Full Idea
The modern Occident has developed a very different form of capitalism: the rational capitalist organisation of free labour …which needed two other factors: the separation of the business from the household, and the closely connected rational book-keeping.
Gist of Idea
Modern western capitalism has free labour, business separate from household, and book-keeping
Source
Max Weber (The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism [1904], Author's Intro)
A Reaction
For small businesses the separation has to be maintained by a ruthless effort of imagination. Book-keeping is because the measure of loss and profit is the engine of the whole game. Labour had to be dragged free of family and community.
Book Reference
Weber,Max: 'Protestant Ethic and Spirit of Capitalism' [Routledge 2001], p.-7
Related Idea
Idea 20690 The state fostered individualism, to break the power of family and community [Harari]