Puritanism, as it existed in 17th- and 18th-century New England especially, has commonly been thought of as a religious ideology that sanctioned the growth of individualist economic ethics. The materialistic American Yankee or shrewd Gilded Age business magnate — so it is thought — inherited from his Puritan forefathers faith in the spiritual value of acquisition, natural social hierarchy, and parsimony towards the poor. Take, for instance, this excerpt from an article in the Rhode Island Current:

“The Puritans believed that God awarded wealth and power to those who were chosen as a spiritual elite. They associated wealth with goodness and authority, and authority with a shared religious belief – their own … There is no doubt the idea that wealth is associated with good qualities – moral fiber, intelligence, and natural authority – has become so ingrained in our culture that it is an almost invisible influence on our thinking. We have this unexamined bias that money is, in essence, close to God.“¹

The colonial Puritans are frequently accused, therefore, of endowing American economic culture with its most negative attitudes. 

Such claims are greatly misleading. In particular, they fail to understand the underlying social philosophy that informed how Puritans conceptualized the ethic of the individual in economic activity. Puritanism did not operate according to the core liberal values of individuality, freedom, and the supremacy-of-self that began to materialize in the late 18th century. It instead emphasized, in continuity with older medieval reasoning, society as fundamentally communal in structure and function. Obligations to the body-politic or social union, therefore, were prioritized over the achievement of private aspirations. Indeed, self-interest was castigated as criminal. According to 18th-century Boston’s leading evangelical minister Benjamin Colman, 

“THIS Self-interest … is the great Enemy to the Commonweal, which perverteth all right, which confoundeth all order, which spoileth all the convenience and comfort of Society. It is the chief spring of injustice, making men violate all laws and rules of Conscience; they falsify their Trusts, they betray their Friends, they supplant their Neighbour, they detract from the worth and vertue of any Man, they forge and vent odious flanders, they commit any sort of wrong or outrage, they without regard or remorse do any thing which seemeth to further their design.”²

It should be noted that New England Puritans did not condemn economic self-interest wholesale; one could and indeed should accrue wealth to supply the necessities of himself, his family, and his posterity. To pursue and desire gain was not wrong. But to make it — and by extension, oneself — the end of economic activity was indubitably immoral, ultimately because it detracted from the real purpose of market relationships: social cohesion and exchange within the social body.³

Therefore, the economic advancement of individuals availed nothing if it did not produce an equivalent or greater benefit to the community at large. Rent-seeking behaviors that denigrated social communication, such as usury, price-gouging (monopolizing key goods in times of scarcity), oppressive pricing, speculation, or price-heckling were all denounced as vices inimical to society’s flourishing. Acquisition was not inherently wrong; but strict rules regulated how it was to be conducted. The same principle was applied to the labor market, wherein both employers and laborers were mandated to come to amiable agreements on wages. Puritanism’s preference for community-oriented rather than self-interested economic reasoning necessitated a kind of economic mutuality: in every market interaction, traders were to earnestly consider the interests of the other person, justly valuing each good. While the Puritans recognized the impersonal forces of supply and demand, they did not rationalize the market as in modern economic theory; they retained the more personal and sociable element, emphasizing not only material exchange but human commerce at large. The market was conceived of primarily as a communitarian institution, with individual participants acting out of both self- and other-interest.

It may be a fruitful exercise to compare the Puritan view of markets to the prevailing model of classical economics. Adam Smith (1723-1790), the Scottish moral philosopher considered the father of modern economics, believed that economic self-interest was the fundamental principle underlying markets. As his famous example in the Wealth of Nations goes, 

“It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities but of their advantages.“⁴

Smith’s stance, it should be remembered, was not so much the articulation of a new doctrine as it was an observation of economic reality. Humans naturally resonate more with self-interested, rather than altruistic, incentives. The Puritans would not dispute this positive economic statement — they knew self-interest dominated most peoples’ economic behavior — but sought to hold men to a higher normative standard where self-interest coexisted with external community interest. What Puritans would dispute in Smith’s theory, however, was that individual self-interest could, guided by the Invisible Hand of market forces, lead to optimal market outcomes. As seen earlier, giving private interests precedence over the common welfare of society gave rise to numerous kinds of market failures, failures especially in the moral and ethical sense. Economic individualism spurred not only the collapse of social bonds and civic virtue but the spiritual decline of society. The Puritans were greatly opposed, it turns out, to the economic thinking that has long been attributed to them in popular culture. Instead it espoused a comparatively traditional, communitarian vision of economic behavior and society.

Such ideas, as we will find, were not confined to the pamphlet or sermon but found practical implementation through policies instituted throughout the 17th- and 18th-century. The extent to which they were successful was problematic, however. The orthodox tenets of Puritan economic theology were not well-adapted to the incredible proliferation of commerce and the rise of competitive, overseas markets, nor could it quell the innate human desire for self-advancement. Doctrine preceded practice in Puritanism, as early American authority Bernard Bailyn noted. Ministers sought to reinforce a normative, traditional view of economic reasoning and market relationships that was inimical to the prevailing aspirations of a commercializing New England society in an age of transition.

References

1. Taylor, Ruth S. “‘You Make Your Own Reality’: How Puritan Thought Cleared the Way for the Roy Family.” Rhode Island Current, July 31, 2023. ↩︎
2. Colman, Benjamin. “The Religious Regards We Owe to Our Country, and the Blessing of Heaven Assured Thereunto” (1718), 29. Evans Early American Imprint Collection, University of Michigan Library Digital Collections.  ↩︎
3. Valeri, Mark. Heavenly Merchandize: How Religion Shaped Commerce in Puritan America, 30. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2014. ↩︎
4. Smith, Adam. “An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (Cannan Ed.), Vol. 1: Online Library of Liberty,” Book I Chapter II. Online Library of Liberty. https://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/smith-an-inquiry-into-the-nature-and-causes-of-the-wealth-of-nations-cannan-ed-vol-1#.  ↩︎