Calvinism’s doctrine of vocation energetically promoted economic life and wealth

Evidence

Luther, like those humanists, deplores sadness and celebrates gaiety, he condemns idleness and commands work: but, on the other hand, he is led to an attitude of diffidence and hostility towards letters and study, so that Erasmus could say ‘ubicumque regnat lutheranismus, ibi literarum est interitus ’ [wherever Lutheranism reigns, there is the death of letters]. Certainly, if not just as the effect solely of the aversion adopted by its founder, German protestantism was for a couple of centuries all but sterile in the field of study, criticism, and philosophy. The Italian reformers, notably those of the circle of Juan de Valdes and their friends, managed however, to combine without stress humanism and mysticism, the cult of study and moral austerity. Calvinism, with its harsh conception of Grace and its harsh discipline, did not favour the free search for knowledge and the cult of beauty either, but it acquired the role, by interpreting, developing and adapting the concept of Grace into that of vocation, of energetically promoting economic life, production and the increase of wealth. — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 1401

The Italian reformers, notably those of the circle of Juan de Valdes and their friends, managed however, to combine without stress humanism and mysticism, the cult of study and moral austerity. Calvinism, with its harsh conception of Grace and its harsh discipline, did not favour the free search for knowledge and the cult of beauty either, but it acquired the role, by interpreting, developing and adapting the concept of Grace into that of vocation, of energetically promoting economic life, production and the increase of wealth. — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 1401

Categorization

• XREF: Gramsci here echoes Weber’s Protestant Ethic thesis; useful as a touchstone in later readings on how belief systems produce material activity. — connects to: Natural theology sacralized commerce, science, and improvement as divine service — Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology,…, 913; Economic mystification parallels medieval theology and requires a grassroots Reformation. — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished…, 1813
• DEFINE: Describes how the Calvinist concept of Grace was adapted into ‘vocation’, a mechanism central to Gramsci’s account of how religious worldviews become productive.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 1401