The Essential Rothbard - Ludwig von Mises Institute

114 The Essential Rothbard
want, in the case of the ruler that something being the maintenance
and expansion of power. 300
He concludes his discussion with a stinging rebuke to modern
political scientists, who “eschew moral principles as being ‘unscientific’
and therefore outside their sphere of interest.” 301
Rothbard firmly rejects the thesis of Max Weber, according to
which the “inner-wordly asceticism” that Calvinism encouraged
played a key role in the rise of capitalism. Rothbard counters that
capitalism began long before Calvin; and the stress on “God and
profit” that Weber found distinctively Protestant was present in
the Catholic Middle Ages.
For the Weber thesis, Rothbard substitutes another contrast
between Catholics and Protestants, here following Emil Kauder.
The Calvinist stress on the calling led to emphasis on work and
saving and distrust of consumption: Catholic Europe, following
the Aristotelian and scholastic tradition, found nothing wrong with
consumption. This difference led to a crucial split in the growth of
economics, between utility and cost-of-production theories of
price.
In an insightful passage, Rothbard sets aside oceans of misinterpretation
about the quarrel between the Ancients and the Moderns.
The pitting of “tradition” vs. “modernity” is largely an artificial
antithesis. “Moderns” like Locke or perhaps even
Hobbes may have been individualists and “right-thinkers,”
but they were also steeped in scholasticism and natural
law. 302
Further, on the same page he strikes at another theory of vast
but unmerited influence:
300 Economic Thought Before Adam Smith, p. 190.
301 Ibid., p. 192.
302 Ibid., pp. 313–14.