The Protestant Work Ethic?

I just finished watching a series by Niall Ferguson where he looked at 'western' civilization and its rise and potential fall. He quite creatively posits six 'killer apps' that made the West dominant: competition, science, medicine, property ownership, consumerism and the work ethic. (PBS has a nice, easy to remember page listing these:  Six Killer Apps  ).

Like all television presentations there is much left out, primarily nuance, but in general he makes a good case. The principle curiosity (as in a curio), is his resurrection of Max Weber's protestant work ethic theory. I have profound difficulties with social scientific theorizing as humanity is, in my view, much too supple and complex to be understood or predicted in a theory. Weber's is not accepted uncritically anymore in any case, so i was surprised to see him use this for his final of six shows. This leads Dr. Ferguson to ignore Catholicism in the United States and in China. He compares the U.S. and China in terms of the Protestant work ethic in this last episode. He mentions only Protestantism assuming that the only innovative and hardworking people in either society are Protestants. You can make a case for Christianity being tied to the rise and dominance of the West, but not just Protestantism. In an earlier episode, he contrasted South America with North America and suggested that the rise of North America to prosperity was in part linked to Protestantism. This ignored the fact that there were large numbers of Catholics in North America. I should mention here that by 'North America'  he actually meant the United States. Yet the wealth that industrial capitalism brought to the U.S. was in the second half of the 19th century at a time when Catholic immigrants largely provided the cheap work force for new factories. You could make some case for this in Canada's history, as French Canada remained pre-industrial with a pre-industrial mindset bolstered specifically by the Catholic church - but not for the United States. In English Canada, Protestantism and industrialization dominated from the 1850s, though the cheap workers were mainly English and Irish, both Catholic and Protestant.

I would agree that the 'work ethic' is intrinsic to the rise and dominance of the West, but I wonder if it can be attributed to Protestantism alone. There is a link perhaps, but one more associated with individualism than directly to Protestantism. The United States did and does have a Protestant based mentality, to which Catholics are integrated. Hmmmmm. So, maybe he is correct in the end, but with a savage disregard for nuance in his arguments.

I'll think about this more and post when I have more marking to procrastinate from....