hubinger weber's sociology of state

Max Weber's 'Sociology of the State' and the Science of Politics in Germany
Author(s): Gangolf Hübinger
Source: Max Weber Studies , JANUARY/JULY 2009, Vol. 9, No. 1/2, Special Issue on Max
Weber and the Political (JANUARY/JULY 2009), pp. 17-32
Published by: Max Weber Studies
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[MWS 9.1/9.2 (2009) 17-32]
ISSN 1470-8078
Max Weber's 'Sociology of the State'
and the Science of Politics in Germany*
Gangolf Hübinger
From the beginning of his academic career Weber had raised the
question how politics and the state could be a subject of scientific
analysis and how the leading political strata should be trained. In his
inaugural lecture ('The Nation State and Economic Policy'), which
he gave as professor of economics at the University of Freiburg, 13
May, 1895, Weber concentrated on economic policy and stated, 'the
science of a country's economic policy is a political science. It is a
servant of politics, not the day-to-day politics of the persons and
classes who happen to be ruling at any given time, but the enduring
power-political interest of the nation' (Weber 1994: 16). From this
point onwards to his death in 1920, Weber thematised in his work
new perspectives on the complex structure of the political order and
economic action. The combination of 'the forms of the state and the
economy' was to conclude his summer semester lecture course on
the Sociology of the State, as indicated in his dictated lecture pro
spectus (Disposition). First, however, the basic question has to be
clarified, which he addressed to his audience of Freistudenten inhis
famoslecture on 'Politics as a Vocation': 'what is the "state" in the
context of all the human communities?' (Weber 1994: 310).
In all the phases of his work Weber was always alert to what the
sciences of the state could contribute to his research themes. When
he, together with Werner Sombart and Edgar Jaffé, took over the
Archiv für Sozialwissenschaft und Sozialpolitik in 1904, they established
in the Foreword (Geleitwort) the new direction of the journal. The
journal would proceed 'from a quite specific standpoint , that of 'the
economically conditioned nature of cultural phenomena'. This task
could only be accomplished by 'keeping in close contact with neigh
bouring disciplines—the general theory of the state, the philosophy
* Translated by Sam Whimster.
© Max Weber Studies 2010, Global Policy Institute, London Metropolitan University, 31
Jewry Street, London, EC3N 2EY.
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18 Max Weber Studies
of law, social ethics—and with social psy
inquiries commonly grouped under th
2010:100). What then had the neighbour
of the state and philosophy of law to of
An institutionalised discipline of poli
time and the state had yet to become
research. But when Weber in his first contribution to the Archiv
published his critical epistemological reflections on the subject of
the social and cultural sciences in the essay 'The "Objectivity" of
knowledge in social science and social policy', the state served as an
illustration of what an ideal type is. It was the state that provided a
weighty example:
That complex of human relationships, norms and relations deter
mined by norms we refer to as the 'state' is, for example, an 'economic'
phenomenon with respect to state finances: to the extent that it has an
impact on economic life through legislation and so on (and indeed in
those aspects where its behaviour is governed by factors far removed
from economic perspectives) it is 'economically relevant'; finally,
where its behaviour and its attributes are determined by motives other
than those of its 'economic' relationships, then it is 'economically
conditioned' (2004: 369).
The 'question of the logical structure of the concept of the state', and
so for the construction of an ideal type, Weber then terms 'the most
complicated and interesting case'. The major challenge of the 'Gen
eral Theory of the State' is to treat adequately as an object of research
and teaching 'an infinity of diffuse and discrete active and passive
human actions, relations regulated factually and legally, sometimes
unique, sometimes recurrent in character, all held together by an idea,
a belief in actually or normatively prevailing norms and relations of
rule of man by man' (Weber 2004:394). It is precisely here, however,
where ideas created by theorists of the state themselves—most of
all the 'the metaphysics of the organic state' —that Weber finds the
greatest weakness in the scientific analysis of the state and politics.
In day-to-day politics, which occupied Weber intensively during the
World War One and in the revolution of 1918-1919, an imprecise
concept of the state divides academic knowledge and, in particular,
is polarised in the German and Anglo-Saxon public discourse.
The scientific concept of the state, however formulated, is naturally
only a synthesis that we employ for scientific cognitive ends. But it is
on the other hand also abstracted from the imprecise syntheses that
could be found in the heads of historical humans. The concrete form
assumed by the historical 'state' in such contemporary syntheses can
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Hübinger Max Weber's'Sociology of the State' 19
however be rendered explicit only through orientation to ideal-typical
concepts. And there is not the slightest doubt that the manner in which
these syntheses were made by contemporaries, however logically
incomplete, the 'ideas' that they themselves formed of the state—
the German 'organic' state metaphysic contrasted to the American
'business' view, for example—were of eminent practical significance;
that in other words what should be a valid, or what was believed to
be a valid, practical idea and the theoretical ideal type constructed for
heuristic ends ran in parallel and tended constantly to run into each
other (Weber 2004; 394).
In the years following the 'Objectivity' essay Weber did not directly
concern himself with the question of the sociology of the state. This
changed around 1910. One sign of this, among others, is the plan
drawn up for the contents of Schönberg's Handbuch der politischen
Ökonomie that was to appear under Weber's direction. In this he
reserved for himself the theme of 'the state'. He planned to deal with
it in 'Book One. The Economy and the Science of Economics' and in
its chapter 3, 'Economy, Nature and Society'. Here Weber himself
was preparing section 4 'Economy and Society' and the state was to
appear within 'Economy and Social Groups (Family and Commu
nity Associations, Estates and Classes, State)' (2003: 808-16). Weber
was further involved in the subject in course of his organisational
work for the Handbuch der politischen Ökonomie (later Grundriß der
Sozialökonomik), when he engaged on a more comprehensive theory
of domination (Herrschaftslehre) in relation to Jellinek's outline
for a 'sociological theory of the state'. Then in 1913 'domination'
(Herrschaft) moved to the centre of his own contributions to the
Grundriß in the section 'Economy and Society' and one can find fur
ther reflections on the subject in his essay 'On some categories of
interpretative sociology' published in November 1913. At the core of
this extensive theory of domination remained, as before, 'a complete
sociological theory of the state in outline', as he wrote to his publisher
Paul Siebeck 23 January 1913 announcing the finished manuscript
on rulership together with the 'major contribution (Economy and
Society—incl. State and Law)'. By the end of 1913 after much prepa
ratory and trying work editing the Grundriß der Sozialökonomik, a new
basic plan for ordering social scientific knowledge became clearer
to him. Once again the sociology of the state held a central place
in the new plan. 'It is the attempt to eliminate anything organicist,
Stammlerish, supra-empirical, or norm asserting and to think of the
'sociological theory of the state' as a theory of simply empirically
typical human action', he wrote 29 December 1913 to the Freiburg
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20 Max Weber Studies
law professor Hermann Kantorowicz
later in a letter to Paul Siebeck, which
tion on the construction of 'Economy
a finished sociological theory and pres
major forms of community in relatio
which contains 'a comprehensive sociolog
rulership' (Weber 2003: 449ff.). Before
then was working with a concept of the
in relation to the sociology of rulership
During the war this changed decisiv
85ff.). The concept of the state—its e
peting political communities of early m
a modern mass state—moves to the c
analysis of domination. There are seve
in the experience of war, in the intell
constitution after the war as well as a scie
politics.
After the war in Munich, where he had taken up the post of pro
fessor again, Weber wrote the first three chapters of his new version
of 'Economy and Society', drawing on this material for his lectures.
In the summer semester of 1919 he lectured on 'The most general
categories of the science of society'. On the basis of the corrected
proofs for chapter 1, 'Basic Sociological Concepts', Weber also began
his lecture course on the sociology of the state on 11 May 1920.
The very last lecture course Weber gave before his death was
devoted to politics. He announced the exact title in his own hand
writing—'General Theory of the State and Politics (Sociology of the
State)', which was a four hour per week lecture held at the University
of Munich in the summer semester (Weber 2009: 64). We know how
the lectures were structured since there is a stenographic record. In
the first lecture Weber dictated the following plan:1
1. [Concept of the State.]2
2. Types of legitimate rule.
3. Estates and classes.
4. The lineage state and feudal state.
5. Patrimonialism and expert officialdom.
6. Citizens and the city-state: state and nation.
1. Weber 2009: 65-67. This differs slightly from that given by Johannes Winck
elmann (1966:113).
2. Not dictated but found in student notes of Erwin Stölz (Weber 2009:66).
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Hübinger Max Weber's 'Sociology of the State' 21
7. The division of powers in the estates and the idea of repre
sentation.
8. The rational division of power, parliamentarism.
9. Different types of democracy.
10. Political power and self-government.
11. Political power and hierocratic power.
12. Political power and military power.
Forms of state and economy (Staatsform und Wirtschaftsform)
13. Politically oriented capitalism.
14. Modern state and rational capitalism.
15. Soviets-state (Rätestaat).
16. Influence of foreign policy on the internal structure.
Max Weber was only able to deliver the first half of the course, he
died on 14 June. 'And then came the day in June 1920 when a note
was pinned to the door of the lecture theatre saying he was ill. Only
a few days later he lay on his bier having fallen victim to pneu
monia', wrote the historian George W.F. Hallgarten, who consid
ered his studies with Max Weber as 'the decisive impression of my
academic career, indeed of my whole life' (Hallgarten 1969:102ff.).
What Hallgarten and the many others of those who attended his
lectures were able to hear was primarily Weber's conclusions from
the chapter 'Types of Domination' from Economy and Society (Weber
1972:122-76). This can be seen in the headings of the lecture course,
providing a kind of basic political concepts like 'state', 'power', or
'democracy', the basic sociological concepts like 'estates', 'classes',
and the universal-historical fundamental issues like 'capitalism'
or 'bureaucracy'. Weber linked the ideal-typical constructions of
Economy and Society, the first three chapters of which arrived in
proof at the start of the lecture course in April 1920, with the texts
on the sociology of state that he had written during the war and
the revolution. The most important of these texts is 'Parliament
and government in re-organised Germany', which developed out
of a series of articles for the liberal newspaper Frankfurter Zeitung
(Weber 1994:130-271).3 In his lecture in front of students on 'Politics
as a Vocation' Weber presented his sociology of state in universal
historical terms but also in strict systematic terms. All of these texts
bear upon Weber's last lecture course 'General Theory of the State
3. 'Max Weber/Parlament und Regierung im neugeordneten Deutschland'
(Weber 1984:432-5%).
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22 Max Weber Studies
and Polities', and in the conclusion I w
provides an innovative look into 'polit
'sociology of the state'.
Wolfgang J. Mommsen was to have edi
for the Max Weber Gesamtausgabe. N
able about Weber's political thought th
ing of 'Sociology of the State' Momm
draw on all the registers of his knowled
regard to re-fashion one of Max Webe
newspaper articles mentioned, on the
and government, Weber opened with a
Legacy' (Weber 1894:437-50). I suggest
is the heritage of Wolfgang J. Mommse
political Weber.
Here I would say there are two theor
reading the political Weber. The first is
linked to universal history. The second
antinomic structure of Weber's thought
319). Weber thought through and exp
issues. He did not attempt to resolve f
the manner of the intellectual circle of
size in the manner of Hegel or Ernst T
Weber's life these antinomies are at w
sed 'politics' rigorously according to th
value judgements. In his role as political
the same categories, for a new re-org
after the war.4
Three interrelated questions should be
bution, when considering Weber's tur
expressed in his last lecture course 'Gene
Polities'.
1. In what tradition should Weber's
given its classical-sounding title 'Gen
and Polities'? This links to the fu
what is 'the science of politics' in Ge
after the Second World War that p
lished as a university discipline.
4. For more detail see Gangolf Hiibinger (2006
in respect of this aspect of Weber, even though p
Radkau's biography of Weber (2005).
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Hübinger Max Weber's'Sociology of the State' 23
2. What 'problems' motivated Weber, so as to cause Weber to
write and lecture directly on theory of the state and politics
in Germany? This raises the significance of the First World
War as something 'intellectually specific', above all the effect
of 1917—an epochal year in world history—upon Weber the
academic and political citizen.
3. What intellectual perspective is to be discovered in the naming
and the treatment of the lecture course as 'Sociology of the
State'? This becomes an issue of just how entwined the lec
ture course was with the major themes of Weber7 s work: the
universal-historical perspective, the basic concepts of social
action, the interaction between economy and rulership.
1. The Science of Politics in Germany
The theory of state and politics is a centuries old tradition in German
universities. But it was then part of very different disciplines. Even
in Max Weber's lifetime it was still not an independent subject. From
the late middle ages 'politics' was part of the Aristotelian trio of ethics,
economics, and politics. Primacy was given to ethics in its teaching
and, in the period of the Enlightenment, ethics was taken to be the
crowning of philosophical anthropology (Bleek 2001). At the start
of the 19th century the theologian, Friedrich Schleiermacher, was
lecturing in Berlin on 'the theory of the state'. Schleiermacher (1768
1834) was one of the leading representatives of German idealism. He
outlined a liberal Kulturethik, distinguishing four autonomous fields
of action for the individual liberty of man: free sociability, science,
art and religion. Politics is the sphere which provides a constitutional
monarchy with strong representative institutions of citizens, which
determines the tasks of the administration of the state and the state
economy, and which secures the cultural preservation of the state
against the violent challenges of other states. This (ethico-cultural)
type is of major significance, since it remains valid, with variations,
for the whole of the 19th century. It is in the work of Georg Jellinek
and Max Weber that it becomes structurally re-ordered.5
In the course of the 19th century the teaching of politics migrated
to the historical sciences and to economics. The three most signifi
cant liberal historians teaching 'politics on a historical basis' were
Friedrich Christoph Dahlmann (1785-1860), Johann Gustav Droysen
(1808-1844) and Georg Gottfried Gervinus (1805-1871). All three
5. See chapter 2 of Hübinger (2006).
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24 Max Weber Studies
were members of the German Nation
lution of 1848. Dahlmann was for a sh
Droysen was the lead writer for the
Gervinus as the chief editor of the De
influential publicist. This is worth em
the striking triangle of the scientific an
publicist and the political mandate that
Weber himself.
It was Droysen, the theoretician of h
egory of 'power7 as specific to politic
actors on the political stage are the 'e
foundation of the German Empire of 18
and politics gradually breaks up into i
ing and research. When Max Weber st
the 1890s, there were still two represen
tion of scientific politics: Heinrich vo
Wilhelm Roscher (1817-1894). The histor
Berlin politics lectures, which had a larg
state is an ethical power in itself'. He pu
tive that the citizens 'have to take upon
the state'. Treitschke's politics' signifies
of the state of the Wilhelmine era (Trei
The protestant and conservative und
expressed somewhat differently by th
Roscher. He gave a lecture course entitle
Theory of Monarchy, Aristocracy and D
book was still selling, in its third editio
Aristotelian of German historicism. His 'Politics' offers a univeral
empirical description (natural theory) of constitutional forms. It
divides these constitutions into an evolutionary theory of stages. Its
purpose is a political ethic and it postulated the integrative power
of the monarchical order in the face of the instability of the new
industrial society. Roscher feared the collapse of bourgeois institu
tions and he established the fourth constitutional type of Caesarism
(which was not Aristotelian). In 1903 Max Weber subjected Roscher's
scientific conception to a sharp critique for its historicism, thereby
demanding the separation of the politically existing from the ethical
'ought' (Weber 1976: 2-42). Within the political science of the whole
of Germany this remained a minority position. Moving on from the
tradition of political science in Germany, what are the historical con
ditions of the period in which Weber wrote?
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Hübinger Max Weber's'Sociology of the State' 25
2. The challenges of the First World War
Max Weber responded to the great challenges of European society
before and after 1900 with theoretical analyses that are still relevant
today. On the social question, which dominated Europe at the end
of the 19th century, he reacted with a structural analysis of capital
ism. On the cultural question at the start of the 20th century, which
in Germany fostered the Lebensreform movement and neo-Romanti
cism, he responded with a cultural analysis of the world religions.
And on the political question of the self-emasculation of Europe in
the First World War, he reacted with a univeral-historical analysis of
the forms of rulerships and a critical analysis of the contemporary
modern state.
During the war Weber's work on the Grundriß der Sozialökonomik
and so also on Economy and Society was at first broken off and then
directed much more strongly than planned to the field of politics.
In early 1917 Weber was aware of two different things. The war,
which for him always was historically justified and which he called
'great and wonderful',6 was effectively lost with the entrance of the
United States of America. What he found so insupportable were
the political elites in Germany, which surrounded the dilettante
Kaiser. They lacked any historical judgement in understanding the
February Revolution in Russia and they were completely incapable
of reforming the political system. Central to the last five years of
his life was the issue of the sociological determination of the 'rule
of man by man' and the significance of the modern state. Together
with Wolfgang Mommsen I have edited the important texts for the
Max Weber Gesamtausgabe (Weber 1984). Weber develops the most
important aspect of his 'general theory of the state and politics' not
academically removed but in public argument about the new politi
cal order in Germany. Weber first wrote a series of articles for the
liberal Frankfurter Zeitung on 'German parliamentarism in the past
and future'. The brochure 'Parlament und Regierung im neugeor
dneten Deutschland' appeared as an 'academic' publication under
conditions of wartime censorship. Weber's public intervention in
the struggle over the future direction of politics in this example and
more generally shows that it makes no sense to bifurcate Weber into
a writer on day-to-day politics and a producer of systematic catego
ries. Even for Wolfgang Schluchter Weber appears always 'to swing
6. In a letter, 8 September 1914, to his sister Lili Schäfer (Weber 2003:792).
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26 Max Weber Studies
between the present and the most dista
The regular to and fro between pres
tion in the past. This is seen in the ear
ancient Rome and in modern day Pru
Israel and the political demagogues of
lecture course 'General Theory of th
framed within this movement of the i
3. Weber's lectures on 'General Theory of
All the ways in which 'the science of p
days he found, for the same reason, to
was a Zeitschrift für Politik and a Han
found favour with him (else he wou
deplorable state of teaching and textbo
state caused him in 1909 to start the
ialökonomik which would have an en
was sympathetic to the separation of t
and the 'general social theory of the st
league Georg Jellinek had established
indispensable did not interest him gr
construct a 'a general theory of state a
Jellinek in June 1909 (Hanke and Mo
Weber laboured on this for ten years
In the summer of 1918 he re-commenc
the results first in Vienna to studen
and again in Vienna Weber gave a lec
Sociology of the State' (Weber 2005: 7
on this occasion he did talk about a f
ship, namely the legitimacy of the occ
at through democratic consensus. Ho
this idea, or whether it was just the
ful explanation, requires further con
7. 'Under the title "A Positive Critique of th
presented his research on the sociology of reli
Marianne Weber (1984: 604).
8. We know about the lecture through a report
October, 1917, reprinted in Weber 2005: 745-56
about how the modern development of the for
terised by the gradual emergence of a fourth i
which, at least officially, derived its own legi
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Hübinger Max Weber's 'Sociology of the State' 27
substituted his threefold typology of legitimate rulership in favour
of a fourth type. Instead the 'legitimacy through democratic consen
sus' is introduced as the anti-authoritarian transformation of cha
risma.9 After Weber had negotiated the chair in Munich for 'Science
of society, economic history and economics', as successor to Lujo
Brentano, he lectured there in the winter semester of 1919-1920 on
'The Outline of universal Social and Economic History'. Parts of the
manuscript were to have been designated for the second part of his
lecture course on theory of state and politics, 'The Forms of the State
and the Economy'. The first part follows the main features of the
third chapter 'Types of Domination' of the first part of Economy and
Society that had in April 1920 just been sent to the printers. But there
is little point going into details of Weber philology here.
The main issue is, what did Weber bring to the existing academic
treatment of politics that was new? This question can be linked to
Wolfgang Mommsen's presentation of the antinomic structure of
Weber's thinking, already mentioned. For Mommsen the most impor
tant antinomy, characteristic of Weber, was the contrast between
conceptions of universal history constructed from individual value
relations (Wertbezügen) and at the same time making individual and
political value choices in the light of universal-historical facts. Whether
Weber's style of thinking should be thought in terms of an 'antinomic
structure', or as a pendulum swinging between the present and the
past, requires a cultural sociological model that allows a more pre
cise grasp of the role-change and overlapping roles of the academic
and the intellectual. In French intellectual history there is one such
model with the distinction between the 'intellectuel spécifique' and
the 'intellectuel scientifique' (Noiriel 2003: 201-54). The model, which
supposes a particular tension and interaction between scientific
rationality and citizen engagement in civil society, can be applied to
Max Weber. Weber's role model for the 'academic-intellectual' (intel
lectuel scientifique) would have been Theodor Mommsen more than
anyone else. The classical historian, political publicist and sometime
parliamentarian, Mommsen, in his own self-description an 'animal
politicum', had, on the one hand, strictly distinguished between
empirical historical research and political value judgements, and, on
its early stages it is still far removed from all modern democratic ideas. Its specific
bearer, however, is the sociological structure of the occidental city, which in its emer
gence and in its sociological meaning is different from all city-like structures of other
periods and countries in Antiquity and the Middle Ages' (Weber 2005:755).
9. See Stefan Breuer (2006:129ff.) and H. Bruhns and W. Nippel (2000).
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28 Max Weber Studies
the other hand, in his overall habitu
stepping over these boundaries.10
The second of Wolfgang J. Momm
the substantive kernel of politics, at 'v
political. Weber devoted a lecture ho
forces' which change all political rela
nalism from without and charisma from within'. The more modern
a society the more a fundamental tension develops between ratio
nalism and charisma, between impersonal and personal violence,
which results in different types of rulership. The 'belief in legiti
macy' ('Legitimationsglaube'), as is known, has a central significance
for those citizens who are subjected to different political orders. The
dispute over the Constitution of the Europe Union at the beginning
of tire 21st century is instructive. The plebiscites that were held and
those that were denied have shown how difficult it is to progress
the belief in legitimacy in a highly complex political association like
the European Union and just how diffuse thinking is over the prin
ciples of what counts as valid legitimation. Max Weber in his time
confronted an audience of some four hundred people right at the
start of his lecture with a current example, that 'in Bavaria a republic
of soviets, democracy and monarchy' struggle side by side for the
chance to be recognised as the legitimate constitutional power. What
can be said in conclusion about the nature of Weber's last lecture
course and in addition his late political writings in respect to the two
antinomies—the theoretical tension between past and present and
the empirical tension between personal and impersonal violence?
In the lecture course the central lines of argumentation of his
entire work come together. Weber takes three quick anthropological
steps to reach his specific theme of the universal-historical process
of 'political association'. First step: every human action is pursued
according to the sense it has for the individual. Political action
therefore is explained by the subjective reference of rulers and those
who wish to obey. Second step: all social relationships are ones of
struggle. 'Struggle cannot be excluded from all cultural life.' (Weber
1976: 517; 1949: 26) Weber anthropologically places 'struggle'—from
the small family through to the system of world powers—still above
'class conflict' and 'conflict between races' and thus still above the
directive ideas of 'class' and 'race' which are followed by those who
subscribe to the ideas of Karl Marx and Charles Darwin. Third step:
10. On the close connection between Theodor Mommsen and Max Weber see
for more detail chapters 3 and 5 of Gangolf Htibinger (2006).
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Hübinger Max Weber's 'Sociology of the State' 29
all social relationships of struggle institutionalize themselves. Het
erogeneous interest-situations and value positions create (tempo
rary) legitimate orders.
Following these three steps emerges the univeral-historical out
line of all relationships of rulership from the clan chief of the ancient
household community to the political demagogue of the large indus
trial states. Weber furnishes the audience with illustrative examples
from the most recent past and present, as in the revered William
Ewart Gladstone as plebiscitary leader in a democratic mass society,
or 'the socialist dictatorship of the soviets'. He shows the listeners
ideal-typically the two contradictory effects of modern Caesarism
according to whether the propertied or propertyless strata legitimize
the state monopoly of violence.
Sense-relations (Sinn-Bezüge), relationships of struggle, the inter
ests of obedience come together as the three elements of a historical
theory of political association. This is a scientific revolution in political
thought in the Kaiserreich. For the development of the science of
politics in the 20th century as an academic discipline this paradigm
has yet to become a basis for building models.11 The old argument
around charisma and bureaucracy remains more relevant for Weber
specialists. Andreas Anter sees in the 20th century an increase in
impersonal power of law and apparatus, and at the same time a
changed distribution between state and non-state violence with the
serious erosion of the classical type of state. Anter ties this state
ment with an emphatic concluding thesis, in which Weber's types of
domination are historically hierarchalised: 'It is the development of
the domination of impersonal violence that is the leitmotiv of Max
Weber's entire historical sociology' (Anter in Hanke and Mommsen
2001:138). Wolfgang J. Mommsen's position is vehemently opposed,
holding that there is no rationalised political order 'without a char
ismatic element'. The leitmotiv of Weber7s theoretical and historical
work on domination is the 'selection of the political leader7. Mom
msen had already established this position in his book Max Weber and
German Politics against counter-positions with the most pertinent of
all quotations from 'Politics as a Vocation': 'But the only choice lies
11. There is an astonishing discrepancy between particular quotations from
Weber and the handling of Weber's models, cf. Bleek (2001). Recent theories, which
bring together symbolic action and institutional orders in systematic interaction,
as done by the research areas of the German Research-Community at Dresden and
Constance, are insufficiently aware of the 'genealogy' of the problems posed in the
same terms by Max Weber. Cf. Melville (2001) and Klaus Tanner (2005:25-44).
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30 Max Weber Studies
between a leadership democracy (Führe
and democracy without a leader, whi
sional politician" who has no vocatio
The structural possibility between t
and impersonal rule in all social relat
the decisive element in 'Max Weber's
(Mommsen 1974: 19-21). This has bee
theoretical approaches which seek to
spective on 'domination'. So far as t
Weber, it is Wolfgang Mommsen's h
Weberian theory of domination that,
chapter on 'domination' in Economy a
tion. On this basis the editor of Webe
issue with the new theories: 'The thr
next to one another, they are neither p
nor in a hierarchical sequence. Quite t
insisted that a rulership is never purel
ditional or charismatic, but that in rea
modification of the types of domina
a theoretical premiss for a scientific 't
even if Weber 'as a human person an
progressive rationalization in almost all
to the freedom of individual action' (
Max Weber's lecture course on 'Gen
Politics' from 1920 supports the alrea
three types of domination in the older
Society' and as already quoted empha
lutionary powers of rationalism from
within' have framed human life over
where traditional domination was con
matic eruptions. This is closely related
the opposition between personal and
not by resolving the opposition in fa
dynamic in the political thought of We
J. Mommsen when he saw it as structu
insisted that working with Weberian c
solid empirical basis. This means that W
a Vocation' should not be forgotten: '
for his success on the functioning of
365). The 'search for power, booty and
has to be satisfied. Weber had the exam
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Hübinger Max Weber's'Sociology of the State' 31
between the conviction ethics and material interests of the 'Red
Guards' before his eyes (Weber 1994: 365). Similar examples stand
before us in the present shifts in power in all the states of the world.
In line with Mommsen, it remains a valuable undertaking to take
these two basic potentialities of the political, which Weber elaborated
historically, and set them in the extreme course of the 20th century
in their empirically open tension. There are no shortage of instances
of the potential for violence when the state is both concentrated and
eroded for the historical-political sciences.
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