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Max Weber's Politics and Political Education

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 August 2014

Lawrence A. Scaff*
Affiliation:
University of Arizona

Abstract

Max Weber's work has long been considered the property of sociologists. This paper attempts to restore an understanding of the fundamental political nature of his thought and action. Through an examination of Weber's political writings and involvements, beginning with the Freiburg Inaugural Address of 1895, it is demonstrated that Weber developed a political theory which was both critical and empirical, and attempted (unsuccessfully) to put it into practice. The two sides of this attempt are discussed: the critique of Bismarckian and Wilhelmian politics and Weber's own “positive” construction of a new political order. “Bureaucratization” and “democratization” are understood as the key themes of this analysis. Identification with the middle class is stressed as a major determinant of action, transcended only by a profound commitment to political education of the nation. Political education is judged to be the supreme task of theory; it supplies the source of Weber's political and scientific commitments, and the explanation for his ultimate political failure.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1973

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References

1 Weber nominated Friedrich Naumann as the most appropriate choice for this 1918 speech, feeling that he lacked the necessary political qualifications himself. He consented only when it was rumored that Kurt Eisner would be his actual replacement. See the account by Birnbaum, Immanuel in Koenig, René and Winckelmann, Johannes, eds., “Max Weber zum Gedaechtnis,” Koelner Zeitschrift fuer Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie, Sonderheft 7 (Cologne: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1964), pp. 1921.Google Scholar

2 Bendix, Reinhard and Roth, Guenther, Scholarship and Partisanship: Essays on Max Weber (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1971), esp. chaps 14Google Scholar, which are valuable for emphasizing the connections between Weber's scholarly and partisan activities.

3 See especially the work by Mommsen, Wolfgang J., the German historian, Max Weber und die deutsche Politik, 1890–1920 (Tuebingen: Mohr, 1959).Google Scholar This study is mainly responsible for the debate over Weber's politics that emerged in its most heated form at the 1964 meetings of the German Sociological Society, recorded in Max Weber und die Soziologie heute, ed. Stammer, Otto (Tuebingen: Mohr, 1965)Google Scholar, and recently translated by Kathleen Morris. Other “political” treatments of Weber that deserve mention are two later articles by Mommsen, , “Zum Begriff der ‘plebiszitaeren Fuehrerdemokratie’ bei Max Weber,” Koelner Zeitschrift fuer Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie, XV (1963), 295322Google Scholar, and “Universalgeschichtliches und politisches Denken bel Max Weber,” Historische Zeitschrift, CCI (1965), 557–612. (The latter article has been partially translated in both the International Social Science Journal, XVII (1965), and in Max Weber, ed. Wrong, Dennis (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1970).Google Scholar See also Mayer, Jacob P., Max Weber and German Politics, A Study in Political Sociology, 2nd ed. (London: Faber and Faber, 1956)Google Scholar; Loewenstein, Karl, Max Weber's Political Ideas in the Perspective of Our Time, tr. Winston, R. and Winston, C. (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1966)Google Scholar; and most recently, Dronberger, Ilse, The Political Thought of Max Weber (New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1971).Google Scholar Mommsen's studies are by far the best of these, although they are sometimes badly marred by an attempt to interpret Weber as a precursor of Nazism.

4 It should be mentioned that the Alldeutsche Verband soon became a puppet of Tirpitz, the extreme nationalists, and large industrial interests, with an accompanying shift in political emphasis and program. Weber remained a member of it for six years, whereas his fruitful association with Naumann and with the Verein fuer Sozialpolitik lasted the duration of his life.

5 The Freiburg Inaugural Address, “Der Nationalstaat und die Volkswirtschaftspolitik,” Gesammelte Politische Schriften, 2nd ed. (Tuebingen: Mohr, 1958), p. 13Google Scholar; all translations are the author's. (This volume will be cited as GPS.) Similar remarks were made in an 1894 speech before the fifth Evangelisch-sozialen Kongress, quoted in Weber, Marianne, Max Weber, ein Lebensbild (Tuebingen: Mohr, 1926), p. 145Google Scholar; hereafter cited as Lebensbild.

6 In 1913, referring to the problem of nationalism and the relation between value-judgments and scientific knowledge, Weber judged the speech “immature,” containing arguments “with which I can no longer identify on many important points:” “Gutachten zur Werturteilsdiskussion im Ausschuss des Vereins fuer Sozialpolitik,” reprinted in Baumgarten, Eduard, Max Weber, Werk und Person (Tuebingen: Mohr, 1964), p. 127Google Scholar, and similar remarks quoted in Lebensbild, p. 416. In subsequent writings scientific statements were distinguished on logical grounds from the justification of ultimate practical values. Using the distinction, Weber intended to suggest the following: value-judgments or a Weltanschauung cannot be derived from scientific analysis, a value-judgment cannot be ultimately justified by referring only to empirical facts, and in social science an investigator's values seriously influence his observations through the search for significance (Bedeutung) and a value-orientation (Wertbeziehung). This position did not eliminate science's role as a counsellor for political action, nor did it advance the more specific claim that no conceivable way exists whereby rational scientific inquiry can inform political judgments. In these senses the early and late work was consistent.

7 Two critiques that rely heavily on the nationalism of the Freiburg Address, to the exclusion of other features, are Bergstraesser, Arnold, “Max Webers Antrittsvorlesung in zeitgeschichtlicher Perspektive,” Vierteljahrshefte fuer Zeitgeschichte, V (Juli, 1957), 209–19Google Scholar, and Nolte, Ernst, “Max Weber vor dem Faschismus,” Der Staat, II (1963), 124.Google Scholar

8 “Der Sozialismus,” a lecture delivered in 1918, Gesammelte Aufsaetze zur Soziologie und Sozialpolitik (Tuebingen: Mohr, 1924), pp. 504–5; cited below as GASS.

9 “Der Nationalstaat,” GPS, p. 20.

10 A remark made by Albert Salomon in 1926, quoted in Mommsen, , Max Weber, p. 112n.Google Scholar In the contrasting choices of audience and the consequences following from these choices there is sense to the phrase, although Weber's expectations for his chosen audience are understandably somewhat different from Marx's.

11 “Der Nationalstaat,” GPS, p. 21.

12 Ibid., p. 23.

13 Ibid., p. 24.

14 See, for example, “Wahlrecht und Demokratie in Deutschland” (1917), GPS, p. 274.

15 “The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism” (1904–5), Gesammelte Aufsaetze zur Religionssoziologie, 5th ed., 3 vols. (Tuebingen: Mohr, 1963), I:20–1; translated as a separate book by Talcott Parsons (New York: Scribners, 1958). The German edition will be cited hereafter as GAR.

16 “Der Nationalstaat,” GPS, p. 22; for the critique of Bismarck see especially “Bismarcks Aussenpolitik und die Gegenwart” (1915), “Bismarcks Erbe in der Reichsverfassung” (1917), and a section of “Parlament und Regierung im neugeordneten Deutschland” (1918), all in GPS, pp. 109–26, 229–32, 299–308.

17 “Parlament und Regierung,” GPS, p. 307. All of this major essay except the last part is translated as an appendix to Weber's Economy and Society, ed. Roth, Guenther and Wittich, Claus, 3 vols. (New York: Bedminster Press, 1968), 3:13811469.Google Scholar

18 Ibid., p. 306.

19 Ibid., p. 307.

20 Ibid.

21 “Deutschlands kuenftige Staatsform” (1918), GPS, p. 437.

22 From a letter to Naumann, December 14, 1906, quoted in Baumgarten, p. 486.

23 Letter of February 5, 1906, quoted in Mommsen, , “Universalgeschichtliches und politisches Denken bei Max Weber,” 574Google Scholar, n48; also in Baumgarten, p. 450; cf. p. 429.

24 Letter to Naumann, November 12, 1908, reprinted in Baumgarten, p. 488.

25 “Wahlrecht und Demokratie,” GPS, p. 277; see also “Parlament und Regierung,” GPS, pp. 325–6, and Economy and Society, 3:991 ff., for the same point.

26 “Parlament und Regierung,” GPS, p. 308.

27 Ibid., p. 335; cf. p. 380 for a similar statement.

28 Ibid., p. 339.

29 “The Protestant Ethic,” GAR, 1:208, 215 n1.

30 “Parlament und Regierung,” GPS, p. 318.

31 On this theme see Ibid. pp. 310 ff.; “Agrarverhaeltnisse im Altertum” (1909), Gesammelte Aufsaetze zur Sozial- und Wirtschaftsgeschichte (Tuebingen: Mohr, 1924), p. 278, to be cited as GASW; and Economy and Society, 3:956–1005.

32 “Parlament und Regierung,” GPS, pp. 319, 340.

33 Ibid., p. 320.

34 From the proceedings reprinted in GASS, p. 414.

35 “Agrarverhaeltnisse,” GASW, p. 278.

36 “Wahlrecht und Demokratie,” GPS, p. 268.

37 Ibid., p. 272.

38 “Parlament und Regierung,” GPS, p. 428.

39 ibid., p. 334.

40 “Deutschlands kuenftige Staatsform,” GPS, pp. 441–2.

41 “Wahlrecht und Demokratie” and “Deutschlands kuenftige Staatsform.” GPS, pp. 233, 471.

42 Ibid., p. 279; see also “Zur lage der buergerlichen Demokratie in Russland” (1906), and “Parlament und Regierung,” GPS, pp. 60–1, 321.

43 “Parlament und Regierung,” GPS, p. 298. See also the letter to Prof. Ehrenberg, July 16, 1917, in the first edition only of GPS, pp. 469–70; Mommsen gives the correct date in Max Weber, p. 55 n1.

44 “Parlament und Regierung,” GPS, p. 327.

45 See “Wahlrecht und Demokratie” and “Parlament und Regierung,” GPS, pp. 259, 275 ff., 324 ff., 334, 343, 367, 384, 412, 421.

46 “Parlament und Regierung,” GPS, pp. 342–3. The popular search for a unique German form of state was Weber's polemical target here.

47 This is true for Mommsen in the 1959 work, Max Weber, esp. p. 390. See also his “Zum Begriff der ‘plebiszitaeren Fuehrerdemokratie’ bei Max Weber,” where a few qualifications are made (particularly the admission that Weber was “the last great representative of classical liberalism,” p. 315) even though his view is on balance unchanged. On these issues Mommsen's critique is additionally unconvincing, since it systematically ignores Weber's intentions.

48 “Wahlrecht und Demokratie,” GPS, pp. 255 ff.

49 “Parlament und Regierung,” GPS, pp. 380–1. Gladstone, for example, was judged to be “the dictator of the battlefield of elections:” “Politics as a Vocation” (1919), GPS, p. 523.

50 GPS, p. 381; cf. p. 275, where strengthening of political leadership as such is made an important task.

51 See the definitive account of the constitutional discussions in Schulz, Gerhard, Zwischen Demokratie und Diktatur, Verfassungspolitik und Reichsreform in der Weimarer Republik (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1963), 1:114–42.Google Scholar Some helpful documents can be found in Burdick, Charles B. and Lutz, Ralph H., eds., The Political Institutions of the German Revolution, 1918–1919 (New York: Praeger, 1966), esp. pp. 66, 264.Google Scholar

52 “Der Reichspraesident” (1919), GPS, pp. 486–9; see also Baumgarten, p. 549 for these points, and “Deutschlands kuenftige Staatsform,” GPS, p. 457.

53 “Deutschlands kuenftige Staatsform,” GPS, p. 458.

54 Quoted in Mann, Golo, “Max Weber als Politiker,” Die neue Rundschau, 75 (1964), 400.Google Scholar See the interesting discussion by Arendt, Hannah, “Truth and Politics,” Philosophy, Politics and Society, ed. Laslett, Peter and Runciman, W. G., third series (Oxford: Blackwell, 1967), pp. 104–33.Google Scholar

55 Michael J. Oakeshott's essay, “Political Education,” which concludes with the sentence, “The world is the best of all possible words and everything in it is a necessary evil,” belongs to this tradition: Rationalism in Politics and Other Essays (New York: Basic Books, 1962), pp. 111–36. Unlike Machiavelli and Weber, however, Oakeshott is uninterested in founding a new “realistic” science of politics.

56 Plato, , Republic, 402A.Google Scholar

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