Abstract
In The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, Max Weber quoted passages from Benjamin Franklin’s Advice to a Young Tradesman from 1748 (which was actually a letter), which have now become famous, in which Weber claimed that the spirit of capitalism spoke ‘in a characteristic fashion’: Remember that time is money. He that can earn ten shillings a day by his labour, and goes abroad, or sits idle, one half that day, though he spends but sixpence during his diversion or idleness, ought not to reckon that the only expense; he has really spent, or rather thrown away, five shillings besides.
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Notes
Edwin Cannan, ‘Early history of the term capital’, in Quarterly Journal of Economics, 35 (1920–1), pp. 469–81
R.D. Richards, ‘Early history of the term capital’, in ibid., 40 (1925–6), pp. 329–38.
John Eatwell, Murray Milgate and Peter Newman (eds.), The New Palgrave: a Dictionary of Economics, I (London, 1987), p. 715.
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© 1998 Craig Muldrew
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Muldrew, C. (1998). Introduction: Deconstructing Capitalism. In: The Economy of Obligation. Early Modern History: Society and Culture. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-26879-5_1
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