic. The combination of its hatred for modernity and liberalism,[10] urban-industrial development and political centralization, was highly conducive to the conspiratorial, elitist and terrorist strategies characteristic of the revolutionary politics of the Jacobins. Despite the French Revolution and the beginnings of urbanization and industrialization in the nineteenth century, the peasant and artisan culture of eighteenth-century France survived.[11]

The distinguishing feature of liberalism as a world-view is the value placed upon individual freedom, whether defined as freedom from coercion, moral self-determination, or the right to individual happiness. Liberals have sought to defend individual freedom through a variety of idioms - for example, the doctrines of natural rights (Locke), Social Darwinism (Spencer) or moral idealism (Kant). Pluralists have maintained that individual freedom implies an institutional condition of competition and conflict. The gravest threat to freedom is monopoly and absolutism, which suppresses self-determination with external coercion; which suppresses competition and diversity in a regimented and uniform order; and which substitutes authoritarian means for conflict and consensus as the primary problem-solving mechanisms.[12]

Liberals in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries uniformly agreed that, given what they perceived as the voluntary, pluralistic and dynamic nature of capitalism, private property was a necessary condition of liberty. They failed to grasp what was to become the core of the socialist critique, namely that the other side to the voluntarism, competition and dynamism of capitalism was heteronomy for the laborers and the poor, and a developmental process towards monopoly and static hierarchy.[13] Because of the intellectual and political immaturity of the people of France, and the resistance to change by its propertied classes, conspiracy, terror and dictatorial means were considered legitimate vehicles of revolution.[14]

This differed from the American situation wherein revolution was seen as the agency of individual liberty. Such a revolutionist was thought of in terms of his individual accomplishments. Indeed, the great moments of the War for Independence seem to highlight the notable men who participated in it: Washington's crossing of the Delaware; Benedict Arnold's treason, etc. The French Revolution, on the other hand, is fraught with instances of the masses rioting against the established regime, at times in utter chaos.

Throughout the nineteenth century, the French locked horns with the dilemma of progressivism. Liberalism joined ranks with conservatism to thwart the socialism of Marx and Saint Simon. The constant seesawing back and forth between the aristocracy and the bourgeoisie had less to do with fulfilling the will of the people than with the confusion of an illiterate populace.

But what of Catholicism? Was the chaos in France the by-product of Catholicism or is there another explanation? Certainly Protestantism was not unknown in that country. Since the days of Louis XIV, the Huguenots proselytized about the virtues of hard work and duty to God. Minorities in France, they behaved very much like their brethren in Germany, England and the American colonies. While the Catholics seemed content with the otherworldliness of their faith, the Protestants endeavored to acquire the materialistic joys of life. A famous proverb of the day seems to sum up the differences between the two quite nicely: "The Catholic is quieter, having less of the acquisitive impulse; he prefers a life of the greatest possible security, even with a smaller income, to a life of risk and excitement, even though it may bring the chance of gaining honor and riches. While the Protestant prefers to eat well, the Catholic prefers to sleep undisturbed."[15]

Despite its love/hate relationship with the Church, France remained throughout her turbulent years very much Catholic. At no time, even during the Jacobin era, was there a repudiation of the Pope; merely a renouncing of Papal authority. The French were, on the whole, loyal to Rome. The violence the nation witnessed throughout the latter part of the eighteenth century and most of the nineteenth century was not, at any rate, directed at the Pontiff, but rather at those who corrupted his authority: namely the clergy.

Nor is it conceivable that the lag France endured during the formative years of the Industrial Revolution could be attributed solely to the political upheavals of that time. Other nations have endured similar upheavals. What sets France apart is the fact that her population, in addition to being divided and polarized by economic tensions, was under the auspices of an ethic which, at a time when it ought to have been inspiring its people to reach new heights, was still extolling the virtues of caution and forbearance. Though France dabbled in feats of colonialism, particularly during the Napoleonic eras, the French as a people never thought of themselves as the rightful heirs to the world, at least not in the modern era. Providence, to the French Catholic, did not make the world a stage for him, it merely molded him into a good actor on it.

And France was not alone in this affliction. Spain, Portugal and Italy, where Catholicism was and still is prevalent, likewise showed a disparaging trend in both economic and political influence during the early period of the Industrial Revolution. Throughout these countries, indeed throughout Europe and America, the fact that the business leaders and owners of capital, as well as the higher grades of skilled labor, and even more the higher technically and commercially trained personnel of modern enterprises, were overwhelmingly Protestant was undeniable.[16] Even more striking was the fact that while Catholics tended to remain in their crafts and became master craftsmen, Protestants were much more likely to fill the upper ranks of skilled labor and administrative positions.[17] This latest fact might explain why France was so late in automating much of its textile industry, and why Germany, Belgium and England, all predominantly Protestant, enjoyed such an immense advantage in productive capabilities.

Race and Exploitation: A Marxist Perspective on Capital

Many explanations concerning the matter of racism have surfaced over the last few decades. Nearly all have ignored the connection with capitalism. For good reason is this done. To take a revealing look at the roots of racism, particularly in the United States, and to attempt a causal link with the development of capitalism, would be to unmask an unspeakable truth about western society; one which Marx wrote frequently about. That truth was simply that capitalism, to thrive, must inevitably pit one worker against another. In the United States, at least, that meant the white worker against the black.

Marx believed that capitalism must inevitably bring about three conditions in society: 1. Recurrent economic crises; 2. Alienation of the worker from the product of his labor; and 3. Exploitation of the worker at the hands of his employer. It is this last point which demands our attention here.

Up to the eleventh century, Christian Europe was hemmed in from the North, East and South by heathens and infidels; the Mediterranean was almost completely encircled by the Arabian Mohammedans, a people whose culture was superior to that of the northern Europeans.[18] Owing to a need for trade with the East, especially by the Italian, Spanish and Portuguese merchants, and its obstruction by the Mohammedans, the Crusades, with the blessing of Rome, commenced. Though not completely successful, the experience did nonetheless expose the Europeans to other cultures.

By the late 1400s, Portuguese traders had begun to feel their way down the African coast in the hopes of finding a yet faster route to the East Indies. At this point in time the white man still had no conception of himself as being superior to other men. Though they viewed the natives of Africa as heathens and inferior warriors, this had not led to any conclusions about racial superiority.[19] Of more significance still is the fact that there was as yet no belief in any cultural incapacity of these colored people.[20] It was believed, in fact, that their conversion to Christianity would make them the equals of all other Christians.

The Portuguese had no clear sense of racial antagonism, because its economic and rationalistic basis had not yet been developed among them.[21] The reason for this was that the Portuguese, like the Spaniards and Italians of southern Europe, were still endowed with the crusader spirit of the Church. They saw no exploitable value in the black man, and were far more concerned with the condition of his soul than with the services of his sweat. Once conquered and converted, blacks were quickly integrated into society. This ethic was to change abruptly, though, in 1492.

The discovery of America would usher in a new creed. Though Columbus initially found the natives of the West Indies[22] to be a "loving" and "docile" people capable of harming no one and offering nothing but unconditional love and friendship, the governments of Portugal and Spain were, nonetheless, unmoved. Pope Alexander VI's bull of demarcation issued under Spanish pressure on May 3, 1493, and its revision by the Treaty of Tordesillas on June 7, 1494, arrived at through diplomatic negotiations between Spain and Portugal, put all heathen peoples and their resources - that is to say, especially the colored peoples of the world - at the disposal of Spain and Portugal.[23]

The path was now cleared for the expropriation and subsequent exploitation of these lands by both countries. Gone were the mystical inhibitions of the Church to free exploitation of economic resources; developing was a sense of nationalism and a commitment to the consolidation of European nations by the rising mercantile class. The ensuing slave trade which was to develop was simply a way of recruiting labor for the purpose of exploiting the great natural resources of the new world. This trade did not develop because Indians and Negroes were red and black, or because their cranial capacity averaged a certain number of cubic centimeters; but simply because they were the best workers to be found for the heavy labor in the mines and plantations across the Atlantic.[24] Had there been a sufficient supply of white workers to dig the mines and plant the fields, they most assuredly would have been used as well.

This then was the catalyst of race prejudice in the West. It did not spring up by chance, nor was it a by-product of a built-in antipathy between various ethnic groups or cultures. Only the need for exploitable labor facilitated the rise of it, and its origins have no parallel anywhere else on the globe. It follows, logically, that all racial antagonism is essentially political-class conflict. The capitalist exploiter, being opportunistic and practical, will utilize any convenience to keep his labor and other resources freely exploitable; he will devise and employ race prejudice when that becomes convenient.[25] Hence, exploitation of peoples should not be construed as a moral deficiency, but rather as a necessary by-product of the need to increase production and compete for markets.

In Marxist terminology, classes are defined by their relationship to the means of production (i.e., the tools, machines and property used in production). In a capitalist society, the owners of the means of production are called the bourgeoisie. The proletariat, the workers, having no means of production, are thus "reduced to selling their labor power in order to live." For the transformation of money into capital, therefore, the owner of money must find the free worker available on the commodity-market; and this worker must be free in the double sense that as a free individual he can dispose of his labor power as his own commodity, and that, on the other hand, he has no other commodity for sale.[26]

The worker's place in the system has been primarily related to production, and he has been regarded as an item of cost - that is to say, as both a necessary and important factor of production and as an impediment to the entrepreneur in his basic urge to undersell his competitors.[27] In other words, the worker was worth only so much in wages as was necessary to keep him alive and allow him to reproduce so as to insure future working-class generations. This wage was referred to as a subsistence wage. The capitalist, further vilifying the relationship of exploitation, uses the labor of the worker above and beyond what is needed to compensate him for his production. If, for instance, it takes six hours to produce say 50 widgets at 50 cents per day, and the capitalist uses the labor of that worker for a duration of twelve hours without compensating him for the additional six hours, it can be said the worker has created surplus-value "which, for the capitalist, has all the charms of something created out of nothing."[28]

Slavery, then, was the ultimate windfall for the capitalist. At once, he had all of the advantages of exploitable labor without virtually any of the costs. Whereas, the working-class white man at least had his labor power to sell to the capitalist, the African slave did not possess even this measly commodity. He had only his life, and even that was owned by his master. Without disguise the master defined the slaves, the colored people, as chattel, and exploited them in production virtually on the same economic principle as that employed in the exploitation of beasts of burden.[29]

To justify their behavior the exploiters argued that the slave, by his inferior breeding and sub-human condition, merited such treatment. Hence, throughout the colonial South, and even after the War for Independence, plantation landowners and their brethren preachers extolled the incontrovertible superiority of the white man over the black. They relied for verification of their views not on the basis of superstition or mere gossip, but on the basis of "scientific" books, which stated unequivocally the incapacity of the black man to be assimilated into the white man's culture. Blackness was associated with filth, foulness and evil. Owing to these beliefs, the colonies passed laws banning sexual mixing and marriage. Children of mixed marriage were considered black. At the time of the War for Independence, a black man was considered only three fifths of a white man. No less a "patriot" than Thomas Jefferson had held these racist views; at the time of his death he had over 180 slaves on his plantation.

The treatment the American Indian received was hardly any better. Though never officially enslaved the way his African brethren were, America's native son, nevertheless, was subjected to much of the same discrimination. In the period between 1880 and 1930, over 65 percent of the 138 million acres of land previously held by Native Americans moved to white ownership. By the last decade of the nineteenth century, most of the indigenous populations were on reservations where they were forbidden to practice their religions and their children were forced to go to boarding schools run by whites where they had to learn to speak English. While this policy was publicly touted as essential in helping the Indians to assimilate into the "mainstream" culture, the facts were very different. Native Americans were excluded from citizenship and not allowed to vote until 1924; even as late as the 1930s, there was a feeling among some influential individuals that they were biologically inferior to white Anglo-Saxons.[30]

While the French had their share of racists tendencies, like the Spaniards and Portuguese before them, its economic and rationalistic basis had not yet been developed among them. Most of France's empire building after 1870 attested to the presence, but hardly the overwhelming dominance, of its economic factor.[31] The Third Republic had inherited a motley assortment of colonies from previous regimes. Unlike the British, who in principle aimed at ultimate self-government for many of their colonies, the French wavered between the policies of assimilation and association. Assimilation would hopefully result in the natives' total absorption of French culture and civilization ultimately resulting in their becoming full-fledged French citizens in a unitary French Empire. Association, on the other hand, was the policy of encouraging the subject peoples to evolve in their own culture under the direction of French appointees and a local elite that had acquired French attributes.[32]

Because of the political struggles of France's left- and right-wing factions over the issue of colonialism, the country lost valuable time in the achievement of a world presence. Only 10 percent of French "foreign" investment was placed in French colonial possessions. The trade of the colonies, too, was principally with other countries and not with France. Nor did the French merchant marine benefit from this commerce; most of the trade was carried in foreign ships.[33]

The Clergy, too, complicated matters and played a prominent role in French foreign policy. While the United States, Great Britain and other Protestant nations were exporting their brand of philosophy, France was extending its Catholicism throughout North Africa and Southeast Asia. Unfettered by any need to "save" these peoples' souls, the former were free to exploit them by any means necessary to both the advantage of the oppressor and the detriment of the conquered. While in the Caribbean and Latin America, capitalism was free to take the resources it needed to expand the American empire, France's wavering and missionary spirit would cost it dearly.

The differences between the United States and France are apparent both with respect to their religious beliefs and, more importantly, how those beliefs influenced their policies. The United States operated from a posture of self-righteousness. Its policy of manifest destiny was derived not from any ill-will towards those people who were directly and unfortunately exploited, but rather from divine Providence, whose good graces all real Americans were presumed to be under. It then parlayed that belief system into a racist, exploitative formula, wherein blacks were targeted as "inferior" to their white counter-parts.

France, still endowed with the crusader spirit of its Catholicism, did not fully reap the benefits of capitalistic exploitation. Its internal political division led to its economic malaise, which led still further to its decline as a world power at the hands of its Protestant neighbors.

Sociologists who have studied Marx and Weber have focused, understandably, on the differences between the two theorists. Most have chosen to ignore the fact that Weber, despite his apparent aversion of his counterpart's methodology, was nonetheless in constant dialogue with him. I suspect that most of the controversy surrounding this dialogue centered around the fact that both men were talking about opposite sides of the same coin. For Marx, history was driven by economics. In his deterministic view, humans defined their belief systems through their economic conditions. Weber turned this equation around. He believed that humanity defined its economic situation through its belief system. While it would be convenient to dismiss the argument both theorists had as merely a cart/horse dialogue, much of the histories of the United States and France support both men's views.

Whether one is an economic determinist or not, there is ample evidence to suggest that the economic prowess and developmental belief systems the United States procured throughout its formative years cannot be adequately explained by any available method other than Weber's Protestant ethic theory. While it is true that other nations besides the U.S. were predominantly Protestant, in no other nation was the Puritan spirit of Calvin so indelibly and undeniably etched.

Also true is Marx's theory of capitalistic exploitation within such countries. For, if it is true that capitalism developed most strongly in those nations with a strong Protestant work ethic, so was it equally true that a high incidence of racism developed, as well. The United States is both the most economically advanced and the most racially polarized nation on the globe. This cannot be a coincidence.


[1]Weber, pp. 99-100.
[2]ibid., p. 105.
[3]ibid., p. 111.
[4]Bellah, p. 39.
[5]ibid., p. 29.
[6]Mowry, p. 154.
[7]White, p. 143.
[8]ibid., p. 150.
[9]ibid., pp. 224-225.
[10]The use of the term liberalism in this context should not be construed in the same context as that which currently passes for liberalism in contemporary America. For our purposes, it is analagous to progressiv-ism, at least as it pertains to the tradition of Marx, Weber and Durkheim.
[11]Seidman, p. 71.
[12]ibid., p. 15.
[13]ibid., p. 15.
[14]ibid., pp. 69-70.
[15]Weber, pp. 39-41.
[16]ibid., p. 35.
[17]ibid., pp. 38-39.
[18]Cox, p. 326.
[19]While earlier societies often discriminated against different peoples (the Romas against the Christians, the Egyptians against the Jews), such discrimination was cultural, not racial.
[20]ibid., p. 327.
[21]ibid., p. 329.
[22]The term Indian was actually coined by Columbus himself who thought he had mistakenly stumbled upon the East Indies, thus the inappropriate usage.
[23]ibid., p. 332.
[24]ibid., p. 332.
[25]ibid., p. 333.
[26]Marx, 272.
[27]op.cit., pp. 338-339.
[28]op.cit., p. 325.
[29]op.cit., p. 357.
[30]Hurst, p. 89.
[31]Harvey, p. 155.
[32]ibid., pp. 156, 160.
[33]ibid., p. 155.