John Kilcullen
Copyright (c) 1996, R.J. Kilcullen.
"SEO" refers to Max Weber, The Theory of Social and Economic Organization, tr. Henderson and Parsons (New York, 1947) (HB/175/.W364).
"ES" refers to Max Weber, Economy and Society, ed. G. Roth and C. Wittich (New York, 1968) (HM/57/.W342).
"Beetham" refers to David Beetham, Max Weber and the Theory of Modern Politics (London, 1974) (JA/76/.B37).
Max Weber (1864-1920) was a German academic, a liberal, but a liberal of the Kaiser's Germany: a nationalist, an anti-Socialist (i.e. an anti-Marxist), a Prussian reserve officer. In an autobiographical passage he says, "The usual training for haughty aggression in the duelling fraternity [at university] and as an officer had undoubtedly had a strong influence upon me", GM, p.7. According to the editor's introduction in GM, "The concept of the nation and of national interest... is the limit of Weber's political outlook and... constitutes his ultimate value", ibid. p.48--i.e. the survival needs of Germany would over-ride any moral restriction. Weber was active in politics as a National Liberal, in opposition to both conservatives and socialists. He was contemptuous of the Kaiser, but supported certain annexationist war aims in World War I.
Intellectually he was opposed to Marxism, and indeed it has become traditional to contrast Marx and Weber. In Germany the main carrier of Marxism was the Social Democratic Party (still extant, but since World War II not Marxist). Its chief theoretician was Karl Kautsky, now regarded as a somewhat "vulgar" Marxist: i.e. one whose view of the relation between "base and superstructure" was too much like the "Marxism" repudiated by Engels in the letters on historical materialism that he wrote in the 1890s. To remind you: in those letters Engels stressed that superstructure reacts upon base, that the elements of the superstructure, such as law and religion, have their own tradition which may resist and modify demands originating in the economic system, that it is only "ultimately" that economic factors determine social development. It may be that in these letters Engels abandoned, or watered down too far, an essential and distinctive Marxist tenet. But if we regard the late Engels as, on this point at least, the spokesman for authentic Marxism, then there is less justification for the contrast between Weber and Marx, especially since Weber in fact borrowed a good deal from Marx. Still, he did not endorse Marx's prediction that capitalism would self-destruct, and Weber did not desire the triumph of socialism.
Weber's reaction to the Marxism of the Social Democratic Party was like Engels' reaction to "Marxism": that it is an oversimplification of history and of contemporary society to say that the lines of causation run in one direction only, from the economic structures to the other elements. Weber's analyses are designed to show that every historical phenomenon is caused by many factors and that none of them is permanently predominant. The use of sociology and social history is to sensitise us to the many ways in which one thing leads to another, so that we may become more aware of what is happening or just about to happen but without imagining that we can see very far ahead.
Turn to Readings, p.163, to the section "Class, status and party", and read section A (ending 1/3 way down p.927). (Pause the tape while you read.)
The first paragraph links this material to the context, a discussion of the legal order.
The next two paragraphs point out that economic power is not the only sort--that is, that power may have some other basis besides the economic (for example, it may be based on law), and that other kinds of power are not always sought from economic motives (e.g. economic power may be sought for the sake of honour--though power does not always bring honour and honour is not always based on power). The point of these paragraphs is that these things--social honour or prestige, economic power or wealth, and political power--are not always related in the same way. The lines of causation may run in various directions. No factor is permanently basic in relation to the others.
The last paragraph lists three headings for the discussion of power distribution, class, status and parties. Class is for Weber, as for Marx and Engels, an economic category: a person's class is a function of their economic power or lack of power. Status is a matter of honour or prestige, "party" is a grouping for the exercise of political power. Weber does not think that status and political power are reducible to class. He would reject Engels' claim that "In modern history, at least... all political struggles are class struggles" (Readings p.143, (original pagination p.234, two-thirds down)).
Let's look at Weber's account of class. Read section B (ending at the bottom of p.928)
The first sentence anticipates the argument of the next section. The purpose of this section is to offer a definition of what a class is. Weber and Marx use the term differently from our common use. If a political scientist doing a voting survey asks respondents what class they belong to, the question will usually be understood as meaning something like what income do you have. This is not unrelated to what Marx and Weber meant, but it is not simply the same. For Marx there are two classes, the capitalists and the proletariat--the owners of the means of production, and those who don't own any of the means of production but sell their labour power. Weber picks out as the significant thing here that the capitalist and the proletarian meet in a market, and come into it in different ways, as purchaser of labour power and as seller, as someone able to wait, not compelled to buy or sell merely to survive another day--that's the capitalist--and as someone who must sell his services today or starve. So Marx's two classes, in Weber's view, are distinguished essentially by their relation to a market and precisely by their bargaining power. Bargaining power is a matter of monopoly (or oligopoly) or lack of it.
Weber, then, analyses class mainly in terms of "monopoly". This comprehends Ricardo's analysis of rent and Marx's analysis of capitalism. The "separation" of workers from the means of production gives those who control the means of production a monopoly. A class situation indicates a common source of income consisting in power to trade something in a market. "Class situation" is "market situation". How exchangeable things are distributed may itself enhance some people's incomes: those whose need to exchange is less urgent will make the most profitable deals. The mode of distribution gives the propertied a monopoly "on the possibility of transferring property... to the sphere of 'capital goods'... and all chances to share in returns on capital... 'Property' and 'lack of property' are, therefore, the basic categories of all class situations". Within these categories class situations are further differentiated according to the kind of property and the kind of services that are traded in the market.
The theory outlined in this section is also found in the last chapter of Volume 3 of Marx's Capital, but as a theory to be rejected. This is what Marx says:
The first question to be answered is this: What constitutes a class?--and the reply to this follows naturally from the reply to another question, namely: What makes wage-labourers, capitalists and landlords constitute the three great social classes?
At first glance--the identity of revenues and sources of revenue [cf. Weber]. There are three great social groups whose members, the individuals forming them, live on wages, profit and ground-rent respectively, on the realisation of their labour-power, their capital, and their landed property.
However [what follows seems to be meant as an objection], from this standpoint, physicians and officials, e.g., would also constitute two classes, for they belong to two distinct social groups, the members of each of these groups receiving their revenue from one and the same source. The same would also be true of the infinite fragmentation of interest and rank into which the division of social labour splits labourers as well as capitalists and landlords--the latter, e.g., into owners of vineyards, farm owners, owners of forests, mine owners and owners of fisheries. [Here the manuscript breaks off.] (Karl Marx, Capital, vol. III, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1966, p. 886.)
We never learn why Marx seems to regard it as an objection to the theory that it would lead to the division and subdivision of the "three great social classes". This is the very last page of the book, which Engels edited from Marx's papers after Marx died. Exactly what is the relation between Marx's conception of class to Weber's remains a matter of controversy.
The point of the next section is that the fact that a number of people have the same relation to the market does not automatically guarantee that they will be conscious of having a common interest, or that they will act together to further their interest. Re-read the first sentence of section B, and read section C, to the top of p.930.
In the first sentence of B, 3 lines down, underline "social". On p.929, at the end of the first paragraph underline "association", and "social". Three lines down underline "mass", in the next line "social", and 7 lines further down underline "social", "association", "mass", and 8 lines below that "social".
The translation in the Readings is at these points slightly different from the translation in From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology, trans. & ed. H.H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills. In GM there is a distinction made between three sorts of action, which they call "communal", "societal" and "mass" actions. In our translation what GM call "communal" is translated "social", and what they call "societal" is translated "associative". In the first sentence of section B, when he says, "classes are not communities", GM go on: "they merely represent possible, and frequent bases for communal action"--a class is not a community but a possible basis for communal action. In section C, in the translation in Readings, the last sentence reads in GM: "The rise of societal or even of communal action from a common class situation is by no means a universal phenomenon". GM supply from elsewhere in the book a definition of these two sorts of actions: "Communal action [social action in our translation] refers to that action which is oriented to the feeling of the actors that they belong together. Societal action [association, in our translation] is oriented to a rationally motivated adjustment of interests".
What does this mean? I think it corresponds to the difference between a sense of solidarity and a sense of distinct but not radically incompatible individual interests. When people act out of a sense of solidarity with one another, they are not thinking of difference or conflict of interest--or if they are aware of it, they are willing to subordinate their individual interest to the objective of the group as a whole. Members of a trade union, for example, may be willing to strike in sympathy with others who have some grievance even through they do not themselves have the grievance and realise that they will never make up the loss of wages, because they feel a sense of solidarity with the members in defence of whom the strike is called. Members of an army may be willing to risk their own lives for the sake of winning a victory (or for the survival of as many members of the army as possible). On the other hand, there will be occasions on which people cooperate in some sort of associative action because they see this as rationally the best way of furthering their own different individual ends--trading in a market is an example of this. The third category, "mass" action, is where a number of people for similar individual reasons do similar individual actions (e.g. people running away from an explosion). So to sum up the three fold distinction:
A mass action is one in which a lot of people do the same thing.
A societal action (or associative) action is one in which the individuals may do different things, but in cooperation, and the individuals are motivated to cooperate by the calculation that this will serve their respective individual (not necessarily selfish) ends.
Communal (or social) action is action motivated by a sense of solidarity, by a feeling of belonging together, of identity of ends. Because of this sense of belonging individuals may be willing even to risk their lives or make other sacrifices detrimental to their separate ends.
The point Weber is making in section C is that the fact of being in the same relation to the market will not necessarily result in any common action, and if it does it may be merely "mass" action or "associative" (self-interested) action, it may not lead to action out of a sense of solidarity in which individuals subordinate their individual interests to some good sought by all the members of the class. Re-read the section and see whether this is what he is saying. If that is the point, the Marxists would agree: what is in itself a class may not be a class "for itself".
So if the point of making this point is to contradict Marxism (and there is really no need to take it that way), then it must be said that there is no contradiction. Marx does not think that the proletarians will automatically come to act together to overthrow capitalism just because they all belong to the same class. His argument is that the working of capitalism, by bringing them together in large organised factories and oppressing them more and more severely while the capitalist class grows smaller and more visibly unnecessary to production, will produce a class consciousness and a willingness to act together to expropriate the expropriators. He may be wrong about all this, but he is not saying that being in the same relation to the market necessarily leads to actions based on a sense of solidarity. Lenin thought the working class would not develop the appropriate class consciousness except through a "vanguard" party.
The next section, D, is mainly about different kinds of struggles between classes. But there are two secondary points. In the second paragraph, 4 lines down, underline "members of different classes", and 5 lines further down, "specific kind of social action to protect the possession of goods per se", and 3 lines further down, "legal order". The point in this section is that classes presuppose markets, markets presuppose property rights, and property presupposes law: part of the so-called super-structure, the law, is thus presupposed to the existence of classes, which is supposed to be basic. So read this section down to "legal order".
Now comes another secondary point. From "Each kind of class situation" down to "before we consider them" makes the point that what he is about to say about class struggles is subject to an "other things being equal" qualification, the main other thing being the influence of status stratification. Read that bit.
Now we come to the main point of the section. Insert some numbers to make the argument clearer. On p.931, line 1, insert (1) before "consumption credit", (2) before "commodity market", and (3) before "Labour market". Then (1) again before the next sentence, "The class struggles of antiquity", and half-way down the paragraph insert (2) before "the struggle over the means of sustenance", and near the end of the paragraph insert (3) before "There were only incipient". At the beginning of the next paragraph ("The propertyless of antiquity") insert (2), insert (3) before "Today", and one line down underline "transition". Read to the end of section D.
Twelve lines from the bottom of p.931 underline "actually and directly participate", and 3 lines from the bottom "role the class situation has played in the formation of political parties". Re-read this section. The point is that there is an important aspect of political conflict that can not be explained in general class terms, but only by reference to a special fact; and it means that the main class antagonists of the proletariat in politics will often not be the big capitalists.
So much for class. We come now to Weber's second category, status. Read section E.
To paraphrase. Status is determined by social estimation of honour. Honour may be connected with any shared quality. In the long run property is a status qualification, but status is normally opposed to the pretensions of sheer property--the "newly rich" are not accepted. Both propertied and propertyless people can belong to the same status group, though precariously.
Status honour is linked immediately to style of life. It is associated with restrictions on "social" (i.e. non-economic) intercourse, e.g. on intermarriage--it may lead to complete endogamous closure (i.e. to marrying always within the group). Submission to the appropriate style of life (conventions, passing fashions) is a pretension (i.e. claim) to membership. Thus all sorts of circles set themselves apart, "usurp status honour". ("Usurp"; no one confers this status, they simply "set themselves up" as somebodies.) But status may lead via economic power to political power, which may then be used to uphold status distinctions.
There are various reference in section E to America. Remember that the America he is talking about is pre World War I. He visited America in 1904.
So a status group shares some quality to which some honour (or dishonour) is attached. A special type of status group is the ethnic group, where the shared quality is ethnic origin. In the next section when he refers to caste he is thinking especially of India. Read section F.
On p.934, 1/3 way down, mark as important the sentence beginning "They differ precisely in this way..."
Notice at the end of the section the references to political membership and class situation as influences on the formation of status groups: once again Weber is suggesting that what is cause on one occasion may be effect on another.
Read section G. That seems clear enough. The main point of the next section is to confirm his thesis that status and class are two distinct bases of social power--status is not reducible to class. In fact, status considerations and class are often opposed. Read section H.
Notice the point made in the last paragraph, "As to the general economic conditions...". If you ask which is the more basic division, into classes or into status groups, the answer is that sometimes it is the one, sometimes the other. This is actually not in contradiction with Engels' later views. Turn back to Readings, p.152, on the right hand side, the paragraph "So with all the other accidents", and compare that with Weber's last paragraph.
So much for status. Now we come to the third of Weber's categories, political parties. What he suggests here is that political parties are not always based on class; sometimes they are based on status groups, including ethnic groups; sometimes they are not based on either. Read section I.
Eleven lines down, "association" is a reference to what the other translation calls "societal action", oriented to a rationally motivated adjustment of individual interests, as distinct from social or communal action, based on a sense of solidarity, and from "mass" action.
To look back, Weber has been illustrating his three categories of class, status and power, and suggesting that none of them is reducible to the others, and that none of them is in every situation basic: sometimes political parties are based on class or status groups, but sometimes they are not, and sometimes political power impacts upon the economic or social order. Similarly, though in the long run economic factors often determine status, in the short term status may inhibit or favour economic activity. None of this, it seems to me, is really in disagreement with Marx and Engels, and there is no indication that Weber meant it to be. Engels would probably have been satisfied with the point that in the long run economic factors generally prevail.
Let us turn now to the next extract, from Max Weber, The Theory of Social and Economic Organisation, tr. A.M. Henderson & Talcott Parsons, p.324 ff. The topics are "legitimacy", and then bureaucracy.
Read from p.324 to three quarters of the way down p.325, to the first of the numbered paragraphs.
"Imperative coordination" is a translation of a German word that could be more conservatively translated as "rulership". What is it to be a ruler? Weber says (1st paragraph) that it is for it to be probable that if you issue a command it will be obeyed by the persons whose ruler you are said to be. Turn to p.327 and read numbered paragraph 4 on obedience. Note "without regard to the actor's own attitude to the value of the content of the command." If you say "do so and so" and they do it because they agree that this is a good thing to do, then you are not ruling, they are not obeying--you're offering a suggestion and they are taking it up.
Why do your subjects obey? Partly perhaps out of fear, partly perhaps because they expect some material benefits from obedience (e.g. the wages of a public servant). But normally, Weber says, there are other elements, "affectual" (i.e. emotional) and "ideal" (i.e. having to do with beliefs and thoughts), which prompt obedience. This is reminiscent of Hume's essay, "Of the First Principles of Government": according to Hume the authority of government rests on opinion; there are opinions of interest (corresponding to fear and hope of material gain) and opinions of right; some at least must be influenced by the belief that it is right to obey, before the ruler will be able to muster enough force to give others the belief that it is in their interest to obey. Twelve lines down p.325 Weber mentions the "belief in legitimacy", i.e. the opinion that it is right to obey.
Notice two lines from the top of p.325 the term Wertrational. Weber contrasts this with Zweckrational. An action may be rational because it is conducive to some end or goal (in German Zweck), or it may be rational because some value is attributed to it quite apart from its usefulness as a means to an end. When Weber talks about rationality he usually means conduciveness to an end, but sometimes, as here, he recognises that the social system will not work unless people attribute value to some actions without calculating that they will further some end. In lines 2-4 he says: "Purely material interests and calculations of advantage... result, in this as in other connections, in a relatively unstable situation". A ruler not supported by any belief in his legitimacy would fall from power as soon as it became possible for people to achieve their goals by some better method than obedience to him.
Now we come to the numbered paragraphs two thirds of the way down p.325. They seem to be notes, comments, supplementary observations. Read to 3 lines down p.328.
Re-read on p.325 the last sentence before the first numbered paragraph ("Hence... ), and then read section 2, pp.328-9.
"Rational-legal" is the kind of legitimacy we are most familiar with. Our rulers can point to statutes and constitutions as the basis of their authority. The constitution rests upon our beliefs about the appropriate procedure for drawing up and approving constitutions. This proper procedure is not a matter of law in the narrow sense, but it is a matter of impersonal rules. It doesn't depend on our attitude to the persons who worked this procedure.
During the early middle ages and into the 19th century most nations did not have written constitutions. The authority of the King was personal, but it depended not upon his personal qualities but on the fact that he was the person occupying the traditional position of authority--this is "traditional" leadership.
A charismatic leader is someone whom people follow purely because of his individual personal qualities. He doesn't rely on any statute or constitution or procedure of appointment, he may not occupy a traditional position--he and his followers may be creating something new. "Charisma" is a theological term; it means a gift. The essential point is that the charismatic leader leads by force of personality. Hitler would be one example. Francis of Assissi would be another example. Modern party political leaders exercise "charismatic" leadership, according to Weber--though in fact, as it seems to me, within their party their leadership may be rational-legal.
On p.329 at the top notice the term "ideal type", and at the beginning of section 2, "pure type", which means the same thing. "Ideal" here does not mean desirable, but "abstract", "theoretical", "in the realm of ideas", with overtones of Plato's ideas as not being perfectly exemplified by anything we actually experience. An ideal type is what is now often called a model. Students of history, politics and society generally need a repertory of models with which to analyse their subject matter. The analysis is partly a matter of seeing how far the model fits and using the inner logic of the model to understand what actually happens, but it is partly also a matter of seeing how and why the model does not fit. The discrepancy between the predicted behaviour of the model and what actually happens draws attention to causes not included in the model. One important "ideal type" is capitalism: no actual society has ever been purely and exactly an instance of capitalism. Capitalism is a theoretical construct useful in understanding, say, 1990s Australia insofar as this is a capitalist society; but its other features have to be taken into account also. The main thing about an ideal type is that its content and inner logic should be explicit and transparent. So, for example, "Class, status, party" and the essay on legitimacy are in part exercises in definition. The definitions are stipulative: "By so-and-so I will mean". It does not matter much if people generally use the words in some other sense, as long as we know what we mean. The model is whatever the model-maker wants it to be. It seems to me that Weber's ideal types are often not well enough integrated: the various parts of the model do not cohere with tight logic but are merely juxtaposed under the guidance of the historical cases that Weber has in mind.
Read now section 3, to the top of p.333. This is clear enough. The word "monocratic", which occurs in the next section, means rule by one person. An organisation of which the head is one person (rather than a committee or board) is a monocracy. Read section 4, to the bottom of p.336. Again, that is clear enough. Read section 5, to the top of p.341. Notice that Weber regards bureaucratisation as one of the leading features of the modern world, and that he regards it as inescapable--after a socialist revolution bureaucracy would flourish even more. There is a longer, more detailed treatment of bureaucracy in GM p.196ff. I won't say more about this topic. See lecture, "Max Weber on Bureaucracy".
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 (at least) some of which 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.
Read now the rest of the lecture. Again much drama and the heroic stance.
The last remaining extract is from another lecture given about the same time to a similar audience. "Wissenschaft" is a somewhat wider word than our word "science"; it covers also social science and humanistic scholarship. "An academic career" would be a fair translation of the title. We will skip over a fair bit, and I won't attempt to fill in the gaps--it would be worth your while sometime to read the whole lecture, in GM. Read now pp.138-140. According to Weber one of the major trends in modern European cultural history has been what he calls here rationalisation and disenchantment; and the consequence has been to deprive us of any sense that life has a meaning, or that death has a meaning.
Now read pp.143-4. So science is meaningless too, according to Tolstoy. Is that true? if it is then the academic career will lack meaning. Weber holds that none of the basic value questions can be answered by any process of reasoning: we just have to take our stand. You will see this attitude at various places in the next few pages, which are mainly about the teacher's duty, as Weber see it, not to teach his own values. Read to near the bottom of p.147, the paragraph beginning "Scientific pleading is meaningless". Notice in this passage that although Weber says that "one cannot demonstrate scientifically what the duty of an academic teacher is", he certainly recommends his own view of the duty in morally evaluative language: "I deem it irresponsible to exploit the circumstance", etc. (mid p.146). So he holds, though he does not claim to be able to justify this position by argument, that a teacher should teach fact not values, and that the primary task of a useful teacher is to teach his students to recognise inconvenient facts--facts that conflict with their party's opinions.
Now read from the last paragraph p.147 to one third of the way down p.149 ("But enough of these questions"). Compare this passage with Readings p.186, "Politics as a vocation", p.123.
Read now to p.152, the paragraph beginning "This proposition". This is all pretty clear, except perhaps the 10 lines at the bottom of p.151. "We can and should state". "We" means teachers: teachers can and should state in the classroom that this follows from this and not from that, that you can't consistently hold both x and y, that you have to choose between them, and serve one god and offend the other; so if you--i.e. the student--remain faithful to yourself--that is, adhere consistently to whatever you've chosen to commit yourself to--then you will reach conclusions that subjectively make sense to you. That seems to be what these ten lines seem to mean. (To me it seems senseless to make a virtue of consistency to one's commitment if no reason can be given for making any commitment.)
Now read the rest of the extract.
1. Think of some examples to illustrate Weber's distinction between 'communal', 'societal' and 'mass' actions. Does he think that most members of a class will act out of a sense of class interest? According to Weber, is law the expression, or the foundation, of class division?
2. What does Weber mean by 'status group', in contrast with 'class' (examples?)? Do we have 'status groups' and 'classes' in Australia? What is the meaning of 'endogamous', 'exogamous'? Why does Weber say that status honour usually arises by 'usurpation'? In Australia are there any 'ethic' status groups? Are there any signs of 'caste'?
3. What would Weber say to Engels' proposition that 'in modern history, at least... all political struggles are class struggles'?
4. What is Weber's "ideal type" of bureaucracy?
5. What effect does Weber think bureaucratisation has on society's values? Does what he says about this cast any light on your own life?
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