Censo e professione: parallelismi weberiani tra l’istituto romano del colonato e la nozione protestante del Beruf

This paper first examines Johann Karl Rodbertus’s interpretation of the ancient oikos or domus as the origin of the division of labour. It then considers Max Weber’s critical reading of Rodbertus’s studies, and his challenging of the idea that the autarky of the oikos was a key feature of Roman economics and that the colonate, by separating some production activities from the household economy, opened the way for capitalism. According to Rodbertus, the late imperial colonate was marked by the separation – central to capitalist organisation – of the domestic and productive spheres; Weber, however, places this separation much later, in the late Middle Ages, when the guilds became widespread and crafts and commercial activities were professionalised within a mandatory framework of status and professions.