MAX WEBER: A GREAT SOCIOLOGIST FOR THE 21ST CENTURY
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Introduction
“Politics is a strong and slow boring of hard boards.” This is one quote from the work of one of the most famous sociologists ever, German Professor Max Weber. In 2010 a new edition of his work Politics As A Vocation (Politik als Beruf, 65 pages, eleventh edition), was published in its original German by publisher Duncker & Humblot. It is the first in a planned series including Staatssoziologie and Wirtschaftsgeschichte.
Max Weber was born…..
Politics can be defined in many ways one being that it is the leadership or influencing the leadership of a political association or a state.
What is a state? It is a community that claims the monopoly of the legitimate use of force within a given territory. The elite in that community needs continuous administration, require obedience to those who hold power. The decisive means of politics is violence so the elite has to control the material goods necessary for the use of the violence needed.
Living for and off politics
If a politician live s for politics you either enjoy power or you can serve a cause. Living off it the politician makes it the permanent source of income. A political organization is thus needed for the struggle for power. These organizations have developed into modern parties. There are basically two categories of politicians: administrative officials and political officials. In reality ministers (political officials) are less in control than the heads of divisions in ministries, who are long-term, administrative appointees.
Political leaders in the West are often demagogues. They have existed since the creation of the constitutional state and certainly since the establishment of democracy (see for example page 28 in the new German edition).
”What kind of man must one be if he is to be allowed to put his hand on the wheel of history?” (115). He must have passion, a feeling of responsibility, and a sense of proportion. Passion in the sense of matter-of-factness, of passionate devotion to a cause, to the god or demon who is its overlord. Responsibility to the cause must be the guiding star of action. For this, a sense of proportion is needed Warm passion and a cool sense of proportion must be forged together in one and the same soul.
The politician must combat vanity, in order to be matter-of-factly devoted to his cause and preserve some distance, not least from himself. Lack of objectivity and irresponsibility are the two deadly sins of politics; vanity, the need to personally stand in the foreground, temps the politician to commit these sins. The final result of political action regularly stands in completely inadequate and often paradoxical relation to its original meaning (oh, cheery old Weber). Because of this fact, the serving of a cause must not be absent if action is to have inner strength. Exactly which cause looks like a matter of belief (117). Some kind of faith must exist in a politician, ”otherwise it is absolutely true that the curse of the creature’s worthlessness overshadows even the externally strongest political successes” (117).
Then is a discussion of two ethics, the ethic of ultimate ends and the ethic of responsibility. They are fundamentally different and irreconcilably opposed. The ethic of ultimate ends, formulated in religious terms, is: ”The Christian does rightly and leaves the results with the Lord.” If an action of good intention leads to bad results, then, in the actor’s eyes, not he, but the world, or the stupidity of other men, or God’s will who made them thus, is responsible for the evil. The ethic of responsibility, on the other hand, requires one to give an account of the foreseeable results of one’s action. The man who believes in an ethic of responsibility takes into account precisely the average deficiencies of people. He does not feel in a position to burden others with the results of his own actions so far as he was able to foresee them; he will say, these results are ascribed to my action. On the other hand, the ultimate ends dude feels a ”responsibility” only to keep his intentions good.
In many cases, the attainment of good ends is bound up with the price of using morally dubious or dangerous means, and must face the possibility of evil ramifications. From no ethics in the world can it be concluded when and to what extent a good ends justifies ethically dangerous means and ramifications. (121) The ethics of absolutism goes to pieces on the problem of justification of means by ends. Everything that is striven for through political action operating with violent means and following an ethic of responsibility endangers the salvation of the soul. If, however, on chases after the ultimate good in a war of beliefs, following a pure ethic of absolute ends, then the goals may be damaged and discredited for generations because responsibility for consequences is lacking. A man following an ethic of responsibility will arise at a place where he must say, Here I stand; I can do no other. Here, the ethic of ultimate ends and the ethic of responsibility are supplements, which only in unison constitute a genuine man, a man who can have the calling for politics (127).
Politics as a vocation
Now we come to two public lectures Weber gave in 1918, just after Germany had been defeated in World War I. His audience were radical students. He was himself at the time an active politician. The first is on politics as a vocation, i.e., on the calling of a politician.
Read pp.77 to half way down p.79.
Notice the definition of “the state” in the middle of p.78. This might remind you of Marsilius or Hobbes. Notice that the definition is of the modern state: “Today, however we have to say…” “Specifically, at the present time, the right to use physical force is ascribed” etc. Compare the account of the three basic legitimations, from the foot p.78 and on p.79, with the earlier account, on p.173 of Readings.
He goes on, in the page or so omitted, to say that “here”, i.e. in this lecture, he is concerned with charismatic leadership, that of the great demagogue in parliament. “Men do not obey him by virtue of tradition or statute, but because they believe in him… [their devotion] is oriented to his person and to its qualities”.
However, the charismatic leader needs a staff, a bureaucracy, to help him continue to dominate effectively. Read on to the end of the extract from p.81. In earlier history, the highest leader had to work through and with men who had their own, lower, centres of power, which, however, were not derived from him. But over time the highest leaders have worked to “expropriate” the power of these others and replace them with bureaucrats. Read on through the paragraph on p.82 beginning “Everywhere”. Notice the echoes of Marx. The reference at the end of the paragraph to the expropriation of the expropriator is a reference to the 1918 German revolution which deposed the Kaiser and established a democratic constitution. He goes on to talk about professional politicians, who exist to some extent under monarchical rule but come into special prominence in democracies.
“There are two ways”, he says, “of making politics one’s vocation: Either one lives for politics, or one lives off politics”. Only independently wealthy men can live for politics. If poor men can be professional politicians, then it must be possible to make an income by being a politician. There may be a salary, but as well there will be spoils:
For loyal service today, party leaders give offices of all sorts–in parties, newspapers, cooperative societies, health insurance, municipalities, as well as in the state. All party struggles are struggles for the patronage of office, as well as struggles for objective goals. (p.87).
It is no accident that the British Chief Whip of the governing party holds the title of “patronage secretary”.
Weber goes on to contrast this with the status honour of the bureaucrat. Political patronage threatens efficiency, so in bureaucracy it is excluded as far as possible. This topic leads him into an interesting discussion of the changing relationship between monarch, bureaucrats and parliament in Germany, Britain, America and other countries, and then to a categorisation of the different kinds of professional politicians found at various times in various places from Mongolia to England, ending with the politicians trained as lawyers prominent in France and in the other countries allied against Germany in the recent war. “The craft of the trained lawyer is to plead effectively the cause of interested clients. In this the lawyer is superior to any official [i.e. bureaucrat], as the superiority of enemy propaganda could teach us”.
In Weber’s opinion, the weakness of the German system of government under the Kaiser was that the Kaiser relied very heavily on bureaucrats and did not give enough scope and influence to politics. (I think this is also true of universities.) He writes:
According to his proper vocation, the genuine official–and this is decisive for the evaluation of our former regime–will not engage in politics. Rather, he should engage in impartial “administration”… Sine ira et studio, “without scorn and bias”, he shall administer his office. Hence, he shall not do precisely what the politician, the leader as well as his following, must always and necessarily do, namely fight.
Read on now to the end of p.95.
This is one of Weber’s themes: despite the effectiveness of bureaucracy, the bureaucracy needs to be under the control of politicians or other charismatic leaders, since otherwise it lacks any sense of direction or purpose. Go back to p.176 of Readings, on p.335, near the end of numbered paragraph 4, and underline: “Thus at the top of a bureaucratic organisation there is necessarily an element which is at least not purely bureaucratic”. Just as the economy needs entrepreneurs, so the political system and other parts of the social system need charismatic leaders.
Returning now to “Politics as a vocation”. Weber then talks about political journalism (this is a pretty wide-ranging essay) and different kinds of party organisation (beginning with the feudal parties of the middle ages, e.g. the Guelphs and Ghibbilines, ranging through the development of the English and American party systems, to Germany). Then he comes to the question, “What inner enjoyments can this career [of a professional politician] offer, and what personal conditions are presupposed for one who enters this avenue?” This avenue may lead to power:
But now the question for him is: Through what qualities can I hope to do justice to this power… How can he hope to do justice to the responsibility that power imposes upon him? With this we enter the field of ethical questions: what kind of a man must one be if he is to be allowed to put his hand on the wheel of history?
Read on now, at p.115, to 4 lines down p.117. So politicians must have devotion to a cause and coolness in choosing effective means to the end and must be undistracted by personal vanity.
Now read down to “Now then” near the bottom of p.118. What is this all about? Obviously on p.118 Weber is talking about Germany’s defeat in the war. The point he is making about ethics, however, is that ethics should not be used as a means of putting others in the wrong and oneself in the right. Going back to p.117, there are various obscurities here, but one point is clear, that the cause to which the politician must be devoted, whatever it is, is a matter of faith, not something that reason can establish. Ultimate world views clash, and in the end we must make a choice. This may remind you of French existentialism: no one can rationally show that you ought to devote yourself to this cause rather than that one, but you must commit yourself to one rather than another.
Read the next paragraph. Weber’s point is that different relationships and different circumstances affect ethical requirements: it will not be the case (3rd line of the paragraph) that the ethic of political conduct is identical with that of any other conduct.
Now read from the middle of p.119 to the middle of p.121. This is a famous contrast between the ethic of ultimate ends and the ethic of responsibility. “Ethic of ends” is not actually a well-chosen term. The first term he used, on p.119, was “the absolute ethic”, which is a fair enough term for an ethical system consisting of rules some of which (at least) are supposed to be followed in every case no matter what the consequences, or, to be more exact, rules which make an action conforming to them right even if it has undesirable consequences. An ethic that says “disregard consequences” is not properly described as an ethic of ends–an end is a consequence sought. The appropriate contrast is the one near the bottom of p.120, “The Christian does rightly and leaves the results with the Lord”, etc.–doing rightly means here, not seeking some end, but obeying certain rules or principles.
The confusion I have just commented on runs through the next few pages. Read from the middle of p.121 to 10 lines from top of p.123. It is only the ethic of responsibility that has any problem about the end justifying the means.
The “absolute” ethic of doing the right thing whatever the consequences is not tempted to justify wrong acts as having good consequences.
To be more exact, what Weber calls the absolute ethics, and miscalls the ethics of ultimate ends, does not say that certain acts are right and must be done whatever the consequences, but that certain kinds of acts are under all circumstances wrong and must never be done–they are forbidden absolutely. In a concrete situation you have a choice of doing x, y or z, or doing nothing. If doing nothing would have bad consequences and doing x is forbidden, then you do y or z–these being permitted actions which fend off the bad consequences. The difficulty is that in some situations all the actions that would ward off the bad consequences seem to be forbidden: then you have to allow the bad consequences to happen, since the end (of warding them off) cannot justify the only available means (some forbidden action). If on the other hand you say, as most modern liberals do, that no ethical prohibition is ever absolute, that every prohibition has possible exceptions (see Mill, Readings p.85, 3 quarters of the way down the left side), then you can avoid seriously evil consequences by doing something that would normally be prohibited. Weber doesn’t seem to have thought through these issues.
Read the next paragraph, to near the bottom of p.123.
Weber suggests here that different life spheres have different moral laws, which may come into conflict. So what is wrong in some department of life may not be wrong in politics. For example, it might not be wrong for a politician to lie his way into office.
Read the next two paragraphs, to near the bottom of p.124. Again the point is that ethical systems may and should allow in politics and war actions they forbid in some other areas of life.
Read the next paragraph, to near the bottom of p.125. The point here is that no matter how exalted morally the charismatic leader may be, to achieve anything he will have to cater to the base motivations of a band of followers. (This is too cynical; the band of followers may be idealists too.)
Read to 2 lines down p.127. Apparently the patriotic politician should be willing to do things so wicked by normal standards as to jeopardise the salvation of his soul.
Read the next paragraph, beginning “surely” on p.127. One cannot prescribe (presumably because there are no cogent reasons why) that one should adopt an ethic of ultimate ends or an ethic of responsibility. Still, Weber obviously prefers the ethic of responsibility and recommends it by his rhetoric: “It is immensely moving when a mature man is aware of a responsibility for the consequences of his conduct”. The rhetoric is also in the “tough guy” imagery: “trained relentlessness in viewing the realities of life, and the ability to face such realities and to measure up to them”, and so on.
The ethic of responsibility is, after all, utilitarianism (or some form of consequentialism, the generic doctrine of which utilitarianism is the best known species). All consequentialist doctrines have some trouble with the question whether the end justifies the means–whether in some situations, because of the consequences, it may be right to do what is ordinarily wrong. In fact all ethical theories have some trouble with this, and most of them say that sometimes it will be right to do what is ordinarily wrong. The suspicion, however, is that utilitarianism and other forms of consequentialism really have no room for secondary principles according to which some things are not to be done even on some occasions when the consequences would be good. My article “Utilitarianism and Virtue” (Ethics, 93 (1983)), in Articles & Chapters p.57 shows that this suspicion is not correct.
The “ethic of ultimate ends” that Weber presents as if it were the only alternative to consequentialism is really a straw man. No one, I believe, has ever said you should keep doing things which are supposed to serve some ultimate end even when they don’t (the view he attributes to the syndicalist, at the bottom of p.120). What some have said is that among the prohibitions of morality, though some may have exceptions, others are absolute: there are some kinds of acts which are never to be done even when they would have good net consequences–e.g. that it could never be right for the police to “frame” an innocent person even if that were the only way to allay disorder caused by some crime. Between the two theories, that we must always shape our action in view of likely consequences case by case, and that we should do this but within the constraints imposed by some absolute prohibitions, there does not seem to be a dramatic choice: they are not far apart really. The drama is uncalled for.
MAX WEBER: Politics as a Vocation
Politics is a strong and slow boring of hard boards.
First, a general chat on states.
Politics is any kind of leadership in action (Class, Status, Party: remember, social clubs and grad school cohorts can have parties, just as states can). For this lecture, we will understand politics as the leadership or influencing the leadership of a political association, today (1918) a state.
The decisive means of politics is violence.
A state is defined by the specific means peculiar to it, the use of physical force. The state is a human community that successfully claims the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force within a given territory. Politics, then, means striving to share power or striving to influence the distribution of power, either among states or among groups within a state. The state is a relation of men dominating men by means of legitimate violence (you already know the three ways it can get legitimated, so I’m not telling you). Leaders may arise on those three foundations as well.
How do the politically dominant powers maintain that dominance? Organized domination calls for continuous administration, requires that human conduct be conditioned to obedience to the power-bearers. It requires control over the material goods necessary for the use of physical violence. Thus, it requires control of the personal executive staff and the material implements of administration. All states may be classified by whether the staff of men themselves owns the administrative means, or whether they are separated from it (necesse. for bureaucracy).
Now to chatting about politics as a vocation.
There are two ways to make politics your vocation: you can live for it or off it. It you live for it, you make it your life in an internal sense, either because you enjoy power or because you serve some cause. If you live off it, you strive to make it your permanent source of income (cf Dan Rostenkowski). All party struggles are struggles for the patronage of office, as well as struggles for objective goals (see D.R. again). Setbacks in participating in offices are felt more severely by parties than is action against their objective goals.
The development of politics into an organization which demanded training in the struggle for power, and int eh methods of this struggle as developed by modern party policies, determined the separation of public functionaries into two categories: administrative officials and political officials. Political officials can be transferred any time at will, and can be dismissed or at least temporarily withdrawn. Cabinet ministers often are much less in control of their areas than divisional heads, who are long-term, administrative appointees; a minister is simply the representative of a given political power constellation.
The genuine official, even a political official, conducts his business sine ira et studio (at least formally, as long as the vital interests of the ruling order are not in question). To be passionate, on the other hand, is the element of the politician and above all of the political leader. ”Since the time of the constitutional state, and definitely since democracy has been established, the demagogue has been the typical political leader” (96). The current state of affairs is a ”dictatorship resting on the exploitation of mass emotionality” (107). Next to the qualities of will, the force of demagogic speech has been above all decisive in the choice of strong leaders.
”What kind of man must one be if he is to be allowed to put his hand on the wheel of history?” (115). He must have passion, a feeling of responsibility, and a sense of proportion. Passion in the sense of matter-of-factness, of passionate devotion to a cause, to the god or demon who is its overlord. Responsibility to the cause must be the guiding star of action. For this, a sense of proportion is needed Warm passion and a cool sense of proportion must be forged together in one and the same soul.
The politician must combat vanity, in order to be matter-of-factly devoted to his cause and preserve some distance, not least from himself. Lack of objectivity and irresponsibility are the two deadly sins of politics; vanity, the need to personally stand in the foreground, temps the politician to commit these sins. The final result of political action regularly stands in completely inadequate and often paradoxical relation to its original meaning (oh, cheery old Weber). Because of this fact, the serving of a cause must not be absent if action is to have inner strength. Exactly which cause looks like a matter of belief (117). Some kind of faith must exist in a politician, ”otherwise it is absolutely true that the curse of the creature’s worthlessness overshadows even the externally strongest political successes” (117).
Then is a discussion of two ethics, the ethic of ultimate ends and the ethic of responsibility. They are fundamentally different and irreconcilably opposed. The ethic of ultimate ends, formulated in religious terms, is: ”The Christian does rightly and leaves the results with the Lord.” If an action of good intention leads to bad results, then, in the actor’s eyes, not he, but the world, or the stupidity of other men, or God’s will who made them thus, is responsible for the evil. The ethic of responsibility, on the other hand, requires one to give an account of the foreseeable results of one’s action. The man who believes in an ethic of responsibility takes into account precisely the average deficiencies of people. He does not feel in a position to burden others with the results of his own actions so far as he was able to foresee them; he will say, these results are ascribed to my action. On the other hand, the ultimate ends dude feels a ”responsibility” only to keep his intentions good.
In many cases, the attainment of good ends is bound up with the price of using morally dubious or dangerous means, and must face the possibility of evil ramifications. From no ethics in the world can it be concluded when and to what extent a good ends justifies ethically dangerous means and ramifications. (121) The ethics of absolutism goes to pieces on the problem of justification of means by ends. Everything that is striven for through political action operating with violent means and following an ethic of responsibility endangers the salvation of the soul. If, however, on chases after the ultimate good in a war of beliefs, following a pure ethic of absolute ends, then the goals may be damaged and discredited for generations because responsibility for consequences is lacking. A man following an ethic of responsibility will arise at a place where he must say, Here I stand; I can do no other. Here, the ethic of ultimate ends and the ethic of responsibility are supplements, which only in unison constitute a genuine man, a man who can have the calling for politics (127).
