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Politics as a Vocation
Max Weber
THIS lecture, which I give at your request, will necessarily disappoint you in a
number of ways. You will naturally expect me to take a position on actual
problems of the day. But that will be the case only in a purely formal way and
toward the end, when I shall raise certain questions concerning the significance
of political action in the whole way of life. In today’s lecture, all questions that
refer to what policy and what content one should give one’s political activity must
be eliminated. For such questions have nothing to do with the general question
of what politics as a vocation means and what it can mean. Now to our subject
matter.
What do we understand by politics? The concept is extremely broad and
comprises any kind of independent leadership in action. One speaks of the
currency policy of the banks, of the discounting policy of the Reichsbank, of the
strike policy of a trade union; one may speak of the educational policy of a
municipality or a township, of the policy of the president of a voluntary
association, and, finally, even of the policy of a prudent wife who seeks to guide
her husband. Tonight, our reflections are, of course, not based upon such a
broad concept. We wish to understand by politics only the leadership, or the
influencing of the leadership, of a political association, hence today, of a state.
But what is a ‘political’ association from the sociological point of view? What is a
‘state’? Sociologically, the state cannot be defined in terms of its ends. There is
scarcely any task that some political association has not taken in hand, and there
is no task that one could say has always been exclusive and peculiar to those
associations which are designated as political ones: today the state, or
historically, those associations which have been the predecessors of the modern
state. Ultimately, one can define the modern state sociologically only in terms of
the specific means peculiar to it, as to every political association, namely, the
use of physical force.
‘Every state is founded on force,’ said Trotsky at Brest-Litovsk. That is indeed
right. If no social institutions existed which knew the use of violence, then the
concept of ‘state’ would be eliminated, and a condition would emerge that could
be designated as ‘anarchy,’ in the specific sense of this word. Of course, force is
certainly not the normal or the only means of the state–nobody says that–but
force is a means specific to the state. Today the relation between the state and
violence is an especially intimate one. In the past, the most varied institutions-beginning with the sib–have known the use of physical force as quite normal.
Today, however, we have to say that a state is a human community that
(successfully) claims the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force within
a given territory. Note that ‘territory’ is one of the characteristics of the state.
Specifically, at the present time, the right to use physical force is ascribed to
other institutions or to individuals only to the extent to which the state permits
it. The state is considered the sole source of the ‘right’ to use violence. Hence,
‘politics’ for us means striving to share power or striving to influence the
distribution of power, either among states or among groups within a state.
This corresponds essentially to ordinary usage. When a question is said to be a
‘political’ question, when a cabinet minister or an official is said to be a ‘political’
official, or when a decision is said to be ‘politically’ determined, what is always
meant is that interests in the distribution, maintenance, or transfer of power are
decisive for answering the questions and determining the decision or the official’s
sphere of activity. He who is active in politics strives for power either as a means
in serving other aims, ideal or egoistic, or as ‘power for power’s sake,’ that is, in
order to enjoy the prestige-feeling that power gives.
Like the political institutions historically preceding it, the state is a relation of
men dominating men, a relation supported by means of legitimate (i.e.
considered to be legitimate) violence. If the state is to exist, the dominated must
obey the authority claimed by the powers that be. When and why do men obey?
Upon what inner justifications and upon what external means does this
domination rest?
To begin with, in principle, there are three inner justifications, hence basic
legitimations of domination.
First, the authority of the ‘eternal yesterday,’ i.e. of the mores sanctified through
the unimaginably ancient recognition and habitual orientation to conform. This is
‘traditional’ domination exercised by the patriarch and the patrimonial prince of
yore.
There is the authority of the extraordinary and personal gift of grace (charisma),
the absolutely personal devotion and personal confidence in revelation, heroism,
or other qualities of individual leadership. This is ‘charismatic’ domination, as
exercised by the prophet or–in the field of politics–by the elected war lord, the
plebiscitarian ruler, the great demagogue, or the political party leader.
Finally, there is domination by virtue of ‘legality,’ by virtue of the belief in the
validity of legal statute and functional ‘competence’ based on rationally created
rules. In this case, obedience is expected in discharging statutory obligations.
This is domination as exercised by the modern ‘servant of the state’ and by all
those bearers of power who in this respect resemble him.
It is understood that, in reality, obedience is determined by highly robust
motives of fear and hope–fear of the vengeance of magical powers or of the
power-holder, hope for reward in this world or in the beyond– and besides all
this, by interests of the most varied sort. Of this we shall speak presently.
However, in asking for the ‘legitimations’ of this obedience, one meets with these
three ‘pure’ types: ‘traditional,’ ‘charismatic,’ and ‘legal.’
These conceptions of legitimacy and their inner justifications are of very great
significance for the structure of domination. To be sure, the pure types are rarely
found in reality. But today we cannot deal with the highly complex variant,
transitions, and combinations of these pure types, which problems belong to
‘political science.’ Here we are interested above all in the second of these types:
domination by virtue of the devotion of those who obey the purely personal
‘charisma’ of the ‘leader.’ For this is the root of the idea of a calling in its highest
expression.
Devotion to the charisma of the prophet, or the leader in war, or to the great
demagogue in the ecclesia or in parliament, means that the leader is personally
recognized as the innerly ‘called’ leader of men. Men do not obey him by virtue
of tradition or statute, but because they believe in him. If he is more than a
narrow and vain upstart of the moment, the leader lives for his cause and ‘strives
for his work.’ The devotion of his disciples, his followers, his personal party
friends is oriented to his person and to its qualities.
Charismatic leadership has emerged in all places and in all historical epochs.
Most importantly in the past, it has emerged in the two figures of the magician
and the prophet on the one hand, and in the elected war lord, the gang leader
and condotierre on the other hand. Political leadership in the form of the free
‘demagogue’ who grew from the soil of the city state is of greater concern to us;
like the city state, the demagogue is peculiar to the Occident and especially to
Mediterranean culture. Furthermore, political leadership in the form of the
parliamentary ‘party leader’ has grown on the soil of the constitutional state,
which is also indigenous only to the Occident.
These politicians by virtue of a ‘calling,’ in the most genuine sense of the word,
are of course nowhere the only decisive figures in the cross-currents of the
political struggle for power. The sort of auxiliary means that are at their disposal
is also highly decisive. How do the politically dominant powers manage to
maintain their domination? The question pertains to any kind of domination,
hence also to political domination in all its forms, traditional as well as legal and
charismatic.
Organized domination, which calls for continuous administration, requires that
human conduct be conditioned to obedience towards those masters who claim to
be the bearers of legitimate power. On the other hand, by virtue of this
obedience, organized domination requires the control of those material goods
which in a given case are necessary for the use of physical violence. Thus,
organized domination requires control of the personal executive staff and the
material implements of administration.
The administrative staff, which externally represents the organization of political
domination, is, of course, like any other organization, bound by obedience to the
power-holder and not alone by the concept of legitimacy, of which we have just
spoken. There are two other means, both of which appeal to personal interests:
material reward and social honor. The fiefs of vassals, the prebends of
patrimonial officials, the salaries of modern civil servants, the honor of knights,
the privileges of estates, and the honor of the civil servant comprise their
respective wages. The fear of losing them is the final and decisive basis for
solidarity between the executive staff and the power-holder. There is honor and
booty for the followers in war; for the demagogue’s following, there are ‘spoils’-that is, exploitation of the dominated through the monopolization of office–and
there are politically determined profits and premiums of vanity. All of these
rewards are also derived from the domination exercised by a charismatic leader.
To maintain a dominion by force, certain material goods are required, just as
with an economic organization. All states may be classified according to whether
they rest on the principle that the staff of men themselves own the
administrative means, or whether the staff is ‘separated’ from these means of
administration. This distinction holds in the same sense in which today we say
that the salaried employee and the proletarian in the capitalistic enterprise are
‘separated’ from the material means of production. The power-holder must be
able to count on the obedience of the staff members, officials, or whoever else
they may be. The administrative means may consist of money, building, war
material, vehicles, horses, or whatnot. The question is whether or not the powerholder himself directs and organizes the administration while delegating
executive power to personal servants, hired officials, or personal favorites and
confidants, who are non-owners, i.e. who do not use the material means of
administration in their own right but are directed by the lord. The distinction runs
through all administrative organizations of the past.
These political associations in which the material means of administration are
autonomously controlled, wholly or partly, by the dependent administrative staff
may be called associations organized in ‘estates.’ The vassal in the feudal
association, for instance, paid out of his own pocket for the administration and
judicature of the district enfeoffed to him. He supplied his own equipment and
provisions for war, and his subvassals did likewise. Of course, this had
consequences for the lord’s position of power, which only rested upon a relation
of personal faith and upon the fact that the legitimacy of his possession of the
fief and the social honor of the vassal were derived from the overlord.
However, everywhere, reaching back to the earliest political formations, we also
find the lord himself directing the administration. He seeks to take the
administration into his own hands by having men personally dependent upon
him: slaves, household officials, attendants, personal ‘favorites,’ and
prebendaries enfeoffed in kind or in money from his magazines. He seeks to
defray the expenses from his own pocket, from the revenues of his patrimonium;
and he seeks to create an army which is dependent upon him personally because
it is equipped and provisioned out of his granaries, magazines, and armories. In
the association of ‘estates,’ the lord rules with the aid of an autonomous
‘aristocracy’ and hence shares his domination with it; the lord who personally
administers is supported either by members of his household or by plebeians.
These are propertyless strata having no social honor of their own; materially,
they are completely chained to him and are not backed up by any competing
power of their own. All forms of patriarchal and patrimonial domination, Sultanist
despotism, and bureaucratic states belong to this latter type. The bureaucratic
state order is especially important; m its most rational development, it is
precisely characteristic of the modern state.
Everywhere the development of the modern state is initiated through the action
of the prince. He paves the way for the expropriation of the autonomous and
‘private’ bearers of executive power who stand beside him, of those who in their
own right possess the means of administration, warfare, and financial
organization, as well as politically usable goods of all sorts. The whole process is
a complete parallel to the development of the capitalist enterprise through
gradual expropriation of the independent producers. In the end, the modern
state controls the total means of political organization, which actually come
together under a single head. No single official personally owns the money he
pays out, or the buildings, stores, tools, and war machines he controls. In the
contemporary ‘state’–and this is essential for the concept of state–the
‘separation’ of the administrative staff, of the administrative officials, and of the
workers from the material means of administrative organization is completed.
Here the most modern development begins, and we see with our own eyes the
attempt to inaugurate the expropriation of this expropriator of the political
means, and therewith of political power.
The revolution [of Germany, 1918] has accomplished, at least in so far as
leaders have taken the place of the statutory authorities, this much: the leaders,
through usurpation or election, have attained control over the political staff and
the apparatus of material goods; and they deduce their legitimacy–no matter
with what right–from the will of the governed. Whether the leaders, on the basis
of this at least apparent success, can rightfully entertain the hope of also
carrying through the expropriation within the capitalist enterprises is a different
question. The direction of capitalist enterprises, despite far-reaching analogies,
follows quite different laws than those of political administration.
Today we do not take a stand on this question. I state only the purely conceptual
aspect for our consideration: the modern state is a compulsory association which
organizes domination. It has been successful in seeking to monopolize the
legitimate use of physical force as a means of domination within a territory. To
this end the state has combined the material means of organization in the hands
of its leaders, and it has expropriated all autonomous functionaries of estates
who formerly controlled these means in their own right. The state has taken their
positions and now stands in the top place.
During this process of political expropriation, which has occurred with varying
success in all countries on earth, ‘professional politicians’ in another sense have
emerged. They arose first in the service of a prince. They have been men who,
unlike the charismatic leader, have not wished to be lords themselves, but who
have entered the service of political lords In the struggle of expropriation, they
placed themselves at the princes; disposal and by managing the princes’ politics
they earned, on the one hand, a living and, on the other hand, an ideal content
of life. Again it is only in the Occident that we find this kind of professional
politician in the service of powers other than the princes. In the past, they have
been the most important power instrument of the prince and his instrument of
political expropriation.
Before discussing ‘professional politicians’ in detail, let us clarify in all its aspects
the state of affairs their existence presents. Politics, just as economic pursuits,
may be a man’s avocation or his vocation. One may engage in politics, and hence
seek to influence the distribution of power within and between political
structures, as an ‘occasional’ politician. We are all ‘occasional’ politicians when
we cast our ballot or consummate a similar expression of intention, such as
applauding or protesting in a ‘political’ meeting, or delivering a ‘political’ speech,
etc. The whole relation of many people to politics is restricted to this. Politics as
an avocation is today practiced by all those party agents and heads of voluntary
political associations who, as a rule, are politically active only in case of need and
for whom politics is, neither materially nor ideally, ‘their life’ in the first place.
The same holds for those members of state counsels and similar deliberative
bodies that function only when summoned. It also holds for rather broad strata
of our members of parliament who are politically active only during sessions. In
the past, such strata were found especially among the estates. Proprietors of
military implements in their own right, or proprietors of goods important for the
administration, or proprietors of personal prerogatives may be called ‘estates.’ A
large portion of them were far from giving their lives wholly, or merely
preferentially, or more than occasionally, to the service of politics. Rather, they
exploited their prerogatives in the interest of gaining rent or even profits; and
they became active in the service of political associations only when the overlord
of their status-equals especially demanded it. It was not different in the case of
some of the auxiliary forces which the prince drew into the struggle for the
creation of a political organization to be exclusively at his disposal. This was the
nature of the Rate von Haus aus [councilors] and, still further back, of a
considerable part of the councilors assembling in the ‘Curia’ and other
deliberating bodies of the princes. But these merely occasional auxiliary forces
engaging in politics on the side were naturally not sufficient for the prince. Of
necessity, the prince sought to create a staff of helpers dedicated wholly and
exclusively to serving him, hence making this their major vocation. The structure
of the emerging dynastic political organization, and not only this but the whole
articulation of the culture, depended to a considerable degree upon the question
of where the prince recruited agents.
A staff was also necessary for those political associations whose members
constituted themselves politically as (so-called) ‘free’ communes under the
complete abolition or the far-going restriction of princely power.
They were ‘free’ not in the sense of freedom from domination by force, but in the
sense that princely power legitimized by tradition (mostly religiously sanctified)
as the exclusive source of all authority was absent. These communities have
their historical home in the Occident. Their nucleus was the city as a body politic,
the form in which the city first emerged in the Mediterranean culture area. In all
these cases, what did the politicians who made politics their major vocation look
like?
There are two ways of making politics one’s vocation: Either one lives ‘for’
politics or one lives ‘off’ politics.
By no means is this contrast an exclusive one. The rule is, rather, that man does
both, at least in thought, and certainly he also does both in practice. He who
lives ‘for’ politics makes politics his life, in an internal sense. E …
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