The most prominent question the famous sociologist Max Weber posed was this: Why do some groups succeed, and make greater economic leaps, than others?
The conclusion Weber reached affirms a strong relationship between religion and economic achievement. Examining the records of the German state of Baden, he observed the following: Protestants achieved more than Catholics, and Jews more than Protestants. These comparisons led him to conclude that religion plays a profound role in propelling some groups toward success and holding others back.
What Weber meant was the values and ideals a religion urges on its adherents, not the article of faith itself: values such as hard work, thrift, honesty, rationality, and austerity. All of them spur the groups that hold them toward prosperity, and lead them to see the marks of success as proof of God's favor.
These values gave rise to what later became known as capitalism, which rests on saving and then investment, so that capital accumulates and wealth takes shape.
The Catholics, for their part, went in another direction.
Their focus on the next world made them less able to compete economically in this one; they adopted values different from those of the Protestants and the Jews. There is a further point. The paternal relationship between clergy and laity left people subject to the clergy and unwilling to depart from their teachings — unlike the Protestants, whose freedom and direct relationship with God weakened clerical authority over them.
One advantage of escaping that authority was learning to read and write, which deepened people's knowledge and skills, whereas Catholics needed a cleric to read the holy book to them: there was an intermediary between the servant and his Lord.
Before the Asian tigers rose, Weber wrote, too, about the values and habits of conduct that had pushed those societies toward stagnation. Drawn from Eastern religions, these values were an obstacle to development. They left a person stripped of will and subject to forces greater than himself, forces that decide his fate. Added to this were powerful traditions of blind obedience to fathers, submission to custom, and excessive family loyalty — all of which made change extremely difficult.
Weber is not saying that some religions are better than others, or that there are correct creeds and mistaken ones. What he explains is that the values Protestants hold contain teachings more conducive to economic prosperity, and that from childhood they implant, in the mental and psychological structure, principles that sink deep, shaping conduct and inclining a person toward success more than others.
Values such as continuous work, self-discipline, saving rather than spending, respect for time, education and reading, and the treatment of professional success as a moral duty: All of these drove the accumulation of capital and, in turn, the Industrial Revolution.
On the Asian side, before the region prospered, it was submerged in paternalistic teachings, in an exaggerated respect for tradition and custom, and in the individual's sense of being bound and directed — and this led to its decline.
The psychologist David McClelland poses the more important question: Why do some countries develop faster than others?
The answer lies inside human beings and societies, not outside them. The forces that produce development, lead to success, and stimulate change are deep drives in the human psyche before they are in factories and natural resources.
McClelland believes development occurs when a society produces a greater number of people possessing what he called the need for achievement: People who strive hard for personal success, set clear goals, take on responsibility, prefer accomplishment to comfort, and seek out challenge.
Societies where this type of personality is more common come closer to surpassing others.
McClelland analyzed children's stories in some thirty countries and found that stories glorifying diligence, success, initiative, and self-reliance were later associated with higher rates of economic growth, which is to say that planting such a culture early is like planting seeds that will open later into economic and social success.
Among the most famous ideas he advanced are those concerning upbringing and its supreme importance. He holds that the years of childhood are decisive in forming the motive to achieve and the drive to succeed.
The best values and habits for this stage, he argues, are these: Standards for the child that are high but at the same time reasonable; encouragement of the child's independence; parental intervention that is limited rather than suffocating; and open pride in the child's accomplishments.
The child needs you to set high standards, but not crushing ones; to teach him to rely on himself; to have his father intervene in a limited way, not in a manner that disfigures his personality; and to be proud of him rather than grinding him down. Excessive indulgence does harm, and so does excessive domination.
And he offers governments an important piece of advice. Do not look at economic plans, he says, but at their effect on people's values, motives, and behavior — for these are the factors that determine the success of development over the long term.
