MAX WEBER (1864–1920) - sagepub.com · Max Weber, Jr., was born in Erfurt, Germany, in 1864. He...

4MAX WEBER (1864–1920)

135

Key Concepts

� Verstehen

� Ideal types

� Protestant ethic

� Calling

� “Iron cage”

� Rationalization

� Bureaucracy

� Authority

� Charisma

� Class, status, and party

Source: Courtesy of the Library of Congress.

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No one knows who will live in this cage in the future, or whether at the endof this tremendous development entirely new prophets will arise, or therewill be a great rebirth of old ideas and ideals, or, if neither, mechanizedpetrification embellished with a sort of convulsive self-importance. For ofthe last stage of this cultural development it might well be truly said:“Specialists without spirit, sensualists without heart; this nullity imaginesthat it has attained a level of civilization never before achieved.”

(Weber 1904–1905/1958:182)

From the course requirements necessary to earn your degree, to the paper workand tests you must complete in order to receive your driver’s license, to therecord keeping and mass of files that organize most every business enterprise,

our everyday life is channeled in large measure through formalized, codified proce-dures. Indeed, in Western cultures, few aspects of life have been untouched by the gen-eral tendency toward rationalization and the adoption of methodical practices. Sowhether it’s developing a long-term financial plan for one’s business, following theadvice written in sex manuals, or even planning for one’s own death, little in modernlife is left to chance. It was toward an examination of the causes and consequences ofthis “disenchantment” of everyday life that Max Weber’s wide-ranging work crystal-lized. In this chapter, we explore Weber’s study of this general trend in modern societyas well as other aspects of his writings. But while Weber did not self-consciously setout to develop a unified theoretical model, making his intellectual path unlike that fol-lowed by both Marx and Durkheim, it is this characteristic of his work that has made ita continual wellspring of inspiration for other scholars. Perhaps the magnitude ofWeber’s impact on the development of sociology is captured best by the prominentsocial theorist, Raymond Aron, who described Weber as “the greatest of the sociolo-gists” (Aron 1967/1970:294).

Max Weber, Jr., was born in Erfurt, Germany, in 1864. He was the eldest of eightchildren born to Max Weber, Sr., and Helene Fallenstein Weber, though only six sur-vived to adulthood. Max Jr. was a sickly child. When he was four years old, he becameseriously ill with meningitis, and though he eventually recovered, throughout the rest ofhis life, he suffered the physical and emotional aftereffects of the disease, most appar-ently anxiety and nervous tension. From an early age, books were central in Weber’slife. He read whatever he could get his hands on, including Kant, Machiavelli, Spinoza,Goethe, and Schopenhauer, and he wrote two historical essays before his 14th birthday.But Weber paid little attention in class and did almost no work for school. According tohis widow Marianne, although “he was not uncivil to his teachers, he did not respectthem. . . . If there was a gap in his knowledge, he went to the root of the matter and thengladly shared what he knew” (Marianne Weber 1926/1975:48).

In 1882, at 18 years old, Weber took his final high school examinations. His teachersacknowledged his outstanding intellectual accomplishments and thirst for knowledge,but expressed doubts about his “moral maturity.” Weber went to the University ofHeidelberg for three semesters and then completed one year of military service in

136 � SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY IN THE CLASSICAL ERA

A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH

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Strausbourg. When his service ended, he enrolled at the University of Berlin and, forthe next eight years, lived at his parents’ home. Upon passing his first examinationin law in 1886, Weber began work as a full-time legal apprentice. While working as ajunior barrister, he earned a Ph.D. in economic and legal history in 1889. He then tooka position as lecturer at the University of Berlin.

Throughout his life, Weber was torn by the personal struggles between his motherand his father. Weber admired his mother’s extraordinary religious piety and devotionto her family and loathed his father’s abusive treatment of her. At the same time, Weberadmired his father’s intellectual prowess and achievements and reviled his mother’spassivity. Weber followed in his father’s footsteps by becoming a lawyer and joining thesame organizations as his father had at the University of Heidelberg. Like his father, hewas active in government affairs as well. As a member of the National Liberal Party,Max Sr. was elected to the Reichstag (national legislature) and later appointed byChancellor Bismarck to the Prussian House of Deputies. For his part, Max Jr. was acommitted nationalist and served the government in numerous capacities, including asa delegate to the German Armistice Commission in Versailles following Germany’sdefeat in World War I. But he was also imbued with a sense of moral duty quite simi-lar to that of his mother. Weber’s feverish work ethic—he drove himself mercilessly,denying himself all leisure—can be understood as a inimitable combination of hisfather’s intellectual accomplishments and his mother’s moral resolve.

In 1893, at the age of 29, Weber married a distant cousin named Marianne Schnitger,and finally left his childhood home. Today, Marianne Weber is recognized as an impor-tant feminist, intellectual, and sociologist in her own right. She was a popular publicspeaker on social and sexual ethics and wrote many books and articles. Her most influ-ential works, Marriage and Motherhood in the Development of Law (1907) and Womenand Love (1935), examined feminist issues and the reform of marriage. However,Marianne is known best as the intellectual partner of her husband. She and Max made aconscious effort to establish an egalitarian relationship, and they worked together on intel-lectual projects. Interestingly, Marianne referred to Max as her “companion” and impliedthat theirs was an unconsummated marriage. (It is rumored that Max had a long-lastingaffair with a woman of Swiss nobility who was a member of the Tobleron family.) Despiteher own intellectual accomplishments, Marianne’s 700-page treatise, Max Weber: ABiography, first published in 1926, has received the most attention, serving as the centralsource of biographical information on her husband (and vital to this introduction as well).

In 1894, Max Weber joined the faculty at Freiburg University as a full professorof economics. Shortly thereafter, in 1896, Weber accepted a position as Chair ofEconomics at the University of Heidelberg, where he first began his academic career.But in 1897, he suffered a serious nervous breakdown. According to Marianne, thebreakdown was triggered by the inexorable guilt Weber experienced after his father’ssudden death. Just seven weeks before he died, Weber had rebuked his father over histyrannical treatment of his mother. The senior Weber had prohibited his wife Helenefrom visiting Max and Marianne at their home in Heidelburg without him; when he andHelene showed up together for the visit, his son forced him to leave. Unfortunately,that was the last time father and son ever spoke.

Weber experienced debilitating anxiety and insomnia throughout the rest of his life.He often resorted to taking opium in order to sleep. Despite resigning his academicposts, traveling, and resting, the anxiety could not be dispelled. Nevertheless, he hadspurts of manic intellectual activity and continued to write as an independent scholar.In 1904, Weber traveled to the United States and began to formulate the argumentof what would be his most celebrated work, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit ofCapitalism (1904–1905).

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After returning to Europe, Weber resumed his intellectual activity. He met with thebrilliant thinkers of his day, including Werner Sombart, Paul Hensel, FerdinandTönnies, Ernst Troeltsch, and Georg Simmel (see Chapter 6). He helped establish theHeidelberg Academy of the Sciences in 1909 and the Sociological Society in 1910(Marianne Weber 1926/1975:425). However, Weber was still plagued by compulsiveanxiety. In 1918, he helped draft the constitution of the Weimar Republic while givinghis first university lectures in 19 years at the University of Vienna, but he sufferedtremendously and turned down an offer for a permanent post (Weber 1958:23). In1920, at the age of 56, Max Weber died of pneumonia. Marianne lived for another34 years and completed several important manuscripts left unfinished at her husband’sdeath.

Weber’s work encompasses a wide scope of substantive interests. Most, if not all, ofhis writing has had a profound impact on sociology. As such, an attempt to fullycapture the breadth and significance of his scholarship exceeds the limitations of asingle chapter. Nevertheless, we can isolate several aspects of his work that, takentogether, serve as a foundation for understanding the impetus behind much of hiswriting. To this end, we divide our discussion in this section into two major parts:(1) Weber’s view of the science of sociology and (2) his engagement with the workof Karl Marx and Friedrich Nietzsche.

Sociology

Weber defined sociology as “a science which attempts the interpretive understand-ing of social action in order thereby to arrive at a causal explanation of its course andeffects” (1947:88). In casting “interpretive understanding” or Verstehen as the princi-pal objective, Weber’s vision of sociology offers a distinctive counter to those whosought to base the young discipline on the effort to uncover universal laws applicableto all societies. Thus, unlike Durkheim, who analyzed objective, sui generis “socialfacts” that operated independently of the individuals making up a society (seepage 82), Weber turned his attention to the subjective dimension of social life, seekingto understand the states of mind or motivations that guide individuals’ behavior.

In delimiting the subject matter of sociology, Weber further specified “social action”to mean that which, “by virtue of the subjective meaning attached to it by the actingindividual (or individuals), it takes account of the behaviour of others and is thereby ori-ented in its course” (1947:88). Such action can be either observable or internal to theactor’s imagination, and it can involve a deliberate intervening in a given situation, anabstaining of involvement, or acquiescence. The task for the sociologist is to understandthe meanings individuals assign to the contexts in which they are acting and the conse-quences that such meanings have for their conduct.

To systematize interpretive analyses of meaning, Weber distinguished between fourtypes of social action. In doing so, he clearly demonstrates his multidimensionalapproach to the problem of action (see Figure 4.1). First is instrumental-rational action.Such action is geared toward the efficient pursuit of goals through calculating theadvantages and disadvantages associated with the possible means for realizing them.Under this category would fall the decision of a labor union to strike in order to bargainfor greater employment benefits. Rehearsing one’s performance for an upcoming jobinterview is another example of instrumental-rational action.


INTELLECTUAL INFLUENCES AND CORE IDEAS

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Like instrumental-rational action, value-rational action involves the strategicselection of means capable of effectively achieving one’s goals. However, value-rationalaction is pursued as an end in itself, not because it serves as a means for achieving anulterior goal. As such, it “always involves ‘commands’ or ‘demands’” that compel theindividual to follow a line of conduct for its own sake—because it is the “right” thingto do (ibid.:116). Examples of this type of action include risking arrest to further anenvironmental cause or refraining from cheating on exams. The third type is affectiveaction, which is marked by impulsiveness or a display of unchecked emotions. Absentfrom this behavior is the calculated weighing of means for a given end. Examples ofaffective action are a baseball player arguing an umpire’s called strike or parents cryingat their child’s wedding ceremony.

The fourth type of social action outlined by Weber is traditional action, wherebehaviors are determined by habit or longstanding custom. Here, an individual’sconduct is shaped not by a concern with maximizing efficiency or commitmentto an ethical principle, but, rather, by an unreflective adherence to established routines.This category includes religious rites of passage such as confirmations and bar mitz-vahs, singing the national anthem at the start of sporting events, and eating turkey atThanksgiving with one’s family.

It is important to point out that in everyday life, a given behavior or course ofconduct is likely to exhibit characteristics of more than one type of social action. Thus,a person may pursue a career in social work not only because it is a means for earninga salary, but also because he is committed to the goal of helping others as a value in itsown right. Weber’s categories of social action, then, serve as ideal types or analyticalconstructs against which real-life cases can be compared. Such “pure” categories arenot realized in concrete cases, but, instead, are a conceptual yardstick for examining dif-ferences and similarities, as well as causal connections, between the social processesunder investigation. Thus, “ideal” refers to an emphasis on particular aspects of sociallife specified by the researcher, not to a value judgment as to whether something is

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NONRATIONAL

affective action

traditional action

value-rational action

INDIVIDUAL COLLECTIVE

instrumental-rational action

RATIONAL

Figure 4.1 Weber’s Four Types of Social Action

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“good” or “bad.” As you will read in the selections that follow, Weber’s work is guidedin large measure by constructing ideal types. For instance, his essay on bureaucracyconsists in the main of a discussion of the ideal characteristics of such an organization.Similarly, his essay on the three forms of domination involves isolating the featuresspecific to each ideal type, none of which actually exists in pure form.

Weber’s notion of sociology as an interpretive science based on Verstehen (under-standing) and his focus on constructing ideal types marks his ties to important intellec-tual debates that were taking shape in German universities. At the heart of the debateswas the distinction drawn between the natural and social sciences and the methodolo-gies appropriate to each. The boundary separating biology, chemistry, and physics fromhistory, economics, psychology, and sociology was an outgrowth of German Idealismand the philosophy of Immanuel Kant (1724–1804). Kant argued that the realm ofmind and “spirit” was radically different from the external, physical world of objects.According to Kant, because individuals create meaning and ultimately are free tochoose their course of action, it is not possible to construct universal laws regardinghuman behavior. As a result, social life is not amenable to scientific investigation. Onthe other hand, absent of consciousness, objects and processes occurring in the naturalworld are open to scientific analysis and the development of general laws regardingtheir actions.

Among the scholars grappling with the implications of the Kantian divisionwere the historical economists Wilhelm Dilthey (1833–1911) and Heinrich Rickert(1863–1936), whose work would have a profound impact on Weber. It was Dilthey whoarticulated the view that historical studies, and the social sciences more generally,should seek to understand particular events and their relationship to the specificcontexts in which they occur. The task of history, then, is to interpret the subjectivemeanings actors assign to their conduct, not to search for causal explanations couchedin terms of universal laws. According to Dilthey, any attempt to produce general causallaws regarding human behavior would not capture the unique historical conditions thatshaped the events in question or a society’s development. Moreover, such efforts wouldfail to study the very things that separate social life from the physical world ofobjects—human intent and motivation. Unlike the natural sciences and their analyses ofthe regularities governing observable objects and events, the social sciences aim tounderstand the internal states of actors and their relationship to behaviors.

In Weber’s own definition of sociology, quoted above, we clearly see his indebted-ness to Dilthey’s work. Following Dilthey, Weber cast the social sciences as a branch ofknowledge dedicated to developing an interpretive understanding of the subjectivemeanings actors attach to their conduct. Yet, Weber maintained a view not shared byDilthey, namely, that the social sciences, like the natural sciences, are conducted bymaking use of abstract and generalizing concepts. Here lies the impetus behind Weber’sdevelopment of ideal types as a method for producing generalizable findings based onthe study of historically specific events. For Weber, scientific knowledge is distin-guished from nonscientific analyses not on the basis of the subject matter underconsideration, but, rather, on how such studies are carried out. Thus, in constructingideal types of action Weber argued that analyses of the social world were not inher-ently less scientific or generalizable than investigations of the physical world.Nevertheless, Weber’s Verstehen approach led him to contend that the search for uni-versal laws of human action would lose sight of what is human—the production ofmeaningful behavior as it is grounded within a specific historical context.

It is in his notion of ideal types that we find Weber’s links to the work of HeinrichRickert. As a neo-Kantian thinker, Rickert accepted the distinction between the naturalsciences and social sciences as self-evident. However, he saw the differences between


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the two branches of knowledge as tied to the method of inquiry appropriate to each, notto any inherent differences in subject matter, as did Dilthey. According to Rickert,regardless of whether an investigator is interested in understanding the meanings thatmotivate actors or attempting to uncover universal laws that govern the world of phys-ical objects, both subjects are studied by way of concepts. Moreover, it is through theuse of concepts that the investigator is able to select the aspects of the social or naturalworld most relevant to the purpose of her inquiry. The difference between the scienceslies, then, in how concepts are used to generate knowledge.

While the natural sciences used concepts as a way to generate abstract principlesthat explain the uniformities that shape the physical world, Rickert maintained thatconcepts used in the social sciences are best directed toward detailing the particularfeatures that account for the uniqueness of an event or a society’s development. Inshort, for Rickert the natural sciences were driven by the deductive search for universallaws. On the other hand, the social sciences were committed to producing inductivedescriptions of historically specific phenomena.

For example, in subjecting molecules to changes in temperature and pressure, aphysicist is interested in explaining their reaction in terms of causal laws whose valid-ity is not restricted to any specific time period or setting. Conversely, social scientistsstudying episodes of protests, for instance, should seek to understand why individualschose to act and how the cultural and institutional contexts shaped their behaviors. Butbecause the contexts in which, for instance, the French Revolution, the Boston TeaParty, and the women’s suffrage movement occurred were historically unique, it is notpossible to formulate generalized explanations of protests on the basis of such specific,unreplicable events. Attempts to do so would require a level of conceptual abstractionthat would necessarily lose sight of the particulars that made the events historicallymeaningful.

As we noted earlier, Weber’s use of ideal types as a method for framing his analysesstems in important respects from Rickert’s discussions on the role of concepts in thesciences. However, he did not share Rickert’s view that the social sciences are unable toconstruct general causal explanations of historical events or societal development. Here,Weber sought to forge a middle ground between the generating of abstract laws charac-teristic of the natural sciences and the accumulation of historically specific facts thatsome contended must guide the social sciences. To this end, he cast the determination ofcausality as an attempt to establish the probability that a series of actions or events arerelated or have an elective affinity. Hence, Weber’s notion of causality is fundamentallydifferent from the conventional scientific usage, which sees it as the positing of invari-ant and necessary relationships between variables. According to Weber, the complexitiesof social life make it unamenable to formulating strict causal arguments such as thosefound in the natural sciences. While it can be stated that temperatures above 32 degreesFahrenheit (x) will cause ice to melt (y), such straightforward, universal relationshipsbetween variables cannot be isolated when analyzing social processes; individual con-duct and societal developments are not carried out with the constancy and singular causal“elegance” that characterizes the physical world. Thus, a sociologist cannot say with thesame degree of certainty that an increase in educational attainment (x) will cause a risein income (y). For while this relationship between the two variables may be probable, itis not inevitable. One need only keep in mind that a university professor with a Ph.D.typically makes far less money than a corporate executive with a bachelor’s degree. Asa result, sociologists should set out to determine the set of factors that, when takentogether, have an elective affinity with a particular outcome. Armed with ideal types, thesociologist can then develop general arguments that establish the probable relationshipbetween a combination of causes and a particular consequence.

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Of Nietzsche and Marx

“The honesty of a contemporary scholar . . . can be measured by the position hetakes vis-à-vis Nietzsche and Marx. Whoever fails to acknowledge that he could notcarry out the most important part of his own work without the work done byboth . . . deceives himself and others. The intellectual world in which we live is aworld which to a large extent bears the imprint of Marx and Nietzsche.”1

Such were the words spoken by Max Weber to his students shortly before his death.For while his vision of sociology as a discipline was shaped in large measure by hislinks to German Idealism and the controversies surrounding historical studies, his sub-stantive interests bear important connections to the work of Friedrich Nietzsche(1844–1900) and Karl Marx.

Moreover, Weber drew inspiration from a host of scholars, not solely Nietzscheand Marx, whose studies likewise guided his prolific research activities. Yet, with adetailed account of even Nietzsche’s philosophy beyond the scope of this chapter, herewe provide only brief remarks intended to highlight his influence on Weber.

Evidencing his connection to Nietzsche, a major theme running throughout thewhole of Weber’s work is rationalization. By rationalization Weber was referring to anongoing process in which social interaction and institutions were increasingly governedby methodical procedures and calculable rules. Thus, in steering the course of societaldevelopment, values, traditions, and emotions were being displaced in favor of formaland impersonal practices. While such practices may breed greater efficiency in obtain-ing designated ends, they also lead to the “disenchantment of the world” where “thereare no mysterious incalculable forces that come into play, but rather that one can, inprinciple, master all things by calculation” (Weber 1919/1958:139).

The ambivalence with which Weber viewed the process of rationalization stems fromthe loss of ultimate meaning that accompanied the growing dominance of an instru-mental and scientific orientation to life. For while science can provide technologicaladvances that enable us to address more efficiently how to do things, it cannot provideus with a set of meanings and values that answer the more fundamental question: why?Unlike those who saw in the Enlightenment’s debunking of religious beliefs and super-stitions the road to progress, Weber maintained that rationalization and the scientific,calculative outlook in which it is rooted do not generate “an increased and generalknowledge of the conditions under which one lives” (1919/1958:139). They offer,instead, techniques empty of ultimate meaning.

Weber’s reluctance to champion the “progress” brought by science and technologi-cal advances was influenced by Nietzsche’s own nihilistic view of modernity expressedmost boldly in his assertion that “God is dead.” Nietzsche’s claim reflected his convic-tion that the eclipse of religious and philosophical absolutes brought on by the riseof science and instrumental reasoning had created an era of nihilism or meaningless-ness. Without religious or philosophical doctrines to provide a foundation for moraldirection, life itself would cease to have an ultimate purpose. No longer could ethicaldistinctions be made between what one ought to do and what one can do.

Yet, Weber was unwilling to assign a determinative end to history. Whether or notthe spiritual void created by the disenchantment of the modern world would continuewas, for him, an open question. The search for meaning—which Weber saw as theessence of the human condition—carried out in a meaningless world sparked the rise of


1Quoted in Robert J. Antonio (1995:1-41).

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charismatic leaders who were capable of offering their followers purpose and directionin the lives. (See “The Types of Legitimate Domination,” below.) Ruling over others byvirtue of their professed “state of grace,” such figures were capable of radicallytransforming the existing social order. Weber’s depiction of the power of charismaticleaders, with their ability to transcend the conventions and expectations imposed by thesocial order, bears important similarities to Nietzsche’s notion of the Übermenschor “superman.” For Nietzsche, the fate of humanity and what is truly human lay inthe hands of the Übermenschen, who alone are capable of overcoming the moral andspiritual bankruptcy that Nietzsche believed corrupted the modern age.

In addition to drawing inspiration from Nietzsche’s work, much of Weber’s writingreflects a critical engagement with, and extension of, Marx’s theory of historical mate-rialism.2 As we noted in Chapter 2, Marx saw class struggles as the decisive force in the

Max Weber � 143

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900): Is God Dead?

It is difficult to overstate the influence that the work of German philosopherand social critic Friedrich Nietzsche has had on twentieth-century thought. Fromtheologians and psychologists, philosophers and sociologists, to poets and play-wrights, Nietzsche’s ideas have penetrated virtually every domain of modernintellectual culture. Yet, it was not until after his death that he would earn suchacclaim, for during his life his writings attracted but the smallest of audiences.

Beset with a host of physical ailments, and stricken by a complete mental break-down at the age of 45, Nietzsche, nevertheless, managed to develop a number ofthemes that would usher in a thoroughgoing critique of seemingly unassailabletruths. Rejecting the Enlightenment notion that reason offers the pathway to humanemancipation, Nietzsche believed that the essence of humanity lies in emotional andphysical experiences. Moreover, he repudiated Christianity’s ascetic ethic as arenunciation or avoidance of life and championed, instead, the embracing of all thatlife offers, even the most tragic of sufferings, as the ultimate expression of greatness.

The man who declared, “God is dead” and who argued that truth, values, andmorals are not based on some intrinsic, ahistorical criteria, but, instead, are estab-lished by the victors in the unending struggle for power, did not enter the canonof liberal academia without controversy. Owing to the intentional distortionsand forgeries of some of his writing by his sister, Elisabeth, Nietzsche was ofteninterpreted as an anti-Semitic fascist. Though he abhorred such hatred as “slavish”and “herd-like,” Hitler’s Third Reich reinvented Nietzsche’s notion of the “willto power” and the Übermensch or “superman” as a justification for its militaryaggression and genocidal practices. Fortunately, contemporary scholars ofNietzsche’s work have corrected many of Elisabeth’s falsities, allowing the trueintention of his piercing, original insights into modern culture to be realized.

Significant Others

2It is important to point out that Weber’s critique of Marx was based more on secondary inter-pretations of Marx’s work than on a thorough, first-hand encounter with his writings, as much ofit was unavailable. In Weber’s time, and continuing today, Marx was (is) often miscast as an eco-nomic determinist by his followers and critics alike. Perhaps more accurately, then, Weber wasresponding to a “crude,” reductionist version of Marxism.

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evolution of history. Class struggles were, in turn, the inevitable outcome of theinherent contradictions found in all pre-communist economic systems. While findingmuch convincing in Marx’s argument, Weber nevertheless did not embrace it in itsentirety. In constructing his own theoretical framework, Weber departed from Marx ina number of respects, three of which we outline here.

First, Weber maintained that social life did not evolve according to some immanentor necessary law. Thus, unlike Marx, Weber did not foresee a definitive “end of prehis-tory” toward which social evolution progressed. Instead, he saw the future of modernsociety as an open question, the answer to which it is impossible to foretell. Thisposition, coupled with his view that rationalizing processes had transformed modernsociety into an “iron cage” (see below), accounts for Weber’s unwillingness to accepta utopian vision of humanity’s future.

Second, he contended that the development of societies could not be adequatelyexplained on the basis of a single or primary causal mechanism. The analysis of eco-nomic conditions and class dynamics alone could not capture the complex social andcultural processes responsible for shaping a society’s trajectory. In particular, Webermaintained that Marx, in emphasizing economic factors and class-based interests,underestimated the role that ideas play in determining a society’s course of develop-ment. On this point, Weber sought to incorporate Marx’s argument into his own workwhile offering what he saw as a necessary corrective. To this end, he remarked, “Notideas, but material and ideal interests, directly govern men’s conduct. Yet very fre-quently the ‘world images’ that have been created by ‘ideas’ have, like switchmen,determined the tracks along which action has been pushed by the dynamic of interest”(1915/1958:280).

Acknowledging the powerful sway that “interests” hold over individuals as theychart their course of action, Weber nevertheless argued that ideas play a central role inshaping the paths along which interests are realized. He saw ideas as an independentcultural force and not as a reflection of material conditions or the existing mode of pro-duction. As the source for constructing meaning and purposeful lines of action, ideasare not simply one element among others confined to the “superstructure”; instead, theyserve as the bases on which individuals carve out possible avenues of action.

A third difference lies in where the two theorists located the fundamental problemsfacing modern industrial society. As you read previously, Marx identified capitalism asthe primary source of humanity’s inhumanity. The logic of capitalism necessarily led tothe exploitation of the working class as well as the alienation of the individual from hiswork, himself, and others. For Weber, however, it was not capitalism but the process ofrationalization and the increasing dominance of bureaucracies that threatened to destroycreativity and individuality. By design, bureaucratic organizations, and the rational pro-cedures that govern them, routinize and standardize people and products. Though mak-ing for greater efficiency in the spheres of life they have touched, it is the impersonalityof bureaucracies, their indifference to difference, that has created a “cold” and emptyworld. (See the essay “Bureaucracy,” excerpted below.)

Not surprisingly, then, Weber, unlike many of his contemporaries, did not seein socialism the cure for society’s ills. In taking control of a society’s productive forces,socialist forms of government would only further bureaucratize the social order, offer-ing a poor alternative to capitalism. Indeed, Weber believed capitalism was a “better”economic system to the extent that its competitiveness allowed more opportunitiesto express one’s individuality and creative impulses. Clearly, Weber did not embraceMarx’s or his followers’ calls for a communist revolution, for such a movement,in expanding the scope of bureaucracies, would accelerate the hollowing out ofhuman life.


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Weber’s work is avowedly multidimensional. He explicitly recognized that individualaction is channeled through a variety of motivations that encompass both rationalist andnonrationalist dimensions. Moreover, his definition of sociology as a science aimed atthe interpretive understanding of social action squarely places the individual and herconduct at the center of analysis. Complementing this position are Weber’s substantiveinterests that led him to study religious idea systems, institutional arrangements, classand status structures, forms of domination, and broad historical trends; in short,elements aligned with the collective dimension of social life.

Of course, not every essay incorporates elements from each of the four dimensions.For instance, Weber’s discussion of bureaucracy (excerpted below) focuses on theadministrative functions and rules that account for the efficiency and impersonality thatmark this organizational form. As a result, he emphasizes the structural or collectivistaspects of bureaucracies and how they work down to shape a given individual’s behav-ior within them. Thus, you will find Weber remarking, “The individual bureaucrat can-not squirm out of the apparatus into which he has been harnessed. . . . [H]e is only asmall cog in a ceaselessly moving mechanism which prescribes to him an essentiallyfixed route of march” (1925c/1978:988). Weber’s interest, then, lies here in describingthe bureaucratic apparatus replete with its institutionalized demands for technicalexpertise and leveling of social differences.3

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NONRATIONAL

Mead Durkheim

Simmel

Du Bois

Weber

GilmanMarx

Figure 4.2 Weber’s Basic Theoretical Orientation

WEBER’S THEORETICAL ORIENTATION


3While Weber’s approach is clearly multidimensional, it is due to arguments like theone expressed in his essay on bureaucracy that we position the body of his work “off-center,”ultimately in the collectivist/rationalist quadrant of our diagram. In the end, his emphasis liesin examining the rationalizing (i.e., rationalist) processes that have shaped the development ofmodern Western institutions (i.e., collectivist).

RATIONAL

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In Figure 4.3, we have highlighted a number of key concepts found in our precedingremarks or in the primary selections that follow. From the chart, it is readily apparentthat Weber’s theoretical orientation spans each of the four dimensions. Because someof these concepts were discussed previously (for instance, those regarding the types ofaction) and others will be addressed later in our introductions to the selections, we willrestrict our comments in this section to a single example that underscores Weber’s mul-tidimensional approach.

In The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, Weber discusses the importanceof the calling in motivating individuals to pursue worldly success. Originally a doctrineespoused by the Protestant reformer Martin Luther, the idea that each individual has acalling or “life-task” has its roots in a religious quest for salvation. In terms of our the-oretical map, then, the calling reflects a nonrationalist orientation to action. The indi-vidual’s salvation was dependent on fulfilling the moral obligation to perform the dutiesof his labor to the best of his abilities. Here, the individual’s actions are inspired by thedesire to please God and thus ensure the certainty of his grace, not by a desire to accu-mulate wealth as a means for purchasing material goods. Moreover, the calling is anindividualist concept. It serves as the basis on which individuals make sense of their lifecircumstances and determine their fate.

Weber’s analysis of the calling, however, was not tied solely to an examination of howreligious ideas motivate individual conduct. For Weber, the significance of the calling alsolies in its fueling a dramatic transformation: the growth and eventual dominance of capi-talism. While oversimplifying his argument, we can say that Weber contended that the


NONRATIONAL

affective action

traditional action traditional authority

value-rational actionProtestant ethic

“calling”

charisma status groupscharismatic authority

rational-legal authority

instrumental-rational partyaction

classes

bureaucracy

capitalism

RATIONAL

Figure 4.3 Weber’s Core Concepts


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development of modern forms of capitalism was tied to the ascetic lifestyle demanded bythe pursuit of one’s calling. Originally a religious injunction to lead a life freed from the“temptations of the flesh,” the calling evolved into a more general, secular axiom requiringindividuals to base their actions on methodical, rational procedures. According to Weber,the secularization of the calling was a major force contributing to the explosive growth ofcapitalism in the West. Businesses were increasingly organized on the basis of impersonal,rational practices aimed at the efficient production of goods and services. Stripped of itsreligious impulses, of its spiritual moorings, the calling was transformed into a rationalistorientation to action. Methodical and calculative practices were adopted in all spheres oflife, not to ensure one’s state of grace, but because it was in one’s self-interest to do so.

Last, Weber’s argument reveals a decidedly collectivist element as well. The asceticideals lying at the heart of the Protestant ethic were carried into the practical affairsof economic activity and social life more generally. This unleashed the process ofrationalization, disenchanting Western society and creating an “iron cage” from whichthe individual is left with little power to escape. The dominance of capitalism andimpersonal, bureaucratic forms of organization was a collective force that determinedthe life-chances of the individual. This dynamic is illustrated in the following passagetaken from The Protestant Ethic and with which we end this section:

The Puritan wanted to work in a calling; we are forced to do so. For when asceticismwas carried out of monastic cells into everyday life, and began to dominate worldlymorality, it did its part in building the tremendous cosmos of the modern economicorder. This order is now bound to the technical and economic conditions of machineproduction which to-day [sic] determine the lives of all the individuals who are borninto this mechanism, not only those directly concerned with economic acquisition,with irresistible force. (1904-1905/1958:181)

Readings

In the selections that follow, you will be introduced to four of Weber’s mostinfluential writings. First, excerpts from The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit ofCapitalism offer Weber’s analysis of the relationship between religion andthe economic and cultural life of modern Western society. In the secondreading, from Economy and Society, Weber investigates the crosscuttingsources of power: class, status, and party. A parallel theme is addressed inthe third selection, also from Economy and Society, in which Weber outlinesthree distinct types of domination or authority. We end with Weber’s descrip-tion of bureaucracy, the predominant form of modern social organizations,from his essay “Bureaucracy,” also from Economy and Society.

Introduction to The ProtestantEthic and the Spirit of Capitalism

Beyond doubt, one of the most influential sociology books ever written, TheProtestant Ethic, masterfully captures the two subjects that preoccupied Weber’sintellectual activities: (1) the rationalizing tendencies so prevalent in Western societyand (2) the role of ideas in shaping them. In addressing these twin issues, Weber

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argues that a religious belief system, intended to explain the path to a transcendenteternal salvation, paradoxically fueled the creation of a secular world in which “materialgoods have gained an increasing and finally an inexorable power over the lives of menas at no previous period in history” (1904/1958:181).

Unlike Marx, who viewed religion as “the opiate of masses,” or Durkheim, who sawin religion humanity’s worship of itself, Weber saw in religious beliefs a system ofmeaning aimed at explaining the existence of suffering and evil in the world. Suchexplanations have a profound impact on individuals’ actions and consequently on thebroader social order. Of particular import is whether in addressing these ultimate issues,a belief system orients its adherents toward a “mastery” of the world or a mystical orcontemplative escape from it. Thus, Protestantism, and Calvinism in particular,demanded that its followers serve as the “instruments” of God in order to fashion theworld in His image. Conversely, Eastern religions such as Buddhism and Hinduismrequired their faithful to become “vessels” for the divine spirit in order to communewith otherworldly cosmic powers. The active engagement with the external, secularworld called for by the Protestant belief system functioned as a potent impetus forsocial change, while the inward search for spiritual awakening characteristic of themajor Eastern religions proved to be a socially conservative force.

In developing a scientifically based account of the independent role religious ideas canplay in shaping the social order and, in particular, economic systems, Weber offered apowerful critique of Marxist theories of capitalism. As we discussed previously, he saw inhistorical materialism a one-sided causal interpretation, and in several passages of TheProtestant Ethic you will read Weber clearly setting his sights on piercing this doctrine.Counter to Marx’s emphasis on property relations and the process of production, Webermaintained that the extraordinarily methodical attitude that characterized Protestantasceticism was integral to the rise and eventual dominance of Western capitalism.1

Thus, Weber showed that not only “material” factors, but also “ideal” factors can beinstrumental in producing social change. In doing so, he sparked one of the most impor-tant and enduring debates in the history of sociology.

Having already highlighted several key elements of The Protestant Ethic when we out-lined Weber’s theoretical orientation, we briefly call attention to the book’s main ideas.Weber traced the rise of individualism to the late sixteenth century and the ProtestantReformation, which, among other things, redefined the nature of the relationship betweenman and God. Led by Martin Luther (1483–1546), the Protestant Reformers insistedthat each individual must methodically strive to realize a moral and righteous life each andevery day, constantly devoted to the glorification of God. This methodical individualismchallenged the previously dominant religious practice in which a handful of religious pro-fessionals (clergy) performed rituals in order to appease the gods either on behalf of thewhole society or on behalf of those who paid them for their services. But Luther main-tained that these token, periodic rituals could never placate a great and all-powerful God.The best mortals could hope for was a “sign” that they might be one of the elect; butultimately there was no proof of certainty, for only God knows who will be saved. Theduty of each individual, then, is to glorify God, not seek to appease Him.

1Significantly, Weber’s central point was not that the Protestant ethic caused the emergence andgrowth of Western capitalism. Protestantism alone was not sufficient for creating this profoundeconomic change. Rather, he argued that Protestant asceticism combined with a number of otherimportant structural and social factors to produce the dominance of Western capitalism. In par-ticular, Weber pointed to the separation of business pursuits from the home; the development ofrational bookkeeping methods; technological advances in methods of production, distribution,and communication; the development of a rational legal system based on impersonal, formalrules; and most importantly, the rational organization of free labor.

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As originally conceived by Luther, the calling represented a fate to which theindividual must submit; thus rich and poor alike were encouraged to be content withtheir lot, for it was God’s will that had assigned to each his station in life. In thehands of later Puritans leaders, the meaning of the calling was transformed. UnderJohn Calvin (1509–1564) and Richard Baxter (1615–1691), the calling was inter-preted as God’s commandment to work for His divine glory. To this view was addedalso the new belief that the individual could indeed determine his eternal fate. Successand profit in worldly affairs was now taken as divinely granted proof of one’s stateof grace. Baxter stated the injunction thusly, “If God show you a way in which youmay lawfully get more than in another way. . . . if you refuse this, and choose the lessgainful way, you cross one of the ends of your calling, and you refuse to be God’ssteward, and to accept His gifts and use them for Him when He requireth it” (in Weber1904–1905/1958:162).

Yet, it was not success itself that offered proof, rather it was how success wasachieved that marked a person as one of God’s elect. For Baxter cautioned his follow-ers that “You may labour to be rich for God, though not for the flesh and sin” (ibid.). Inthis proscription lay the seeds for the subjective disposition that would ignite the growthof capitalism. Wealth served as confirmation of one’s salvation only if it did not lead toidleness or the enjoyment of luxuries. Profitableness, moreover, was best guaranteedwhen economic pursuits were carried out on the basis of methodical and rational plan-ning. Thus, ascetic restrictions on consumption were combined with the religiouslyderived compulsion to increase one’s wealth. The ethical imperative to save and investone’s wealth would become the spiritual foundation for the spread of capitalism.

It would not be long, however, before the rational and bureaucratic structures neces-sary to modern capitalism would render obsolete the religious spirit that first hadimbued it with meaning.2 Modern humanity is now left to live in a disenchanted “ironcage” emptied of life’s magical possibilities.

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Source: Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, 1st edition, © 1958. Reprinted by permissionof Pearson Education, Inc., Upper Saddle River, New Jersey.2One need merely note the spread of capitalism to countries and regions of the world that have not been exposedin any significant degree to Protestantism.

❖

The Protestant Ethic and theSpirit of Capitalism (1904)

Max Weber

THE SPIRIT OF CAPITALISM

In the title of this study is used the somewhatpretentious phrase, the spirit of capitalism.What is to be understood by it? The attempt togive anything like a definition of it brings out

certain difficulties which are in the very natureof this type of investigation. . . .

Thus, if we try to determine the object, theanalysis and historical explanation of which weare attempting, it cannot be in the form of a con-ceptual definition, but at least in the beginning

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only a provisional description of what is heremeant by the spirit of capitalism. Such adescription is, however, indispensable in orderclearly to understand the object of the investiga-tion. For this purpose we turn to a document ofthat spirit which contains what we are lookingfor in almost classical purity, and at the sametime has the advantage of being free from alldirect relationship to religion, being thus, forour purposes, free of preconceptions.

“Remember, that time is money. He that canearn ten shillings a day by his labour, and goesabroad, or sits idle, one half of that day, thoughhe spends but sixpence during his diversion oridleness, ought not to reckon that the onlyexpense; he has really spent, or rather thrownaway, five shillings besides.

“Remember, that credit is money. If a manlets his money lie in my hands after it is due, hegives me the interest, or so much as I can makeof it during that time. This amounts to a consid-erable sum where a man has good and largecredit, and makes good use of it.

“Remember, that money is of the prolific,generating nature. Money can beget money, andits offspring can beget more, and so on. Fiveshillings turned is six, turned again it is sevenand threepence, and so on, till it becomesa hundred pounds. The more there is of it, themore it produces every turning, so that theprofits rise quicker and quicker. He that killsa breeding-sow, destroys all her offspring tothe thousandth generation. He that murders acrown, destroys all that it might have produced,even scores of pounds.”

“Remember this saying, The good paymasteris lord of another man’s purse. He that is knownto pay punctually and exactly to the time hepromises, may at any time, and on any occasion,raise all the money his friends can spare. This issometimes of great use. After industry and fru-gality, nothing contributes more to the raising ofa young man in the world than punctuality andjustice in all his dealings; therefore never keepborrowed money an hour beyond the time youpromised, lest a disappointment shut up yourfriend’s purse for ever.

“The most trifling actions that affect a man’scredit are to be regarded. The sound of yourhammer at five in the morning, or eight at night,heard by a creditor, makes him easy six months

longer; but if he sees you at a billiard-table, orhears your voice at a tavern, when you should beat work, he sends for his money the next day;demands it, before he can receive it, in a lump.

“It shows, besides, that you are mindful ofwhat you owe; it makes you appear a careful aswell as an honest man, and that still increasesyour credit.

“Beware of thinking all your own that youpossess, and of living accordingly. It is a mis-take that many people who have credit fall into.To prevent this, keep an exact account for sometime both of your expenses and your income. Ifyou take the pains at first to mention particulars,it will have this good effect: you will discoverhow wonderfully small, trifling expenses mountup to large sums, and will discern what mighthave been, and may for the future be saved,without occasioning any great inconvenience.

“For six pounds a year you may have the useof one hundred pounds, provided you are a manof known prudence and honesty.

“He that spends a groat a day idly, spendsidly above six pounds a year, which is the pricefor the use of one hundred pounds.

“He that wastes idly a groat’s worth of histime per day, one day with another, wastes theprivilege of using one hundred pounds each day.

“He that idly loses five shillings’ worth oftime, loses five shillings, and might as prudentlythrow five shillings into the sea.

“He that loses five shillings, not only losesthat sum, but all the advantage that might bemade by turning it in dealing, which by the timethat a young man becomes old, will amount to aconsiderable sum of money.”

It is Benjamin Franklin who preaches to usin these sentences, the same which FerdinandKürnberger satirizes in his clever and maliciousPicture of American Culture as the supposed con-fession of faith of the Yankee. That it is the spiritof capitalism which here speaks in characteristicfashion, no one will doubt, however little we maywish to claim that everything which could beunderstood as pertaining to that spirit is containedin it. Let us pause a moment to consider this pas-sage, the philosophy of which Kürnberger sumsup in the words, “They make tallow out of cattleand money out of men”. The peculiarity of thisphilosophy of avarice appears to be the ideal ofthe honest man of recognized credit, and above


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all the idea of a duty of the individual toward theincrease of his capital, which is assumed as anend in itself. Truly what is here preached is notsimply a means of making one’s way in theworld, but a peculiar ethic. The infraction of itsrules is treated not as foolishness but as forget-fulness of duty. That is the essence of the matter.It is not mere business astuteness, that sort ofthing is common enough, it is an ethos. This is thequality which interests us. . . .

Now, all Franklin’s moral attitudes arecoloured with utilitarianism. Honesty is useful,because it assures credit; so are punctuality,industry, frugality, and that is the reason they arevirtues. A logical deduction from this would bethat where, for instance, the appearance of hon-esty serves the same purpose, that would suffice,and an unnecessary surplus of this virtue wouldevidently appear to Franklin’s eyes as unpro-ductive waste. And as a matter of fact, the storyin his autobiography of his conversion to thosevirtues, or the discussion of the value of a strictmaintenance of the appearance of modesty, theassiduous belittlement of one’s own deserts inorder to gain general recognition later, confirmsthis impression. According to Franklin, thosevirtues, like all others, are only in so far virtuesas they are actually useful to the individual, andthe surrogate of mere appearance is alwayssufficient when it accomplishes the end in view.It is a conclusion which is inevitable for strictutilitarianism. The impression of many Germansthat the virtues professed by Americanism arepure hypocrisy seems to have been confirmed bythis striking case. But in fact the matter is not byany means so simple. Benjamin Franklin’s owncharacter, as it appears in the really unusualcandidness of his autobiography, belies thatsuspicion. The circumstance that he ascribeshis recognition of the utility of virtue to a divinerevelation which was intended to lead him inthe path of righteousness, shows that somethingmore than mere garnishing for purely egocentricmotives is involved.

In fact, the summum bonum of this ethic, theearning of more and more money, combinedwith the strict avoidance of all spontaneousenjoyment of life, is above all completely devoidof any eudæmonistic, not to say hedonistic,admixture. It is thought of so purely as an endin itself, that from the point of view of the

happiness of, or utility to, the single individual,it appears entirely transcendental and absolutelyirrational. Man is dominated by the making ofmoney, by acquisition as the ultimate purposeof his life. Economic acquisition is no longersubordinated to man as the means for the satis-faction of his material needs. This reversal ofwhat we should call the natural relationship,so irrational from a naïve point of view, isevidently as definitely a leading principle ofcapitalism as it is foreign to all peoples notunder capitalistic influence. At the same timeit expresses a type of feeling which is closelyconnected with certain religious ideas. If we thusask, why should “money be made out of men”,Benjamin Franklin himself, although he was acolourless deist, answers in his autobiographywith a quotation from the Bible, which his strictCalvinistic father drummed into him again andagain in his youth: “Seest thou a man diligentin his business? He shall stand before kings”(Prov. xxii. 29). The earning of money within themodern economic order is, so long as it is donelegally, the result and the expression of virtueand proficiency in a calling; and this virtue andproficiency are, as it is now not difficult to see,the real Alpha and Omega of Franklin’s ethic, asexpressed in the passages we have quoted, aswell as in all his works without exception.

And in truth this peculiar idea, so familiarto us to-day, but in reality so little a matter ofcourse, of one’s duty in a calling, is what is mostcharacteristic of the social ethic of capitalisticculture, and is in a sense the fundamental basis ofit. It is an obligation which the individual is sup-posed to feel and does feel towards the content ofhis professional activity, no matter in what it con-sists, in particular no matter whether it appears onthe surface as a utilization of his personal powers,or only of his material possessions (as capital).

Of course, this conception has not appearedonly under capitalistic conditions. On the con-trary, we shall later trace its origins back toa time previous to the advent of capitalism. Stillless, naturally, do we maintain that a consciousacceptance of these ethical maxims on the part ofthe individuals, entrepreneurs or labourers, inmodern capitalistic enterprises, is a condition ofthe further existence of present-day capitalism.The capitalistic economy of the present day isan immense cosmos into which the individual is

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born, and which presents itself to him, at leastas an individual, as an unalterable order of thingsin which he must live. It forces the individual, inso far as he is involved in the system of marketrelationships, to conform to capitalistic rules ofaction. The manufacturer who in the long run actscounter to these norms, will just as inevitably beeliminated from the economic scene as theworker who cannot or will not adapt himself tothem will be thrown into the streets without a job.

Thus the capitalism of to-day, which hascome to dominate economic life, educates andselects the economic subjects which it needsthrough a process of economic survival of thefittest. But here one can easily see the limits ofthe concept of selection as a means of historicalexplanation. In order that a manner of life sowell adapted to the peculiarities of capitalismcould be selected at all, i.e. should come todominate others, it had to originate somewhere,and not in isolated individuals alone, but as away of life common to whole groups of men.This origin is what really needs explanation.Concerning the doctrine of the more naïve his-torical materialism, that such ideas originate asa reflection or superstructure of economic situa-tions, we shall speak more in detail below.At this point it will suffice for our purpose tocall attention to the fact that without doubt, inthe country of Benjamin Franklin’s birth(Massachusetts), the spirit of capitalism (in thesense we have attached to it) was present beforethe capitalistic order. . . . It is further undoubtedthat capitalism remained far less developed insome of the neighbouring colonies, the laterSouthern States of the United States of America,in spite of the fact that these latter were foundedby large capitalists for business motives, whilethe New England colonies were founded bypreachers and seminary graduates with the helpof small bourgeois, craftsmen and yoemen, forreligious reasons. In this case the causal relationis certainly the reverse of that suggested by thematerialistic standpoint.

But the origin and history of such ideas ismuch more complex than the theorists of thesuperstructure suppose. The spirit of capitalism,in the sense in which we are using the term, hadto fight its way to supremacy against a wholeworld of hostile forces. A state of mind suchas that expressed in the passages we have

quoted from Franklin, and which called forththe applause of a whole people, would both inancient times and in the Middle Ages have beenproscribed as the lowest sort of avarice and as anattitude entirely lacking in self-respect. It is, infact, still regularly thus looked upon by all thosesocial groups which are least involved in oradapted to modern capitalistic conditions. This isnot wholly because the instinct of acquisitionwas in those times unknown or undeveloped, ashas often been said. Nor because the auri sacrafames, the greed for gold, was then, or now,less powerful outside of bourgeois capitalismthan within its peculiar sphere, as the illusionsof modern romanticists are wont to believe.The difference between the capitalistic andpre-capitalistic spirits is not to be found at thispoint. The greed of the Chinese Mandarin, theold Roman aristocrat, or the modern peasant, canstand up to any comparison. And the auri sacrafames of a Neapolitan cab-driver or barcaiuolo,and certainly of Asiatic representatives of similartrades, as well as of the craftsmen of southernEuropean or Asiatic countries, is, as anyone canfind out for himself, very much more intense,and especially more unscrupulous than that of,say, an Englishman in similar circumstances. . . .

The most important opponent with which thespirit of capitalism, in the sense of a definitestandard of life claiming ethical sanction, hashad to struggle, was that type of attitude andreaction to new situations which we may desig-nate as traditionalism. . . .

One of the technical means which themodern employer uses in order to secure thegreatest possible amount of work from his menis the device of piece-rates. In agriculture, forinstance, the gathering of the harvest is a casewhere the greatest possible intensity of labour iscalled for, since, the weather being uncertain,the difference between high profit and heavyloss may depend on the speed with which theharvesting can be done. Hence a system ofpiece-rates is almost universal in this case. Andsince the interest of the employer in a speeding-up of harvesting increases with the increase ofthe results and the intensity of the work, theattempt has again and again been made, byincreasing the piece-rates of the workmen,thereby giving them an opportunity to earn whatis for them a very high wage, to interest them


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in increasing their own efficiency. But a peculiardifficulty has been met with surprising fre-quency: raising the piece-rates has often hadthe result that not more but less has been accom-plished in the same time, because the workerreacted to the increase not by increasing but bydecreasing the amount of his work. A man, forinstance, who at the rate of 1 mark per acremowed 2½ acres per day and earned 2½ marks,when the rate was raised to 1.25 marks per acremowed, not 3 acres, as he might easily havedone, thus earning 3.75 marks, but only 2 acres,so that he could still earn the 2½ marks to whichhe was accustomed. The opportunity of earningmore was less attractive than that of workingless. He did not ask: how much can I earn in aday if I do as much work as possible? but: howmuch must I work in order to earn the wage, 2½marks, which I earned before and which takescare of my traditional needs? This is an exampleof what is here meant by traditionalism. A mandoes not “by nature” wish to earn more andmore money, but simply to live as he is accus-tomed to live and to earn as much as is neces-sary for that purpose. Wherever moderncapitalism has begun its work of increasingthe productivity of human labour by increasingits intensity, it has encountered the immenselystubborn resistance of this leading trait ofpre-capitalistic labour. And to-day it encountersit the more, the more backward (from a capital-istic point of view) the labouring forces are withwhich it has to deal.

Another obvious possibility, to return toour example, since the appeal to the acquisitiveinstinct through higher wage-rates failed, wouldhave been to try the opposite policy, to force theworker by reduction of his wage-rates to workharder to earn the same amount than he didbefore. Low wages and high profits seem evento-day to a superficial observer to stand in cor-relation; everything which is paid out in wagesseems to involve a corresponding reduction ofprofits. That road capitalism has taken again andagain since its beginning. For centuries it was anarticle of faith, that low wages were productive,i.e. that they increased the material results oflabour so that, as Pieter de la Cour, on this point,as we shall see, quite in the spirit of the oldCalvinism, said long ago, the people only workbecause and so long as they are poor.

But the effectiveness of this apparently soefficient method has its limits. Of course thepresence of a surplus population which it canhire cheaply in the labour market is a necessityfor the development of capitalism. But thoughtoo large a reserve army may in certain casesfavour its quantitative expansion, it checks itsqualitative development, especially the transi-tion to types of enterprise which make moreintensive use of labour. Low wages are by nomeans identical with cheap labour. From apurely quantitative point of view the efficiencyof labour decreases with a wage which is phys-iologically insufficient, which may in the longrun even mean a survival of the unfit. . . . Lowwages fail even from a purely business point ofview wherever it is a question of producinggoods which require any sort of skilled labour,or the use of expensive machinery which is eas-ily damaged, or in general wherever any greatamount of sharp attention or of initiative isrequired. Here low wages do not pay, and theireffect is the opposite of what was intended. Fornot only is a developed sense of responsibilityabsolutely indispensable, but in general also anattitude which, at least during working hours, isfreed from continual calculations of how thecustomary wage may be earned with a maxi-mum of comfort and a minimum of exertion.Labour must, on the contrary, be performed as ifit were an absolute end in itself, a calling. Butsuch an attitude is by no means a product ofnature. It cannot be evoked by low wages orhigh ones alone, but can only be the product ofa long and arduous process of education. To-day, capitalism, once in the saddle, can recruitits labouring force in all industrial countrieswith comparative ease. In the past this was inevery case an extremely difficult problem. Andeven to-day it could probably not get alongwithout the support of a powerful ally along theway, which, as we shall see below, was at handat the time of its development. . . .

Now, how could activity, which was at bestethically tolerated, turn into a calling in the senseof Benjamin Franklin? The fact to be explainedhistorically is that in the most highly capitalisticcentre of that time, in Florence of the fourteenthand fifteenth centuries, the money and capitalmarket of all the great political Powers, this atti-tude was considered ethically unjustifiable, or at

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best to be tolerated. But in the backwoods smallbourgeois circumstances of Pennsylvania in theeighteenth century, where business threatenedfor simple lack of money to fall back into barter,where there was hardly a sign of large enterprise,where only the earliest beginnings of bankingwere to be found, the same thing was consideredthe essence of moral conduct, even commandedin the name of duty. To speak here of a reflectionof material conditions in the ideal superstructurewould be patent nonsense. What was the back-ground of ideas which could account for the sortof activity apparently directed toward profitalone as a calling toward which the individualfeels himself to have an ethical obligation? For itwas this idea which gave the way of life ofthe new entrepreneur its ethical foundation andjustification. . . .

ASCETICISM AND THE

SPIRIT OF CAPITALISM

In order to understand the connection betweenthe fundamental religious ideas of asceticProtestantism and its maxims for everyday eco-nomic conduct, it is necessary to examine withespecial care such writings as have evidentlybeen derived from ministerial practice. For in atime in which the beyond meant everything,when the social position of the Christiandepended upon his admission to the communion,the clergyman, through his ministry, Church dis-cipline, and preaching, exercised and influence(as a glance at collections of consilia, casus con-scientiæ, etc., shows) which we modern men areentirely unable to picture. In such a time the reli-gious forces which express themselves throughsuch channels are the decisive influences in theformation of national character.

For the purposes of this chapter, though byno means for all purposes, we can treat asceticProtestantism as a single whole. But since thatside of English Puritanism which was derivedfrom Calvinism gives the most consistent reli-gious basis for the idea of the calling, we shall,following our previous method, place one of itsrepresentatives at the centre of the discussion.Richard Baxter stands out above many other writ-ers on Puritan ethics, both because of his emi-nently practical and realistic attitude, and, at the

same time, because of the universal recognitionaccorded to his works, which have gone throughmany new editions and translations. He was aPresbyterian and an apologist of the WestminsterSynod, but at the same time, like so many of thebest spirits of his time, gradually grew away fromthe dogmas of pure Calvinism. . . . His ChristianDirectory is the most complete compendium ofPuritan ethics, and is continually adjusted to thepractical experiences of his own ministerial activ-ity. In comparison we shall make use of Spener’sTheologische Bedenken, as representative ofGerman Pietism, Barclay’s Apology for theQuakers, and some other representatives ofascetic ethics, which, however, in the interest ofspace, will be limited as far as possible.

Now, in glancing at Baxter’s Saints’ Everlas-ting Rest, or his Christian Directory, or similarworks of others, one is struck at first glance bythe emphasis placed, in the discussion of wealthand its acquisition, on the ebionitic elementsof the New Testament. Wealth as such is agreat danger; its temptations never end, and itspursuit is not only senseless as compared withthe dominating importance of the Kingdom ofGod, but it is morally suspect. Here asceticismseems to have turned much more sharply againstthe acquisition of earthly goods than it did inCalvin, who saw no hindrance to the effective-ness of the clergy in their wealth, but rather athoroughly desirable enhancement of their pres-tige. Hence he permitted them to employ theirmeans profitably. Examples of the condemna-tion of the pursuit of money and goods may begathered without end from Puritan writings,and may be contrasted with the late mediævalethical literature, which was much more open-minded on this point.

Moreover, these doubts were meant with per-fect seriousness; only it is necessary to examinethem somewhat more closely in order to under-stand their true ethical significance and implica-tions. The real moral objection is to relaxation inthe security of possession, the enjoyment ofwealth with the consequence of idleness and thetemptations of the flesh, above all of distractionfrom the pursuit of a righteous life. In fact, it isonly because possession involves this danger ofrelaxation that it is objectionable at all. For thesaints’ everlasting rest in the next world; on earthman must, to be certain of his state of grace, “do


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the works of him who sent him, as long as it is yetday”. Not leisure and enjoyment, but only activ-ity serves to increase the glory of God, accordingto the definite manifestations of His will.

Waste of time is thus the first and in principlethe deadliest of sins. The span of human lifeis infinitely short and precious to make sure ofone’s own election. Loss of time through socia-bility, idle talk, luxury, even more sleep than isnecessary for health, six to at most eight hours,is worthy of absolute moral condemnation. Itdoes not yet hold, with Franklin, that time ismoney, but the proposition is true in a certainspiritual sense. It is infinitely valuable becauseevery hour lost is lost to labour for the glory ofGod. Thus inactive contemplation is also value-less, or even directly reprehensible if it is at theexpense of one’s daily work. For it is less pleas-ing to God than the active performance of Hiswill in a calling. Besides, Sunday is provided forthat, and, according to Baxter, it is always thosewho are not diligent in their callings who haveno time for God when the occasion demands it.

Accordingly, Baxter’s principal work isdominated by the continually repeated, oftenalmost passionate preaching of hard, continu-ous bodily or mental labour. It is due to a com-bination of two different motives. Labour is, onthe one hand, an approved ascetic technique,as it always has been in the Western Church,in sharp contrast not only to the Orient butto almost all monastic rules the world over. Itis in particular the specific defence against allthose temptations which Puritanism unitedunder the name of the unclean life, whoserôle for it was by no means small. The sexualasceticism of Puritanism differs only in degree,not in fundamental principle, from that ofmonasticism; and on account of the Puritanconception of marriage; its practical influence ismore far-reaching than that of the latter. Forsexual intercourse is permitted, even withinmarriage, only as the means willed by God forthe increase of His glory according to the com-mandment, “Be fruitful and multiply.” Alongwith a moderate vegetable diet and cold baths,the same prescription is given for all sexualtemptations as is used against religious doubtsand a sense of moral unworthiness: “Work hardin your calling.” But the most important thingwas that even beyond that labour came to be

considered in itself the end of life, ordained assuch by God. St. Paul’s “He who will not workshall not eat” holds unconditionally for every-one. Unwillingness to work is symptomatic ofthe lack of grace. . . .

[Not] only do these exceptions to the duty tolabour naturally no longer hold for Baxter, but heholds most emphatically that wealth does notexempt anyone from the unconditional com-mand. Even the wealthy shall not eat withoutworking, for even though they do not need tolabour to support their own needs, there is God’scommandment which they, like the poor, mustobey. For everyone without exception God’sProvidence has prepared a calling, which heshould profess and in which he should labour.And this calling is not, as it was for the Lutheran,a fate to which he must submit and which hemust make the best of, but God’s command-ment to the individual to work for the divineglory. This seemingly subtle difference hadfar-reaching psychological consequences, andbecame connected with a further development ofthe providential interpretation of the economicorder which had begun in scholasticism.

The phenomenon of the division of labourand occupations in society had, among others,been interpreted by Thomas Aquinas, to whomwe may most conveniently refer, as a direct con-sequence of the divine scheme of things. Butthe places assigned to each man in this cosmosfollow ex causis naturalibus and are fortuitous(contingent in the Scholastic terminology). Thedifferentiation of men into the classes and occu-pations established through historical develop-ment became for Luther, as we have seen, adirect result of the divine will. The perseveranceof the individual in the place and within thelimits which God had assigned to him was areligious duty. . . .

But in the Puritan view, the providential char-acter of the play of private economic intereststakes on a somewhat different emphasis. Trueto the Puritan tendency to pragmatic interpre-tations, the providential purpose of the divisionof labour is to be known by its fruits. . . .

But the characteristic Puritan element appearswhen Baxter sets at the head of his discussionthe statement that “outside of a well-markedcalling the accomplishments of a man are onlycasual and irregular, and he spends more time

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in idleness than at work”, and when he concludesit as follows: “and he [the specialized worker]will carry out his work in order while anotherremains in constant confusion, and his businessknows neither time nor place. . . therefore is acertain calling the best for everyone”. Irregularwork, which the ordinary labourer is often forcedto accept, is often unavoidable, but always anunwelcome state of transition. A man withouta calling thus lacks the systematic, methodicalcharacter which is, as we have seen, demandedby worldly asceticism.

The Quaker ethic also holds that a man’s lifein his calling is an exercise in ascetic virtue, aproof of his state of grace through his conscien-tiousness, which is expressed in the care andmethod with which he pursues his calling. WhatGod demands is not labour in itself, but rationallabour in a calling. In the Puritan concept ofthe calling the emphasis is always placed onthis methodical character of worldly asceticism,not, as with Luther, on the acceptance of the lotwhich God has irretrievably assigned to man.

Hence the question whether anyone maycombine several callings is answered in theaffirmative, if it is useful for the common goodor one’s own, and not injurious to anyone, andif it does not lead to unfaithfulness in one ofthe callings. Even a change of calling is byno means regarded as objectionable, if it is notthoughtless and is made for the purpose of pur-suing a calling more pleasing to God, whichmeans, on general principles, one more useful.

It is true that the usefulness of a calling, andthus its favour in the sight of God, is measuredprimarily in moral terms, and thus in terms ofthe importance of the goods produced in it forthe community. But a further, and, above all, inpractice the most important, criterion is found inprivate profitableness. For if that God, whosehand the Puritan sees in all the occurrences oflife, shows one of His elect a chance of profit, hemust do it with a purpose. Hence the faithfulChristian must follow the call by taking advan-tage of the opportunity. “If God show you a wayin which you may lawfully get more than inanother way (without wrong to your soul or toany other), if you refuse this, and choose the lessgainful way, you cross one of the ends of yourcalling, and you refuse to be God’s steward, andto accept His gifts and use them for Him when

He requireth it: you may labour to be rich forGod, though not for the flesh and sin.”

Wealth is thus bad ethically only in so far asit is a temptation to idleness and sinful enjoy-ment of life, and its acquisition is bad only whenit is with the purpose of later living merrily andwithout care. But as a performance of duty in acalling it is not only morally permissible, butactually enjoined. The parable of the servantwho was rejected because he did not increasethe talent which was entrusted to him seemedto say so directly. To wish to be poor was, itwas often argued, the same as wishing to beunhealthy; it is objectionable as a glorificationof works and derogatory to the glory of God.Especially begging, on the part of one able towork, is not only the sin of slothfulness, but aviolation of the duty of brotherly love accordingto the Apostle’s own word.

The emphasis on the ascetic importance ofa fixed calling provided an ethical justificationof the modern specialized division of labour.In a similar way the providential interpreta-tion of profit-making justified the activities ofthe business man. The superior indulgence ofthe seigneur and the parvenu ostentation of thenouveau riche are equally detestable to asceti-cism. But, on the other hand, it has the highestethical appreciation of the sober, middle-class,self-made man. “God blesseth His trade” is astock remark about those good men who hadsuccessfully followed the divine hints. Thewhole power of the God of the Old Testament,who rewards His people for their obedience inthis life, necessarily exercised a similar influenceon the Puritan who, following Baxter’s advice,compared his own state of grace with that ofthe heroes of the Bible, and in the process inter-preted the statements of the Scriptures as thearticles of a book of statutes. . . .

Let us now try to clarify the points in whichthe Puritan idea of the calling and the premium itplaced upon ascetic conduct was bound directlyto influence the development of a capitalistic wayof life. As we have seen, this asceticism turnedwith all its force against one thing: the sponta-neous enjoyment of life and all it had to offer. . . .

As against this the Puritans upheld theirdecisive characteristic, the principle of asceticconduct. For otherwise the Puritan aversion tosport, even for the Quakers, was by no means


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simply one of principle. Sport was accepted ifit served a rational purpose, that of recreationnecessary for physical efficiency. But as ameans for the spontaneous expression of undis-ciplined impulses, it was under suspicion; andin so far as it became purely a means of enjoy-ment, or awakened pride, raw instincts or theirrational gambling instinct, it was of coursestrictly condemned. Impulsive enjoyment of life,which leads away both from work in a callingand from religion, was as such the enemy ofrational asceticism, whether in the form ofseigneurial sports, or the enjoyment of the dance-hall or the public-house of the common man. . . .

The theatre was obnoxious to the Puritans, andwith the strict exclusion of the erotic and ofnudity from the realm of toleration, a radical viewof either literature or art could not exist. The con-ceptions of idle talk, of superfluities, and of vainostentation, all designations of an irrational atti-tude without objective purpose, thus not ascetic,and especially not serving the glory of God, butof man, were always at hand to serve in decidingin favour of sober utility as against any artistictendencies. This was especially true in the case ofdecoration of the person, for instance clothing.That powerful tendency toward uniformity oflife, which to-day so immensely aids the capital-istic interest in the standardization of production,had its ideal foundations in the repudiation of allidolatry of the flesh. . . .

Although we cannot here enter upon a dis-cussion of the influence of Puritanism in allthese directions, we should call attention to thefact that the toleration of pleasure in culturalgoods, which contributed to purely aesthetic orathletic enjoyment, certainly always ran upagainst one characteristic limitation: they mustnot cost anything. Man is only a trustee of thegoods which have come to him through God’sgrace. He must, like the servant in the parable,give an account of every penny entrusted to him,and it is at least hazardous to spend any of it fora purpose which does not serve the glory of Godbut only one’s own enjoyment. What person,who keeps his eyes open, has not met represen-tatives of this view-point even in the present?The idea of a man’s duty to his possessions, towhich he subordinates himself as an obedientsteward, or even as an acquisitive machine,bears with chilling weight on his life. The

greater the possessions the heavier, if the asceticattitude toward life stands the test, the feeling ofresponsibility for them, for holding them undi-minished for the glory of God and increasingthem by restless effort. The origin of this type oflife also extends in certain roots, like so manyaspects of the spirit of capitalism, back into theMiddle Ages. But it was in the ethic of asceticProtestantism that it first found a consistent eth-ical foundation. Its significance for the develop-ment of capitalism is obvious.

This worldly Protestant asceticism, as wemay recapitulate up to this point, acted power-fully against the spontaneous enjoyment of pos-sessions; it restricted consumption, especially ofluxuries. On the other hand, it had the psycho-logical effect of freeing the acquisition of goodsfrom the inhibitions of traditionalistic ethics. Itbroke the bonds of the impulse of acquisitionin that it not only legalized it, but (in the sensediscussed) looked upon it as directly willed byGod. The campaign against the temptations ofthe flesh, and the dependence on external things,was, as besides the Puritans the great Quakerapologist Barclay expressly says, not a struggleagainst the rational acquisition, but against theirrational use of wealth.

But this irrational use was exemplified in theoutward forms of luxury which their code con-demned as idolatry of the flesh, however naturalthey had appeared to the feudal mind. On theother hand, they approved the rational and utili-tarian uses of wealth which were willed by Godfor the needs of the individual and the community.They did not wish to impose mortification on theman of wealth, but the use of his means for nec-essary and practical things. The idea of comfortcharacteristically limits the extent of ethically per-missible expenditures. It is naturally no accidentthat the development of a manner of living con-sistent with that idea may be observed earliestand most clearly among the most consistentrepresentatives of this whole attitude toward life.Over against the glitter and ostentation of feudalmagnificence which, resting on an unsound eco-nomic basis, prefers a sordid elegance to a sobersimplicity, they set the clean and solid comfortof the middle-class home as an ideal.

On the side of the production of privatewealth, asceticism condemned both dishonestyand impulsive avarice. What was condemned as

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covetousness, Mammonism, etc., was the pursuitof riches for their own sake. For wealth in itselfwas a temptation. But here asceticism was thepower “which ever seeks the good but ever createsevil”; what was evil in its sense was possessionand its temptations. For, in conformity with theOld Testament and in analogy to the ethical valu-ation of good works, asceticism looked upon thepursuit of wealth as an end in itself as highly rep-rehensible; but the attainment of it as a fruit oflabour in a calling was a sign of God’s blessing.And even more important: the religious valuationof restless, continuous, systematic work in aworldly calling, as the highest means to asceti-cism, and at the same time the surest and mostevident proof of rebirth and genuine faith, musthave been the most powerful conceivable lever forthe expansion of that attitude toward life whichwe have here called the spirit of capitalism.

When the limitation of consumption iscombined with this release of acquisitive activ-ity, the inevitable practical result is obvious:accumulation of capital through ascetic compul-sion to save. The restraints which were imposedupon the consumption of wealth naturallyserved to increase it by making possible theproductive investment of capital. . . .

As far as the influence of the Puritan outlookextended, under all circumstances—and this is,of course, much more important than the mereencouragement of capital accumulation—itfavoured the development of a rational bour-geois economic life; it was the most important,and above all the only consistent influencein the development of that life. It stood at thecradle of the modern economic man.

To be sure, these Puritanical ideals tendedto give way under excessive pressure from thetemptations of wealth, as the Puritans them-selves knew very well. With great regularity wefind the most genuine adherents of Puritanismamong the classes which were rising from alowly status, the small bourgeois and farmers,while the beati possidentes, even amongQuakers, are often found tending to repudiate theold ideals. It was the same fate which again andagain befell the predecessor of this worldlyasceticism, the monastic asceticism of theMiddle Ages. In the latter case, when rationaleconomic activity had worked out its full effectsby strict regulation of conduct and limitation of

consumption, the wealth accumulated eithersuccumbed directly to the nobility, as in thetime before the Reformation, or monastic dis-cipline threatened to break down, and one of thenumerous reformations became necessary.

In fact the whole history of monasticism is ina certain sense the history of a continual strug-gle with the problem of the secularizing influ-ence of wealth. The same is true on a grandscale of the worldly asceticism of Puritanism.The great revival of Methodism, which pre-ceded the expansion of English industry towardthe end of the eighteenth century, may well becompared with such a monastic reform. We mayhence quote here a passage from John Wesleyhimself which might well serve as a motto foreverything which has been said above. For itshows that the leaders of these ascetic move-ments understood the seemingly paradoxicalrelationships which we have here analysed per-fectly well, and in the same sense that we havegiven them. He wrote:

“I fear, wherever riches have increased, theessence of religion has decreased in thesame proportion. Therefore I do not see howit is possible, in the nature of things, for anyrevival of true religion to continue long. Forreligion must necessarily produce both indus-try and frugality, and these cannot but produceriches. But as riches increase, so will pride,anger, and love of the world in all its branches.How then is it possible that Methodism, thatis, a religion of the heart, though it flourishesnow as a green bay tree, should continue inthis state? For the Methodists in every placegrow diligent and frugal; consequently theyincrease in goods. Hence they proportionatelyincrease in pride, in anger, in the desire of theflesh, the desire of the eyes, and the prideof life. So, although the form of religionremains, the spirit is swiftly vanishing away. Isthere no way to prevent this—this continualdecay of pure religion? We ought not toprevent people from being diligent and frugal;we must exhort all Christians to gain all theycan, and to save all they can; that is, in effect,to grow rich.”

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give all they can, so that they will grow in graceand lay up a treasure in heaven. It is clear thatWesley here expresses, even in detail, just whatwe have been trying to point out.

As Wesley here says, the full economic effectof those great religious movements, whose sig-nificance for economic development lay aboveall in their ascetic educative influence, generallycame only after the peak of the purely religiousenthusiasm was past. Then the intensity of thesearch for the Kingdom of God commencedgradually to pass over into sober economicvirtue; the religious roots died out slowly, givingway to utilitarian worldliness. . . .

A specifically bourgeois economic ethic hadgrown up. With the consciousness of standingin the fullness of God’s grace and being visiblyblessed by Him, the bourgeois business man, aslong as he remained within the bounds of formalcorrectness, as long as his moral conduct wasspotless and the use to which he put his wealthwas not objectionable, could follow his pecu-niary interests as he would and feel that he wasfulfilling a duty in doing so. The power of reli-gious asceticism provided him in addition withsober, conscientious, and unusually industriousworkmen, who clung to their work as to a lifepurpose willed by God.

Finally, it gave him the comforting assurancethat the unequal distribution of the goods ofthis world was a special dispensation of DivineProvidence, which in these differences, as inparticular grace, pursued secret ends unknownto men. Calvin himself had made the much-quoted statement that only when the people, i.e.the mass of labourers and craftsmen, were poordid they remain obedient to God. In theNetherlands (Pieter de la Court and others), thathad been secularized to the effect that the massof men only labour when necessity forces themto do so. This formulation of a leading idea ofcapitalistic economy later entered into the cur-rent theories of the productivity of low wages.Here also, with the dying out of the religiousroot, the utilitarian interpretation crept in unno-ticed, in the line of development which we haveagain and again observed. . . .

Now naturally the whole ascetic literatureof almost all denominations is saturated withthe idea that faithful labour, even at low wages,on the part of those whom life offers no other

opportunities, is highly pleasing to God. In thisrespect Protestant Asceticism added in itselfnothing new. But it not only deepened this ideamost powerfully, it also created the force whichwas alone decisive for its effectiveness: the psy-chological sanction of it through the conceptionof this labour as a calling, as the best, often in thelast analysis the only means of attaining certaintyof grace. And on the other hand it legalized theexploitation of this specific willingness to work,in that it also interpreted the employer’s businessactivity as a calling. It is obvious how powerfullythe exclusive search for the Kingdom of Godonly through the fulfilment of duty in the calling,and the strict asceticism which Church disciplinenaturally imposed, especially on the propertylessclasses, was bound to affect the productivity oflabour in the capitalistic sense of the word.The treatment of labour as a calling became ascharacteristic of the modern worker as the corre-sponding attitude toward acquisition of the busi-ness man. It was a perception of this situation,new at his time, which caused so able an observeras Sir William Petty to attribute the economicpower of Holland in the seventeenth century tothe fact that the very numerous dissenters in thatcountry (Calvinists and Baptists) “are for themost part thinking, sober men, and such asbelieve that Labour and Industry is their dutytowards God”. . . .

One of the fundamental elements of the spiritof modern capitalism, and not only of that but ofall modern culture: rational conduct on the basisof the idea of the calling, was born—that is whatthis discussion has sought to demonstrate—fromthe spirit of Christian asceticism. One has only tore-read the passage from Franklin, quoted at thebeginning of this essay, in order to see that theessential elements of the attitude which wasthere called the spirit of capitalism are the sameas what we have just shown to be the content ofthe Puritan worldly asceticism, only without thereligious basis, which by Franklin’s time haddied away. The idea that modern labour has anascetic character is of course not new. Limitationto specialized work, with a renunciation of theFaustian universality of man which it involves, isa condition of any valuable work in the modernworld; hence deeds and renunciation inevitablycondition each other today. This fundamentallyascetic trait of middle-class life, if it attempts to

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be a way of life at all, and not simply the absenceof any, was what Goethe wanted to teach, at theheight of his wisdom, in the Wanderjahren, andin the end which he gave to the life of his Faust.For him the realization meant a renunciation, adeparture from an age of full and beautifulhumanity, which can no more be repeated in thecourse of our cultural development than can theflower of the Athenian culture of antiquity.

The Puritan wanted to work in a calling; weare forced to do so. For when asceticism was car-ried out of monastic cells into everyday life, andbegan to dominate worldly morality, it did its partin building the tremendous cosmos of the moderneconomic order. This order is now bound to thetechnical and economic conditions of machineproduction which to-day determine the lives ofall the individuals who are born into this mecha-nism, not only those directly concerned with eco-nomic acquisition, with irresistible force. Perhapsit will so determine them until the last ton of fos-silized coal is burnt. In Baxter’s view the care forexternal goods should only lie on the shoulders ofthe “saint like a light cloak, which can be thrownaside at any moment.” But fate decreed that thecloak should become an iron cage.

Since asceticism undertook to remodel theworld and to work out its ideals in the world,material goods have gained an increasing andfinally an inexorable power over the lives of menas at no previous period in history. To-day thespirit of religious asceticism—whether finally,who knows?—has escaped from the cage. Butvictorious capitalism, since it rests on mechanicalfoundations, needs its support no longer. The rosyblush of its laughing heir, the Enlightenment,seems also to be irretrievably fading, and the ideaof duty in one’s calling prowls about in our liveslike the ghost of dead religious beliefs. Where thefulfilment of the calling cannot directly be relatedto the highest spiritual and cultural values, orwhen, on the other hand, it need not be felt simplyas economic compulsion, the individual generallyabandons the attempt to justify it at all. In the fieldof its highest development, in the United States,the pursuit of wealth, stripped of its religious andethical meaning, tends to become associated withpurely mundane passions, which often actuallygive it the character of sport.

No one knows who will live in this cage inthe future, or whether at the end of this tremen-dous development entirely new prophets willarise, or there will be a great rebirth of old ideasand ideals, or, if neither, mechanized petrifica-tion, embellished with a sort of convulsive self-importance. For of the last stage of this culturaldevelopment, it might well be truly said:“Specialists without spirit, sensualists withoutheart; this nullity imagines that it has attained alevel of civilization never before achieved.”

But this brings us to the world of judgments ofvalue and of faith, with which this purelyhistorical discussion need not be burdened. Thenext task would be rather to show the significanceof ascetic rationalism, which has only beentouched in the foregoing sketch, for the content ofpractical social ethics, thus for the types of orga-nization and the functions of social groups fromthe conventicle to the State. Then its relations tohumanistic rationalism, its ideals of life and cul-tural influence; further to the development ofphilosophical and scientific empiricism, to tech-nical development and to spiritual ideals wouldhave to be analysed. Then its historical develop-ment from the mediæval beginnings of worldlyasceticism to its dissolution into pure utilitarian-ism would have to be traced out through all theareas of ascetic religion. Only then could thequantitative cultural significance of asceticProtestantism in its relation to the other plasticelements of modern culture be estimated.

Here we have only attempted to trace the factand the direction of its influence to their motivesin one, though a very important point. But itwould also further be necessary to investigate howProtestant Asceticism was in turn influenced in itsdevelopment and its character by the totality ofsocial conditions, especially economic. The mod-ern man is in general, even with the best will,unable to give religious ideas a significance forculture and national character which they deserve.But it is, of course, not my aim to substitute for aone-sided materialistic an equally one-sided spir-itualistic causal interpretation of culture and ofhistory. Each is equally possible, but each, if itdoes not serve as the preparation, but as the con-clusion of an investigation, accomplishes equallylittle in the interest of historical truth.


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Introduction to “Class, Status, Party”

In “Class, Status, Party,” we again find Weber engaged in an implicit debate withMarx. While Marx saw interests, and the power to realize them, tied solely to classposition, Weber saw the two as flowing from several sources. In fact, he argued thatdistinct interests and forms of power were connected to economic classes, statusgroups, and political parties. The result is a discarding of Marx’s model in favor ofa more complex view of how interests shape individuals’ actions and the organizationof societies.

Weber begins this essay with a definition of power, a definition that to thisday guides work in political sociology. He defines it as “the chance of a man or ofa number of men to realize their own will in a social action even against the resis-tance of others . . .” (1925a/1978:926). Such chances, however, are not derivedfrom a single source, nor is power valued for any one particular reason. Power maybe exercised for economic gain, to increase one’s ”social honor” (or status), or forits own sake. Moreover, power stemming from one source, for instance economicpower, may not translate into our domains. Thus, a person who has achievedsubstantial economic wealth through criminal activity will not have a high degreeof status in the general society. Conversely, academics have a relatively highdegree of status, but little economic power. Whatever power intellectuals havestems from their social honor, not from their ability to “realize their own will”through financial influence.

This essay is significant not only for its picture of the cross-cutting sourcesof interests and power. Weber also offers here a distinct definition of class as wellas his conception of status groups and parties. Recall that for Marx, classes arebased on a group’s more or less stable relationship to the means of production(owners of capital vs. owners of labor power). For Weber, however, classes are notstable groups or “communities” produced by existing property relations. Instead,they are people who share “life chances” or possibilities that are determined by“economic interests in the possession of goods and opportunities for income”within the commodity and labor markets (1925a/1978:927). While recognizing withMarx that “property” and “lack of property” form the basic distinction betweenclasses, Weber nevertheless argued that classes are themselves the product of ashared “class situation”—a situation that reflects the type and amount of exchangesone can pursue in the market.

Status groups, on the other hand, are communities. The fate of such communities isdetermined not by their chances on the commodity or labor markets, however, but by“a specific, positive or negative, social estimation of honor” (Weber 1925a/1978:932,emphasis in the original). Such “honor” is expressed through “styles of life” or “con-ventions” that identify individuals with specific social circles. Race, ethnicity, religion,taste in fashion and the arts, and occupation have often formed a basis for making sta-tus distinctions. More than anything, membership in status groups serves to restrict anindividual’s chances for social interaction. For instance, the selection of marriage part-ners has frequently depended on a potential mate’s religion or ethnicity. Even in mod-ern, “egalitarian” societies like the United States, interracial marriages are relativelyuncommon.

Additionally, regardless of possessing significant economic power or materialwealth, one’s race or religion can either close or open a person to educationaland professional opportunities, as well as to membership in various clubs or

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associations.1 Indeed, once membership into a style of life or institution can be bought,its ability to function as an expression of social honor or sign of exclusivity is threat-ened. This dynamic can be seen in shifting fashions in clothes and tastes in music, aswell as in the democratization of education whereby proper “breeding” is no longer aprerequisite for getting a college diploma.

The third domain from which distinct interests are generated and power is exercised isthe “legal order.” Here, “parties’ reside in the sphere of power” (Weber 1925a/1978:938).They include not only explicitly political groups but also rationally organized groups moregenerally. As such, parties are characterized by the strategic pursuit of goals and the main-tenance of a staff capable of implementing their objectives. Moreover, they are not neces-sarily tied to either class or status group interests, but are aimed instead at “influencing acommunal action no matter what its content may be” (ibid.). Examples of parties includelabor unions, which, through bureaucratic channels and the election of officers, seek to wineconomic benefits on behalf of workers, and, of course, the Republican and Democraticparties, which pursue legislative action that alternates between serving the class interests oftheir constituents (e.g., tax policy, trade regulations) and the interests of varying statusgroups (e.g., affirmative action, abortion rights, and gun control).


1During the early years of unionizing in the United States, trade unions were racially, and at timesethnically, segregated. Thus, while sharing a common “class situation,” workers, nevertheless,were divided by status group memberships. Some sociologists and labor historians have arguedthat the overriding salience of racial (i.e., status group) divisions fractured the working class, pre-venting workers from achieving more fully their class-based interests. Similar arguments havebeen made with regard to the feminist movement. In this case, white, middle-class women arecharged with forsaking the plight of non-white and lower-class women in favor of pursuing goalsthat derive from their unique class situation.

ACTION

Nonrational

Rational

Individual

Status

Interests

Collective

Status Groups:“A specific, positive or negative,social estimation of honor”

Class:People who share “lifechances” or possibilities thatare “determined by economicinterests in the possession ofgoods and opportunities forincome”

Party:Aimed at “influencing acommunal action no matterwhat its content may be”

Table 4.1 Weber’s Notion of Class, Status, and Party

ORDER

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A. Economically determined power and thestatus order. The structure of every legal orderdirectly influences the distribution of power,economic or otherwise, within its respectivecommunity. This is true of all legal orders andnot only that of the state. In general, we under-stand by “power” the chance of a man or anumber of men to realize their own will in asocial action even against the resistance ofothers who are participating in the action.

“Economically conditioned” power is not, ofcourse, identical with “power” as such. On thecontrary, the emergence of economic power maybe the consequence of power existing on othergrounds. Man does not strive for power only inorder to enrich economically. Power, includingeconomic power, may be valued for its own sake.Very frequently the striving for power is also con-ditioned by the social honor it entails. Not allpower, however, entails social honor: The typicalAmerican Boss, as well as the typical big specu-lator, deliberately relinquishes social honor. Quitegenerally, “mere economic” power, and especially“naked” money power, is by no means a recog-nized basis of social honor. Nor is power the onlybasis of social honor. Indeed, social honor, orprestige, may even be the basis of economicpower, and very frequently has been. Power, aswell as honor, may be guaranteed by the legalorder, but, at least normally, it is not their primarysource. The legal order is rather an additional fac-tor that enhances the chance to hold power orhonor; but it can not always secure them.

The way in which social honor is distributed ina community between typical groups participatingin this distribution we call the “status order.” Thesocial order and the economic order are related ina similar manner to the legal order. However, the

economic order merely defines the way in whicheconomic goods and services are distributedand used. Of course, the status order is stronglyinfluenced by it, and in turn reacts upon it.

Now: “classes,” “status groups,” and “par-ties” are phenomena of the distribution of powerwithin a community.

B. Determination of class situation by marketsituation. In our terminology, “classes” are notcommunities; they merely represent possible,and frequent, bases for social action. We mayspeak of a “class” when (1) a number of peoplehave in common a specific causal component oftheir life chances, insofar as (2) this componentis represented exclusively by economic interestsin the possession of goods and opportunities forincome, and (3) is represented under the condi-tions of the commodity or labor markets. This is“class situation.”

It is the most elemental economic fact that theway in which the disposition over material prop-erty is distributed among a plurality of people,meeting competitively in the market for the pur-pose of exchange, in itself creates specific lifechances. The mode of distribution, in accord withthe law of marginal utility, excludes the non-wealthy from competing for highly valued goods;it favors the owners and, in fact, gives to them amonopoly to acquire such goods. Other thingsbeing equal, the mode of distribution monopo-lizes the opportunities for profitable deals for allthose who, provided with goods, do not necessar-ily have to exchange them. It increases, at leastgenerally, their power in the price struggle withthose who, being propertyless, have nothing tooffer but their labor or the resulting products, andwho are compelled to get rid of these products in

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❖

The Distribution of Power Within thePolitical Community: Class, Status, Party (1925)

Max Weber

Source: Excerpts from Max Weber’s Economy and Society, 2 vols. Translated and edited by Guenther Roth andClaus Wittich; © 1978 the Regents of the University of California. Original work published 1925. Reprinted withpermission granted by the Regents of the University of California and the University of California Press.

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order to subsist at all. The mode of distributiongives to the propertied a monopoly on the possi-bility of transferring property from the sphere ofuse as “wealth” to the sphere of “capital,” that is,it gives them the entrepreneurial function and allchances to share directly or indirectly in returnson capital. All this holds true within the area inwhich pure market conditions prevail. “Property”and “lack of property” are, therefore, the basiccategories of all class situations. It does not mat-ter whether these two categories become effectivein the competitive struggles of the consumers orof the producers.

Within these categories, however, class situa-tions are further differentiated: on the one hand,according to the kind of property that is usablefor returns; and, on the other hand, according tothe kind of services that can be offered in themarket. Ownership of dwellings; workshops;warehouses; stores; agriculturally usable landin large or small holdings—a quantitative differ-ence with possibly qualitative consequences;ownership of mines; cattle; men (slaves); dispo-sition over mobile instruments of production, orcapital goods of all sorts, especially money orobjects that can easily be exchanged for money;disposition over products of one’s own labor orof others’ labor differing according to their var-ious distances from consumability; dispositionover transferable monopolies of any kind—allthese distinctions differentiate the class situa-tions of the propertied just as does the “mean-ing” which they can give to the use of property,especially to property which has money equiva-lence. Accordingly, the propertied, for instance,may belong to the class of rentiers or to the classof entrepreneurs.

Those who have no property but who offerservices are differentiated just as much accord-ing to their kinds of services as according to theway in which they make use of these services, ina continuous or discontinuous relation to arecipient. But always this is the generic conno-tation of the concept of class: that the kind ofchance in the market is the decisive momentwhich presents a common condition for theindividual’s fate. Class situation is, in this sense,ultimately market situation. The effect of nakedpossession per se, which among cattle breedersgives the non-owning slave or serf into thepower of the cattle owner, is only a fore-runner

of real “class” formation. However, in the cattleloan and in the naked severity of the law ofdebts in such communities for the first timemere “possession” as such emerges as decisivefor the fate of the individual; this is much incontrast to crop-raising communities, which arebased on labor. The creditor-debtor relationbecomes the basis of “class situations” first inthe cities, where a “credit market,” howeverprimitive, with rates of interest increasingaccording to the extent of dearth and factualmonopolization of lending in the hands of aplutocracy could develop. Therewith “classstruggles” begin.

Those men whose fate is not determinedby the chance of using goods or services forthemselves on the market, e.g., slaves, are not,however, a class in the technical sense of theterm. They are, rather, a status group.

C. Social action flowing from class interest.According to our terminology, the factor thatcreates “class” is unambiguously economic inter-est, and indeed, only those interests involvedin the existence of the market. Nevertheless, theconcept of class-interest is an ambiguous one:even as an empirical concept it is ambiguous assoon as one understands by it something otherthan the factual direction of interests followingwith a certain probability from the class situa-tion for a certain average of those people sub-jected to the class situation. The class situationand other circumstances remaining the same,the direction in which the individual worker, forinstance, is likely to pursue his interests mayvary widely, according to whether he is consti-tutionally qualified for the task at hand to a high,to an average, or to a low degree. In the sameway, the direction of interests may vary accord-ing to whether or not social action of a larger orsmaller portion of those commonly affected bythe class situation, or even an association amongthem, e.g., a trade union, has grown out of theclass situation, from which the individual mayexpect promising results for himself. The emer-gence of an association or even of mere socialaction from a common class situation is by nomeans a universal phenomenon.

The class situation may be restricted in itsefforts to the generation of essentially similarreactions, that is to say, within our terminology,


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of “mass behavior.” However, it may not evenhave this result. Furthermore, often merelyamorphous social action emerges. For example,the “grumbling” of workers known in ancientOriental ethics: The moral disapproval of thework-master’s conduct, which in its practicalsignificance was probably equivalent to anincreasingly typical phenomenon of preciselythe latest industrial development, namely, theslowdown of laborers by virtue of tacit agree-ment. The degree in which “social action” andpossibly associations emerge from the massbehavior of the members of a class is linked togeneral cultural conditions, especially to thoseof an intellectual sort. It is also linked to theextent of the contrasts that have already evolved,and is especially linked to the transparency ofthe connections between the causes and the con-sequences of the class situation. For howeverdifferent life chances may be, this fact in itself,according to all experience, by no means givesbirth to “class action” (social action by themembers of a class). For that, the real conditionsand the results of the class situation must be dis-tinctly recognizable. For only then the contrastof life chances can be felt not as an absolutelygiven fact to be accepted, but as a resultant fromeither (1) the given distribution of property, or(2) the structure of the concrete economic order.It is only then that people may react against theclass structure not only through acts of intermit-tent and irrational protest, but in the form ofrational association. There have been “classsituations” of the first category (1), of a specifi-cally naked and transparent sort, in the urbancenters of Antiquity and during the MiddleAges; especially then when great fortunes wereaccumulated by factually monopolized tradingin local industrial products or in foodstuffs;furthermore, under certain conditions, in therural economy of the most diverse periods,when agriculture was increasingly exploited in aprofit-making manner. The most important his-torical example of the second category (2) is theclass situation of the modern proletariat.

D. Types of class struggle. Thus every class maybe the carrier of any one of the innumerable pos-sible forms of class action, but this is not neces-sarily so. In any case, a class does not in itselfconstitute a group (Gemeinschaft). To treat

“class” conceptually as being equivalent to“group” leads to distortion. That men in thesame class situation regularly react in massactions to such tangible situations as economicones in the direction of those interests that aremost adequate to their average number is animportant and after all simple fact for the under-standing of historical events. However, this factmust not lead to that kind of pseudo-scientificoperation with the concepts of class and classinterests which is so frequent these days andwhich has found its most classic expression inthe statement of a talented author, that the indi-vidual may be in error concerning his interestsbut that the class is infallible about its interests.

If classes as such are not groups, neverthelessclass situations emerge only on the basis ofsocial action. However, social action that bringsforth class situations is not basically actionamong members of the identical class; it is anaction among members of different classes.Social actions that directly determine the classsituation of the worker and the entrepreneur are:the labor market, the commodities market, andthe capitalistic enterprise. But, in its turn, theexistence of a capitalistic enterprise presup-poses that a very specific kind of social actionexists to protect the possession of goods per se,and especially the power of individuals to dis-pose, in principle freely, over the means of pro-duction: a certain kind of legal order. Each kindof class situation, and above all when it restsupon the power of property per se, will becomemost clearly efficacious when all other determi-nants of reciprocal relations are, as far as possi-ble, eliminated in their significance. It is in thisway that the use of the power of property in themarket obtains its most sovereign importance.

Now status groups hinder the strict carryingthrough of the sheer market principle. In thepresent context they are of interest only fromthis one point of view. Before we briefly con-sider them, note that not much of a generalnature can be said about the more specific kindsof antagonism between classes (in our meaningof the term). The great shift, which has beengoing on continuously in the past, and up to ourtimes, may be summarized, although at a cost ofsome precision: the struggle in which class situ-ations are effective has progressively shifted fromconsumption credit toward, first, competitive

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struggles in the commodity market and thentoward wage disputes on the labor market. Theclass struggles of Antiquity—to the extent thatthey were genuine class struggles and not strug-gles between status groups—were initially car-ried on by peasants and perhaps also artisansthreatened by debt bondage and strugglingagainst urban creditors. . . .

The propertyless of Antiquity and of theMiddle Ages protested against monopolies, pre-emption, forestalling, and the withholding ofgoods from the market in order to raise prices.Today the central issue is the determination ofthe price of labor. The transition is representedby the fight for access to the market and for thedetermination of the price of products. Suchfights went on between merchants and workersin the putting-out system of domestic handicraftduring the transition to modern times. Since it isquite a general phenomenon we must mentionhere that the class antagonisms that are condi-tioned through the market situations are usuallymost bitter between those who actually anddirectly participate as opponents in price wars.It is not the rentier, the share-holder, and thebanker who suffer the ill will of the worker, butalmost exclusively the manufacturer and thebusiness executives who are the direct oppo-nents of workers in wage conflicts. This is so inspite of the fact that it is precisely the cashboxes of the rentier, the shareholder, and thebanker into which the more or less unearnedgains flow, rather than into the pockets of themanufacturers or of the business executives.This simple state of affairs has very frequentlybeen decisive for the role the class situationhas played in the formation of political parties.For example, it has made possible the varietiesof patriarchal socialism and the frequentattempts—formerly, at least—of threatened sta-tus groups to form alliances with the proletariatagainst the bourgeoisie.

E. Status honor. In contrast to classes, Stände(status groups) are normally groups. They are,however, often of an amorphous kind. In con-trast to the purely economically determined“class situation,” we wish to designate as statussituation every typical component of the life ofmen that is determined by a specific, positive ornegative, social estimation of honor. This honor

may be connected with any quality shared by aplurality, and, of course, it can be knit to a classsituation: class distinctions are linked in themost varied ways with status distinctions.Property as such is not always recognized as astatus qualification, but in the long run it is, andwith extraordinary regularity. In the subsistenceeconomy of neighborhood associations, it isoften simply the richest who is the “chieftain.”However, this often is only an honorific prefer-ence. For example, in the so-called pure moderndemocracy, that is, one devoid of any expresslyordered status privileges for individuals, it maybe that only the families coming under approxi-mately the same tax class dance with one another.This example is reported of certain smallerSwiss cities. But status honor need not neces-sarily be linked with a class situation. On thecontrary, it normally stands in sharp oppositionto the pretensions of sheer property.

Both propertied and propertyless people canbelong to the same status group, and frequentlythey do with very tangible consequences. Thisequality of social esteem may, however, in thelong run become quite precarious. The equalityof status among American gentlemen, forinstance, is expressed by the fact that outside thesubordination determined by the different func-tions of business, it would be considered strictlyrepugnant—wherever the old tradition still pre-vails—if even the richest boss, while playingbilliards or cards in his club would not treat hisclerk as in every sense fully his equal inbirthright, but would bestow upon him the con-descending status-conscious “benevolence”which the German boss can never dissever fromhis attitude. This is one of the most importantreasons why in America the German clubs havenever been able to attain the attraction that theAmerican clubs have.

In content, status honor is normally expressedby the fact that above all else a specific style oflife is expected from all those who wish tobelong to the circle. Linked with this expecta-tion are restrictions on social intercourse (thatis, intercourse which is not subservient to eco-nomic or any other purposes). These restrictionsmay confine normal marriages to within thestatus circle and may lead to complete endog-amous closure. Whenever this is not a mereindividual and socially irrelevant imitation of


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another style of life, but consensual action ofthis closing character, the status development isunder way.

In its characteristic form, stratification bystatus groups on the basis of conventional stylesof life evolves at the present time in the UnitedStates out of the traditional democracy. Forexample, only the resident of a certain street(“the Street”) is considered as belonging to“society,” is qualified for social intercourse, andis visited and invited. Above all, this differenti-ation evolves in such a way as to make for strictsubmission to the fashion that is dominant at agiven time in society. This submission to fash-ion also exists among men in America to adegree unknown in Germany; it appears as anindication of the fact that a given man putsforward a claim to qualify as a gentleman. Thissubmission decides, at least prima facie, thathe will be treated as such. And this recognitionbecomes just as important for his employmentchances in swank establishments, and aboveall, for social intercourse and marriage with“esteemed” families, as the qualification fordueling among Germans. As for the rest, statushonor is usurped by certain families resident fora long time, and, of course, correspondinglywealthy (e.g., F.F.V., the First Families ofVirginia), or by the actual or alleged descen-dants of the “Indian Princess” Pocahontas, ofthe Pilgrim fathers, or of the Knickerbockers,the members of almost inaccessible sects and allsorts of circles setting themselves apart bymeans of any other characteristics and badges.In this case stratification is purely conventionaland rests largely on usurpation (as does almostall status honor in its beginning). But the road tolegal privilege, positive or negative, is easilytraveled as soon as a certain stratification of thesocial order has in fact been “lived in” and hasachieved stability by virtue of a stable distribu-tion of economic power.

F. Ethnic segregation and caste. Where theconsequences have been realized to their fullextent, the status group evolves into a closedcaste. Status distinctions are then guaranteed notmerely by conventions and laws, but also byreligious sanctions. This occurs in such a waythat every physical contact with a member ofany caste that is considered to be lower by

the members of a higher caste is considered asmaking for a ritualistic impurity and a stigmawhich must be expiated by a religious act. Inaddition, individual castes develop quite distinctcults and gods.

In general, however, the status structurereaches such extreme consequences only wherethere are underlying differences which are heldto be “ethnic.” The caste is, indeed, the normalform in which ethnic communities that believein blood relationship and exclude exogamousmarriage and social intercourse usually associ-ate with one another. Such a caste situationis part of the phenomenon of pariah peoplesand is found all over the world. These peopleform communities, acquire specific occupationaltraditions of handicrafts or of other arts, andcultivate a belief in their ethnic community.They live in a diaspora strictly segregated fromall personal intercourse, except that of anunavoidable sort, and their situation is legallyprecarious. Yet, by virtue of their economicindispensability, they are tolerated, indeed fre-quently privileged, and they live interspersedin the political communities. The Jews are themost impressive historical example.

A status segregation grown into a castediffers in its structure from a mere ethnic segre-gation: the caste structure transforms thehorizontal and unconnected coexistences of eth-nically segregated groups into a vertical socialsystem of super- and subordination. Correctlyformulated: a comprehensive association inte-grates the ethnically divided communities intoone political unit. They differ precisely in thisway: ethnic coexistence, based on mutual repul-sion and disdain, allows each ethnic communityto consider its own honor as the highest one; thecaste structure brings about a social subordina-tion and an acknowledgement of “more honor”in favor of the privileged caste and statusgroups. This is due to the fact that in the castestructure ethnic distinctions as such havebecome “functional” distinctions within thepolitical association (warriors, priests, artisansthat are politically important for war and forbuilding, and so on). But even pariah peopleswho are most despised (for example, the Jews)are usually apt to continue cultivating the beliefin their own specific “honor,” a belief that isequally peculiar to ethnic and to status groups.

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However, with the negatively privilegedstatus groups the sense of dignity takes aspecific deviation. A sense of dignity is theprecipitation in individuals of social honor andof conventional demands which a positivelyprivileged status group raises for the deport-ment of its members. The sense of dignitythat characterizes positively privileged statusgroups is naturally related to their “being”which does not transcend itself, that is, it isrelated to their “beauty and excellence”(öικειoν εργoν). Their kingdom is “of thisworld.” They live for the present and byexploiting their great past. The sense of dignityof the negatively privileged strata naturallyrefers to a future lying beyond the present,whether it is of this life or of another. In otherwords, it must be nurtured by the belief in aprovidential mission and by a belief in a spe-cific honor before God. The chosen people’sdignity is nurtured by a belief either that in thebeyond “the last will be the first,” or that in thislife a Messiah will appear to bring forth intothe light of the world which has cast them outthe hidden honor of the pariah people. Thissimple state of affairs, and not the resentmentwhich is so strongly emphasized in Nietzsche’smuch-admired construction in the Genealogyof Morals, is the source of the religiosity culti-vated by pariah status groups. . . .

For the rest, the development of status groupsfrom ethnic segregations is by no means thenormal phenomenon. On the contrary. Sinceobjective “racial differences” are by no meansbehind every subjective sentiment of an ethniccommunity, the question of an ultimately racialfoundation of status structure is rightly aquestion of the concrete individual case. Veryfrequently a status group is instrumental in theproduction of a thoroughbred anthropologi-cal type. Certainly status groups are to a highdegree effective in producing extreme types,for they select personally qualified individuals(e.g., the knighthood selects those who are fitfor warfare, physically and psychically). Butindividual selection is far from being the only,or the predominant, way in which status groupsare formed: political membership or class situa-tion has at all times been at least as frequentlydecisive. And today the class situation is by farthe predominant factor. After all, the possibility

of a style of life expected for members of a statusgroup is usually conditioned economically.

G. Status privileges. For all practical purposes,stratification by status goes hand in hand witha monopolization of ideal and material goodsor opportunities, in a manner we have cometo know as typical. Besides the specific statushonor, which always rests upon distance andexclusiveness, honorific preferences may consistof the privilege of wearing special costumes,of eating special dishes taboo to others, ofcarrying arms—which is most obvious in itsconsequences—, the right to be a dilettante, forexample, to play certain musical instruments.However, material monopolies provide the mosteffective motives for the exclusiveness of a sta-tus group; although, in themselves, they arerarely sufficient, almost always they come intoplay to some extent. Within a status circle thereis the question of intermarriage: the interest ofthe families in the monopolization of potentialbridegrooms is at least of equal importance andis parallel to the interest in the monopolizationof daughters. The daughters of the membersmust be provided for. With an increased closureof the status group, the conventional preferentialopportunities for special employment grow intoa legal monopoly of special offices for themembers. Certain goods become objects formonopolization by status groups, typically,entailed estates, and frequently also the posses-sion of serfs or bondsmen and, finally, specialtrades. This monopolization occurs positivelywhen the status group is exclusively entitled toown and to manage them; and negatively when,in order to maintain its specific way of life, thestatus group must not own and manage them. Forthe decisive role of a style of life in status honormeans that status groups are the specific bearersof all conventions. In whatever way it may bemanifest, all stylization of life either originatesin status groups or is at least conserved by them.Even if the principles of status conventionsdiffer greatly, they reveal certain typical traits,especially among the most privileged strata.Quite generally, among privileged status groupsthere is a status disqualification that operatesagainst the performance of common physicallabor. This disqualification is now “setting in” inAmerica against the old tradition of esteem for


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labor. Very frequently every rational economicpursuit, and especially entrepreneurial activity, islooked upon as a disqualification of status.Artistic and literary activity is also considereddegrading work as soon as it is exploited forincome, or at least when it is connected withhard physical exertion. An example is the sculp-tor working like a mason in his dusty smock asover against the painter in his salon-like studioand those forms of musical practice that areacceptable to the status group.

H. Economic conditions and effects of statusstratification. The frequent disqualificationof the gainfully employed as such is a directresult of the principle of status stratification,and of course, of this principle’s oppositionto a distribution of power which is regulatedexclusively through the market. These twofactors operate along with various individualones, which will be touched upon below.

We have seen above that the market andits processes knows no personal distinctions:“functional” interests dominate it. It knowsnothing of honor. The status order means pre-cisely the reverse: stratification in terms ofhonor and styles of life peculiar to status groupsas such. The status order would be threatened atits very root if mere economic acquisition andnaked economic power still bearing the stigmaof its extra-status origin could bestow upon any-one who has won them the same or even greaterhonor as the vested interests claim for them-selves. After all, given equality of status honor,property per se represents an addition even ifit is not overtly acknowledged to be such.Therefore all groups having interest in the statusorder react with special sharpness preciselyagainst the pretensions of purely economicacquisition. In most cases they react the morevigorously the more they feel themselves threat-ened. . . . Precisely because of the rigorousreactions against the claims of property per se,the “parvenu” is never accepted, personally andwithout reservation, by the privileged statusgroups, no matter how completely his style oflife has been adjusted to theirs. They will onlyaccept his descendants who have been educatedin the conventions of their status group and whohave never besmirched its honor by their owneconomic labor.

As to the general effect of the status order,only one consequence can be stated, but it is avery important one: the hindrance of the freedevelopment of the market. This occurs first forthose goods that status groups directly withholdfrom free exchange by monopolization, whichmay be effected either legally or conventionally.For example, in many Hellenic cities during the“status era” and also originally in Rome, theinherited estate (as shown by the old formula forplacing spendthrifts under a guardian) wasmonopolized, as were the estates of knights,peasants, priests, and especially the clienteleof the craft and merchant guilds. The market isrestricted, and the power of naked property perse, which gives its stamp to class formation,is pushed into the background. The results ofthis process can be most varied. Of course, theydo not necessarily weaken the contrasts in theeconomic situation. Frequently they strengthenthese contrasts, and in any case, where stratifi-cation by status permeates a community asstrongly as was the case in all political commu-nities of Antiquity and of the Middle Ages, onecan never speak of a genuinely free marketcompetition as we understand it today. There arewider effects than this direct exclusion ofspecial goods from the market. From the con-flict between the status order and the purelyeconomic order mentioned above, it follows thatin most instances the notion of honor peculiarto status absolutely abhors that which is essentialto the market: hard bargaining. Honor abhorshard bargaining among peers and occasionallyit taboos it for the members of a status groupin general. Therefore, everywhere some statusgroups, and usually the most influential, con-sider almost any kind of overt participation ineconomic acquisition as absolutely stigmatizing.

With some over-simplification, one mightthus say that classes are stratified according totheir relations to the production and acquisitionof goods; whereas status groups are stratifiedaccording to the principles of their consumptionof goods as represented by special styles of life.

An “occupational status group,” too, is a sta-tus group proper. For normally, it successfullyclaims social honor only by virtue of the specialstyle of life which may be determined by it. Thedifferences between classes and status groupsfrequently overlap. It is precisely those status

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communities most strictly segregated in termsof honor (viz., the Indian castes) who today show,although within very rigid limits, a relativelyhigh degree of indifference to pecuniary income.However, the Brahmins seek such income inmany different ways.

As to the general economic conditionsmaking for the predominance of stratification bystatus, only the following can be said. Whenthe bases of the acquisition and distributionof goods are relatively stable, stratification bystatus is favored. Every technological repercus-sion and economic transformation threatensstratification by status and pushes the class situ-ation into the foreground. Epochs and countriesin which the naked class situation is of predom-inant significance are regularly the periods oftechnical and economic transformations. Andevery slowing down of the change in economicstratification leads, in due course, to the growthof status structures and makes for a resuscitationof the important role of social honor.

I. Parties. Whereas the genuine place of classesis within the economic order, the place ofstatus groups is within the social order, thatis, within the sphere of the distribution ofhonor. From within these spheres, classes andstatus groups influence one another and thelegal order and are in turn influenced by it.“Parties” reside in the sphere of power. Theiraction is oriented toward the acquisition ofsocial power, that is to say, toward influencingsocial action no matter what its content maybe. In principle, parties may exist in a socialclub as well as in a state. As over against theactions of classes and status groups, for whichthis is not necessarily the case, party-orientedsocial action always involves association. Forit is always directed toward a goal which isstriven for in a planned manner. This goal maybe a cause (the party may aim at realizing aprogram for ideal or material purposes), orthe goal may be personal (sinecures, power,and from these, honor for the leader and thefollowers of the party). Usually the party aimsat all these simultaneously. Parties are, there-fore, only possible within groups that have anassociational character, that is, some rationalorder and a staff of persons available who areready to enforce it. For parties aim precisely at

influencing this staff, and if possible, to recruitfrom it party members.

In any individual case, parties may representinterests determined through class situation orstatus situation, and they may recruit their fol-lowing respectively from one or the other. Butthey need be neither purely class nor purely sta-tus parties; in fact, they are more likely to bemixed types, and sometimes they are neither.They may represent ephemeral or enduringstructures. Their means of attaining power maybe quite varied, ranging from naked violenceof any sort to canvassing for votes with coarseor subtle means: money, social influence, theforce of speech, suggestion, clumsy hoax, andso on to the rougher or more artful tactics ofobstruction in parliamentary bodies.

The sociological structure of parties differsin a basic way according to the kind of socialaction which they struggle to influence; thatmeans, they differ according to whether or notthe community is stratified by status or byclasses. Above all else, they vary according tothe structure of domination. For their leadersnormally deal with its conquest. In our generalterminology, parties are not only products ofmodern forms of domination. We shall also des-ignate as parties the ancient and medieval ones,despite the fact that they differ basically frommodern parties. Since a party always strugglesfor political control (Herrschaft), its organiza-tion too is frequently strict and “authoritarian.”Because of these variations between the formsof domination, it is impossible to say anythingabout the structure of parties without discussingthem first. Therefore, we shall now turn to thiscentral phenomenon of all social organization.

Before we do this, we should add one moregeneral observation about classes, status groupsand parties: The fact that they presuppose alarger association, especially the framework of apolity, does not mean that they are confined to it.On the contrary, at all times it has been the orderof the day that such association (even when itaims at the use of military force in common)reaches beyond the state boundaries. This can beseen in the [interlocal] solidarity of interests ofoligarchs and democrats in Hellas, of Guelphsand Ghibellines in the Middle Ages, and withinthe Calvinist party during the age of religiousstruggles; and all the way up to the solidarity

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of landlords (International Congresses ofAgriculture), princes (Holy Alliance, KarlsbadDecrees [of 1819]), socialist workers, conserva-tives (the longing of Prussian conservatives for

Russian intervention in 1850). But their aimis not necessarily the establishment of a newterritorial dominion. In the main they aim toinfluence the existing polity.

Introduction to “The Types of Legitimate Domination”

In this selection, Weber defines three “ideal types” of legitimate domination: rationalor legal authority, traditional authority, and charismatic authority. As abstract con-structs, none of the ideal types actually exist in pure form. Instead, public authority isbased on some mixture of the three types. Nevertheless, social systems generallyexhibit a predominance of one form or another of domination.

Before briefly describing the forms of legitimate authority, we first need to clarifyWeber’s definition of legitimacy. By “legitimacy,” Weber was referring to the publiclyinvoked reasons for obeying or complying with the commands issuing from an author-ity. It is to these reasons that authority figures turn when seeking to legitimate theiractions as well as the actions of those subjected to their commands. Thus, the princi-ples on which legitimacy rests are more the expression of a particular political ideol-ogy than the expression of individuals’ underlying motives for obeying authority.

Modern states are ruled through rational-legal authority. This form of domination isbased on the rule of law. Legitimacy thus rests “on a belief in the legality of enactedrules and the right of those elevated to authority under such rules to issue commands”(Weber 1925b/1978:215). Obedience is owed not to the person occupying the office,but to the office itself, that is, to the impersonal, legal order. For it is this order that veststhe superior with the authority to demand compliance, a right which is ceded uponvacating the office. Once retired, a police officer is but another civilian and as such nolonger has the power to enforce the law.

Traditional authority is the authority of “eternal yesterday.” It rests on an “establishedbelief in the sanctity of immemorial traditions” (ibid.:215). This is the rule of kings andtribal chieftains. Leadership is attained not on the basis of impersonally measured merit,but on lines of heredity or rites of passage. Subjects owe their allegiance not to bureau-cratically imposed rules, but to their “master.” Compliance, then, is based on the personalloyalty demanded by tradition. The leader’s commands are legitimate because he (or she,as in the case of Queen Victoria pictured above) is the leader.

Weber’s third type of authority derives from the charisma possessed by the leader.Demands for obedience are legitimated by the leader’s “gift of grace,” which isdemonstrated through extraordinary feats, acts of heroism, or revelations—in short,miracles. Like traditional authority, loyalty is owed to the person and not to an officeor bureaucratic position. But unlike traditional authority, compliance is demanded onthe basis of the “conception that it is the duty of those subject to charismatic author-ity to recognize its genuineness and to act accordingly” (ibid.:242). Thus, charismaticauthority is not based on appeals to tradition or to “what has always been.”

History is replete with charismatic leaders who have inspired intense personaldevotion to themselves and their cause. From Jesus and Muhammad, Joan of Arc andGandhi, to Napoleon and Hitler, such leaders have proved to be a powerful force forsocial change, both good and bad. Indeed, in its rejection of both tradition and rational,formal rules, charismatic authority, by its very nature, poses a challenge to existing

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Photo 4.1b England’s Queen Victoria (1819-1901)


Photo 4.1a William Jefferson Clinton, the 42nd President of the United States


Embodiments of legitimatedomination: President Clintonexercised rational-legal author-ity; Queen Victoria ruled onthe basis of traditional authority;Mahatma Gandhi possessedcharismatic authority.

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political order. In breaking from history as well as objective laws, charisma carries theclaim: “It is written, but I say unto you.”

Not withstanding its revolutionary potential, charismatic authority is inherentlyunstable. Charisma lasts only as long as its possessor is able to provide benefits to hisfollowers. If the leader’s prophecies are proved wrong, if enemies are not defeated, ifmiraculous deeds begin to “dry up,” then his legitimacy will be called into question. Onthe other hand, even if such deeds or benefits provide a continued source of legitimacy,

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Photo 4.1c Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948), India’s Past Spiritual and Political Leader


ACTION

Nonrational

Rational

Individual

Charismatic:“Gift of grace”of leader

Collective

Traditional:“Established belief in thesanctity of immemorialtraditions”

Rational-Legal: “Belief in thelegality of enacted rules andthe right of those elevated toauthority under such rules toissue commands”

Table 4.2 Weber’s Types of Legitimate Domination

ORDER

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DOMINATION AND LEGITIMACY

Domination was defined as the probability thatcertain specific commands (or all commands)will be obeyed by a given group of persons. Itthus does not include every mode of exercis-ing “power” or “influence” over other persons.Domination (“authority”)1 in this sense may bebased on the most diverse motives of compli-ance: all the way from simple habituation to themost purely rational calculation of advantage.Hence every genuine form of dominationimplies a minimum of voluntary compliance,that is, an interest (based on ulterior motives orgenuine acceptance) in obedience.

Not every case of domination makes use ofeconomic means; still less does it always haveeconomic objectives. However, normally the ruleover a considerable number of persons requires astaff, that is, a special group which can normallybe trusted to execute the general policy as well asthe specific commands. The members of theadministrative staff may be bound to obedienceto their superior (or superiors) by custom, byaffectual ties, by a purely material complex ofinterests, or by ideal (wertrationale) motives.The quality of these motives largely determinesthe type of domination. Purely material interestsand calculations of advantages as the basis ofsolidarity between the chief and his administra-tive staff result, in this as in other connexions, ina relatively unstable situation. Normally other

elements, affectual and ideal, supplement suchinterests. In certain exceptional cases the formeralone may be decisive. In everyday life theserelationships, like others, are governed by cus-tom and material calculation of advantage. Butcustom, personal advantage, purely affectual orideal motives of solidarity, do not form a suffi-ciently reliable basis for a given domination. Inaddition there is normally a further element, thebelief in legitimacy.

Experience shows that in no instance doesdomination voluntarily limit itself to the appealto material or affectual or ideal motives as abasis for its continuance. In addition every suchsystem attempts to establish and to cultivate thebelief in its legitimacy. But according to thekind of legitimacy which is claimed, the type ofobedience, the kind of administrative staffdeveloped to guarantee it, and the mode of exer-cising authority, will all differ fundamentally.Equally fundamental is the variation in effect.Hence, it is useful to classify the types of domi-nation according to the kind of claim to legiti-macy typically made by each. In doing this, it isbest to start from modern and therefore morefamiliar examples. . . .

The Three Pure Types of Authority

There are three pure types of legitimate dom-ination. The validity of the claims to legitimacymay be based on:


the leader at some point will die. With authority resting solely in the charismaticindividual, the movement he inspired will collapse along with his rule, unless designsfor a successor are created. Often, the transferring of authority eventually leads tothe “routinization of charisma” and the transformation of legitimacy into either arational-legal or traditional type—witness the Catholic Church.

Source: From Max Weber’s Economy and Society, 2 vols. Translated and edited by Guenther Roth and ClausWittich; © 1978 The Regents of the University of California. Original work published 1925. Reprinted withpermission granted by the Regents of the University of California and the University of California Press.

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1. Rational grounds—resting on a belief inthe legality of enacted rules and the rightof those elevated to authority under suchrules to issue commands (legal authority).

2. Traditional grounds—resting on an estab-lished belief in the sanctity of immemorialtraditions and the legitimacy of those exer-cising authority under them (traditionalauthority); or finally,

3. Charismatic grounds—resting on devotionto the exceptional sanctity, heroism orexemplary character of an individualperson, and of the normative patterns ororder revealed or ordained by him (charis-matic authority).

In the case of legal authority, obedience isowed to the legally established impersonal order.It extends to the persons exercising the authorityof office under it by virtue of the formal legalityof their commands and only within the scope ofauthority of the office. In the case of traditionalauthority, obedience is owed to the person of thechief who occupies the traditionally sanctionedposition of authority and who is (within itssphere) bound by tradition. But here the obliga-tion of obedience is a matter of personal loyaltywithin the area of accustomed obligations. Inthe case of charismatic authority, it is the charis-matically qualified leader as such who is obeyedby virtue of personal trust in his revelation, hisheroism or his exemplary qualities so far as theyfall within the scope of the individual’s belief inhis charisma. . . .

LEGAL AUTHORITY

WITH A BUREAUCRATIC STAFF

Legal Authority: The Pure Type

Legal authority rests on the acceptance ofthe validity of the following mutually inter-dependent ideas.

1. That any given legal norm may be estab-lished by agreement or by imposition, ongrounds of expediency or value-rationality orboth, with a claim to obedience at least on thepart of the members of the organization. This is,however, usually extended to include all personswithin the sphere of power in question—which

in the case of territorial bodies is the territorialarea—who stand in certain social relationshipsor carry out forms of social action which in theorder governing the organization have beendeclared to be relevant.

2. That every body of law consists essentiallyin a consistent system of abstract rules whichhave normally been intentionally established.Furthermore, administration of law is held toconsist in the application of these rules to partic-ular cases; the administrative process in the ratio-nal pursuit of the interests which are specified inthe order governing the organization within thelimits laid down by legal precepts and followingprinciples which are capable of generalized for-mulation and are approved in the order governingthe group, or at least not disapproved in it.

3. That thus the typical person in authority, the“superior,” is himself subject to an impersonalorder by orienting his actions to it in his owndispositions and commands. (This is true notonly for persons exercising legal authority whoare in the usual sense “officials,” but, forinstance, for the elected president of a state.)

4. That the person who obeys authority doesso, as it is usually stated, only in his capacity asa “member” of the organization and what heobeys is only “the law.” (He may in this connec-tion be the member of an association, of a com-munity, of a church, or a citizen of a state.)

5. In conformity with point 3, it is held thatthe members of the organization, insofar as theyobey a person in authority, do not owe this obe-dience to him as an individual, but to the imper-sonal order. Hence, it follows that there is anobligation to obedience only within the sphereof the rationally delimited jurisdiction which, interms of the order, has been given to him. . . .

The purest type of exercise of legal authorityis that which employs a bureaucratic adminis-trative staff. Only the supreme chief of the orga-nization occupies his position of dominance(Herrenstellung) by virtue of appropriation, ofelection, or of having been designated for thesuccession. But even his authority consists in asphere of legal “competence.” The wholeadministrative staff under the supreme authoritythen consist, in the purest type, of individualofficials (constituting a “monocracy” asopposed to the “collegial” type, which will be

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discussed below) who are appointed and functionaccording to the following criteria:

(1) They are personally free and subject toauthority only with respect to theirimpersonal official obligations.

(2) They are organized in a clearly definedhierarchy of offices.

(3) Each office has a clearly defined sphereof competence in the legal sense.

(4) The office is filled by a free contractualrelationship. Thus, in principle, there isfree selection.

(5) Candidates are selected on the basis oftechnical qualifications. In the mostrational case, this is tested by examina-tion or guaranteed by diplomas certify-ing technical training, or both. They areappointed, not elected.

(6) They are remunerated by fixed salariesin money, for the most part with a rightto pensions. Only under certain circum-stances does the employing authority,especially in private organizations,have a right to terminate the appointment,but the official is always free to resign.The salary scale is graded according torank in the hierarchy; but in addition tothis criterion, the responsibility of theposition and the requirements of theincumbent’s social status may be takeninto account.

(7) The office is treated as the sole, or atleast the primary, occupation of theincumbent.

(8) It constitutes a career. There is a systemof “promotion” according to seniorityor to achievement, or both. Promotion isdependent on the judgment of superiors.

(9) The official works entirely separatedfrom ownership of the means of admin-istration and without appropriation ofhis position.

(10) He is subject to strict and systematicdiscipline and control in the conduct ofthe office.

This type of organization is in principleapplicable with equal facility to a wide varietyof different fields. It may be applied in profit-making business or in charitable organizations,or in any number of other types of privateenterprises serving ideal or material ends. It isequally applicable to political and to hiero-cratic organizations. With the varying degreesof approximation to a pure type, its historicalexistence can be demonstrated in all thesefields. . . .

TRADITIONAL AUTHORITY:THE PURE TYPE

Authority will be called traditional if legiti-macy is claimed for it and believed in byvirtue of the sanctity of age-old rules and pow-ers. The masters are designated according totraditional rules and are obeyed because oftheir traditional status (Eigenwürde). Thistype of organized rule is, in the simplest case,primarily based on personal loyalty whichresults from common upbringing. The personexercising authority is not a “superior,” but apersonal master, his administrative staff doesnot consist mainly of officials but of personalretainers, and the ruled are not “members” ofan association but are either his traditional“comrades” or his “subjects.” Personal loyalty,not the official’s impersonal duty, determinesthe relations of the administrative staff to themaster.

Obedience is owed not to enacted rules but tothe person who occupies a position of authorityby tradition or who has been chosen for it by thetraditional master. The commands of such aperson are legitimized in one of two ways:

a) partly in terms of traditions which them-selves directly determine the content of thecommand and are believed to be valid withincertain limits that cannot be oversteppedwithout endangering the master’s traditionalstatus;

b) partly in terms of the master’s discretion inthat sphere which tradition leaves open to him;this traditional prerogative rests primarily on thefact that the obligations of personal obediencetend to be essentially unlimited.


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Thus there is a double sphere:

a) that of action which is bound to specifictraditions;

b) that of action which is free of specificrules.

In the latter sphere, the master is free to dogood turns on the basis of his personal pleasureand likes, particularly in return for gifts—thehistorical sources of dues (Gebühren). So far ashis action follows principles at all, these aregoverned by considerations of ethical commonsense, of equity or of utilitarian expediency.They are not formal principles, as in the case oflegal authority. The exercise of power is ori-ented toward the consideration of how far mas-ter and staff can go in view of the subjects’traditional compliance without arousing theirresistance. When resistance occurs, it is directedagainst the master or his servant personally, theaccusation being that he failed to observe thetraditional limits of his power. Opposition is notdirected against the system as such—it is a caseof “traditionalist revolution.”

In the pure type of traditional authority it isimpossible for law or administrative rule to bedeliberately created by legislation. Rules whichin fact are innovations can be legitimized onlyby the claim that they have been “valid of yore,”but have only now been recognized by means of“Wisdom” [the Weistum of ancient Germaniclaw]. Legal decisions as “finding of the law”(Rechtsfindung) can refer only to documentsof tradition, namely to precedents and earlierdecisions. . . .

In the pure type of traditional rule, the fol-lowing features of a bureaucratic administrativestaff are absent:

a) a clearly defined sphere of competencesubject to impersonal rules,

b) a rationally established hierarchy,

c) a regular system of appointment onthe basis of free contract, and orderlypromotion,

d) technical training as a regular requirement,

e) (frequently) fixed salaries, in the type casepaid in money. . . .

CHARISMATIC AUTHORITY

The term “charisma” will be applied to acertain quality of an individual personality byvirtue of which he is considered extraordinaryand treated as endowed with supernatural,superhuman, or at least specifically excep-tional powers or qualities. These are such asare not accessible to the ordinary person, butare regarded as of divine origin or as exem-plary, and on the basis of them the individualconcerned is treated as a “leader.” In primitivecircumstances this peculiar kind of quality isthought of as resting on magical powers,whether of prophets, persons with a reputa-tion for therapeutic or legal wisdom, leadersin the hunt, or heroes in war. How the qualityin question would be ultimately judged fromany ethical, aesthetic, or other such point ofview is naturally entirely indifferent for pur-poses of definition. What is alone importantis how the individual is actually regarded bythose subject to charismatic authority, by his“followers” or “disciples.”. . .

I. It is recognition on the part of those subjectto authority which is decisive for the validity ofcharisma. This recognition is freely given andguaranteed by what is held to be a proof, origi-nally always a miracle, and consists in devotionto the corresponding revelation, hero worship,or absolute trust in the leader. But wherecharisma is genuine, it is not this which is thebasis of the claim to legitimacy. This basis liesrather in the conception that it is the duty ofthose subject to charismatic authority to recog-nize its genuineness and to act accordingly.Psychologically this recognition is a matterof complete personal devotion to the possessorof the quality, arising out of enthusiasm, or ofdespair and hope. . . .

II. If proof and success elude the leader forlong, if he appears deserted by his god or hismagical or heroic powers, above all, if his lead-ership fails to benefit his followers, it is likelythat his charismatic authority will disappear.This is the genuine meaning of the divine rightof kings (Gottesgnadentum). . . .

III. An organized group subject to charis-matic authority will be called a charismaticcommunity (Gemeinde). It is based on an

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emotional form of communal relationship(Vergemeinschaftung). The administrative staffof a charismatic leader does not consist of “offi-cials”; least of all are its members technicallytrained. It is not chosen on the basis of socialprivilege nor from the point of view of domes-tic or personal dependency. It is rather chosenin terms of the charismatic qualities of itsmembers. The prophet has his disciples; thewarlord his bodyguard; the leader, generally, hisagents (Vertrauensmänner). There is no suchthing as appointment or dismissal, no career, nopromotion. There is only a call at the instance ofthe leader on the basis of the charismatic quali-fication of those he summons. There is no hier-archy; the leader merely intervenes in general orin individual cases when he considers themembers of his staff lacking in charismaticqualification for a given task. There is no suchthing as a bailiwick or definite sphere of com-petence, and no appropriation of official powerson the basis of social privileges. There may,however, be territorial or functional limits tocharismatic powers and to the individual’smission. There is no such thing as a salary ora benefice.

Disciples or followers tend to live primar-ily in a communistic relationship with theirleader on means which have been provided byvoluntary gift. There are no established admin-istrative organs. In their place are agents whohave been provided with charismatic authorityby their chief or who possess charisma of theirown. There is no system of formal rules, ofabstract legal principles, and hence no processof rational judicial decision oriented to them.But equally there is no legal wisdom orientedto judicial precedent. Formally concrete judg-ments are newly created from case to caseand are originally regarded as divine judg-ments and revelations. From a substantivepoint of view, every charismatic authoritywould have to subscribe to the proposition, “Itis written . . . but I say unto you . . .” The gen-uine prophet, like the genuine military leaderand every true leader in this sense, preaches,creates, or demands new obligations—mosttypically, by virtue of revelation, oracle, inspi-ration, or of his own will, which are recognizedby the members of the religious, military, orparty group because they come from such a

source. Recognition is a duty. When such anauthority comes into conflict with the com-peting authority of another who also claimscharismatic sanction, the only recourse is tosome kind of a contest, by magical means oran actual physical battle of the leaders. Inprinciple, only one side can be right in such aconflict; the other must be guilty of a wrongwhich has to be expiated.

Since it is “extra-ordinary,” charismaticauthority is sharply opposed to rational, andparticularly bureaucratic, authority, and totraditional authority, whether in its patriarchal,patrimonial, or estate variants, all of which areeveryday forms of domination; while the charis-matic type is the direct antithesis of this.Bureaucratic authority is specifically rational inthe sense of being bound to intellectuallyanalysable rules; while charismatic authority isspecifically irrational in the sense of being for-eign to all rules. Traditional authority is boundto the precedents handed down from the pastand to this extent is also oriented to rules.Within the sphere of its claims, charismaticauthority repudiates the past, and is in this sensea specifically revolutionary force. It recognizesno appropriation of positions of power by virtueof the possession of property, either on the partof a chief or of socially privileged groups. Theonly basis of legitimacy for it is personalcharisma so long as it is proved; that is, as longas it receives recognition and as long as thefollowers and disciples prove their usefulnesscharismatically. . . .

IV. Pure charisma is specifically foreign toeconomic considerations. Wherever it appears,it constitutes a “call” in the most emphatic senseof the word, a “mission” or a “spiritual duty.” Inthe pure type, it disdains and repudiates eco-nomic exploitation of the gifts of grace as asource of income, though, to be sure, this oftenremains more an ideal than a fact. It is not thatcharisma always demands a renunciation ofproperty or even of acquisition, as under certaincircumstances prophets and their disciples do.The heroic warrior and his followers activelyseek booty; the elective ruler or the charismaticparty leader requires the material means ofpower. The former in addition requires a bril-liant display of his authority to bolster his pres-tige. What is despised, so long as the genuinely


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charismatic type is adhered to, is traditional orrational everyday economizing, the attainmentof a regular income by continuous economicactivity devoted to this end. Support by gifts,either on a grand scale involving donation.endowment, bribery and honoraria, or by beg-ging, constitute the voluntary type of support.On the other hand, “booty” and extortion,whether by force or by other means, is thetypical form of charismatic provision for needs.From the point of view of rational economicactivity, charismatic want satisfaction is a typi-cal anti-economic force. It repudiates any sortof involvement in the everyday routine world.It can only tolerate, with an attitude of com-plete emotional indifference, irregular, unsys-tematic acquisitive acts. In that it relieves therecipient of economic concerns, dependenceon property income can be the economic basisof a charismatic mode of life for some groups;but that is unusual for the normal charismatic“revolutionary.” . . .

V. In traditionalist periods, charisma is thegreat revolutionary force. The likewise revolu-tionary force of “reason” works from without:by altering the situations of life and hence itsproblems, finally in this way changing men’sattitudes toward them; or it intellectualizes theindividual. Charisma, on the other hand, mayeffect a subjective or internal reorientation bornout of suffering, conflicts, or enthusiasm. It maythen result in a radical alteration of the centralattitudes and directions of action with a com-pletely new orientation of all attitudes towardthe different problems of the “world.”7 In prera-tionalistic periods, tradition and charismabetween them have almost exhausted the wholeof the orientation of action.

THE ROUTINIZATION OF CHARISMA

In its pure form charismatic authority has acharacter specifically foreign to everydayroutine structures. The social relationshipsdirectly involved are strictly personal, basedon the validity and practice of charismaticpersonal qualities. If this is not to remain apurely transitory phenomenon, but to takeon the character of a permanent relationship,

a “community” of disciples or followers or aparty organization or any sort of political orhierocratic organization, it is necessary forthe character of charismatic authority to becomeradically changed. Indeed, in its pure formcharismatic authority may be said to exist onlyin statu nascendi. It cannot remain stable, butbecomes either traditionalized or rationalized,or a combination of both.

The following are the principal motivesunderlying this transformation: (a) The idealand also the material interests of the followersin the continuation and the continual reactiva-tion of the community, (b) the still strongerideal and also stronger material interests of themembers of the administrative staff, the disci-ples, the party workers, or others in continuingtheir relationship. Not only this, but they havean interest in continuing it in such a way thatboth from an ideal and a material point of view,their own position is put on a stable everydaybasis. This means, above all, making it possi-ble to participate in normal family relation-ships or at least to enjoy a secure socialposition in place of the kind of discipleshipwhich is cut off from ordinary worldly connec-tions, notably in the family and in economicrelationships.

These interests generally become conspic-uously evident with the disappearance of thepersonal charismatic leader and with theproblem of succession. The way in which thisproblem is met—if it is met at all and thecharismatic community continues to exist ornow begins to emerge—is of crucial impor-tance for the character of the subsequent socialrelationships. . . .

Concomitant with the routinization ofcharisma with a view to insuring adequate suc-cession, go the interests in its routinizationon the part of the administrative staff. It is onlyin the initial stages and so long as the charis-matic leader acts in a way which is completelyoutside everyday social organization, that it ispossible for his followers to live communisti-cally in a community of faith and enthusiasm,on gifts, booty, or sporadic acquisition. Only themembers of the small group of enthusiasticdisciples and followers are prepared to devotetheir lives purely idealistically to their call. Thegreat majority of disciples and followers will

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in the long run “make their living” out of their“calling” in a material sense as well. Indeed, thismust be the case if the movement is not todisintegrate.

Hence, the routinization of charisma alsotakes the form of the appropriation of powersand of economic advantages by the followers ordisciples, and of regulating recruitment. Thisprocess of traditionalization or of legalization,according to whether rational legislation isinvolved or not, may take any one of a numberof typical forms. . . .

For charisma to be transformed into aneveryday phenomenon, it is necessary that itsanti-economic character should be altered. It mustbe adapted to some form of fiscal organization toprovide for the needs of the group and hence tothe economic conditions necessary for raisingtaxes and contributions. When a charismaticmovement develops in the direction of prebendalprovision, the “laity” becomes differentiated fromthe “clergy”—derived from κλη−ρos, meaning a“share”—, that is, the participating members ofthe charismatic administrative staff which hasnow become routinized. These are the priestsof the developing “church.” Correspondingly, ina developing political body—the “state” in the

rational case—vassals, benefice-holders, officialsor appointed party officials (instead of voluntaryparty workers and functionaries) are differentiatedfrom the “tax payers.”. . .

It follows that, in the course of routinization,the charismatically ruled organization is largelytransformed into one of the everyday authorities,the patrimonial form, especially in its estate-type or bureaucratic variant. Its original pecu-liarities are apt to be retained in the charismaticstatus honor acquired by heredity or office-holding. This applies to all who participate inthe appropriation, the chief himself and themembers of his staff. It is thus a matter of thetype of prestige enjoyed by ruling groups. Ahereditary monarch by “divine right” is not asimple patrimonial chief, patriarch, or sheik;a vassal is not a mere household retainer orofficial. Further details must be deferred to theanalysis of status groups.

As a rule, routinization is not free of conflict.In the early stages personal claims on thecharisma of the chief are not easily forgottenand the conflict between the charisma of theoffice or of hereditary status with personalcharisma is a typical process in many historicalsituations.


Introduction to “Bureaucracy”

In this essay, Weber defines the “ideal type” of bureaucracy, outlining its uniqueand most significant features. The salience of Weber’s description lies in the fact thatbureaucracies have become the dominant form of social organization in modernsociety. Indeed, bureaucracies are indispensable to modern life. Without them, amultitude of necessary tasks could not be performed with the degree of efficiencyrequired for serving large numbers of individuals. For instance, strong and effectivearmies could not be maintained, the mass production of goods and their sale wouldslow to a trickle, the thousands of miles of public roadways could not be paved,hospitals could not treat the millions of patients in need of care, and establishinga university capable of educating 20,000 students would be impossible. Of course,all of these tasks and countless others are themselves dependent on a bureaucraticorganization capable of collecting tax dollars from millions of people.

Despite whatever failings particular bureaucracies may exhibit, the form of organiza-tion is as essential to modern life as the air we breathe. In accounting for the ascendancyof bureaucracies, Weber is clear:

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The decisive reason for the advance of bureaucratic organization has also been itspurely technical superiority over any other form of organization. . . . Precision,speed, unambiguity, knowledge of the files, continuity, discretion, unity, strict sub-ordination, reduction of friction and of material and personal costs—these are raisedto the optimum point in the strictly bureaucratic administration. . . . As comparedwith all [other] forms of administration, trained bureaucracy is superior on all thesepoints. (1925c/1978:973, emphasis in the original)

A number of features ensure the technical superiority of bureaucracies. First, author-ity is hierarchically structured, making for a clear chain of command. Second, selectionof personnel is competitive and based upon demonstrated merit. This reduces the like-lihood of incompetence that can result from appointing officials through nepotism or byvirtue of tradition. Third, a specialized division of labor allows for the more efficientcompletion of assigned tasks. Fourth, bureaucracies are governed by formal, impersonalrules that regulate all facets of the organization. As a result, predictability of action andthe strategic planning that it makes possible are better guaranteed.

As the epitome of the process of rationalization, however, Weber by no meansembraced unequivocally the administrative benefits provided by bureaucracies. While

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Photo 4.2 No special favors here!

Source: Courtesy of Activision, Inc. Copyright 1993; used by permission.

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Photo 4.3 Look familiar? Waiting in line at the student services building at a university.

Source: Scott Appelrouth; used with permission.

in important respects, bureaucracies are dependent on the development of massdemocracy for their fullest expression, nevertheless, they create new elite groups ofexperts and technocrats. Moreover, he contended that their formal rules and proceduresled to the loss of individual freedom.7 For those working in bureaucracies (and count-less do), Weber saw the individual “chained to his activity in his entire economic andideological existence” (1925c/1978:988). The bureaucrat is thus reduced to “a smallcog in a ceaselessly moving mechanism which prescribes to him an essentially fixedroute of march” (ibid.). Operating “‘[w]ithout regard for persons’. . . [b]ureaucracydevelops the more perfectly, the more it is ‘dehumanized,’ the more completely itsucceeds in eliminating from official business love, hatred, and all purely personal,irrational, and emotional elements which escape calculation” (1925c/1978:975).Whether as an employee or as a client, who has not been confronted with the facelessimpersonality of a bureaucracy immune to the “special circumstances” that, after all,make up the very essence of our individuality.

7As we noted earlier, Weber’s analysis of bureaucratic organizations offers an importantcritique of Marx’s perspective. While Marx argued that capitalism is the source of alienation inmodern society, Weber saw the source lying in bureaucracies and the rational procedures theyembody. Additionally, in recognizing that bureaucracies create elite groups of technocrats whopursue their own professional interests, Weber also suggested that such organizational leaders(i.e., state officials) do not necessarily advance the interests of a ruling capitalist class. A relatedtheme can likewise be found in “Class, Status, Party.”

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CHARACTERISTICS OF

MODERN BUREAUCRACY

Modern officialdom functions in the followingmanner:

I. There is the principle of official jurisdic-tional areas, which are generally ordered byrules, that is, by laws or administrative regula-tions. This means:

(1) The regular activities required for thepurposes of the bureaucratically governed struc-ture are assigned as official duties.

(2) The authority to give the commandsrequired for the discharge of these duties is dis-tributed in a stable way and is strictly delimitedby rules concerning the coercive means, physical,sacerdotal, or otherwise, which may be placedat the disposal of officials.

(3) Methodical provision is made forthe regular and continuous fulfillment of theseduties and for the exercise of the correspondingrights; only persons who qualify under generalrules are employed.

In the sphere of the state these three ele-ments constitute a bureaucratic agency, in thesphere of the private economy they constitute abureaucratic enterprise. Bureaucracy, thusunderstood, is fully developed in political andecclesiastical communities only in the modernstate, and in the private economy only in themost advanced institutions of capitalism.Permanent agencies, with fixed jurisdiction, arenot the historical rule but rather the exception.This is even true of large political structuressuch as those of the ancient Orient, the

Germanic and Mongolian empires of conquest,and of many feudal states. In all these cases, theruler executes the most important measuresthrough personal trustees, table-companions, orcourt-servants. Their commissions and powersare not precisely delimited and are temporarilycalled into being for each case.

II. The principles of office hierarchy and ofchannels of appeal (Instanzenzug) stipulate aclearly established system of super- and subor-dination in which there is a supervision of thelower offices by the higher ones. Such a systemoffers the governed the possibility of appealing,in a precisely regulated manner, the decision ofa lower office to the corresponding superiorauthority. With the full development of thebureaucratic type, the office hierarchy is mono-cratically organized. The principle of hierarchi-cal office authority is found in all bureaucraticstructures: in state and ecclesiastical structuresas well as in large party organizations andprivate enterprises. It does not matter for thecharacter of bureaucracy whether its authority iscalled “private” or “public.”

When the principle of jurisdictional “compe-tency” is fully carried through, hierarchicalsubordination—at least in public office—doesnot mean that the “higher” authority is autho-rized simply to take over the business of the“lower.” Indeed, the opposite is the rule; once anoffice has been set up, a new incumbent willalways be appointed if a vacancy occurs.

III. The management of the modern office isbased upon written documents (the “files”),which are preserved in their original or draftform, and upon a staff of subaltern officials andscribes of all sorts. The body of officials work-ing in an agency along with the respective appa-ratus of material implements and the files makes

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Bureaucracy (1925)

Max Weber

Source: From Max Weber’s Economy and Society, 2 vols. Translated and edited by Guenther Roth and ClausWittich; © 1978 The Regents of the University of California. Original work published 1925. Reprinted withpermission granted by the Regents of the University of California and the University of California Press.

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up a bureau (in private enterprises often calledthe “counting house,” Kontor).

In principle, the modern organization ofthe civil service separates the bureau from theprivate domicile of the official and, in general,segregates official activity from the sphere ofprivate life. Public monies and equipment aredivorced from the private property of the offi-cial. This condition is everywhere the product ofa long development. Nowadays, it is found inpublic as well as in private enterprises; in thelatter, the principle extends even to the entrepre-neur at the top. In principle, the Kontor (office)is separated from the household, business fromprivate correspondence, and business assetsfrom private wealth. The more consistently themodern type of business management has beencarried through, the more are these separationsthe case. The beginnings of this process are tobe found as early as the Middle Ages.

It is the peculiarity of the modern entrepre-neur that he conducts himself as the “first offi-cial” of his enterprise, in the very same way inwhich the ruler of a specifically modern bureau-cratic state [Frederick II of Prussia] spokeof himself as “the first servant” of the state. Theidea that the bureau activities of the state areintrinsically different in character from themanagement of private offices is a continentalEuropean notion and, by way of contrast, istotally foreign to the American way.

IV. Office management, at least all special-ized office management—and such manage-ment is distinctly modern—usually presupposesthorough training in a field of specialization.This, too, holds increasingly for the modernexecutive and employee of a private enterprise,just as it does for the state officials.

V. When the office is fully developed, officialactivity demands the full working capacity ofthe official, irrespective of the fact that thelength of his obligatory working hours in thebureau may be limited. In the normal case, thistoo is only the product of a long development,in the public as well as in the private office.Formerly the normal state of affairs was thereverse: Official business was discharged as asecondary activity.

VI. The management of the office followsgeneral rules, which are more or less stable,more or less exhaustive, and which can be

learned. Knowledge of these rules represents aspecial technical expertise which the officialspossess. It involves jurisprudence, administra-tive or business management.

The reduction of modern office managementto rules is deeply embedded in its very nature.The theory of modern public administration, forinstance, assumes that the authority to ordercertain matters by decree—which has beenlegally granted to an agency—does not entitlethe agency to regulate the matter by individualcommands given for each case, but only toregulate the matter abstractly. This stands inextreme contrast to the regulation of all rela-tionships through individual privileges andbestowals of favor, which, as we shall see, isabsolutely dominant in patrimonialism, at leastin so far as such relationships are not fixed bysacred tradition.

THE POSITION OF THE OFFICIAL

WITHIN AND OUTSIDE OF BUREAUCRACY

All this results in the following for the internaland external position of the official:

I. Office Holding as a Vocation

That the office is a “vocation” (Beruf) findsexpression, first, in the requirement of a pre-scribed course of training, which demands theentire working capacity for a long period oftime, and in generally prescribed special exami-nations as prerequisites of employment.Furthermore, it finds expression in that the posi-tion of the official is in the nature of a “duty”(Pflicht). This determines the character of hisrelations in the following manner: Legally andactually, office holding is not considered owner-ship of a source of income, to be exploited forrents or emoluments in exchange for the render-ing of certain services, as was normally the caseduring the Middle Ages and frequently up to thethreshold of recent times, nor is office holdingconsidered a common exchange of services, asin the case of free employment contracts.Rather, entrance into an office, including one inthe private economy, is considered an accep-tance of a specific duty of fealty to the purpose


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of the office (Amtstreue) in return for the grantof a secure existence. It is decisive for the mod-ern loyalty to an office that, in the pure type, itdoes not establish a relationship to a person, likethe vassal’s or disciple’s faith under feudal orpatrimonial authority, but rather is devoted toimpersonal and functional purposes. These pur-poses, of course, frequently gain an ideologicalhalo from cultural values, such as state, church,community, party or enterprise, which appear assurrogates for a this-worldly or other-worldlypersonal master and which are embodied by agiven group.

The political official—at least in the fullydeveloped modern state—is not considered thepersonal servant of a ruler. Likewise, the bishop,the priest and the preacher are in fact no longer,as in early Christian times, carriers of a purelypersonal charisma, which offers other-worldlysacred values under the personal mandate of amaster, and in principle responsible only to him,to everybody who appears worthy of them andasks for them. In spite of the partial survival ofthe old theory, they have become officials in theservice of a functional purpose, a purpose whichin the present-day “church” appears at onceimpersonalized and ideologically sanctified.

II. The Social Position of the Official

A. Social esteem and status convention. Whetherhe is in a private office or a public bureau, themodern official, too, always strives for and usu-ally attains a distinctly elevated social esteemvis-à-vis the governed. His social position isprotected by prescription about rank order and,for the political official, by special prohibitionsof the criminal code against “insults to theoffice” and “contempt” of state and churchauthorities.

The social position of the official is normallyhighest where, as in old civilized countries, thefollowing conditions prevail: a strong demandfor administration by trained experts; a strongand stable social differentiation, where the offi-cial predominantly comes from socially andeconomically privileged strata because of thesocial distribution of power or the costliness ofthe required training and of status conventions.The possession of educational certificates orpatents . . . is usually linked with qualification

for office; naturally, this enhances the “statuselement” in the social position of the official.Sometimes the status factor is explicitlyacknowledged; for example, in the prescriptionthat the acceptance of an aspirant to an officecareer depends upon the consent (“election”) bythe members of the official body. . . .

Usually the social esteem of the officials isespecially low where the demand for expertadministration and the hold of status conven-tions are weak. This is often the case in newsettlements by virtue of the great economicopportunities and the great instability of theirsocial stratification: witness the United States.

B. Appointment versus election: Consequencesfor expertise. Typically, the bureaucratic offi-cial is appointed by a superior authority. Anofficial elected by the governed is no longer apurely bureaucratic figure. Of course, a formalelection may hide an appointment—in politicsespecially by party bosses. This does notdepend upon legal statutes, but upon the way inwhich the party mechanism functions. Oncefirmly organized, the parties can turn a formallyfree election into the mere acclamation of acandidate designated by the party chief, or atleast into a contest, conducted according to cer-tain rules, for the election of one of two desig-nated candidates.

In all circumstances, the designation of offi-cials by means of an election modifies the rigid-ity of hierarchical subordination. In principle,an official who is elected has an autonomousposition vis-à-vis his superiors, for he does notderive his position “from above” but “frombelow,” or at least not from a superior authorityof the official hierarchy but from powerful partymen (“bosses”), who also determine his furthercareer. The career of the elected official is notprimarily dependent upon his chief in theadministration. The official who is not elected,but appointed by a master, normally functions,from a technical point of view, more accuratelybecause it is more likely that purely functionalpoints of consideration and qualities will deter-mine his selection and career. As laymen, thegoverned can evaluate the expert qualifica-tions of a candidate for office only in terms ofexperience, and hence only after his service.Moreover, if political parties are involved in any

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sort of selection of officials by election, theyquite naturally tend to give decisive weight notto technical competence but to the services afollower renders to the party boss. This holds forthe designation of otherwise freely elected offi-cials by party bosses when they determine theslate of candidates as well as for the freeappointment of officials by a chief who has him-self been elected. The contrast, however, is rela-tive: substantially similar conditions hold wherelegitimate monarchs and their subordinatesappoint officials, except that partisan influencesare then less controllable.

Where the demand for administration bytrained experts is considerable, and the partyfaithful have to take into account an intellectu-ally developed, educated, and free “public opin-ion,” the use of unqualified officials redoundsupon the party in power at the next election.Naturally, this is more likely to happen whenthe officials are appointed by the chief. Thedemand for a trained administration now existsin the United States, but wherever, as in thelarge cities, immigrant votes are “corralled,”there is, of course, no effective public opinion.Therefore, popular election not only of theadministrative chief but also of his subordinateofficials usually endangers, at least in very largeadministrative bodies which are difficult tosupervise, the expert qualification of theofficials as well as the precise functioningof the bureaucratic mechanism, besides weak-ening the dependence of the officials upon thehierarchy. The superior qualification andintegrity of Federal judges appointed by thepresident, as over and against elected judges, inthe United States is well known, althoughboth types of officials are selected primarilyin terms of party considerations. The greatchanges in American metropolitan administra-tions demanded by reformers have been effectedessentially by elected mayors working with anapparatus of officials who were appointed bythem. These reforms have thus come about in a“caesarist” fashion. Viewed technically, as anorganized form of domination, the efficiency of“caesarism,” which often grows out of democ-racy, rests in general upon the position of the“caesar” as a free trustee of the masses (of thearmy or of the citizenry), who is unfettered by

tradition. The “caesar” is thus the unrestrainedmaster of a body of highly qualified militaryofficers and officials whom he selects freely andpersonally without regard to tradition or to anyother impediments. Such “rule of the personalgenius,” however, stands in conflict with the for-mally “democratic” principle of a generallyelected officialdom.

C. Tenure and the Inverse relationship betweenjudicial independence and social prestige. Nor-mally, the position of the official is held forlife, at least in public bureaucracies, and this isincreasingly the case for all similar structures.As a factual rule, tenure for life is presupposedeven where notice can be given or periodicreappointment occurs. In a private enterprise,the fact of such tenure normally differentiatesthe official from the worker. Such legal or actuallife-tenure, however, is not viewed as a propri-etary right of the official to the possession ofoffice as was the case in many structures ofauthority of the past. Wherever legal guaranteesagainst discretionary dismissal or transfer aredeveloped, as in Germany for all judicial andincreasingly also for administrative officials,they merely serve the purpose of guaranteeing astrictly impersonal discharge of specific officeduties. . . .

D. Rank as the basis of regular salary. The offi-cial as a rule receives a monetary compensationin the form of a salary, normally fixed, and theold age security provided by a pension. Thesalary is not measured like a wage in terms ofwork done, but according to “status,” that is,according to the kind of function (the “rank”)and, possibly, according to the length of service.The relatively great security of the official’sincome, as well as the rewards of social esteem,make the office a sought-after position, espe-cially in countries which no longer provideopportunities for colonial profits. In such coun-tries, this situation permits relatively lowsalaries for officials.

E. Fixed career lines and status rigidity. Theofficial is set for a “career” within the hierar-chical order of the public service. He expects to


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move from the lower, less important and lesswell paid, to the higher positions. The averageofficial naturally desires a mechanical fixingof the conditions of promotion: if not of theoffices, at least of the salary levels. He wantsthese conditions fixed in terms of “seniority,” orpossibly according to grades achieved in asystem of examinations. Here and there, suchgrades actually form a character indelebilis ofthe official and have lifelong effects on hiscareer. To this is joined the desire to reinforcethe right to office and to increase status groupclosure and economic security. All of thismakes for a tendency to consider the offices as“prebends” of those qualified by educationalcertificates. The necessity of weighing generalpersonal and intellectual qualifications withoutconcern for the often subaltern character ofsuch patents of specialized education, hasbrought it about that the highest politicaloffices, especially the “ministerial” positions,are as a rule filled without reference to suchcertificates. . . .

THE TECHNICAL SUPERIORITY

OF BUREAUCRATIC ORGANIZATION

OVER ADMINISTRATION BY NOTABLES

The decisive reason for the advance of bureau-cratic organization has always been its purelytechnical superiority over any other form oforganization. The fully developed bureaucraticapparatus compares with other organizationsexactly as does the machine with the non-mechanical modes of production. Precision,speed, unambiguity, knowledge of the files,continuity, discretion, unity, strict subordina-tion, reduction of friction and of material andpersonal costs—these are raised to the optimumpoint in the strictly bureaucratic administration,and especially in its monocratic form. Ascompared with all collegiate, honorific, andavocational forms of administration, trainedbureaucracy is superior on all these points. Andas far as complicated tasks are concerned, paidbureaucratic work is not only more precise but,in the last analysis, it is often cheaper than evenformally unremunerated honorific service. . . .

Today, it is primarily the capitalist marketeconomy which demands that the official busi-ness of public administration be discharged pre-cisely, unambiguously, continuously, and withas much speed as possible. Normally, the verylarge modern capitalist enterprises are them-selves unequalled models of strict bureaucraticorganization. Business management throughoutrests on increasing precision, steadiness, and,above all, speed of operations. This, in turn, isdetermined by the peculiar nature of the modernmeans of communication, including, amongother things, the news service of the press. Theextraordinary increase in the speed by whichpublic announcements, as well as economic andpolitical facts, are transmitted exerts a steadyand sharp pressure in the direction of speedingup the tempo of administrative reaction towardsvarious situations. The optimum of such reac-tion time is normally attained only by a strictlybureaucratic organization. (The fact that thebureaucratic apparatus also can, and indeeddoes, create certain definite impediments for thedischarge of business in a manner best adaptedto the individuality of each case does not belongin the present context.)

Bureaucratization offers above all theoptimum possibility for carrying through theprinciple of specializing administrative func-tions according to purely objective considera-tions. Individual performances are allocatedto functionaries who have specialized trainingand who by constant practice increase theirexpertise. “Objective” discharge of businessprimarily means a discharge of business accord-ing to calculable rules and “without regard forpersons.”

“Without regard for persons,” however, isalso the watchword of the market and, in gen-eral, of all pursuits of naked economic interests.Consistent bureaucratic domination means theleveling of “status honor.” Hence, if the princi-ple of the free market is not at the same timerestricted, it means the universal domination ofthe “class situation.” That this consequence ofbureaucratic domination has not set in every-where proportional to the extent of bureaucrati-zation is due to the differences between possibleprinciples by which polities may supply theirrequirements. However, the second element

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mentioned, calculable rules, is the most importantone for modern bureaucracy. The peculiarityof modern culture, and specifically of its tech-nical and economic basis, demands this very“calculability” of results. When fully developed,bureaucracy also stands, in a specific sense,under the principle of sine ira ac studio.Bureaucracy develops the more perfectly, themore it is “dehumanized,” the more completelyit succeeds in eliminating from official businesslove, hatred, and all purely personal, irrational,and emotional elements which escape calcu-lation. This is appraised as its special virtue bycapitalism.

The more complicated and specializedmodern culture becomes, the more its externalsupporting apparatus demands the personallydetached and strictly objective expert, in lieuof the lord of older social structures who wasmoved by personal sympathy and favor, bygrace and gratitude. Bureaucracy offers theattitudes demanded by the external apparatusof modern culture in the most favorable com-bination. In particular, only bureaucracy hasestablished the foundation for the administra-tion of a rational law conceptually system-atized on the basis of “statutes,” such as thelater Roman Empire first created with a highdegree of technical perfection. During theMiddle Ages, the reception of this [Roman]law coincided with the bureaucratization oflegal administration: The advance of therationally trained expert displaced the old trialprocedure which was bound to tradition orto irrational presuppositions. . . .

THE LEVELING OF SOCIAL DIFFERENCES

In spite of its indubitable technical superiority,bureaucracy has everywhere been a relativelylate development. A number of obstacles havecontributed to this, and only under certain socialand political conditions have they definitelyreceded into the background.

A. Administrative Democratization

Bureaucratic organization has usuallycome into power on the basis of a leveling of

economic and social differences. This levelinghas been at least relative, and has concerned thesignificance of social and economic differencesfor the assumption of administrative functions.

Bureaucracy inevitably accompanies mod-ern mass democracy, in contrast to the democ-ratic self-government of small homogeneousunits. This results from its characteristic princi-ple: the abstract regularity of the exercise ofauthority, which is a result of the demand for“equality before the law” in the personal andfunctional sense—hence, of the horror of “priv-ilege,” and the principled rejection of doingbusiness “from case to case.” Such regularityalso follows from the social pre-conditions ofits origin. Any non-bureaucratic administrationof a large social structure rests in some wayupon the fact that existing social, material, orhonorific preferences and ranks are connectedwith administrative functions and duties. Thisusually means that an economic or a socialexploitation of position, which every sort ofadministrative activity provides to its bearers,is the compensation for the assumption ofadministrative functions.

Bureaucratization and democratization withinthe administration of the state therefore signifyan increase of the cash expenditures of the publictreasury, in spite of the fact that bureaucraticadministration is usually more “economical” incharacter than other forms. Until recent times—at least from the point of view of the treasury—the cheapest way of satisfying the need foradministration was to leave almost the entirelocal administration and lower judicature to thelandlords of Eastern Prussia. The same is true ofthe administration by justices of the peace inEngland. Mass democracy which makes a cleansweep of the feudal, patrimonial, and—at least inintent—the plutocratic privileges in administra-tion unavoidably has to put paid professionallabor in place of the historically inherited “avo-cational” administration by notables.

B. Mass Parties and the BureaucraticConsequences of Democratization

This applies not only to the state. For it isno accident that in their own organizations thedemocratic mass parties have completely broken


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with traditional rule by notables based uponpersonal relationships and personal esteem.Such personal structures still persist amongmany old conservative as well as old liberal par-ties, but democratic mass parties are bureaucrat-ically organized under the leadership of partyofficials, professional party and trade union sec-retaries, etc. In Germany, for instance, this hashappened in the Social Democratic party and inthe agrarian mass-movement; in England earli-est in the caucus democracy of Gladstone andChamberlain which spread from Birmingham inthe 1870’s. In the United States, both partiessince Jackson’s administration have developedbureaucratically. In France, however, attemptsto organize disciplined political parties on thebasis of an election system that would compelbureaucratic organization have repeatedlyfailed. The resistance of local circles of notablesagainst the otherwise unavoidable bureaucrati-zation of the parties, which would encompassthe entire country and break their influence,could not be overcome. Every advance of simpleelection techniques based on numbers aloneas, for instance, the system of proportionalrepresentation, means a strict and inter-localbureaucratic organization of the parties andtherewith an increasing domination of partybureaucracy and discipline, as well as the elim-ination of the local circles of notables—at leastthis holds for large states.

The progress of bureaucratization within thestate administration itself is a phenomenon par-alleling the development of democracy, as isquite obvious in France, North America, andnow in England. Of course, one must alwaysremember that the term “democratization” canbe misleading. The demos, itself, in the sense ofa shapeless mass, never “governs” larger associ-ations, but rather is governed. What changes isonly the way in which the executive leaders areselected and the measure of influence which thedemos, or better, which social circles from itsmidst are able to exert upon the content and thedirection of administrative activities by meansof “public opinion.” “Democratization,” in thesense here intended, does not necessarily meanan increasingly active share of the subjects ingovernment. This may be a result of democrati-zation, but it is not necessarily the case.

We must expressly recall at this point thatthe political concept of democracy, deducedfrom the “equal rights” of the governed,includes these further postulates: (1) preven-tion of the development of a closed statusgroup of officials in the interest of a universalaccessibility of office, and (2) minimization ofthe authority of officialdom in the interest ofexpanding the sphere of influence of “publicopinion” as far as practicable. Hence, whereverpossible, political democracy strives to shortenthe term of office through election and recall,and to be relieved from a limitation to candi-dates with special expert qualifications.Thereby democracy inevitably comes into con-flict with the bureaucratic tendencies whichhave been produced by its very fight againstthe notables. The loose term “democratization”cannot be used here, in so far as it is under-stood to mean the minimization of the civil ser-vants’ power in favor of the greatest possible“direct” rule of the demos, which in practicemeans the respective party leaders of thedemos. The decisive aspect here—indeed it israther exclusively so—is the leveling of thegoverned in face of the governing and bureau-cratically articulated group, which in its turnmay occupy a quite autocratic position, both infact and in form. . . .

THE OBJECTIVE AND SUBJECTIVE

BASES OF BUREAUCRATIC PERPETUITY

Once fully established, bureaucracy is amongthose social structures which are the hardest todestroy. Bureaucracy is the means of transform-ing social action into rationally organized action.Therefore, as an instrument of rationally orga-nizing authority relations, bureaucracy was andis a power instrument of the first order for onewho controls the bureaucratic apparatus. Underotherwise equal conditions, rationally organizedand directed action (Gesellschaftshandeln) issuperior to every kind of collective behavior(Massenhandeln) and also social action (Gemein-schaftshandeln) opposing it. Where administra-tion has been completely bureaucratized, theresulting system of domination is practicallyindestructible.

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The individual bureaucrat cannot squirm outof the apparatus into which he has been har-nessed. In contrast to the “notable” performingadministrative tasks as a honorific duty or as asubsidiary occupation (avocation), the profes-sional bureaucrat is chained to his activity in hisentire economic and ideological existence. Inthe great majority of cases he is only a small cogin a ceaselessly moving mechanism which pre-scribes to him an essentially fixed route ofmarch. The official is entrusted with specializedtasks, and normally the mechanism cannot beput into motion or arrested by him, but onlyfrom the very top. The individual bureaucrat is,above all, forged to the common interest of allthe functionaries in the perpetuation of theapparatus and the persistence of its rationallyorganized domination.

The ruled, for their part, cannot dispensewith or replace the bureaucratic apparatus onceit exists, for it rests upon expert training, a func-tional specialization of work, and an attitudeset on habitual virtuosity in the mastery ofsingle yet methodically integrated functions. Ifthe apparatus stops working, or if its work isinterrupted by force, chaos results, which it isdifficult to master by improvised replacementsfrom among the governed. This holds for publicadministration as well as for private economicmanagement. Increasingly the material fate ofthe masses depends upon the continuous andcorrect functioning of the ever more bureau-cratic organizations of private capitalism, andthe idea of eliminating them becomes more andmore utopian.

Increasingly, all order in public and privateorganizations is dependent on the system of filesand the discipline of officialdom, that means, itshabit of painstaking obedience within itswonted sphere of action. The latter is the moredecisive element, however important in practicethe files are. The naive idea of Bakuninism ofdestroying the basis of “acquired rights”together with “domination” by destroying thepublic documents overlooks that the settled ori-entation of man for observing the accustomedrules and regulations will survive indepen-dently of the documents. Every reorganization

of defeated or scattered army units, as wellas every restoration of an administrative orderdestroyed by revolts, panics, or other catastro-phes, is effected by an appeal to this condi-tioned orientation, bred both in the officials andin the subjects, of obedient adjustment to such[social and political] orders. If the appeal issuccessful it brings, as it were, the disturbedmechanism to “snap into gear” again.

The objective indispensability of theonce-existing apparatus, in connection with itspeculiarly “impersonal” character, means thatthe mechanism—in contrast to the feudal orderbased upon personal loyalty—is easily madeto work for anybody who knows how to gaincontrol over it. A rationally ordered official-dom .continues to function smoothly after theenemy has occupied the territory; he merelyneeds to change the top officials. It continues tooperate because it is to the vital interest ofeveryone concerned, including above all theenemy. After Bismarck had, during the longcourse of his years in power, brought hisministerial colleagues into unconditionalbureaucratic dependence by eliminating allindependent statesmen, he saw to his surprisethat upon his resignation they continued toadminister their offices unconcernedly andundismayedly, as if it had not been the inge-nious lord and very creator of these tools whohad left, but merely some individual figure inthe bureaucratic machine which had beenexchanged for some other figure. In spite of allthe changes of masters in France since the timeof the First Empire, the power apparatusremained essentially the same.

Such an apparatus makes “revolution,” inthe sense of the forceful creation of entirelynew formations of authority, more and moreimpossible—technically, because of its con-trol over the modern means of communica-tion (telegraph etc.), and also because of itsincreasingly rationalized inner structure. Theplace of “revolutions” is under this processtaken by coups d’état, as again France demon-strates in the classical manner since all suc-cessful transformations there have been ofthis nature. . . .


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Discussion Questions

1. How can the rise of “new age” movements, extreme sports, Christian funda-mentalism, and spiritual healers such as Benny Han be explained in light of Weber’sdiscussion of the “disenchantment of the world”?

2. What are some of the essential differences between Weber’s view of religionand Durkheim’s?

3. In developing his ideal type of bureaucracy, Weber highlights the rationalaspects of such organizational forms. In what ways might bureaucracies exhibit“irrational” or inefficient features?

4. Given Weber’s three types of legitimate domination, the political system inthe United States is best characterized as based on legal authority. What elementsof the other types of authority can, nevertheless, still be found?

5. Weber argues that class, status, and party are three separate avenues throughwhich power is produced and exercised. At the same time, Weber notes that class,status, and party positions can also be interrelated expressions of power. To whatextent do you think these avenues are separate or interrelated in the United States?Must one have power in one sphere in order to obtain it in another? Why or why not?

6. In what way(s) is Weber’s definition of social class different from Marx’sunderstanding of the concept? What are the implications of the difference(s) fordesignating the proletariat a revolutionary force for social change?

Max Weber � 191

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