Weber's Rationalism and Modern Society New Translations on Politics, Bureaucracy, and Social Stratification
Weber's Rationalism and Modern Society New Translations on Politics, Bureaucracy, and Social Stratification
Weber's Rationalism and Modern Society New Translations on Politics, Bureaucracy, and Social Stratification
Typescript of Chapter 1 in Weber’s Rationalism and Modern Society:
New Translations for the 21st Century. Edited and Translated by Tony
Waters and Dagmar Waters. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Please
cite published book.
Max Weber’s Sociology in the 21st Century
I. Introduction
II. A Summary of Weber’s Over-arching Concepts for the 21st
Century
a. The Dynamism of the Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft: The
Heart to Weber’s Sociology
b. Discipline and Bureaucracy
c. The Rationalization of Economy, Honor, and Politics
d. Rationality and Bureaucratized Law
e. Charisma, Leadership, and “Fuehrer-figures”
f. Power, Dominion, and Domination
III. Weber’s Position Relative to Marx, Nietzsche, and Toennies
IV. Martin Luther and the Hindu Upanishads
V. The Persistence of Feudalism, Gemeinschaft, and the
Prussian Tugend
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Typescript of Chapter 1 in Weber’s Rationalism and Modern Society:
New Translations for the 21st Century. Edited and Translated by Tony
Waters and Dagmar Waters. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Please
cite published book.
Max Weber’s Sociology in the 21st Century
I. Introduction
Max Weber’s contributions to the social sciences remain at the
heart of how we speak of ethics, status, ethnicity, class, bureaucracy,
and politics. His definition of the state as being “the legitimated
monopoly over the use of coercive force in a given territory” is a staple
of journalists, and social scientists alike. Weber is also credited with
highlighting concepts such as “iron cage,” “bureaucracy,”
“bureaucratization,” “rationalization,” “charisma,” and the role of the
“work ethic” in ordering modern labor markets. Indeed, such concepts
are so well-known that they are often even cliché.
Other terms which we hope can be added to this list include Weber’s
description of the “judging machine1” that are the modern courts which
should be read by ever first year law student, and the conditioned
“discipline” that underlies modern factories, bureaucracies, and
institutions. In Weber’s writings about politics, we would like to add
the “true human” who is meant for politics, and “The Demon of
Politics” that grips humans heeding the call to political power has
similar value. We also believe that Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft,
words well-known in American sociology of the 1960s and 1970s,
should re-enter the sociological lexicon.
1 des die Auffassung des modernen Richters als eines Automaten
2
Typescript of Chapter 1 in Weber’s Rationalism and Modern Society:
New Translations for the 21st Century. Edited and Translated by Tony
Waters and Dagmar Waters. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Please
cite published book.
Max Weber’s writing is relevant in the twenty-first century because
the issues of social stratification, power, politics, and modernity
resonate just as loudly today as they did during the early twentieth
century when Weber wrote, or for that matter during the feudalism
which Weber so aptly analyzed. In re-translating the essays presented
here we have often marveled at how “today” his writing are. In our life
at Chico State University, Weber’s writing echo in the way that the
faculty senate is run run, civil servants organized, campus politicians
maneuver, information is guarded, and administrative units persist
despite turnover in university leadership or even turbulence of the
Great Recession of 2008. We see this at the national and international
level too, where the political institutions Weber so artfully described in
1918-1919, continue to shape humans in the same fashion they did
then. But, floating above this of course the private and public
bureaucracies which Weber said characterized modernity, even though
they had their roots deep in the feudalism.
How powerful and dominant are bureaucracies? Weber’s ironic
observation that the power of the modern German Bureaucracy
exceeded even that of its own creator, the Iron Chancellor Otto von
Bismarck, should bring a smile to the face of anyone who has ever
filled out a meaningless form, or marveled at the inability of a powerful
President to fulfill even the most basic campaign promise. Indeed from
such a context, we suspect that Mao Zedong would be rolling over in
his Beijing mausoleum if he were to know how persistent China’s
bureaucratic Mandarins are today despite war, invasion, revolution,
The Great Leap Forward, and the Cultural Revolution. Mao Zedong as
well as his predecessors (and successors) did of course destroy much
of Imperial China—but not the Imperial bureaucratic form and
procedure, which persist as Weber wrote, “in spite of it all!”
3
Typescript of Chapter 1 in Weber’s Rationalism and Modern Society:
New Translations for the 21st Century. Edited and Translated by Tony
Waters and Dagmar Waters. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Please
cite published book.
In these introductory remarks, there are summary descriptions of
the key concepts found in the four essays presented here. This is
followed by a brief discussion of how we believe Weber’s writings fit in
with Marx and Nietzsche, both writers to whom Weber occasionally
referred to in his writings, and which we agree do indeed provide a
context for understanding Weber. This is followed by several pages
about the influences on Weber’s writings of three sources who we think
are under-estimated regarding Weber’s writings about politics and
ethics: Ferdinand Tönnies, Martin Luther, and the Hindu Upanishads.
Each wrestle with the tensions within society in ways that are not
found in either Marx’s materialism, or Nietzsche’s nihilism.
II. A Summary of Weber’s Over-arching Concepts for the 21st
Century
This section introduces what we think are among the most
important themes of the four Weber essays presented here. A number
of the themes like bureaucracy, rationality, power, and domination are
emphasized by other Weber commentators, but others—particularly
Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft—are not usually highlighted by Weber
scholars. The following discussion highlights both what we think are
the most important themes for understanding these four essays, and
also points to ways that we think issues like Gemeinschaft,
Gesellschaft, Discipline, Rationalization, Bureaucracy, Charisma, and
Power fit together in Weber’s sociology.
a. The Dynamism of the Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft: The
Heart to Weber’s Sociology
4
Typescript of Chapter 1 in Weber’s Rationalism and Modern Society:
New Translations for the 21st Century. Edited and Translated by Tony
Waters and Dagmar Waters. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Please
cite published book.
Much of Weber’s description of society is derived through the
definition of terms, concepts, and descriptions. He uses specific
historically-grounded examples to flesh out the description.
At the heart of Weber’s sociology are definitions of Gemeinschaft,
which Weber describes as the most basic and enduring social structure
that is “society.” Gemeinschaft is rooted in beliefs about the
persistence of honor and prestige, and reflects a consensus about who
is “us” and who is “them.” Such Gemeinschaft concepts Weber writes,
are historically grounded and persistent, and include associations such
as those of the peasantry, aristocracy, nation, professions, ethnic
groups, clans, tribes, and even the marital pair. Any range of other
groups whose basic membership is rooted in beliefs about birth,
education, ritual, and/or education, rather than a pure naked position
in the marketplace.
But as Weber points out, Gemeinschaft can also be of recent origin
as are in many of the newest countries of the world, though there
typically are also beliefs that such relationships are ancient. Thus even
today, Gemeinschaft-based associations are also rooted in the
“identities” that fascinate English-speaking sociologists today. 2 The
point is that people sharing a status recognize each other as “us” and
are recognized as an us by those outside the group and respect the
rights, responsibilities, and privileges vis a vis each other which are
independent of naked market conditions. As Weber writes such status-
based “Stand” relationships are made visible through group-based
beliefs about such things language use, food likes and dislikes, skills,
2 See e.g. Wallerstein 2004: (Chapter 5). Wallerstein is explicitly adapting the earlier
translation of Weber’s Stand, i.e. status group, and then bending the concept to
match up with the contemporary Wallerstein’s approach is appropriate for discussions
about identities rooted in race, ethnicity, nationality, gender, sexuality, etc. But we
also believe that it is more parsimonious to use Weber’s original term (Stand) in
German, which in fact neatly captures otherwise diverse English concepts like
“identity,” “status group,” “nationality,” etc.
5
Typescript of Chapter 1 in Weber’s Rationalism and Modern Society:
New Translations for the 21st Century. Edited and Translated by Tony
Waters and Dagmar Waters. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Please
cite published book.
uniforms, badges, and physical characteristics which, though they are
displayed by an individual, assign that individual to a group in a
seemingly arbitrary fashion, as indeed Franz Kafka described in his
essay “Gemeinschaft3”, which describes how five friends become a
“Gemeinschaft” because they associate with each other, are
recognized as a group by others, and arbitrarily exclude from
membership a sixth person. As Parkin (1982:100) noted, “almost any
characteristic may be to this end” in order to exclude. This is why
Gemeinschaft-based distinctions are important for understanding the
nature of prestige, status, honor (i.e. Stand) and the distribution of
power via politics).
But Weber does not define Gemeinschaft in a vacuum, he defines it
relative to Gesellschaft. For Weber’s description of the modern world,
including that of the twenty-first century, Weber writes that
Gesellschaft emerges out of the anonymous marketplace, not honor-
based friendships like those of Kafka’s five friends. The basic logic of
the Gesellschaft is different from the Gemeinschaft because it is rooted
in the impersonal nature of the anonymous marketplace, not in the
honor-based associations. Nor in the Gesellschaft is there an
3 Franz Kafka in 1909 defined the German word Gemeinschaft in a brief essay in the
following fashion:
We are five friends, one day we came out of a house one after the other, … Finally we all stood in
a row. People began to notice us, they pointed at us and said: Those five just came out of that
house. Since then we have been living together, it would be a peaceful life if it weren't for a sixth
one continually trying to interfere. He doesn't do us any harm, but he annoys us, and that is harm
enough; why does he intrude when he is not wanted? We don't know him and don't want him to
join us. There was a time, of course, when the five of us did not know one another, either, and it
could be said that we still don't know one another, but what is possible and can be tolerated by the
five of us is not possible and cannot be tolerated with this sixth one. … No matter how he pouts
his lips we push him away with our elbows, but however much we push him away, back he comes.
Source: https://adwilkin.wikispaces.com/file/view/Fellowship.pdf/369712258/Fellowship.pdf
The traditional English title of this essay is “Fellowship,” but the original German is “Gemeinschaft.”
6
Typescript of Chapter 1 in Weber’s Rationalism and Modern Society:
New Translations for the 21st Century. Edited and Translated by Tony
Waters and Dagmar Waters. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Please
cite published book.
assumption of a past, or future relationship. The Gesellschaft is rooted
in calculation and rationalization, not the visible symbols of honor
distributed in the Gemeinschaft. Impersonal calculation, without
reference to personal identity is the hallmark of the Gesellschaft.
Modern anonymous markets, be they in labor, land, capital, or
commodity, are of the Gesellschaft. Modern concepts like the job
market, meritocracy, Boards of Trade, and stock markets all, at least in
theory, emerge from the Gesellschaft and its anonymous
marketplaces. Weber’s classic description of a Gesellschaft relationship
is that between the person who hires a killer, and the killer. They work
intensively together until the transaction completed (i.e. the victim
murdered, and the payment received), but then no longer recognize
each other afterwards. The transaction was strictly “cash and carry;”
the task undertaken is separate from any honor-bound human
relationship (see Weber 1968/1978:XXX).
It is in the Gesellschaft that the modernity for which Weber’s
descriptions rationality and bureaucracy are well-known; Gesellschaft-
based relationships always have a relationship to market activity.
Unlike Gemeinschaft relations, Gesellschaft relations emerge from the
impersonal transactions of the marketplace.
Notably though in Weber’s formulation, the Gesellschaft emerges
out of the Gemeinschaft, and not the other way around. Especially in
the impersonal Gesellschaft world of the businessman most social
relationships are in the impersonal market-mediated Gesellschaft. In
fact the Gesellschaft creates modern society, giving birth to what
Weber called the rationalized world, and its most powerful child, the
bureaucracy.
But in the end, for Weber, the Gemeinschaft still is the central
concept of society (Radkau 2009:414); it is from the values and
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Typescript of Chapter 1 in Weber’s Rationalism and Modern Society:
New Translations for the 21st Century. Edited and Translated by Tony
Waters and Dagmar Waters. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Please
cite published book.
morality of the Gemeinschaft that the laws governing market activity
ultimately emerge, not the other way around in contrast to the
historical materialism of Marx. And it is in the Gemeinschaft that the
loyalties and moral assumptions about what is right and good are
created, and from which the legitimated use of force in a given
territory emerges.
But before focusing on the children of the Gesellschaft, i.e.
rationalization and bureaucracy, it is important to describe how Weber
contrasts Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft; after all it is this relationship
that is not only at the heart of the writings highlighted in this book, but
also in that of the early twentieth century social philosophers
especially Ferdinand Tönnies.
Tönnies popularized the use of the Gemeinschaft and
Gesellschaft in his 1888 book Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft
(Community and Society). This book was well-known in Weber’s world,
a fact acknowledged by Weber (see Weber 1968: 4, 41; and Radkau
2009:413-415). Indeed, Weber explicitly puts the distinction at the
heart of his sociology, while pointing out that how Tönnies used the
terms is different. In participating in this discussion, Weber seeks to
understand better how the traditional world had during the nineteenth
century become the modernity of industrial Europe. In seeking to
understand and define this change, Weber investigates the problems
many others addressed in the same decades, including Marx, Spencer,
Nietzsche, and Durkheim.
But Weber follows most explicitly in Tönnies footsteps when using
the terms Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft, though he does so in a
fashion that more so than the clean mechanistic version of Tönnies
8
Typescript of Chapter 1 in Weber’s Rationalism and Modern Society:
New Translations for the 21st Century. Edited and Translated by Tony
Waters and Dagmar Waters. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Please
cite published book.
with its “overtones of harmony and warmth,” and instead described
“the unruliness of historical reality” (Radkau 2009:414).
Tönnies saw traditional pre-modern community as being of a
Gemeinschaft sort, that was inexorably moving toward a more modern
rationalized Gesellschaft society and its modernity. In Tönnies
formulation, there logically was a time when the affectual, emotional,
and traditional bases of the Gemeinschaft would be overwhelmed by
the more modern rational bases of the Gesellschaft. In other works,
the newer life would naturally replace the older traditional forms of life;
in this respect Tönnies logic is more like that of his contemporaries who
celebrated the evolutionary “surivival of the fittest” understandings of
both biological and socio-economic life. In Tönnies formulation, the
new Gesellschaft society was superior, and would eventually
overwhelm the older forms of Gemeinschaft, with all its sentimentality,
family-based favoritism, tribal organization, and economic
inefficiencies. Tönnies saw this as a form of progress, in which the
better society, that of Gesellschaft would eventually emerge dominant
(See Cahnmann 1968/1995:101-102).
Weber agreed with Tönnies that Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft
were effective analytical categories. However, Weber implicitly
disagreed with the assertion that development was inherently good, or
that the Gesellschaft society was inevitable. Weber viewed modern life
as banal, and his reasoning about the relationship between the two he
saw as dialectical in which there was a tension between the two which
is never quite resolved. To emphasize this, he introduced to German
gerunds, i.e. “verbal nouns” Vergemeinschaftung, and
Vergesellschaftung, to emphasize the fluidity and ever-changing
interactive relationship. Roughly put, they could be translated as
“Gesellschaft-ing,” and “Gemeinschaft-ing,” in which Gemeinschaft-ing
9
Typescript of Chapter 1 in Weber’s Rationalism and Modern Society:
New Translations for the 21st Century. Edited and Translated by Tony
Waters and Dagmar Waters. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Please
cite published book.
is about an increasing attention to emotion and sentiment, while
Gesellschaft-ing is about and increasing attention to rational market
forces.
For Weber, the two qualities co-exist like oil and water. In contrast
Toennies views the emergences of Gesellschaft as being a more
unidirectional historical process (Cahnmann 1995:109-110). Thus,
Weber while accepting Tönnies basic distinctions, also emphasized that
both would always coexist, albeit uncomfortably, and in a dialectical
tension. Weber saw this coexistence in both pre-modern mechanical
societies where the Gesellschaft was small and the Gemeinschaft all-
encompasing; but more especially he saw it in modern society where
the Gesellschaft seemingly overwhelm underlying Gemeinschaft
values, even though it never actually does. Labor unions which
emerge to protect the market position of labor in the marketplace are a
good example of how this tension can play out. Labor unions emerge
to address economic issues of the marketplace, but often develop into
club-like “brotherhoods” to which members develop emotional
commitments. The result is alienation, disenchantment, and
objectification—concerns Weber shared with Marx, Nietzsche, and
many others.
b. Discipline, The Division of Labor, and Bureaucracy
For Weber, there is a central question about why workers slip
seamlessly into the demands of bureaucratic production, whether it is
in a factory or government institution. Weber does not view such
discipline as natural; in his sociology he very much views the
emergence of “discipline” to be the source of a habitus, i.e. a
construction of modern human society. Discipline in Weber’s
construction is a process in which
10
Typescript of Chapter 1 in Weber’s Rationalism and Modern Society:
New Translations for the 21st Century. Edited and Translated by Tony
Waters and Dagmar Waters. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Please
cite published book.
… the psycho-biological nature of a human being is totally adjusted to the
demands of production specifications, which are what the tools and
machines of the outer world require. In short the human being is adjusted
to the functions demanded from him. The human being is stripped of his
personal biological rhythm, and then is reprogrammed into the new rhythm
according to the prerequisites of the task. This is done by the systematic
deconstruction of the functions of every muscle, and then reconstructed
into an optimal economic form of “manpower,” which is put into a new
rhythm and shaped to the requirements of the work.
Embedded in this is the capacity to obey unquestionably and
habitually, even when orders have not been given. Thus the modern
worker habitually knows what th bureaucracy, factory, or boss wants,
and does it—such habitus is what makes modern society possible.
Thus, in “Discipline and Charisma,” Weber describes how changing
weaponry, and military organization has given birth to every higher
levels of such discipline, and the capacity of society to undertake an
ever finer division of labor. In this sense Weber is anticipating the
writings of later writers like Michel Foucault (see Szakolczai 1998), and
Pierre Bourdieu.
Discipline and The division of human labor are central to Weber’s
description of rationalization, and rationalization’s child, the
bureaucracy. Labor works its magic only if everyone on an assembly
line, or in an army, habitually conditioned to undertake a specialized
task on command, whatever the pre-existing psycho-biological
predisposition of a particular human may be, or rather might have
been.
In the process service to self and one’s fellows, becomes an act
coordinated by a inhuman institutions like an army, royal court,
factory, government office, or in the modern world a bureaucracy.
Weber’s central point of course is that in subordinating oneself to such
externally generated discipline, humanity and soul is compromised, as
11
Typescript of Chapter 1 in Weber’s Rationalism and Modern Society:
New Translations for the 21st Century. Edited and Translated by Tony
Waters and Dagmar Waters. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Please
cite published book.
the individual becomes what Nietszche called the “Last Man,” and
whom Weber (while referring to Nietzsche) called
narrow specialists without mind, pleasure-seekers without
heart; in its conceit this nothingness imagines it has climbed
to a level of humanity never before achieved (Weber
2002:XXX).
On this opint, Weber’s reasoning is closer to Nietzsche who saw the
world as an endless struggle (Turner 2011:80), rather than on a
continuum of Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft as Tönnies did.
c. The Rationalization of Economy, Honor, and Politics
Traditionally, Weber’s description of society in Weber’s
masterwork Economy and Society is called in English the “Three-fold
System of Stratification,” and emphasizes emphasis on economy,
status, and power. This division is found in several shorter essays in
Economy and Society (see Weber 1968/1978:XXX-XXX). The best
developed of these essays is “Classes, Stände, Parties” which Hans H.
Gerth and C. Wright Mills highlighted in their Weber scholarship in the
1940s (See Gerth and Mills 1944, 1947; Oakes and Viddich 1999; and
Waters and Waters 2010). Most significantly, as Weber emphasizes in
“Classes, Stände, Parties,” these three structures of society from the
hierarchies of economic, social, and political power found in societies
ancient and modern.
Issues of honor are distributed within the assumptions of the
Gemeinschaft, and lead to the formation of status groups, or what in
German is more precisely called Stände which Weber points out
emerges from the “House of Honor.” In developing this point, Weber is
separating himself, from Karl Marx’s society which traced all social
differentiation back to the “House of the Marketplace,” where
12
Typescript of Chapter 1 in Weber’s Rationalism and Modern Society:
New Translations for the 21st Century. Edited and Translated by Tony
Waters and Dagmar Waters. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Please
cite published book.
transactions are anonymously undertaken at the cash nexus, where
class-based solidarity emerges. For Marx, all other social
differentiation, including that involving feudal categories, ethnicity,
race, religion emerges out of the struggle between the two classes of
“oppressor” and “oppressed” over the means of production. Weber
asserts that this is only part of the story.
Weber writes that it is in the “House of Honor” that visible
indicators of prestige (positive and negative) are distributed on the
basis of how well people know each other. In this way, there is
interaction between Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft on the one hand,
and the three-fold system of stratification on the other (see pp. XX-XX
Classes, Stände, Parties).
In societies with a well-developed anonymous marketplace, i.e. the
modern capitalist societies Weber observed, class formed from relative
position in the labor, commodity, or credit markets that is in the
“House of the Marketplace,” i.e. the Gesellschaft. People do this
without reference to social rank, i.e. Stand. Rather they respond to
market incentives in the same fashion as others do when presented
with such incentives. To Weber, this is a type of social organization,
that is social class, emerged out of the House of the Marketplace.4
The third type of Social Stratification that Weber described is the
“House of Power” dominated by politics. This house is created when
Stand and Class interests come together to seek power over “the use
of coercive legitimated force in a particular territory5,” in order that
they can compel others to do what they would not do otherwise.
4
As Weber points out, such class action occurs in the labor credit, and
commodity markets respectively.
5
See “Politics as Vocation”, p. x and “Class, Stände, Party,” p. x.
13
Typescript of Chapter 1 in Weber’s Rationalism and Modern Society:
New Translations for the 21st Century. Edited and Translated by Tony
Waters and Dagmar Waters. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Please
cite published book.
According to Weber, power is about using the levers of hope and
coercion to discipline a society via government. But which hope and
which fear is not the only thing at the root of Weber’s thoughts about
politics; ultimately more central is the conditioned habitus that comes
from sacrificing “bio-physical impulses” to the demands of an abstract
rationalized institution. More is described below about how power is
wielded, the role of charisma, and the nature of political ethics below.
d. Rationality and Bureaucratized Law
Weber’s essay “Bureaucracy” is primarily understood for its
description of the hierarchical “top-down” nature of bureaucracy in
which “the rules” rather than humanity drives action, squeezing the
soul of anyone consigned to managing (and being managed) by the
bureaucracy. Indeed, this description is so well known that it is
frequently described as “Weberian bureaucracy.” According to some
who study “caring bureaucracies,” there is a “choice” between the
crueler and more control-oriented administrators who manage in
particular schools, social welfare agencies, and other institutions which
seek to provide “caring services” to a particular clientele (see e.g.
Sergiovanni, Abel and Nelson 1990:49, Ray 2007, and XXX). Typically,
“work-arounds” which favor the caring instincts of those delivering
services (e.g. social workers, nurses, teachers, etc.), are
recommended. But this misses Weber’s main point—he did not
advocate for a particular type of bureaucracy, rather he sought to
develop “bureaucracy” as a term describing the modern corporation
and government that underlies modern social organization. As with
much of Weber’s sociology “bureaucracy neither is or nor bad, it just
“is” and exists as an enduring influence on modern life. In this respect,
the bureaucracy is ore like the weather, than an ideology that can be
14
Typescript of Chapter 1 in Weber’s Rationalism and Modern Society:
New Translations for the 21st Century. Edited and Translated by Tony
Waters and Dagmar Waters. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Please
cite published book.
reformed; Weber’s point is to understand the nature of the
bureaucratic phenomenon, not reform it.
The “problem” for the modern world, is that bureaucracies cannot
care or feel (see Waters 2001 and 2012). This is because they get their
efficiencies from the rationalization emerging from the Gessellschaft,
which are by definition devoid of an emotional capacity to care. From
Weber’s point, this is the point, as he makes clear in both
“Bureaucracy,” and “Politics as Vocation.” Hierarchical bureaucracies
are modern society, and any attempt to deny this fact is beyond to
deny the nature of modern society itself. We are sure that Weber
would “rage against the machine, and attempt to re-enchant a
disenchanted world (see Ritzer) in his political life; indeed this rage is
implicit to his writings. But as an academic he would also view such
rage as being about as effective as campaigning against hurricanes—it
is all besides the point.
Weber’s point is that in bureaucracies, process trumps task; if
process did not trump task, you would not have a modern organization.
Such rationalization means that the process of the “judging machine”
that is rationalized law dominates the process, not the good of the
individuals enmeshed, nor a more abstract sense of justice. Procedure,
the files, hierarchy, and the rules drive decision-making, not a
disembodied abstract assessment of each case in pursuit of an
abstract sense of justice or fairness dreamt of in modern politics, or
university classes in public and business administration. Given
Weber’s definition of bureaucracy, wishing for a “caring” bureaucracy
is a fool’s errand; it is like wishing away the laws of gravity.
e. Charisma, Leadership, and “Führer-figures”
Weber points to a way out of this conundrum though—but it is a
hazardous and potentially catastrophic “solution.” The way to step
15
Typescript of Chapter 1 in Weber’s Rationalism and Modern Society:
New Translations for the 21st Century. Edited and Translated by Tony
Waters and Dagmar Waters. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Please
cite published book.
beyond the oppressive nature of rationalized bureaucratic rule and its
efficient mindless “judging machine” is a leader who transcend the
machine’s apparatus through emotional appeal and unique personal
powers. Transcending bureaucratic rationalization, Weber believes is
possible only via a strong leader—a Führer6—who can command loyalty
by appealing to values from the unrationalized Gemeinschaft, which by
definition is outside the bureaucratic system.
Charismatic leadership is inherently embedded in both emotion
and an individual personality, i.e. conditions which are the opposite of
the rationalized forces found within any bureaucracy and modern
Gesellschaft society as a whole. Weber, writing in the late 1910s cited
Napoleon and Jesus Christ as exemplars of charismatic Führer-figures,
though obviously the two used their charismatic power in very different
ways.
Leadership by Weber’s definition comes in many forms; Führer-
figures are in fact only one such farm, albeit an extreme one. Weber
also describes bureaucratic “leaders” and includes leaders, chiefs,
bosses, parliamentary leaders, etc. “Führer” in this context takes on a
special meaning, which does not have a ready English equivalent;
indeed, in the language of nineteenth and twentieth century English-
writers were occasionally using the German gloss Führer in their own
writing;7 as in Germany, peoples in quickly rationalizing Europe and
America of that era were yearning for a Savior figure. This is the word
6
See pp. for a discussion of how we have translated the problematic
German word Führer in this book.
7
How often and when the word “Fuehrer” or Führer was used in the
English literature before the emergence of Adolf Hitler can be easily
checked searching Google Books. There was a small peak in the
1880s, and a sharper peak in the 1910s, and particularly the early
1920s and of course a spike in the 1930s and after.
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Typescript of Chapter 1 in Weber’s Rationalism and Modern Society:
New Translations for the 21st Century. Edited and Translated by Tony
Waters and Dagmar Waters. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Please
cite published book.
Führer entered both Weber’s vocabulary by World War I, as well as
many others, including, a few years later, Adolf Hitler.
The fact of the matter is that the longing for Führer-figures is a
constant of modernity; indeed as Weber wrote, many twenty-first
century political campaigns are focused by spurious claims that a
wannabe leader will inspire and lead through hope, fear, moral
authority, thereby transcending command by bureaucratic authority.
Indeed, modern political campaigns frequently become dominated by
such “charismatic figures” who seek to entice their publics into an
ecstatic ecstasy, inviting them to follow them on a shared journey
which will transcend the status quo.
Twentieth century examples of such charismatic figures who rise
“above the rules” range across the globe, and include South Africa
(Mandela), Egypt (Nasser), Iran (Khomeini), Thailand (Taksin),
Argentina (Peron), China (Mao), India (Gandhi) and many others. It
also applies in business where charismatic figures like Thomas Edison,
Henry Ford, Steve Jobs, Stephen Spielberg, Bill Gates, Rupert Murdoch,
and others emerge to again, “break the old rules” and through what is
perceived as force of personality, and assert a new order. Weber’s use
of the term Führer to describe the specific characteristic of such
transcendent figures is useful, and indeed has no equivalent in English.
f. Power, Dominion, and Domination: Herrschaft
Weber’s classic definition of the state as “the monopoly over the
legitimated use of coercive Gewalt/power” is critical to the essays
presented here. In this sense, Weber is consistent with a philosophical
tradition that goes back to Hobbes, and includes Locke, Marx, and
many others. Weber views the state as inehrent to the conduct of
human affairs in complex societies—and as he notes repeatedly, this
implies the use of legitimated violence as rulers effectively exercise
17
Typescript of Chapter 1 in Weber’s Rationalism and Modern Society:
New Translations for the 21st Century. Edited and Translated by Tony
Waters and Dagmar Waters. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Please
cite published book.
dominion over the people and territory they rule. For this reason,
Weber writes, those who exercise Gewalt are inherently subject to the
temptations of violence, no matter what ideological regime they use to
justify their actions. And as a social psychologist, Weber notes that
wielding power affects the politicians who control the police and the
armies—in fact he notes that the capacity to wield such power is
“intoxicating,” to any human to whom such power is granted.
Having said that, there is also something external to the individual
which is the Herrschaft, wielded by any Ruler. Herrschaft is a concept
separate from the individual—we have usually translated it as
“dominion” or “domination” to reflect this relationship. In Weber’s
estimation, the capacity to exercise Herrschaft is rooted in the capacity
to be seen as legitimate by those over whom power is wielded. As
such, Herrschaft and power are ethereal projects obvious only in the
very persistence of institutional structures, particularly those of
government.
Weber is also aware that no matter how necessary such domination
may be for the persistence of society, it does indeed usually corrupt
the individual who wields that power; Weber asserts bluntly that such
power is so corrupting that nine out of ten politicians are nothing but
vain windbags (p. XX). As for the one in ten who presumably rises
above this, Weber can only offer up the resignation of Martin Luther
“Here I stand, I can do no other” to describe the “true human” who
enters politics to “forcefully drill…holes in hardwood boards, and that with passion,
and at the same time with a sense of proportion.”
As a conclusion about the nature of politics, and the kind of
humans who practice policits, Weber is devoid of both the optimistic
American pragmatism, and the “Kulturpessimissmus” of not only the
German Nietzsche, but the general Zeitgeist of early twentieth century
18
Typescript of Chapter 1 in Weber’s Rationalism and Modern Society:
New Translations for the 21st Century. Edited and Translated by Tony
Waters and Dagmar Waters. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Please
cite published book.
Germany (Turner 1996:x). Rather Weber wobbles uncertainly between
pragmatism and pessimism, leaving his ideal type of the “true human”
difficult to categorize—except perhaps as tragedy.
III. Weber’s Position Relative to Marx and Nietzsche
Famously, Weber was once said to remark to his students that “The world in which we
ourselves exist intellectually is a world largely molded by Marx and Nietzsche” (see e.g.
Turner 2011:77 and 1986a:3744; Baumgarten 1961: 554555, note 1). Much has been
written about whether this was an offhand comment, or a true reflection of where Weber
positioned himself philosophically. Mommsen (1991:116) sees Weber’s emphases on the
role of aristocratic individualism as reflecting Nietzsche and as such being held in check
by the anonymous socioeconomic conditions described by Marx.
It is our view that the ideas of Marx and Nietzsche do indeed permeate the issues
raised by Weber, but it is in a more general sense, rather than a specific one. Weber is
clearly responding to the challenges made by both classic writers, even though formal
references to their works are few and often oblique (Szakolczai 1998:265). For that
matter we are impressed that not only does Weber respond to the issues raised by Marx
and Nietzsche, but so do many writers of the twentieth and twentyfirst centuries. Marx
and Nietzsche both had the fingers on the insecurities of their time (and our times), as did
Weber.
Thus in The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, Weber indeed responds to
Marx’s assertions about historical materialism, and the alienation of labor (see e.g.
Collins 1986b:5159). In the essays we have translated, he does this mostly forcefully in
“Class, Stände, Parties” where Weber implicitly uses Marx’s definitions of social class to
develop both the nature of class and Stände, with the former defined as reflecting
relationship to the “means of production,” while the latter reflects the subjective/arbitrary
emergence of Stand tied together with symbolic markers reflecting shared “honor,” which
19
Typescript of Chapter 1 in Weber’s Rationalism and Modern Society:
New Translations for the 21st Century. Edited and Translated by Tony
Waters and Dagmar Waters. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Please
cite published book.
in turn seek legal rights.8” Furthermore, it is clear that Weber assumes along with Marx
that the modern condition is a product of modern industrial capitalism, Weber does not
go as far as Marx; he does not believe that society can be reduced to a mode of
production, or for that matter, any particular type of system.
Weber’s relationship to Nietzsche is also amorphous, but indeed Nietzsche’s
influence permeates all four essays translated here. In each essay, the dominance of the
rationalized world, and the manner in which humanity becomes dissipated is highlighted.
Much of this evokes both Nietzsche (and Marx for that matter), particularly the
description of how tools, machines, and institutions shape human beings. Weber also
perhaps evokes Nietzsche’s “supermen” when he writes about the capacity of Führer
figures to dominate societies.
Is Weber a nihilist in the same way Nietzsche was? We think not—and that this is
most apparent in Weber’s most sardonic writing in “Politics as Vocation” even though
this is where he describes most politicians as vain greedy “windbags,” the cynicism of
selfinterested lobbyists, the inhumanity of bureaucrats, corrupt party bosses, and the
powerhungry parties which exist to simply divide the spoils which inhere to government
employment. In doing as Weber notes, politicians must equivocate between the
temptation use their monopoly over legitimate violence to make shortterm decisions at
the expense of the greater good. Do you respond to the problems and passions in front of
you, or do you make decisions, which only in a longer run create a greater good? The
manner for reaching such a key insight does not reflect Marx or Nietzsche; rather it is
pure Weber. This is because Weber has stretched beyond cultural pessimis, and reflects
the “value pluralism” of modern society. This formulation is pure Weber (see Seidman
1983/1991:159).
8
In doing this though, Weber is anticipating laterday developments by the Birmingham
School of Sociology, which focuses on the nature of consumption in structuring “working
class culture” in England, as well as Bourdieu’s concept of “cultural capital.” We think
that Weber’s concept of “Stand” could be used to highlight the distinctions being made in
England and France.
20
Typescript of Chapter 1 in Weber’s Rationalism and Modern Society:
New Translations for the 21st Century. Edited and Translated by Tony
Waters and Dagmar Waters. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Please
cite published book.
IV. Weber’s position relative to Ferdinand Tönnies
While we believe that the influence of Marx and Nietzsche was
more amorphous, that of Ferdinand Tönnies is much more specific.9
Tönnies specifically wrote about the relationship between
Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft, and Weber’s formulation is in explicitly
response to Tönnies.10 Weber in effect agrees with Tönnies that the
distinction is important. However Tönnies sees a progression from a
traditional world rooted in Gemeinschaft ethics, to a modern one where
Gessellschaft and marketplace are dominant; Weber though modifies
this. In particular, instead of seeing a linear progression, Weber sees an
on-going tension between the two structures—in Weber’s mind, a
Gesellschaft is inherently rooted in a Gemeinschaft; and while the
ideology of the Gesellschaft may be dominant especially in times of
threat, it never completely eliminates its roots in the values, morals,
ethics, and culture which gave birth to it. Thus, although the two
coexist like oil and water—coexist they do at least in Weber’s
formulation.
What this means in the larger picture, is that for Weber, unlike for
Marx (and implicitly with Tönnies) the unit of analysis is not only social
9
Much has been written about Weber’s intellectual position relative to Marx and
Nietzsche, less with respect to his position relative to Tönnies. An important
exception is Werner J. Cahnmann (1995).
10
Tönnies in turn wrote his book Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft a least in part in
response to Marx. Marx when writing in English used Gesellschaft (and its variations)
frequently. He used Gemeinschaft less frequently, and in a different way than
Tönnies. Marx used Gesellschaft in a general way which corresponds roughly to the
English “society” which is an entity greater than the sum of individuals (see
Mahowald 1973). Gemeinschaft is a more general universal community which Marx
hoped would emerge out of the Gesellschaft. Thus Marx sees that as Mahowald
(1988:488) put it, “Gesellschaft is for the sake of the Gemeinschaft.” This is different
than what Tönnies wrote. Weber in effect turns this order on its head in his definition
of Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft!
21
Typescript of Chapter 1 in Weber’s Rationalism and Modern Society:
New Translations for the 21st Century. Edited and Translated by Tony
Waters and Dagmar Waters. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Please
cite published book.
class, determined by its relationship to the means of production, but
also the Stände with their roots in visible, arbitrary, and irrational
markers of distinction, and ultimately in feudalism.
V. Martin Luther and the Hindu Upanishads
Another specific influence on Weber’s thoughts are those of Martin
Luther, and the Hindu Upanishads. This is a pairing that Weber
explicitly makes in “Politics as Vocation,” but we think both views are
developed throughout the essays presented here, as well as in Weber’s
other writings. This is because both traditions, embedded in feudalism
as they are, explicitly reflect the nature of social stratification rooted in
occupation and inheritance, in other words what is described by Weber
as Stand, caste, and ethnicity. In Luther Stand is embedded in the
nature of “The Calling” (Beruf) which Weber developed in The
Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, but also here Politics as
Vocation where he writes implicitly about Luther’s “two kingdom”
doctrine from Mark 12:17 (i.e. “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and
to God the things that are God's), when he emphasizes that the ethical
choices that politicians make are different from those of the Sermon on
the Mount, and put into practice by St. Francis, and Augustine.
As Weber points out, this point was also made in the Hindu
Upanishads two thousand years ago, where the the ethics unique to
each caste were emphasized. This is of course an uncomfortable
assumption for a modern English audience, rooted in the ethics of blind
equality before the law, and the justice of competitive labor markets.
But such modern assumptions are those of the Gesellschaft, not the
Gemeinschaft. But as Weber points out in Classes, Staende, Parties,
issues of honor and prestige—the values of the Gemeinschaft—still
persist in the modern world as well, an assumption shared by
generations of sociology students who intuitively know that Staende
22
Typescript of Chapter 1 in Weber’s Rationalism and Modern Society:
New Translations for the 21st Century. Edited and Translated by Tony
Waters and Dagmar Waters. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Please
cite published book.
relationships like ethnicity, profession, group membership, regional
loyalties, etc., all still matter in the distribution of life chances,
irrespective of the abstract concepts of utility assumed by the neo-
classical economics of the Gesellschaft. They also know that different
“rules” apply to different Staende. Politicians, bankers, movie stars,
doctors, lawyers, and professors are all subject to different ethical
cosmos as each other. So are inner city black youth who are from a
Stand which is subject to the “ethics of the street” which politicians,
bankers, etc., are outside of. Such “ethics by caste” is of course what
the Upanishads dealt with; and the assumptions of the Upanishads
about the ethics of caste are found in Weber’s description of Stand
found throughout the essays translated here. indeed, it was in the
caste system of India and elsewhere that Weber locates the “ideal
typical” society stratified by Stand, not in modern capitalism.
It is in the context of such a caste system that Weber writes that politicians must make
decisions that any human interested in saving their eternal soul cannot make. Do you
observe the ethic of loyalty, or that of the rather vague amorphous general good? Who
will be at the subject to the means of violence that the politician wields? Recognizing the
tragedy of such decisions, and saying as Martin Luther did, “Here I Stand I can do no
Other” in spite of the earthly demands of Gesellschaft and its marketplace is all that a
principled person can say, as Weber writes. And it is at this final point, between the
Hindu and Upanishads and Martin Luther, that Weber breaks firmly with Nietzsche’s
nihilism—there is indeed a strange ethical hope for the “True Human” in Weber, who in
the end says only “In spite of it all!.”
VI. The Persistence of Feudalism, Gemeinschaft and the
Prussian Tugend
23
Typescript of Chapter 1 in Weber’s Rationalism and Modern Society:
New Translations for the 21st Century. Edited and Translated by Tony
Waters and Dagmar Waters. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Please
cite published book.
Reading Weber, one is impressed with how much the nature of
European feudalism with its hierarchically organized society permeates
what he has to say.
This is particularly the case when Weber writes about the Stände, with
their rights, responsibilities, and ethics be they of a noble, churchly,
professional, religious, or ethnic character. And here perhaps is a clue
to what is central to Weber’s writing: The on-going tension between the
heartless efficiency of the rationally organized institution, and the
never-ending pushback from the emotion-laden loyalties of traditional
feudalism. Much of this was codified in the Prussian Honor Code, the
Tugend, which was the Code of Virtue formalized during The
Enlightenment, and rooted in the values of feudalism, but which were
24
Typescript of Chapter 1 in Weber’s Rationalism and Modern Society:
New Translations for the 21st Century. Edited and Translated by Tony
Waters and Dagmar Waters. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Please
cite published book.
taken up by the newly emergent Prussian Bourgeois. Weber mentions
The Tugend only once in the essays translated here, bute we are
convinced that the virtues enumerated there for restraint and probity
infuse Weber’s writing—and such bourgeois values emerge from the
Gemeinschaft, not the Gesellschaft!
The manuscripts presented here are littered with references to the
honor, loyalty, conflicting ethics, rationality and emotion which shape
society. Indeed, central to Weber’s message is the assumption that
“feudalism lives” in the modern world, in spite the overwhelming
presence of values rooted in the marketplace. Feudalism lives, as he
writes, in the expression of nationalism, maintenance of professional
monopolies, the honor of the police officer who is a “God’s
representative on earth,” and the Beamte laboring away in the
bureaucratic civil service protecting the rights and prerogatives and
honor of his Amt. It is found in the caste-like divisions within
universities where certification of learning (Bildung) are issued. And,
despite the modern context, these are the actions embedded in honor,
responsibilities, and ultimately feudalism, and not the blind actions of
the modern marketplace.
Does Weber prefer the modern efficient world of the Gesellschaft, or
the traditional emotional world of the Gemeinschaft? To this question,
Weber himself with his emphasis on “value free” sociology would we
think be reluctant to respond. This question assumes that Weber was
a practicing politician, which indeed in other contexts he was. The
point though is that in his philosophical and scientific work, he clearly
did not have an opinion on such values. Indeed, for Weber what is a
good society is, in the context of the writings retranslated here, a moot
question—Weber comes down on neither side. For Weber the scientific
25
Typescript of Chapter 1 in Weber’s Rationalism and Modern Society:
New Translations for the 21st Century. Edited and Translated by Tony
Waters and Dagmar Waters. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Please
cite published book.
philosopher, the vibrant tension between the two is the constant, and
as a result is the social condition underlying social life.
26
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