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FROM MAX WEBER: Essays m Sociolosy
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From Marianne Weber's Miix Wtbci : em Lebensbild
MAX WEBER
FROM MAX WEBER: Essays in Sociology
TRANSLATED, EDITED, AND WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY
H. H. GERTH and C. WRIGHT MILLS
NEW YORK
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
1946
Copyright 1946 by Oxford University Press, New York, Inc.
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
X rel;
reiace
One hundred and fifty years ago A. F, Tytler set forth three Principles
of Translation: To give a complete transcript of the original ideas; to
imitate the styles of the original author; and to preserve the ease of the
original text. In presenting selections from Max Weber to an EngHsh-
reading public, we hope we have met the first demand, that of faithfulness
to the original meaning. The second and the third demands are often
disputable in translating German into English, and, in the case of Max
Weber, they are quite debatable.
The genius of the German language has allowed for a twofold stylistic
tradition. One tradition corresponds to the drift of English towards brief
and grammatically lucid sentences. Such sentences carry transparent trains
of thought in which first things stand first. Friedrich Nietzsche, Georg
Christoph Lichtenberg, and Franz Kafka are eminent among the repre-
sentatives of this tradition.
The other tradition is foreign to the tendency of modern English. It
is often felt to be formidable and forbidding, as readers of Hegel and
Jean Paul Richter, of Karl Marx and Ferdinand Tonnies may testify.
It would hardly do to classify the two traditions as 'good' and 'bad.'
Authors representing the first believe in addressing themselves to the
ear; they wish to write as if they were speaking. The second group ad-
dress themselves to the eye of the silent reader. Their texts cannot easily
be read aloud to others; everyone has to read for himself. Max Weber
once compared German literary humanism to the education of the Chinese
Mandarin; and Jean Paul Richter, one of the greatest of German writers,
asserted that 'a long period bespeaks of greater deference for the reader
than do twenty short sentences. In the end the reader must make them
over into one by rereading and recapitulation. The writer is no speaker
and the reader is no listener. . .' ^
1 Vorschule der Aesthetik, p. 382, Sammtliche Werke, Vol. 18 (Berlin, 1841).
5jBa039
Vi PREFACE
It is obvious that this school of writing is not what it is because of the
inability of its practitioners to write well. They simply follow an alto-
gether different style. They use parentheses, qualifying clauses, inversions,
and complex rhythmic devices in their polyphonous sentences. Ideas are
synchronized rather than serialized. At their best, they erect a grammatical
artifice in which mental balconies and watch towers, as well as bridges
and recesses, decorate the main structure. Their sentences are gothic
castles. And Max Weber's style is definitely in their tradition.
Unfortunately, in his case this style is further complicated by a tendency
to Platonize thought: he has a predilection for nouns and participles
linked by the economic yet colorless forms of weak verbs, such as 'to be,'
'to have,' or 'to seem.' This Platonizing tendency is one of Weber's tributes
to German philosophy and jurisprudence, to the style of the pulpit and
the bureaucratic office.
We have therefore violated the second of Tytler's rules for translators.
Although we have been eager to retain Weber's images, his objectivity,
and of course his terms, we have not hesitated to break his sentence into
three or four smaller units. Certain alterations in tense, which in English
would seem illogical and arbitrary, have been eliminated; occasionally
the subjunctive has been changed into the indicative, and nouns into
verbs; appositional clauses and parentheses have been raised to the level
of equality and condemned to follow rather than herald the main idea.
As Weber has not observed Friedrich Nietzsche's suggestion that one
should write German with an eye to ease of translation, we have had
to drive many a wedge into the structure of his sentences. In all these
matters, we have tried to proceed with respect and measure.
But we have also broken the third rule: Whatever 'ease' Weber may
have in English is an ease of the English prose into which he is rendered
and not any ease of the original work.
A translator of Weber faces a further difficulty. Weber frequently be-
trays a self-conscious hesitancy in the use of loaded words such as democ-
racy, the people, environment, adjustment, etc., by a profuse utilization of
quotation marks. It would be altogether wrong to translate them by the
addition of an ironical 'so-called.' Moreover, Weber often emphasizes
words and phrases; the German printing convention allows for this more
readily than does the English. Our translation, in the main, conforms to
the English convention: we have omitted what to the English reader
would seem self-conscious reservation and manner of emphasis. The same
holds for the accumulation of qualifying words, with which the English
PREFACE Vll
language dispenses without losing in exactitude, emphasis, and meaning.
Weber pushes German academic tradition to its extremes. His major
theme often seems to be lost in a wealth o£ footnoted digressions, exemp-
tions, and comparative illustrations. We have taken some footnotes into
the text and in a few instances we have relegated technical cross-references
which stand in the original text to footnotes.
We have thus violated Tytler's second and third rules in order to fulfil
the first. Our constant aim has been to make accessible to an English-
reading public an accurate rendering of what Weber said.
* * *
We wish to thank the editorial staff of Oxford University Press for
their encouragement of our efforts. Special thanks are due Mrs. Patricke
Johns Heine who assisted revisions of the first drafts of chapters iv, x, and
XII ; and to Mr. J. Ben Gillingham who performed the same task in connec-
tion with section 6 of chapter xiii. Miss Honey Toda partially edited and
retyped many pages of almost illegible manuscript and we are grateful
for her diligence.
We are grateful for the valuable assistance of Dr. Hedwig Ide Gerth
and Mrs. Freya Mills. The administrative generosity of Professor Carl S.
Joslyn, chairman of the Department of Sociology, the University of Mary-
land, and the support of Professor Thomas C. McCormick, chairman at
the University of Wisconsin, have greatly facilitated the work. Professor
E. A. Ross has been kind enough to read chapter xii and to give us his
suggestions.
One of our translations, 'Class, Status, Party,' has been printed in
Dwight Macdonald's Politics (October 1944) and is included in this vol-
ume by his kind permission. We are grateful to the pubHshers, Houghton
MifHin Company, for permission to reprint a revision of Max Weber's
paper given before the Congress of Arts and Science, St. Louis Exposition
of 1904.
Responsibility for the selections and reliability of the German meanings
rendered is primarily assumed by H. H. Gerth; responsibility for the
formulation and editorial arrangement of the EngHsh text is primarily
assumed by C. Wright Mills. But the book as a whole represents our
mutual work and we are jointly responsible for such deficiencies as it
may contain.
Hans H. Gerth
C. Wright Mills
Taole ol (contents
\
Preface, v
Introduction: THE MAN AND HIS WORK
/ ^ I. A Biographical View, 3
\ II. Political Concerns, 32
>ij {TlILVntellectual Orientations, 45
■"^^ \ ** I, Marx and Weber, 46
^y^ Bureaucracy and Charisma: a Philosophy of History, 51
; ^ 3. Methods of Social Science, 55
j 4. The Sociology of Ideas and Interests, 61
\ 5. Social Structures and Types of Capitalism, 65
\ ,^6. Conditions of Freedom and the Image of Man, 70
Part I: SCIENCE AND POLITICS
IV. Politics as a Vocation, 77
V. Science as a Vocation, 129
Part II: POWER
VI. Structures of Power, 159
1. The Prestige and Power of the 'Great Powers,' 159
2. The Economic Foundations of 'Imperialism,' 162
3. The Nation, 171
VII. Class, Status, Party, 180
1. Economically Determined Power and the Social Order, 180
2. Determination of Class-Situation by Market-Situation, 181
3. Communal Action Flowing from Class Interest, 183
4. Types of 'Class Struggle,' 184
5. Status Honor, 186
6. Guarantees of Status Stratification, 187
- 7. 'Ethnic' Segregation and 'Caste,' 188
8. Status Privileges, 190
9. Economic Conditions and Effects of Status Stratification, 192
10. Parties, 194
ix
X CONTENTS
VIII. Bureaucracy, 196
I. Characteristics of Bureaucracy, 196
•«. 2. The Position o£ the Official, 198
3. The Presuppositions and Causes of Bureaucracy, 204
4. The Quantitative Development of Administrative Tasks, 209
5. Qualitative Changes of Administrative Tasks, 212
- 6. Technical Advantages of Bureaucratic Organization, 214
7. Bureaucracy and Lav/, 216
8. The Concentration of the Means of Administration, 221
— 9. The Leveling of Social Differences, 224
10. The Permanent Character of the Bureaucratic Machine, 228
11. Economic and Social Consequences of Bureaucracy, 230
12. The Power Position of Bureaucracy, 232
13. Stages in the Development of Bureaucracy, 235
V 14. The 'Rationalization' of Education and Training, 240
\^1X. The Sociology of Charismatic Authority, 245
w- I. The General Character of Charisma, 245
U 2. Foundations and Instability of Charismatic Authority, 248
L.^3. Charismatic Kingship, 251
X. The Meaning of Discipline, 253
I. The Origins of Discipline in War, 255
2.. The Discipline of Large-Scale Economic Organizations, 261
3. Discipline and Charisma, 262
Part III: RELIGION
XL The Social Psychology of the World Religions, 267
XII. The Protestant Sects and the Spirit of Capitalism, 302
XIII. Religious Rejections of the World and Their Directions, 323
1. Motives for the Rejection of the World: the Meaning of Their
Rational Construction, 323
2. Typology of Asceticism and of Mysticism, 324
3. Directions of the Abnegation of the World, 327
4. The Economic Sphere, 331
5. The Political Sphere, 333
6. The Esthetic Sphere, 340
7. The Erotic Sphere, 343
8. The Intellectual Sphere, 350
9. The Three Forms of Theodicy, 358
Part IV: SOCIAL STRUCTURES
XIV. Capitalism and Rural Society in Germany, 363
XV. National Character and the Junkers, 386
CONTENTS XI
XVI. India: The Brahman and the Castes, 396
1. Caste and Tribe, 398
2. Caste and Guild, 399
3. Caste and Status Group, 405
4. The Social Rank Order of the Castes in General, 409
5. Castes and Traditionalism, 411
XVII. The Chinese Literati, 416
1. Confucius, 421
2. The Development of the Examination System, 422
3. The Typological Position of Confucian Education, 426
4. The Status-Honor of the Literati, 434
5. The Gentleman Ideal, 436
6. The Prestige of Officialdom, 438
7. Views on Economic Policy, 440
8. Sultanism and the Eunuchs as Political Opponents of the Literati,
442
Notes, 445
Index, 469
Introduction
THE MAN AND HIS WORK
1. A ijiograpnical V lew^
Max Weber was born in Erfurt, Thuringia, on 21 April 1864. His father,
Max Weber, Sr., a trained jurist and municipal counselor, came from a
family of linen merchants and textile manufacturers of western Germany.
In 1869 the Webers moved to Berlin, which was soon to become the
booming capital of Bismarck's Reich. There, Weber, Sr. became a pros-
perous politician, active in the municipal diet of Berlin, the Prussian
diet, and the new Reichstag. He belonged to the right-wing liberals led
by the Hanoverian noble, Bennigsen. The family resided in Charlotten-
burg, then a west-end suburb of Berlin, where academic and political
notables were neighbors. In his father's house young Weber came to
know such men as Dilthey, Mommsen, Julian Schmidt, Sybel, Treitschke,
and Friedrich Kapp.
Max Weber's mother, Helene Fallenstein Weber, was a cultured and
liberal woman of Protestant faith. Various members of her Thuringian
family were teachers and small officials. Her father, however, had been
a well-to-do official who, on the eve of the 1848 revolution, had retired
to a villa in Heidelberg. Gervinus, the eminent liberal historian and a
close friend of her family, had tutored her in the several humanist sub-
jects. Until she died, in 1919, Max Weber corresponded with her in long,
intimate, and often learned letters. In Berlin Helene Weber became an
overburdened Hausfraii, faithfully caring for the busy politician, the six
children, and a constant circle of friends. Two of her children had died
in infancy. The misery of the industrial classes of Berlin impressed her
deeply. Her husband neither understood nor shared her religious and
humanitarian concerns. He probably did not share her emotional hfe and
certainly the two differed in their feelings about many public questions.
During Max's youth and early manhood his parents' relations were in-
creasingly estranged.
The intellectual companions of the household and the extensive travels
of the family made the precocious young Weber dissatisfied with the
3
4 THE MAN AND HIS WORK
routine instruction of the schools. He was a weakly child, who suflfered
meningitis at the age of 4; he preferred books to sports and in early
adolescence he read widely and developed intellectual interests of his
own. At the age of 13 he wrote historical essays, one of which he called,
'Concerning the Course of German History, with Special Regard to the
Positions of Kaiser and Pope.' Another was 'Dedicated to My Own In-
significant Ego as well as to Parents and Siblings.' At fifteen he was
reading as a student reads, taking extensive notes. He seemed to have
been preoccupied from an early age with the balanced and qualified state-
ment. Criticizing the rather low tastes of his classmates, who, instead
of Scott's historical novels, read contemporary trash, he was careful to
add: 'Perhaps it sounds presumptuous if I maintain this position, since
I am one of the youngest fellows in my class; however, this circum-
stance strikes one's eyes so sharply that I need not fear that I am not
speaking the truth if I state it in this manner. Of course, there are always
exceptions.' He appeared to be lacking also in any profound respect for
his teachers. Since he was quite ready to share his knowledge with his
schoolmates during examinations, they found him likeable and some-
thing of a 'phenomenon.'
Young Weber, 'a politician's son in the age of Bismarck's Rcalpolitif{,'
dismissed the universal literary appraisal of Cicero as bunk. In his eyes,
Cicero, especially in his first Catilinarian speech, was a dilettante of
phrases, a poor politician, and an irresponsible speaker. Putting himself
in Cicero's shoes, he asked himself what good could these long-winded
speeches accomplish? He felt Cicero ought to have 'bumped off' {ab-
murf(sen) Catiline and squelched the threatening conspiracy by force.
After detailed arguments, he ended a letter to a cousin: 'In short, I find
the speech very weak and without purpose, the whole policy vacillating
with regard to its ends. I find Cicero without appropriate resolve and
energy, without skill, and without the ability to bide his time.' The older
correspondent, a student in Berlin University, responded by intimating
that young Weber was parroting books he had read. In self-defense
Weber repHed sharply but with dignity:
What you have written sounds as if you believe I had copied from some
book, or at least that I had rendered the substance of something I had read.
After all, that is, in a nutshell, the meaning of your long lecture. You seek
to bring out this point in a form as little concrete as possible because you
entertain the opinion that I would mind an opinion which, so far as I my-
self know, is not true. Though I have summoned all knowledge of myself,
A BIOGRAPHICAL VIEW 5
I have not been able to admit that I have let myself be swayed too much by
any one book or by any phrase from the mouth of my teachers. . . To be
sure . . . we younger ones profit in general from treasures that you seniors,
and I consider you as one of them, have garnered. . . I admit that probably
everything indirectly stems from books, for what are books for except to en-
lighten and instruct man about things that are unclear to him? It is possible
that I am very sensitive to books, their comments and deductions. This you
can judge better than I, for in certain respects it is easier to know someone
else than oneself. Yet, the content of my — perhaps completely untrue — state-
ment does not come directly from any book. For the rest, I do not mind your
criticism, as quite similar things are to be found in Mommsen, as I have
only now discovered.^
Young Weber's mother read her son's letters without his knowledge.
She was greatly concerned that she and her son were becoming intel-
lectually estranged. It is not strange that a sincere and intelligent adoles-
cent, aware of the difficulties between his parents and observing the
characteristic ruses of a Victorian patriarchal family, learned that words
and actions should not be taken at their face value. He came to feel that
if one wanted to get at the truth, direct and first-hand knowledge was
necessary. Thus when he was sent to 'confirmation' lessons, he learned
enough Hebrew to get at the original text of the Old Testament.
Frau Weber worried about her son's religious indifference. She wrote:
The closer Max's confirmation approaches, the less can I see that he feels
any of the deeper stimulating influence in this period of his development
which would make him think about what he is asked to enunciate before
the altar as his own conviction. The other day, when we were sitting alone,
I tried to get out of him what he thinks and feels about the main questions
of Christian consciousness. He seemed quite astonished that I should presup-
pose that the self-clarification of such questions as the belief in immortality
and the Benevolence guiding our fate should result from confirmation lessons
for every thinking man. I felt these things with great warmth in my innermost
being — independent of any dogmatic form, they had become the most vital
conviction . . . [yet] it was impossible for me to express it to my own child
in such a way that it would make any impression on him.^
With this profound and personal piety, Helene Weber suflfered under
the worldliness of her external family life. Nevertheless, she lovingly
resigned herself to the somewhat complacent, self-righteous, and patri-
archial atmosphere created by her husband. As an adolescent, Weber
had less and less of a common ground with his mother in serious mat-
6 THE MAN AND HIS WORK
ters. It was not that he was drawn to his father: the worldly atmosphere
of modern intellectual life drew Weber away from the philistinism of his
father as well as from the piety of his mother.
Although respectful, he rebelled against the authority of his elders.
Yet, rather than take part in the 'frivolous' pursuits of his classmates,
the boredom of school routine, and the intellectual insignificance of his
teachers, he withdrew into his own world. Such a boy would not sub-
mit to the impositions of his father. The thoughtless manner in which
his father used his wife did not escape the discerning eye of the seven-
teen-year-old boy. At one point, on a journey to Italy with his father,
he was admonished for not living up to the appropriate degree of stereo-
typed tourist enthusiasm. Max simply declared his intention of returning
home, at once and alone.
The confirmation motto that Weber received was: 'The Lord is the
spirit, but where the Lord's spirit is, there also is freedom.' Max Weber's
widow in her biography comments: 'Hardly any other Biblical motto
could better express the law governing this child's life.'
Weber's pre-university schooling came to an end in the spring of 1882.
Possessed of exceptional talent, he had had no need to 'strain.' His teach-
ers, however, attested to his lack of routine industry and doubted his
'moral maturity.' Like many nineteenth-century thinkers, he made a
rather unfavorable impression upon his teachers. The seventeen-year-old>
stringy young man with sloping shoulders still appeared wanting in
appropriate respect for authority.
He went to Heidelberg and, following in the steps of his father, en-
rolled as a student of law. He also studied a variety of cultural subjects,
including history, economics, and philosophy, which at Heidelberg were
taught by eminent scholars. He accepted provisional membership in his
father's dueling fraternity, the father's influence thus bringing him into
such circles. From the mother's side, through an older cousin who was
studying theology, a son of the Strassburg historian Baumgarten, he par-
ticipated in the theological and philosophical controversies of the day.
He began his daily routine at Heidelberg by rising early to attend a
lecture in logic. Then he 'fiddled around' in the dueling hall for an
hour. He sat through his lectures 'in a studious way,' went to lunch at
12:30, 'for one mark'; occasionally he had a quarter of a litre of wine or
A BIOGRAPHICAL VIEW 7
beer with his meal. Frequently, for two hours in the early afternoon he
played a 'solid game of cards.' Then he retreated to his rooms, went
over his lecture notes, and read such books as Strauss' The Old and the
New Belief. 'Sometimes in the afternoon I go with friends to the moun-
tains and walk, and in the evening we meet again at the restaurant and
have a quite good supper for 80 pfennig. I read Lotze's Microcosm, and
we get into heated argument about it.' ^ Occasionally, invitations to the
homes of professors gave him an opportunity to imitate the characteristic
peculiarities of people known to the group.
During subsequent semesters, Weber joined heartily in the social life
of the dueling fraternity, and he learned to hold his own in drinking
bouts as well as duels. Soon his face carried the conventional dueling
scar. He fell into debt and remained so during his Heidelberg years.
The student and patriotic songs he learned during this period lingered
in his memory throughout the course of his life. The stringy youth grew
into the robust man, broad-shouldered and rather stout. When he visited
his mother in Berlin, now a man with the external characteristics of
Imperial Germany, his mother was shocked at his appearance and re-
ceived him with a slap in the face.
Looking back upon his Heidelberg years, Weber wrote: 'The usual
training for haughty aggression in the dueling fraternity and as an
officer has undoubtedly had a strong influence upon me. It removed
the shyness and insecurity of my adolescence.'^
After three semesters at Heidelberg, at the age of 19 Weber moved
to Strassburg in order to serve his year in the army. Apart from dueling,
he had never done any physical exercise, and the military service with
its drill was difficult for him. In addition to the physical strain, he suf-
fered greatly under the stupidity of barrack drill and the chicanery of
subaltern officers. He did not like to give up his intellectual pursuits:
When I come home I usually go to bed around nine o'clock. However, I
cannot fall asleep, as my eyes are not tired and the intellectual side of man
is not being utilized. The feeling, which begins in the morning and increases
toward the end of the day, of sinking slowly into the night of abysmal
stupidity is actually the most disagreeable thing of all.^
Weber adjusted to this feeling by having his fill of alcohol in the
evening and going through the military routine the next day in the
daze of a moderate hangover. Then he felt 'that the hours fly away
because nothing, not a single thought, stirs under my skull.' Although
8 THE MAN AND HIS WORK
he finally built up his endurance and met most of the physical demands
quite well, he never measured up to the gymnastic acrobatics. Once
a sergeant shouted at him, in Berlin dialect: 'Man, you look like a barrel
of beer swinging on a trapeze.' He made up for this deficiency by per-
fecting his marching endurance and his goosestep. At no time did he
cease to rebel against the
incredible waste of time required to domesticate thinking beings into ma-
chines responding to commands with automatic precision. . . One is sup-
posed to learn patience by observing for an hour each day all sorts of sense-
less things which are called military education. As if, my God! after three
months of the manual of arms for hours every day and the innumerable in-
sults of the most miserable scoundrels, one could ever be suspected of
suffering from lack of patience. The officer candidate is supposed to be de-
prived of the possibility of using his mind during the period of military
training.^
Yet Weber was quite objective; he admitted that the body works
more precisely when all thinking is eliminated. And after he received
his officer's commission, he quickly learned to see the brighter side of
army life. He was well esteemed by his superior officers, and contributed
tall stories and a keen sense of humor to the comradeship of the officers'
mess; and, as one capable of command, he won the respect of the men
under him.
The military year was over in 1884 and at the age of 20 Weber re-
sumed his university studies in Berlin and Goettingen, where, two years
later, he took his first examination in law. But during the summer of
1885 and again in 1887 he returned to Strassburg for military exercises.
And in 1888 he participated in military maneuvers in Posen. There he
felt at close range the atmosphere of the German-Slavonic border, which
seemed to him a 'cultural' frontier. His discussion of Channing, in a letter
addressed to his mother, is characteristic of his thinking at this time.
Channing had made a deep impression upon him, but Weber could
not go along with his ethical absolutism and pacifism. T simply cannot
see what moral elevation will result from placing military professionals
on a footing with a gang of murderers and holding them up for public
disdain. War would not thereby gain in humaneness.' Characteristically,
Weber does not enter into a theological dispute about the Sermon on the
Mount; he keeps at a distance from Channing by locating his perspective
in the social and historical situation; he tries thereby to 'understand' and,
at the same time, he relativizes Channing's position. 'Channing obviously
A BIOGRAPHICAL VIEW 9
has no idea of such matters [war and desertion]. He has in mind the
conditions of American enhsted armies with which the predatory wars
of the democratic American federal Government against Mexico etc. have
been fought.' ^ The arguments indicate, in nuce, the position that Weber
later argues, in the last section of Politics as a Vocation and in the discus-
sion of religion and politics in Religious Rejections of the World.^
It is characteristic of Weber's way of life that in Strassburg his main
social experience remained within his family situation. Two of his
mother's sisters were married to Strassburg professors; and Weber
found friendship and intellectual discourse as well as profound emotional
experience in their houses. Some of the Baumgarten family were ex-
ceptionally prone to mystical and religious experiences, and young Weber
participated with great sympathy in the tensions that these experiences
occasioned. He became the confidant of almost everyone concerned,
learning to appreciate and sympathize with their respective values. He
spoke of himself as 'Ich Weltmensch' and tried to find a workable solu-
tion for the several persons involved. And for Weber this meant
going beyond ethical absolutism: 'The matter does not appear to me
to be so desperate if one does not ask too exclusively (as the Baum-
gartens, now as often, do) : "Who is morally right and who is morally
wrong?" But if one rather asks: "Given the existing conflict, how can
I solve it with the least internal and external damage for all con-
cerned?"'° Weber thus suggested a pragmatic view, a focus on the
consequences of various decisions rather than on the stubborn insistence
upon the introspective awareness of one's intense sincerity. His early let-
ters and the experiences at Strassburg clearly point to his later distinction
between an ethic of responsibility and an ethic of absolute ends.
Weber concluded his studies and took up service in the law courts
of Berlin, in which city he lived with his parents. In the early 'eighties,
he settled down, a diligent student of law, in the lecture rooms of the
eminent jurists of the time. Among them, he admired Gneist, whose
lectures directed his attention to current pohtical problems. 'I find his
lectures true masterpieces; really, I have wondered about his manner
of directly entering questions of politics and about the way he de-
velops strictly liberal views without becoming a propagandist, which
Treitschke does become in his lectures on state and church.' ^°
Weber concentrated upon a field in which economic and legal history
overlapped. He wrote his Ph.D. thesis on the history of trading com-
10 THE MAN AND HIS WORK
panics during the Middle Ages (1889), examining hundreds of ItaHan
and Spanish references and learning both languages in order to do so.
In 1890 he passed his second examination in law. He habilitated himself
in Berhn for commercial, German, and Roman law with a treatise on
what Marx once called 'the secret history of the Romans,' namely, The
History of Agrarian Institutions (1891). The modest title actually covers
a sociological, economic, and cultural analysis of ancient society, a theme
to which Weber repeatedly returned. He had to defend one of the finer
points of his thesis against Theodor Mommsen. At the end of the in-
conclusive exchange, the eminent historian asserted that he knew of no
better man to succeed him 'than the highly esteemed Max Weber.'
In the spring of 1892, a grand niece of Max Weber, Sr., came to Berlin
in order to educate herself for a profession. Marianne Schnitger, the
twenty-one-year-old daughter of a doctor, had attended a finishing school
in the city of Hanover. Upon returning to Berlin after an earlier visit to
the Weber home, she realized that she was in love with Max Weber.
After some confusion, Victorian misunderstandings, and moral attempts
at self-clarification, Max and Marianne announced their formal engage-
ment. They were married in the fall of 1893.
For some six years before his marriage to Marianne, Weber had been
in love with a daughter of his mother's sister in Strassburg, who, for
rather long periods, was in a mental hospital. She was recovering when
Weber gently broke with her. He never forgot that he had unwillingly
caused suffering to this tender girl. It was perhaps an important reason
for the mildness of his reactions to others who were guilty in the field of
personal relations and for his general stoicism in personal affairs. In
addition to this situation, another moral difficulty had stood in the way
of the marriage. Perhaps because of Weber's hesitancy in approaching
Marianne, a friend of his had courted her, and it was somewhat painful
to Weber to cut in.
After his marriage to Marianne, Weber lived the life of a successful
young scholar in Berlin. Having taken the place of Jakob Goldschmidt,
a famous teacher of economics who had become ill, he was in lecture
hall and seminar nineteen hours a week. He also participated in state
examinations for lawyers and, in addition, imposed a heavy load of work
upon himself. He was active in consultation work for government agen-
A BIOGRAPHICAL VIEW II
cies, and made special studies for private reform groups, one on the stock
exchange, and another on the estates in Eastern Germany.
In the fall of 1894, he accepted a full professorship in economics at
Freiburg University. There he met Hugo Miinsterberg, Pastor Naumann,
and Wilhelm Rickert. He had an enormous load, working until very late.
When Marianne urged him to get some rest, he would call out : 'If I don't
work until one o'clock I can't be a professor.'
In 1895, the Webers made a trip to Scotland and the west coast of
Ireland. Returning to Freiburg, Weber gave his inaugural address at
the University. It was entitled, 'The National State and Economic Policy,'
and was a confession of belief in imperialist Realpolitil^ and the House
of Hohenzollern. It caused quite a stir. 'The brutality of my views,' he
wrote, 'have caused horror. The Catholics were the most content with it,
because I gave a firm kick to "Ethical Culture." '
Weber accepted a chair at Heidelberg in 1896, replacing the eminent
and retired Knies, one of the heads of 'the historical school.' He thus
became the colleague of former teachers, Fischer, Bekker, and others,
who still stamped the intellectual and social life of Heidelberg. His circle
of friends included Georg Jellinek, Paul Hensel, Karl Neumann, the
art historian, and Ernst Troeltsch, the religionist, who was to become
one of Weber's greatest friends and intellectual companions, and who
for a time lived in the Weber household.
Max Weber's father died in 1897, shortly after a tense discussion in
which Max heatedly defended his mother against what seemed to him
autocratic impositions. Later Weber felt that his hostile outbreak against
his father was a guilty act which could never be rectified.^^ During the
following summer, the Webers traveled to Spain and on the return trip
Weber became fevered and ill with a psychic malady. He seemed to get
better when the academic year began, but towards the end of the fall
semester he collapsed from tension and remorse, exhaustion and anxiety.
For his essentially psychiatric condition, doctors prescribed cold water,
travel, and exercise. Yet Weber continued to experience the sleeplessness
of an inner tension.
For the rest of his life he suffered intermittently from severe depres-
sions, punctuated by manic spurts of extraordinarily intense intellectual
work and travel. Indeed, his way of life from this time on seems to
12 THE MAN AND HIS WORK
oscillate between neurotic collapse, travel, and work. He was held to-
gether by a profound sense of humor and an unusually fearless practice
of the Socratic maxim.
Eager to make the best of a bad situation and to comfort his wife,
Weber wrote:
Such a disease has its compensations. It has reopened to me the human
side of life, which mama used to miss in me. And this to an extent previously
unknown to me. I could say, with John Gabriel Borkman, that 'an icy hand
has let me loose.' In years past my diseased disposition expressed itself in a
frantic grip upon scientific work, which appeared to me as a talisman. . .
Looking back, this is quite clear. I know that sick or healthy, I shall no
longer be the same. The need to feel crushed under the load of work is
extinct. Now I want most of all to live out my life humanly and to see my
love as happy as it is possible for me to make her. I do not believe that I
shall achieve less than formerly in my inner treadmill, of course, always in
proportion to my condition, the permanent improvement of which will in
any case require much time and rest.^^
He repeatedly attempted to continue his teaching. During one such
attempt his arms and back became temporarily paralyzed, yet he forced
himself to finish the semester. He felt dreadfully tired out; his head
was weary; every mental effort, especially speech, was felt to be detri-
mental to his entire being. In spite of occasional wrath and impatience,
he thought of his condition as part of his fate. He rejected all 'good
counsel.' Since adolescence, everything about him had been geared for
thinking. And now, every intellectual pursuit became a poison to him.
He had not developed any artistic abilities, and physical work of any
sort was distasteful. His wife attempted to persuade him to take up
some craft or hobby, but he laughed at her. For hours he sat and gazed
stupidly, picking at his finger nails, claiming that such inactivity made
him feel good. When he tried to look at his lecture notes, the words
swam in confusion before his eyes. One day, while walking in a v/ood,
he lost his sensory control and openly wept. A pet cat made him so angry
with its mewing that he was quite beyond himself in rage. These symp-
toms were present during the years 1898 and 1899. The university
authorities granted him a leave with pay. Years later, in a letter to his
friend, Karl Vossler, Weber wrote : ' "Misery teaches prayer." . . . Al-
ways? According to my personal experience, I should like to dispute
this statement. Of course, I agree with you that it holds very frequently,
all too frequently for man's dignity.' ^*
A BIOGRAPHICAL VIEW I3
One fall the Webers traveled to Venice for 'a vacation,' They returned
to Heidelberg and again Weber tried to resume some of his duties, but
soon collapsed, more severely than ever before. At Christmas he asked
to be dismissed from his position, but the University granted him a long
leave of absence with a continuance of salary. 'He could not read or
write, speak, walk, or sleep without pain; all mental and part of his
physical functions refused to work.' ^^
Early in 1899, ^^ entered a small mental institution and remained
there alone for several weeks. A young psychopathic cousin of Weber's
was brought to the institution, and during the winter, on medical ad-
vice, Weber's wife traveled with both men to Ajaccio on the island of
Corsica. In the spring, they went to Rome, the ruins of which re-stimu-
lated Weber's historical interest. He felt depressed by the presence of the
psychopathic youth, who was then sent home. Several years later, this
youth took his own life. Weber's letter of condolence to the parents
gives us some insight into his freedom from conventional attitudes to-
wards suicide.
He was a man [he wrote of the cousin] who, chained to an incurably dis-
eased body, yet had developed, perhaps because of it, a sensitivity of feeling, a
clarity about himself, and a deeply hidden and proud and noble height of
inner deportment such as is found among few healthy people. To know and to
judge this is given only to those who have seen him quite near and who have
learned to love him as we have, and who, at the same time, personally know
what disease is. . . His future being what it was, he has done right to depart
now to the unknown land and to go before you, who otherwise would have
had to leave him behind on this earth, walking toward a dark fate, without
counsel, and in loneliness.^^
With such an evaluation of suicide as a last and stubborn affirmation of
man's freedom, Weber takes his stand at the side of such modern
Stoics as Montaigne, Hume, and Nietzsche. He was, at the same time,
of the opinion that religions of salvation do not approve of 'voluntary
death,' that only philosophers have hallowed it.^^
Under the influence of the magnificent landscape of Italy and its his-
torically grandiose scenes, Weber slowly recovered. The Webers also
spent some time in Switzerland, where his mother, now 57, and his
brother Alfred visited them. Shortly after his mother's visit. Max was
able to resume reading, a book on art history. He commented: 'Who
knows how long I can keep it up.? Anything but literature in my own
field.' After three and a half years of intermittently severe disease, in
14 THE MAN AND HIS WORK
1902 Weber felt able to return to Heidelberg and resume a light sched-
ule of work. Gradually, he began to read professional journals and such
books as Simmel's Philosophy of Money. Then, as if to make up for
his years of intellectual privation, he plunged into a vast and universal
literature in which art history, economics, and politics stood alongside
the economic history of monastic orders.
There were, however, repeated setbacks. He was still unable fully to
take up his teaching work. He asked to be dismissed from his profes-
sorship and to be made a titular professor. This request was first re-
jected, but at his insistence, he was made a lecturer. He had requested
the right to examine Ph.D. candidates, but this was not granted. After
four and a half years without production he was able to write a book
review. A new phase of writing finally began, at first dealing with
problems of method in the social sciences.
Weber suffered under the psychic burden of receiving money from
the university without rendering adequate service. He felt that only a
man at his work is a full man, and he forced himself to work. Yet after
only a summer of it, he returned to Italy alone. During the year 1903,
he traveled out of Germany no less than six times; he was in Italy,
Holland, and Belgium. His own nervous condition, his disappointment
at his own insufficiencies, frictions with the Heidelberg faculty, and the
political state of the nation occasionally made him wish to turn his back
on Germany forever. Yet during this year, 1903, he managed to join
with Sombart in the editorship of the Archiv fi'ir Sozialivissenschajt und
Sozialpoliti^, which became perhaps the leading social science journal in
Germany, until suppressed by the Nazis. This editorship provided Weber
an opportunity to resume contact with a wide circle of scholars and
politicians and to broaden the focus of his own work. By 1904, his pro-
ductivity was in full swing again and rising steeply. He published
essays on the social and economic problems of Junker estates, objectivity
in the social sciences, and the first section of the Protestant Ethic and the
Spirit of Capitalism.
Hugo Miinsterberg, his colleague from Freiburg days, had helped
organize a 'Congress of Arts and Science' as part of the Universal Ex-
position of 1904 in St. Louis. He invited Weber (along with Sombart,
Troeltsch, and many others) to read a paper before the Congress.^^ By
August, Weber and his wife were on the way to America.
A BIOGRAPHICAL VIEW I5
Max Weber's reaction to the United States was at once enthusiastic
and detached. He possessed to an eminent degree the 'virtue' which
Edward Gibbon ascribes to the studious traveler abroad, that Virtue
which borders on a vice; the flexible temper which can assimilate itself
to every tone of society from the court to the cottage; the happy flow of
spirits which can amuse and be amused in every company and situa-
tion.' ^^ Hence Weber was impatient and angry with quickly prejudiced
colleagues, who, after a day and a half in New York, began to run down
things in America.
He wished to enter sympathetically into the new world without sur-
rendering his capacity for informed judgments at a later time. He was
fascinated by the rush hour in lower Manhattan, which he liked to
view from the middle of Brooklyn Bridge as a panorama of mass trans-
portation and noisy motion. The skyscrapers, which he saw as 'fortresses
of capital,' reminded him of 'the old pictures of the towers in Bologna
and Florence.' And he contrasted these towering bulks of capitalism with
the tiny homes of American college professors:
Among these masses, all individualism becomes expensive, whether it is in
housing or eating. Thus, the home of Professor Hervay, of the German de-
partment in Columbia University, is surely a doll's house with tiny little
rooms, with toilet and bath facilities in the same room (as is almost always
the case). Parties with more than four guests are impossible (worthy of be-
ing envied!) and with all this, it takes one hour's ride to get to the center of
the city. . .^^
From New York the party journeyed to Niagara Falls. They visited
a small town and then went on to Chicago, which Weber found 'incred-
ible.' He noted well its lawlessness and violence, its sharp contrasts of gold
coast and slum, the 'steam, dirt, blood, and hides' of the stockyards, the
'maddening' mixture of peoples:
the Greek shining the Yankee's shoes lor five cents, the German acting as his
waiter, the Irishman managing his politics, and the Italian digging his dirty
ditches. With the exception of some exclusive residential districts, the whole
gigantic city, more extensive than London, is like a man whose skin has
been peeled off and whose entrails one sees at work.
Again and again, Weber was impressed by the extent of waste, espe-
cially the waste of human life, under American capitalism. He noticed
l6 THE MAN AND HIS WORK
the same conditions tliat the muckrakers were pubUcizing at the time.
Thus he commented, in a letter to his mother:
After their work, the workers often have to travel for hours in order to
reach their homes. The tramway company has been bankrupt for years. As
usual a receiver, who has no interest in speeding up the liquidation, manages
its affairs; therefore, new tram cars are not purchased. The old cars con-
standy break down, and about four hundred people a year are thus killed
or crippled. According to the law, each death costs the company about
$5,000, which is paid to the widow or heirs, and each cripple costs $10,000,
paid to the casualty himself. These compensations are due so long as the
company does not introduce certain precautionary measures. But they have
calculated that the four hundred casualties a year cost less than would the
necessary precautions. The company therefore does not introduce them.^°
In St. Louis, Weber delivered a successful lecture on the social struc-
ture of Germany, with particular reference to rural and political prob-
lems. This was his first 'lecture' in six and a half years. Many of his
colleagues were present, and according to the report of his wife, who
was also present, his talk was very well received. This was gratifying to
the Webers, as it seemed to indicate that he was again able to function
in his profession. He traveled through the Oklahoma territory, and vis-
ited New Orleans as well as the Tuskegee Institution; he visited distant
relatives in North Carolina and Virginia; and then, in fast tempo, trav-
eled through Philadelphia, Washington, Baltimore, and Boston. In New
York, he searched the hbrary of Columbia University for materials to
be used in The Protestant Ethic.
Of the Americans [whom we met] it was a woman, an inspector of in-
dustry, who was by far the most pre-eminent figure. One learned a great deal
about the radical evil of this world from this passionate socialist. The hope-
lessness of social legislation in a system of state particularism, the corruption
of many labor leaders who incite strikes and then have the manufacturer
pay them for settling them. (I had a personal letter of introduction to such a
scoundrel.) . . . and yet, [the Americans] are a wonderful people. Only the
Negro question and the terrible immigration form a big, black cloud.^^
During his travels in America Weber seems to have been most in-
terested in labor problems, the immigrant question, problems of politi-
cal management — especially of municipal government — all expressions
of the 'capitahst spirit,' ^" the Indian question and its administration, the
plight of the South, and the Negro problem. Of the American Negro,
Weber wrote: 'I have talked to about one hundred white Southerners
A BIOGRAPHICAL VIEW V]
of all social classes and parties, and the problem of what shall become
of these people [the Negroes] seems absolutely hopeless.'
He had arrived in America in September 1904; he left for Germany
shortly before Christmas.*
Perhaps the United States was for Weber what England had been for
previous generations of German liberals: the model of a new society.
Here the Protestant sects had had their greatest scope and in their wake
the secular, civic, and 'voluntary associations' had flowered. Here a po-
litical federation of states had led to a 'voluntary' union of immense
contrasts.
Weber was far from the conceit of those German civil servants who
prided themselves in their 'honest administration' and pointed disdain-
fully to the 'corrupt practices' of American politics. Friedrich Kapp, a
returned German-American, had brought such attitudes home to Weber.
But Weber saw things in a broader perspective. Being convinced that
politics are not to be judged solely as a moral business, his attitude was
rather that of Charles Sealsfield, who had, during the eighteen-thirties,
unfolded an epic panorama of the birth of an empire-building nation
destined to 'take its place among the mightiest nations upon the earth.'
Sealsfield had asked, 'Is it not rather a necessary, absolute condition of
our liberty that citizens' virtues, as well as their vices, should grow more
luxuriantly because they are freely permitted to grow and increase.?'
Weber might have agreed, after what he saw, that 'the mouth which
breathes the mephitic vapors of the Mississippi and the Red River
swamps is not fit to chew raisins, that the hand which fells our gigantic
trees and drains our bogs cannot put on kid gloves. Our land is the
land of contrast.' ^^
The key focus of Weber's experience of America was upon the role
of bureaucracy in a democracy. He saw that 'machine politics' were in-
dispensable in modern 'mass democracy,' unless a 'leaderless democracy'
and a confusion of tongues were to prevail. Machine politics, however, i
mean the management of politics by professionals, by the disciplined
party organization and its streamlined propaganda. Such democracy may
also bring to the helm the Caesarist people's tribune, whether in the role
of the strong president or the city manager. And the whole process
*Some translations of Weber's letters from the United States are contained in H. W.
Brann, 'Max Weber and the United States,' Southwestern Social Science Quarterly, June
1944, pp. 18-30.
THE MAN AND HIS WORK
tends towards increasing rational efficiency and therewith bureaucratic
machines: party, municipal, federal.
Weber saw this machine-building, however, in a dialectic fashion:
Democracy must oppose bureaucracy as a tendency towards a caste of
mandarins, removed from the common people by expert training, exam-
ination certificates, and tenure of office, but: the scope of administrative
functions, the end of the open frontier, and the narrowing of oppor-
tunities make the spoils system, with its public waste, irregularities, and
lack of technical efficiency, increasingly impossible and undemocratic.
Thus democracy has to promote what reason demands and democratic
sentiment hates. In his writings, Weber repeatedly refers to those Ameri-
can workers who opposed civil-service reform by arguing that they pre-
ferred a set of corrupt politicians whom they could oust and despise, to
a caste of expert officials who would despise them and who were irre-
movable. Weber was instrumental in having the German President's
power strengthened as a balance of the Reichstag; this act should be
understood along with his American experiences. He was, above all, im-
pressed by the grandiose efficiency of a type of man, bred by free asso-
ciations in which the individual had to prove himself before his equals,
where no authoritative commands, but autonomous decision, good sense,
and responsible conduct train for citizenship.
In 191 8 Weber suggested in a letter to a colleague that Germany should
borrow the American 'club pattern' as a means of 're-educating' Ger-
many; for, he wrote, 'authoritarianism now fails completely, except in
the form of the church.' ^^ Weber thus saw the connection between
voluntary associations and the personality structure of the free man. His
study of the Protestant sect testifies to that. He was convinced that the
automatic selection of persons, with the pressure always upon the in-
dividual to prove himself, is an infinitely deeper way for 'toughening'
man than the ordering and forbidding technique of authoritarian insti-
tutions. For such authoritarianism does not reach into the innermost of
those subject to its external constraint, and it leaves them incapable of
self-direction once the authoritarian shell is broken by counter-violence.
Upon his return to Germany, Max Weber resumed his writing at
Heidelberg. He finished the second part of The Protestant Ethic, which
in a letter to Rickert he called 'Protestant asceticism as the foundation
A BIOGRAPHICAL VIEW IQ
of modern vocational civilization — a sort of "spiritualist" construction of
the modern economy.' ~^'
The first Russian revolution redirected his scholarly work; he learned
Russian, in bed before getting up each morning, in order to follow
events in the Russian daily press. Then he chased 'after the events with
his pen in order to pin them down as daily history.' In 1901 he pub-
lished two major essays on Russia, 'The Situation of Bourgeois Democ-
racy in Russia' and 'Russia's Transition to Sham Constitutionalism.'
Eminent social scientists, such as SchmoUer and Brentano, encouraged
him to resume a professorship, but Weber felt he was not capable of
doing so. For a while longer, he wanted merely to write. Yet, being
universally esteemed, he could not help being drawn into academic poli-
tics, judging prospective candidates for positions, or trying to open up
room for various younger scholars, such as Georg Simmel and Robert
Michels, to whom satisfactory careers were blocked or precluded because
of anti-Semitism or prejudice against young socialist docents. The case
of Robert Michels, the son of an eminent Cologne family of patrician
merchants, especially enraged Weber. At the time, German universities
were closed to him because he was a social democrat. Weber asserted
that, 'If I compare Italian, French, and, at the moment, even Russian
conditions with this condition of ours, I have to consider it a shame of
a civilized nation.' Some professor maintained that in addition to political
reasons for Michels' exclusion there was the further reason that Michels
had not baptized his children. Upon this Weber wrote an article in the
Frankjurter Zeitung on 'The So-called Academic Freedom,' in which
he said:
As long as such views prevail, I see no possibility of behaving as if we had
such a thing as academic freedom. . . And as long as religious communities
knowingly and openly allovi^ their sacraments to be used as means for making
a career, on the same level of a dueling corps or an officer's commission, they
deserve the disdain about which they are so used to complaining.^^
In 1908 he investigated the industrial psychology of his grandfather's
linen factory in WestphaUa. He had hoped to promote a series of such
studies, and the methodological note he wrote is a causal analysis of
physical and psychic factors influencing the productivity of industrial
labor. In this same year, he worked out a long essay on the social struc-
ture of ancient society, published in an encyclopedia * under the modest
* Handwdrterbitch der Staatswissenschaften, 3rd ed., vol. i.
20 THE MAN AND HIS WORK
and somewhat misleading title, 'The Agrarian Institutions of Antiquity.'
A disciple of Freud made his appearance in the intellectual circles in
Heidelberg in 1909. Conventional Victorian conceptions of marital fidel-
ity and of morally justified jealousy were depreciated in the name of a
new norm of mentally healthy living. Full of sympathy for the tragic
entanglements and moral difficulties of friends, which resulted from this
conduct, Weber reacted sharply against what appeared to him a con-
fusion of valuable, though still imprecise, psychiatric insights with an
ethic of vulgar pride in 'healthy nerves.' He was not willing to accept
healthy nerves as an absolute end, or to calculate the moral worth of
repression in terms of its cost to one's nerves. Weber thought that the
therapeutic technique of Freud was a resuscitation of the oral confes-
sion, with the clinician displacing the old directeur d'dme. He felt that
an ethic was disguised in the scientific discussion of the clinician, and
that in this matter a specialized scientist, who should be concerning him-
self only with means, was usurping from laymen their right to make
their own evaluations. Weber thus saw a 'loose' way of life draped in
what he felt was a shifting clinical theory. One can easily see that he
resisted a theory that is, in principle, directed against asceticism and
that conceives of ends only in pragmatic terms, thus deflating the im-
perative claim of heroic ethics. Being personally characterized by an
extremely stern conscience, Weber was often ready to forgive others
but was quite rigid with himself. He believed that many of those who
followed in the wake of Freud were too ready to justify what appeared
to him as moral shabbiness.
It should, however, be noted that although Weber was not willing to
see Freud's disciples use their theories in this personal way, he had
no doubt that Freud's ideas can become a source of highly significant inter-
pretations of a whole series of cultural and historical, moral and religious
phenomena. Of course, from the point of view of a cultural historian, their
significance is not nearly so universal as the understandable enthusiasms of
Freud and his disciples, in the joy of their discovery, would have us believe.
A precondition would be the establishment of an exact typology of a scope
and certainty which does not exist today, despite all assertions to the con-
trary, but which perhaps will exist in two to three decades.^'^
In Heidelberg, during these years from 1906 to 1910, Weber partici-
pated in intense intellectual discussions with such eminent colleagues as
A BIOGRAPHICAL VIEW 21
his brother, Alfred Weber, with Otto Klebs, Eberhard Gothein, Wilhelm
Windelband, Georg JelUnek, Ernst Troeltsch, Karl Neumann, Emil
Lask, Friedrich Gundolf, and Arthur Salz. During vacation times or
other 'free periods,' many friends from outside Heidelberg visited the
Webers. Among them were Robert Michels, Werner Sombart, the phi-
losopher Paul Hensel, Hugo Miinsterberg, Ferdinand Tonnies, Karl
Vossler, and, above all, Georg Simmel. Among the younger scholars who
sought Weber's stimulus were: Paul Honigsheim, Karl Lowenstein, and
Georg Lukacs. These circles were not closed to the non-academic; they
included a few eminent artists, such as Mina Tobler, the musician to
whom Weber dedicated his study of Hinduism and Buddhism, as well
as the former actress, Klare Schmid-Romberg, and her husband, a poet,
philosopher, and connoisseur of art. Karl Jaspers, a psychiatrist who was
to turn philosopher and use Kierkegaard's work in his philosophy of
existentialism, and H. Gruhle, a psychiatrist interested in the latest of
modern art, also belonged to the circle. Three generations of intellectual
and artistic elite were in active discourse at these Heidelberg meeting-s.
In 1908 Max Weber was active in establishing a sociological society.
In a selfless manner, he carried the routine burdens of overcoming the
usual difficulties of such organizations. He was decisive in setting the
level of discussion at the meetings and in defining the scope of future
work. He stimulated collective research enterprises, such as an investi-
gation of voluntary associations, ranging from athletic leagues to re-
ligious sects and political parties. He proposed a methodical study of
the press by questionnaires, and directed and prompted studies in in-
dustrial psychology. In addition, he assumed responsibility to the pub-
lisher Siebeck of organizing an encyclopedic series of social-science
studies. This latter project was intended as a two-year job, but it con-
tinued even after his death, his own Wirtschajt und Gesellschajt appear-
ing posthumously as a volume in the series.
The severity of Weber's sense of honor, his prompt chivalry, and his
position as a reserve officer occasionally impelled him to engage in court
actions and 'affairs of honor.' It was characteristic of him to act with
great impetuosity and righteous indignation. Yet when his opponent had
been morally crushed by the machinery he had set in motion, his furor
cooled, and he was overcome by mercifulness and sympathy, the more
so when he realized that others besides the guilty one suffered from his
actions. Close friends who did not feel so strongly as Weber in such
matters were inclined to consider him a querulous man who lacked a
22 THE MAN AND HIS WORK
sense of measure, a Don Quixote whose actions might well boomerang.
Others hailed him as Germany's foremost educator, whose moral au-
thority raised him above the shoulders of the spineless Philistines, out
only for their own careers. His Don Quixote aspect comes out clearly in
a statement he made to his friend, Theodor Heuss, in 1917: 'As soon as
the war has come to an end, I shall insult the Kaiser until he suesjne,
and then the responsible statesmen, Biilow, Tirpitz, and Bethmann-
Hollweg, will be compelled to make statements under oath.' ^^
When the First World War began, Weber was 50. 'In spite of all,' it
was 'a great and wonderful war,' "^ and he wanted to march at the head
of his company. That his age and medical condition made this impos-
sible was painful to him. But as a member of the reserve corps, he was
commissioned as a disciplinary and economic officer, a captain, in charge
of establishing and running nine hospitals in the Heidelberg area. In
this position he experienced from the inside what had become a central
concept in his sociology: bureaucracy. The social apparatus of which
he had charge was, however, one of dilettantes, rather than of experts;
and Weber worked for and witnessed its transformation into an or-
dered bureaucracy. From August 1914 to the fall of 1915, he served this
commission, which was then dissolved in a reorganization, and Weber
honorably retired. His political frustrations during the war will be dis-
cussed presently.
He went to Brussels for a short time in order to confer with Jaffe
about the administration of the occupation of Belgium. Then he went
to Berlin, as a self-appointed prophet of doom, to write memoranda,
seek contact with political authorities, and fight the mad imperialist
aspiration. In the final analysis, he debunked the conduct of the war-
party as being the gamble of munition makers and agrarian capitalists.
From Berlin he went to Vienna and Budapest, in the service of the
government, to conduct unofficial conversations with industrialists about
tariff questions.
In the fall of 1916 he was back in Heidelberg, studying the Hebrew
prophets and working on various sections of Wirtschaft und Gesell-
schaft. In the summer of 191 7 he vacationed at his wife's home in West-
phalia, reading the poetry of Stefan George and Gundolf's book on
Goethe. In the winters of 1917 and 1918, socialist-pacifist students fre-
quented his 'open hours' on Sundays in Heidelberg. The young com-
munist, Ernst Toller, was among them; frequently he read his poetry
aloud. Later, when Toller was arrested, Weber spoke for him in the
A BIOGRAPHICAL VIEW 23
military court and effected his release, although he could not prevent
the removal of the student group from the university.
In April 1918, he moved to Vienna for a summer term at the uni-
versity. These were his first university lectures for nineteen years. Under
the title, 'A Positive Critique of the Materialist Conception of History,'
he presented his sociology of world religions and politics. His lectures
became events for the university, and he had to perform them in the
largest hall available, as professors, state officials, and politicians attended.
Yet he experienced compulsive anxieties about these lectures, using
opiates in order to induce sleep. Vienna University offered him a per-
manent position, but he did not accept.
In 1918 Weber shifted from Monarchist to Republican loyalties. As
Meinecke said, 'We have turned from being Monarchists at heart to
being Republicans by reason.' He abstained from accepting any political
position in the new regime. A whole series of academic positions were
offered to him: Berlin, Gottingen, Bonn, and Munich. He accepted the
Munich offer, going there in the summer of 1919 as Brentano's suc-
cessor. In Munich, he lived through the excitement of the Bavarian Dic-
tatorship and its collapse. His last lectures were worked out at the re-
quest of his students and have been published as General Economic
History. In midsummer, he fell ill, and, at a late stage of his disease, a
doctor was able to diagnose his condition as deep-seated pneumonia. He
died in June 1920.
Max Weber belonged to a generation of universal scholars, and there
are definite sociological conditions for scholarship of the kind he dis-
played. One such condition was a gymnasium education, which, in
Weber's case, equipped him in such a way that the Indo-Germanic
languages were but so many dialects of one linguistic medium. (A read-
ing knowledge of Hebrew and Russian was acquired by the way.) An
intellectually stimulating family background gave him a head-start and
made it possible for him to study an unusual combination of specialized
subjects. When he had passed his law examination, he was at the same
time a well-equipped economist, historian, and philosopher. And by vir-
tue of having participated, through the Strassburg branch of his family,
in the theological disputes of the time, he was sufficiently acquainted
with the literature of theology to handle it expertly.
It is clear that the enormous amount of work Weber turned out
24 THE MAN AND HIS WORK
would not have been possible without a certain type o£ fruitful leisure.
Materially, this was made possible, at first, by his position as a scholar
in a German university. The career pattern in these universities gave the
German docent time for research during the years when the young
American academician is overburdened with teaching. In addition, there
was no pressure for rapid publication — as attested by the fact that many
book-length chapters of Wirtschaft und Gesellschajt, written before
World War I, were published after 1920. In his middle life Weber came
into an inheritance that was sufficient to relieve him of serious worry
about money.
The relative lack of pressure for 'practical' and immediately 'useful'
knowledge, conditioned by a strongly humanist atmosphere, allowed for
the pursuit of themes remote from the practical demands of the day. In
the social sciences this was the more the case because the impact of
Marxism almost required that the academician take up the question of
capitaUsm as an epochal structure, rather than narrowed and 'practical'
themes. In this connection the freedom of the university from local pres-
sures was important.
Long decades of peace for Germany, from 1870 to 1914, coupled with
general prosperity, had entirely changed the conditions of German schol-
arship. The petty bourgeois professor, harried by money matters, had
been replaced by an upper-class academician with a large home and a
maid. This change facilitated the establishment of an intellectual salon.
It is from this position that Weber saw the residences of American uni-
versity professors.
The intellectual traditions and the accumulated scholarship of Ger-
many, especially in history, the classics, psychology, theology, compara-
tive literature, philology, and philosophy, gave the late-nineteenth-cen-
tury German scholar a pre-eminent base upon which to build his work.
And the clash of two bodies of intellectual work, the conservative inter-
pretation of ideas by academicians in the tradition of Hegel and Ranke,
and the radical intellectual production of non-academic socialists, Kaut-
sky, Bernstein, and Mehring, formed a unique and challenging intel-
lectual tension.
A number of contradictory elements stood in tension with one another
and made up the life and views of Max Weber. If, as he wrote, 'men
are not open books,' we should certainly not expect to find even an easy
index to his many-sided existence. To understand him, we have to grasp
a series of irrational half-paradoxes.
A BIOGRAPHICAL VIEW 25
Although he was personally irreligious — in his own words, 'religiously
unmusical' — he nevertheless spent a good part of his scholarly energy
in tracing the effects of religion upon human conduct and life. It may
not be irrelevant in this connection to repeat that his mother and her
family were deeply pious and that in his early student days Weber lived
close to friends and relatives who suffered extraordinary religious and
psychic states; these experiences profoundly impressed themselves upon
him. That he despised the conventional 'church' Christianity goes with-
out saying, yet he had pity and condescension for those who in political
tragedy and personal despair sacrificed their intellects to the refuge of
the altar.
Many of his friends considered his sincere devotion to his work, the
obvious pathos and dignity of his bearing, and the forcefulness and in-
sight of his speech as religious phenomena. Yet his work is hardly un-
derstandable without an appreciation of his disenchanted view of re-
ligious matters. His love for his mother and his genuine detachment
from 'religion' prevented him from ever falling into the Promethean
blasphemy of Nietzsche, the greatest atheist of the nineteenth century,
which he saw, in the last analysis, as a 'painful residue of the bourgeois
Philistine.' '°
Weber was one of the last of the 'political professors' who made de-
tached contributions to science, and, as the intellectual vanguard of the
middle classes, were also leading political figures. Despite this fact, for
the sake of 'objectivity' and the freedom of his students, Weber fought
against 'the Treitschkes,' who used cloistered academic halls as forums
of political propaganda. Although he was passionately concerned with
the course of German policy, in theory he rigidly segregated his role as a
professor and scientist from that of a publicist. Yet, when his friend
Brentano, in Munich, asked him to accept a position, he answered that
were he to accept any professorship, 'I would have to ask whether it would
not be better to have someone who holds my views in Berlin at the
present time as a counterweight against the absolute opportunism which
now has the say there.' ^^
Throughout his life, Weber was a nationalist and believed in the
mission of the Herrenvol\, yet at the same time he fought for individual
freedom and, with analytic detachment, characterized the ideas of na-
tionalism and racism as justificatory ideologies used by the ruling class,
and their hireling publicists, to beat their impositions into weaker mem-
bers of the polity. He had great esteem for the matter-of-fact conduct
26 THE MAN AND HIS WORK
of labor leaders during the collapse of Germany, yet he lashed out against
the doctrinal drill with which these same men domesticated the masses
and trained them to believe in a future 'paradise' to be brought about
by revolution. He was proud of being a Prussian officer, and yet as-
serted in public that the Kaiser, his commander-in-chief, was something
of yv^hich all Germans should be ashamed. A Prussian officer and a
member of a dueling corps, he nevertheless did not mind rooming in a
Brussels hotel over which flew a red. International flag. A model of the
self-conscious masculinity of Imperial Germany, he nevertheless encour-
aged the first woman labor official in Germany and made vital speeches
to members of the woman's emancipation movement of the early twen-
tjieth century. ^
Weber appears to have been an eminent academic teacher, and yet his
health kept him from academic lectures for almost two decades. Al-
though a scholar, he felt out of place in the academic chair and truly
at home on the political platform. In his insistence on precision and
balance, his prose is full of clauses and reservations, in the most schol-
arly and difficult fashion. Yet at times he felt himself to be comparable
to the demagogues of ancient Judea haranguing to the crowd in the
street.
Among those who had dealings with him, the figure of Weber was
highly controversial. At Heidelberg, many of his colleagues saw him as
a difficult person, who because of demanding conscience and rigidity of
honor was highly inconvenient and somewhat troublesome. Perhaps he
was seen as hypochondriac. In the eyes of many friends and disciples, he
appeared as an overtowering intellect. A Viennese journalist describes
him in the following cliches:
Tall and fully bearded, this scholar resembles one of the German stone
masons of the Renaissance period; only the eyes lack the naivete and sensu-
ous joy of the artist. His gaze is from the innermost, from hidden passages,
and it reaches into the greatest distances. His manner of expression corre-
sponds to the man's exterior; it is infinitely plastic. We meet here an almost
Hellenic way of seeing things. The words are simply formed, and, in their
quiet simplicity, they remind us of Cyclopic blocks.
A disciple in Munich, who was personally distant from Weber, wor-
shiping him from afar, compared him to Diirer's knight: without fear
or favor, taking a straight course between death and the devil. And Karl
Jaspers saw him as a new type of man who had the poise to hold to-
A BIOGRAPHICAL VIEW TJ
gether in synthesis the tremendous tensions of his own self as well as
the confadictions of external public life without resorting to illusions.
Every day that Weber 'wasted for things political' instead of objectifying
himself seemed a pitiful loss to Jaspers.
In spite of the pathos of objectivity that is felt so intensely by the
student of Weber's work, it nevertheless contains passages that refer to
Weber's image of himself. The most obvious of these are found in his
characterization of certain Hebrew prophets.^" When the course of the
war and the collapse of Germany confirmed what Weber had anticipated
for two decades, and the German people alone were proclaimed guilty
for all the misfortunes of the war, Weber felt that the Germans were a
pariah people. During the course of his studies in ancient Judaism, in
iQij5 and IQ17, he was profoundly moved by the analogies he saw be-
tween the situation of the ancient Hebrew peoples and modern Ger-
many. It was not only the public and historical situation he saw as
parallel; in the personality of many prophets and in their irregular and
compulsive psychic states, particularly of Jeremiah. Weber saw features
he felt resembled his own. When he read passages of this manuscript to
his wife, she was touched in immediately seeing that this reading was
an indirect analysis of himself.
Perhaps it was only in this fashion that Weber, who since childhood
was incapable of directly revealing himself, could communicate his own
self-image. Thus, what was most personal to him is accessible and at
the same time hidden by the objectification of his work. By interpreting
the prophets of disaster and doom, Weber illuminated his own personal
and public experiences.
This assimilation of his image of self into a historical figure stands
in a broad tradition of humanism, historicism, and romanticism so char-
acteristic of the nineteenth century. Eminent intellectuals and even states-
men of that century often fashioned their images of themselves in the
costumes of historical figures. Thus Napoleon simulated Alexander the
Great; and the revolutionary republicans of the great upheavals saw
themselves in terms of 'the lives of Plutarch.' In Germany, this illusionist
tendency remained strong throughout the epoch of liberalism. Some of
the best of German youth, among them Francis Lieber, went out to
help the Greeks in their fight for liberation against the Turks. But the
ragged horse trader of the Balkan mountains shattered the marble image
of the ancient Greek. Historical illusions were used as a backdrop of one's
life and perhaps to compensate for the banaHty of the Philistinism, which
28 THE MAN AND HIS WORK
circumscribed the daily routine of powerless German professors with
world-encompassing ideas.
If the older Weber identified himself with Jeremiah in the humanist
tradition of illusion, he well knew that he was in truth no prophet. When
urged by an admiring young intelligentsia to expound his faith, he re-
jected their pleas, asserting that such confession belongs to the circle of
intimates and not the public. Only prophets, artists, and saints might bare
their souls in public. For Weber, modern society is godless, and prophets
as well as saints are singularly out of place. He only offered Isaiah's sug-
gestion: 'He calleth to me out of Seir, Watchman, what of the night?
Watchman, what of the night? The watchman said, The morning com-
eth, and also the night: if ye will enquire, enquire ye: return, come.'
(21:11-12.)
8
If we are to understand Weber's biography as a whole, we must ex-
amine his tensions and his repeated psychic disturbances. Several Unes
of interpretation are possible; jointly or separately, they may offer an
explanation.
Max Weber may have been hereditarily burdened by a constitutional
affliction, which undoubtedly ran through his family line. Some evi-
dence for this interpretation, which is the simplest one, is readily at
hand. Weber's wife was a distant relative of his, and male relatives of
hers ended their lives in insane asylums. Furthermore, a cousin of his
entered the asylum, to which Weber himself was sent during his most
severe breakdown.
If we are willing to see Weber's affliction as purely functional, we
may then follow either one of two different lines of evidence: We may
try to locate his personal difficulties in the private contexts of those dear
to him: mother, father, loves, wife; or we may deal primarily with him
in public contexts.
With reference to his personal relations, we may recall that Weber
was a quiet, observant, and prematurely intelligent boy, who must have
been worried under the strain of the increasingly bad relation between
his father and mother. His strong sense of chivalry was, in part, a re-
sponse to the patriarchal and domineering attitude of his father, who
understood his wife's love as a willingness to serve and to allow herself
to be exploited and controlled by him. This situation came to a climax
when Weber, at the age of 31, in the presence of his mother and his
A BIOGRAPHICAL VIEW 29
wife, saw fit to hold judgment over his father: he would remorselessly
break all relations with him unless he met the son's condition: the
mother should visit him 'alone' without the father. We have noted that
the father died only a short time after this encounter and that Weber
came out of the situation with an ineffaceable sense of guilt. One may
certainly infer an inordinately strong Oedipus situation.
Throughout his life, Weber maintained a full correspondence with
his mother, who once referred to him as 'an older daughter,' She eagerly
sought counsel with him, her first-born, rather than with her husband,
in matters concerning the demeanor of her third son. One should also
pay heed to what was, to be sure, a passing phase of young Weber's
aspiration: his desire to become a real he-man at the university. After
only three semesters, he succeeded in changing externally from a slender
mother's boy to a massive, beer-drinking, duel-marked, cigar-puffing
student of Imperial Germany, whom his mother greeted with a slap in
the face. Clearly, this was the father's son. The two models of identifi-
cation and their associated values, rooted in mother and father, never
disappeared from Max Weber's inner life.
A similar tension, and subsequent source of guilt, occurred when
Weber found himself estranged from an earlier love, another cousin o£
his, whom both his mother and his maternal aunt favored. This situa-
tion was all the more painful to him because his mother joyfully saw
Marianne, his future wife, wooed by a close friend of Max. In marrying
Marianne, Weber was thus beset by guilt from two sources: he was
almost ready to resign his love in favor of his friend, and he was almost
ready to marry a mentally burdened and unstable girl. His proposal let-
ter to his wife, dealing with this situation, seems as much a confession
of guilt as a love letter. And later letters to his wife are apologetic for
sacrificing his marriage with her by allowing his energies to be used up
in the 'inner treadmill' of his intellectual life.
The Webers were childless, and he did not fail to assert his virility in
public by summoning others to duels in a manner which stressed his
special dignity as a Prussian officer. Yet at the same time, as a writer,
he was ready publicly to deflate Prussian militarism and its officer-
bureaucracy for standing behind such educational institutions as the
dueling corps designed to 'break in' upper-class youth to the discipline
required in the career, A profound individual humanism, the 'freedom
of a Christian,' and the lofty heights of his ethical demands were derived
from identification with his mother.
30 THE MAN AND HIS WORK
We may shift from personal relations and the difficulties that may
have arisen from them; Weber was also an intellectual involved in the
political events of his day. He made matters of public concern his vol-
untary burden. With an extraordinary sense of responsibility, he felt inti-
mately called to politics. Yet he had no power and no position from
which his word could tip the balance of policy. And tensions arose from
this fact.
Weber does not seem to have had much basis for his intense identifi-
cation with Germany. He tore down the Junkers, the workers, as well
as the spineless Philistines among the middle classes, who longed for a
Caesar to protect them from the bogey of socialist labor and from the
patriarchalism of the petty dynasties. When Weber traveled, his first
idea was to get out of Germany. And only too frequently, with the
resentment of the unsuccessful lover, he throws out angry words about
turning his back forever upon what he felt to be a hopeless nation.
The Kaiser, to whom he was bound by oath as a Prussian officer, was a
constant object of his public contempt.
Only rarely do we get a glimpse into what nourished his love of his
country and people. At the Exposition in St. Louis he viewed the Ger-
man exhibition of arts, crafts, and industrial products with pride, feel-
ing that the skill, imagination, and artistic craftsmanship of the Germans
were second to none. When he mingled with itinerant socialist workers
in Brussels and was told that a good proportion of the most skillful
tailors in Paris and of the most skilled cobblers in London were from
German Austria, he took pride in belonging to a fellowship of self-for-
gotten workers, who knew nothing better than devotion to the work
at hand.
This attitude enables us to understand how his own ascetic drive for
work was linked with his belief that the most prominent traits of the
German people were the plebeian qualities of commoners and workers,
lacking the social graces of the Latin courtier as well as the religiously
motivated discipline and conventionality of the Anglo-Saxon gentleman.
His own devotion to his work was a realization of his duty to the fel-
lowship of Germans. At the end of November 1918, he wrote: 'One has
seen all the weaknesses, but if one wishes, one may also see the fabulous
capacity of work, the superbity and matter-of-factness, the capacity — not
the attainment — of beautifying everyday life, in contrast to the beauty of
ecstacy or of the gestures of other nations.'
A BIOGRAPHICAL VIEW 3I
Just as his relation to his father was a source of guilt, so Weber de-
veloped strong guilt feelings for living under the Kaiser:
The measure of contempt given our nation abroad (Italy, America, every-
where!), and after all deservedly so! — and this is decisive — ^because we tolerate
this man's regime has become a factor for us of first-rate world political im-
portance. Anyone who reads the foreign press for a few months must notice
this. We are isolated because this man rules us in this fashion and because
we tolerate it and whitewash it. No man or party who in any sense cultivates
democratic, and at the same time national, political ideals should assume re-
sponsibility for this regime, the continuance of which endangers our world
position more than all colonial problems of any kind.^^
Surely Weber's life illustrates the manner in which a man's relation to
political authority may be modeled upon his relation to family disci-
plines. One has only to add, with Rousseau, that in the family the
father's love for his children compensates him for the care he extends
to them; while in the State the pleasure of commanding makes up for
the love which the political chief does not have for his people.^*
11. X oliticai (^
oncerns
In many ways, Max Weber's life and thought are expressions of political
events and concerns. His political stands, which must be understood in
terms of private contexts as well as public happenings, make up a theme
inextricably interwoven with Weber the man and the intellectual. For
he was a political man and a political intellectual. We have noticed how
the very young Weber felt that Cicero made a fool of himself in the
face of a threatened political conspiracy. To judge poHtic^ and rhetoric,
in terms of consequences and_to jTie.asuie_the_motives of men in terms of
the intended or unintended results of their actions remained a constant
principle of his political thinking. In this fundamental sense, Weber the
scholar always wrote from the point of view of the active politician.
His early political position was his father's NationaJ Liberalism. Un-
der eminent leaders, this party had moved towards Bismarck during the
'eighties. In this matter, they were compromised liberals: they wished
'neither to follow nor to fight, but to influence Bismarck.' And they
allowed Bismarck to fight the Kultur/{ampf against the Catholics and to
suppress socialist labor. With such policies being followed, and with the
several splits among the liberal and leftist camp, Bismarck could play
off these parties against one another.
At the age of 20, Weber was identified with the cause of National
Liberalism, but he was cautious not to commit himself definitely to any
specific party. He was watchfully interested in the political process as a
whole and was an eager student of the possible motives of competing
leaders. But he was no 'youthful enthusiast.' It was characteristic of this
detachment that when the National Liberals helped Bismarck to pro-
long the 'emergency law' against the socialists, Weber commented:
If one wants to justify this law one has to take the point of view, perhaps
not quite incorrect, that without this emergency law a considerable restric-
tion of many accomplishments of public life would be inevitable, namely, free-
dom of speech, assembly, and of association. After all, the Social Democrats,
32
POLITICAL CONCERNS 33
by their manner of agitation, were indeed going to compromise fundamental
institutions of public life. . . However, when I think of the matter quietly,
sometimes it seems to me as if equal rights for all might be preferable to
everything else, and in this case the thing to do is to muzzle everybody rather
than to put some in chains. The basic mistake, after all, seems to have been
the Danaer present of Bismarck's Caesarism, namely, the universal franchise
which was a pure murder of equal rights for all in the truest sense of the
word.^
Weber's evaluation of Bismarck, as indicated in this passage, was not
to change. He acknowledged and admired his political genius in relent-
less pursuit of policy of unifying Germany and in attaining for the newly
created state the position of a great power. However, Weber was far
from any uncritical surrender to Bismarck; he did not heroize him;
indeed, he had nothing but scorn for the essentially apolitical hero wor-
ship of Bismarck that spread through the middle classes of Germany.
Weber's, basic criticism of Bismarck was of his intolerance of independ--
ent-minded political leaders, that he surrounded himself with docile and
obedient bureaucrats. 'The horrible destruction of independent convic-
tions which Bismarck has caused among us is, of course, the main reason,
or at least one of the main reasons, for what is wrong with our condi-
tion. But, do we not bear at least the same guilt as he?' "
The^attainmcnt and preservation of intellectual liberty appears to have
been one of Weber's highest conscious values. He rejected, without
reservation, BismarcVs Knltur\a7npj, just as much as he rejected the
Prussian language-policy for Germanizing the Poles and irritating the
Alsatians. Yet he called the progressives 'sterile,' especially in their heads-
I-win-tails-you-lose budget figuring. 'One shivers to think that these
people would be called upon to take Bismarck's place.' After Kaiser
William II ascended to the throne and showed his tendency towards the
personal assumption of power, Weber looked to the future with profound
anxieties. 'These Boulangist, Bonapartist demonstrations are undesirable,
to say the least.' ^
The first traces of Weber's shift away from the National Liberalism —
which became more and more a creature of big business — and in the
direction of a more progressive 'social liberalism' appears in 1887, when
he was 23. At this time he seemed to feel that the state had an obligation
towards the weakest social stratum, the metropolitan proletariat, which
during the development of Berlin lived under the typical miserable con-
ditions of early capitalism. This feeling of social responsibility was, after
OA THE MAN AND HIS WORK
all, one of paternalism. Hence, Weber voted Conservative, though he did
not join the Conservative party.
His detailed studies of the Junker economy in East Elbian, Germany,
undertaken during the early 'nineties at the instigation of a reform
society, which included 'Professorial socialists,' were Weber's first eco-
nomic publications. They established his reputation as an expert in
agrarian problems. He was trying to get at the economic and social
reasons for the displacement of the German population in the east by
Polish-Russian settlers. He demonstrated that the real-estate and property
interests of Junker capitalism were responsible for the depopulation of
the German east, an area that at one time had been a densely populated
peasant land, intermixed with estates. By breaking down official census
statistics into small units, Weber showed that irresistible depopulation
forces went on wherever large entailed estates came into being. At the
same time, the agrarian capitalists imported Polish seasonal laborers,
who, by virtue of their low standards of living and exploitability, dis-
placed the German peasant population.
Insight into this process placed Weber in political opposition to Prussia's
ruling class and therewith in opposition to the class which, by virtue of a
sham constitutional setup of Prussia, dominated the rest of Germany.
His opposition to these landlords rested upon a belief that their interests
ran counter to the interests of the nation. 'We wish to forge small
peasants to the soil of the fatherland not by legal but by psychological
chains. I say it openly: We wish to exploit their land-hunger in order to
chain them to the homeland. And if we had to stamp a generation of
men into the soil in order to guarantee the future of Germany, we would
shoulder this responsibility.' *
In the early 'nineties, Weber argued against historical materialism by
playing up the inexhaustible complexity of causal pluralism. For example,
he felt, for many historical reasons, that the wages of farm hands did not
follow any economic law, least of all an 'iron one.' In his 1894 lecture at
Freiburg, he held that national and ethnic diflferences in the competitive
struggle for existence were more causally important than economic and
class situations. Later his political and intellectual relations with the
body of Marxist knowledge were to be quite different and much more
complex.
Weber's political mood when he was thirty years of age is revealed by
the following passage from his inaugural lecture at Freiburg:
POLITICAL CONCERNS 35
In the main, the fruits of all economic, social, and political endeavors of the
present will benefit not living but future generations. If our work can and
will have meaning, it can only attempt to provide for the future, that is,
for our successors. However, no economic policy is possible on the basis of
optimistic hopes for happiness. Lasciate ogni speranza [Man, if you enter
here, leave all hopes outside] stands written over the door to the unknown
future of human history. It is not a dream of peace and human happiness.
The question is not how men in the future will feel, but rather who they
will be. That is the question which concerns us when we think beyond the
graves of our own generation. And in truth, this question lies at the root of
every economic and political work. We do not strive for man's future well-
being; we are eager to breed in them those traits with which we link the
feeling that they constitute what is humanly great and noble in our na-
ture. . . In the last analysis, the processes of economic development are
struggles for power. Our ultimate yardstick of values is 'reasons of state,' and
this is also the yardstick for our economic reflections. . .^
Thus, in the middle 'nineties, Weber was an imperialist, defending
the power-interest of the national state as the ultimate value and using
the vocabulary of social Darwinism. He warned that economic power
and the call for political leadership of the nation did not always coincide.
He called himself an 'economic nationalist,' measuring the various classes
with the yardstick of the state's political interests. The acquisition of
colonies, the saber-rattling speeches of the Kaiser, and the imperial
grandeur — for these Weber had nothing but the disdain of the expert
who knew that they were hopeless nonsense.
It is dangerous and, in the long run, irreconcilable with the Interest of the
nation if an economically sinking class holds political power in its hands.
It is still more dangerous if those classes to whom economic power and
therewith the claim for political authority is shifting are politically immature
in their leadership of the state. Both are threatening Gerrpr^y'-at this time
and, in truth, they provide the keys to the present danger of our situation.^
What was this 'dangerous situation' ."^ German foreign policy was being
reoriented: Bismarck's treaty with Russia was not renewed, the oppor-
tunity for an alliance with Great Britain was not seized, and a policy o£
planless drifting resulted. It was covered up by braggadocio, Kaiser-bluff,
and led to the political isolation of Germany. The leading strata of this
nation would not orient it towards the West or towards the East. Ger-
man policies were thus erratically directed against everybody and a series
of defeats was cloaked in boastfulness.
36 THE MAN AND HIS WORK
It has been cogently argued that this fatal situation was the result
of compromise between Western industrialism and Junker agrarianism.
The National Liberals, of course, were the imperialists, the Pan-German-
ists, the Anglophobes; their pride was hurt and they wanted 'to show the
British' that Germans, too, could build ships. They pushed the navy
program, which Tirpitz finally put over in one of the most adroit propa-
ganda campaigns of modern history." They won the Junkers' co-operation
for this course by granting them protectionist tariffs in 1902 against the
imports of grain from the United States and Russia. The Junkers as such
did not care for the graessliche Flotte, and, landlubbers as they were,
they did not think much of over-seas empire, with its commerce and
colonies. They remained provincial, they felt politically close to Russian
Czarism, and they were suspicious of the interests of Western industry
in naval construction, which masqueraded as the National Task.
Both Junkers and industrialists, however, feared the mass organizations
of the ascending Social Democrats, the clamor for democracy, and the
attacks against the Prussian system of class suffrage. The compromise of
the respective class interests of industrial National Liberals and agrarian
Junker Conservatives was thus directed against the democratic and
socialist Labor party. And their compromise led to the discarding of
any foreign policy involving alliances with effective naval or military
partners.
The political and economic compromises of the East and West led to
the social fusion of Junkerdom with the new industrial stratum. It was
symptomatic of these changes that Bertha Krupp, Alfred Krupp's only
heir, married the nobleman, von Bohlen, an imperial career diplomat;
and the Kaiser attended the wedding. The Crown also lost prestige
through the scandalous exposures of the political police in the Tausch
trial, the morally unsavory atmosphere of court circles exposed by Maxi-
milian Harden in his crusade against Prince Eulenburg, the series of
humiliations of the Kaiser in the foreign field, the more intense war
scares, and the general armament and naval race. These were some of the
events and trends that made Max Weber feel as if he were riding on 'an
express train moving towards an abyss and not feeling certain whether
the next switch has been set right.'
Weber was friendly with a 'radical' parson, Naumann, who flirted
with socialist ideas and who under Weber's influence turned nationalist.
In 1894, Parson Naumann founded a 'little magazine' to which Weber
contributed.^ For a few years, Weber was in contact with the attempts
POLITICAL CONCERNS 37
of these parsons, teachers, civil servants, artisans, and a few workers — a
typical petty bourgeois circle — to organize a little party. They wished to
create national unity by spreading a sense of social responsibility among
bourgeois classes and training socialist labor for nationalism." Max
Weber's mother and Mrs. Baumgarten forwarded Naumann's campaign
for a seat in the Reichstag, Although he did not lose a friendly contact,
Weber soon impatiently broke his active connection with this group.
In 1897, Weber made a campaign speech in the Saar in the district of
Baron von Stumm, the coal magnate, who was pressing for legislation to
punish trade-union leaders in case of strikes. Although he spoke in favor
of industrial capitalism, which he felt was indispensable for national
power, he also believed strongly in 'individual liberty.' He had been a
member of the Pan-Germanic League, but he broke with it in 1899
'in order to gain my freedom' and because 'my voice does not count
in its policy.' ^°
In 1903, after the worst of his psychic collapses, he cut loose from
and attacked the conservative romanticism behind which the material
and political class interests of dynasty and Junkers were hidden. This was
just before he left for America. After returning to Germany in 1905, his
political interests were aroused by the first Russian revolution of 190^-
Since he took the trouble to learn Russian, he was able to follow events in
several Russian dailies. He was also in frequent conversations with the
Russian political scientist, T. Kistiakovski — one of the intellectual leaders
of leftist bourgeois liberalism in Russia — who worked for the revolution.
The result of these studies was two exemplary essays in political sociology,
which Weber published as special issues of the Archiv. By a sociological
analysis of classes and parties in Russia, Weber — among other trains of
thought — indicated that should the Czar fall, after a European war, and
the extreme left come to power in another revolution, an unheard-of
bureaucratization of the entire social structure of Russia might well result.
Weber's intellectual production had begun again shortly after his re-
turn from America in 1904. This was a time of political crisis for Ger-
rnany, brought about in part by the speeches of the Kaiser and his
excursions to Africa. By 1906 the entente cordial was shaping, and Ger-
many's diplomatic isolation and decline from Bismarckian heights were
obvious. The symbol of the nation, the Kaiser, had become the target of
international ridicule. Weber saw the root of these difficulties in a politi-
cal structure that prevented the efficient selection of responsible political
leaders. He was grieved that Germany's sham constitutionalism made
o8 THE MAN AND HIS WORK
political careers unattractive to talented and eflFective men, who preferred
to enter business or science.
From such views as these, Weber moved slowly towards a 'democratic'
stand, though of a somewhat unique and complex nature. He did not
believe in democracy as an intrinsically valuable body of ideas: 'natural
law,' 'the equality of men,' their intrinsic claim to 'equal rights.' He saw
democratic institutions and ideas pragmatically; not in terms of their
'inner worth' but in terms of their consequences in the selection of effi-
cient political leaders. And he felt that in modern society such leaders
must be able to build up and control a large, well-disciplined machine,
in the American sense. The choice was between a leaderless democracy
or a democracy run by the leaders of large-party bureaucracies.
For Weber, the universal franchise, the struggle for votes, and the free-
dom of organization had no value unless they resulted in powerful
political leaders willing to assume responsibility rather than evade it
and cover up their deeds behind court cliques and imperial bureaucrats
who happened to have the Kaiser's favor.
Before Weber's critical examination, no single German stratum seemed
to be satisfactory for the job at hand. Accordingly, he raised a critical
voice, first of all against the head of the nation, the Kaiser, whom he
scathingly derided as a dilettante covering behind divine right of kings.
The structure of German party life seemed hopeless as a check on the
uncontrolled power of a politically docile but technically perfected bureau-
cratic machine. He pierced the radical phrases of the Social Democrats as
the hysterical howling of powerless party journalists drilling the masses
for an intellectual goosestep, thus making them more amenable to manip-
ulation by the bureaucracy. At the same time, the Utopian comfort
contained in revisionist Marxism's automatic drift into paradise appeared
to substitute a harmless complacency for righteous indignation. And he
thought that the Social Democrats' refusal to make any compromises
with bourgeois parties and assume cabinet responsibilities was one of the
factors blocking the introduction of constitutional government. Later
political analyses made by Weber sprang from this desperate search for a
stratum that would measure up to the political tasks of leadership in an
era of imperialist rivalry.
In the fall of 191 1, a militarist-minded official of a German university
made a speech in which he chastised pacifist elements as 'silly' and spoke
of the 'sentimentality for peace.' A general attending the beer festival
that followed the speech saw fit to dub pacifists as 'men who wear trou-
J
POLITICAL CONCERNS 39
sers but have nothing in them and wish to make poHtical eunuchs out
o£ the people.' ^^ When several professors of Freiburg defended these
speeches against press attacks, Weber wrote a memorandum against what
appeared to him as 'small-town stuff.' He warned that if Germany should
have to go to war, 'her crowned dilettante' (the Kaiser) would interfere
with the leadership of the army and ruin everything. It is interesting that
Weber, a confirmed nationalist believing in force as the last argument of
any policy, nevertheless submitted the following paragraph: 'To char-
acterize a criticism of definite political ideals, no matter how high-minded,
as an undermining of moral forces must call forth justified protests. In
"ethics" the pacifists are undoubtedly our "betters." . . Policy making is
not a moral trade, nor can it ever be.' ^" In spite of this appreciation of
the ethical sincerity of such pacifists as Tolstoy^ we must recall Weber's
own desire for personal participation in the war.
During the war, he was against the annexation of Belgium, but^ this
is not to say that Weber had no imperialist aspirations. He clamored for
'military bases' as far flung as Warsaw and to the north of there. And |
he wished the German army to occupy Liege and Namur for twenty *
years.
In October 1915 he wrote: 'Every victory brings us further from peace.
This is the uniqueness of the situation.' He was beyond himself when
Austria allowed Italy to break away from her. 'The entire statesmanship
of the last twenty-five years is collapsing, and it is very poor satisfaction
always to have said it. The war can now last forever.' He wrote a memo-
randum addressed to the Government and to members of the German
Parliament, but it remained on his own desk. In it are such statements
as: 'It is against German interests to force a peace of which the main re-
sult would be that the heel of the German boot in Europe stands upon
everyone's toes/^^ He saw that sheer prolongation of the war would
bring world industrial supremacy to America. He was alarmed about the
imperialism, which ran rampant through heavy industry and the princely
houses. Desperately he wrote: 'I will learn Polish and then seek to make
contacts with the Poles.' He asked the under-secretary of state for access
to the official archives on Poland and to be allowed to contact Polish in-
dustrialists. Although he used a member of the Catholic Center party as
a front, he was of course refused. By March 1916, Weber was disgusted
with 'the whole Berlin atmosphere, in which all talented people are in-
capacitated by the resentful stupiditv which prevails in the Reich offices.' "
Weber believed that the First World War was a result of a constella-
AO THE MAN AND HIS WORK
tion of economic and political rivalries of nations. In so far as elements
of 'guilt' might enter the picture, he thought that Germany was guilty
of romantic and inefficient management of her affairs. He decried the
aspirations of the war-party as idiotic and, from the very beginning, felt
that it could only lead to disaster. He was particularly enraged by
Tirpitz's naval policy, the sinking of the Lusitania, and the reliance
upon the weapon of the submarine. He anticipated America's entrance
into the war, and in February 1916 stated the following results of this
development :
First, that half of our merchant marine, one-quarter in American and one-
quarter in Italian harbors (!), will be confiscated and used against us; thus
at once the number of British ships will be increased — a matter which these
asses [of the German navy] do not calculate. Second, we shall have 500,000
American sportsmen as volunteers, brilliandy equipped, against our tired
troops, a matter which these asses do not believe. Third, forty billion in cash
will be available to our enemies. Fourth, three more years of war; thus,
certain ruin. Fifth, Rumania, Greece, etc. against us. And all this in order
that Herr von Tirpitz may show what he can do! Never has anything so
stupid been thought of.^^
In October 1916, Weber spoke in a political meeting of progressive
liberals on Germany among the Great Powers of Europe. In this speech
he judged policy with the yardstick of international result: the geographic
position of Germany in the midst of powerful neighbors should make
for a policy of sober alliances rather than a policy of boastful vanity and
conquest. In Weber's view, Russia was 'the main threat.' Accordingly, he
wished an understanding with England. Events in Eastern Europe
brought world-historical decisions to the fore, compared to which changes
in Western Europe appeared trivial. The ultimate cause of the war was
Germany]s late development as an industrial power-state. 'And why have
we become a nation organized into a power state.''' he asked.
Not for vanity, but for the sake of our responsibility to world history. The
Danes, Swiss, Norwegians, and Dutch will not be held responsible by future
generations, and especially not by our own descendants, for allowing, without
a fight, world power to be partitioned between the decrees of Russian officials
on the one hand and the conventions of Anglo-Saxon 'society' — perhaps with
a dash of Latin raison thrown in — on the other. The division of world power
ultimately means the control of the nature of future culture. Future genera-
tions will hold us responsible in these matters, and rightly so, for we are a
nation of seventy and not seven millions.^"
POLITICAL CONCERNS 4I
On 3 November 1918, the sailors at Kiel mutinied. The next day,
Weber spoke in Munich on Germany's reconstruction. He was heckled
by revolutionary intellectuals, among them the Russian Bolshevist Levien,
as well as by veterans in the audience. Shortly afterwards a revolutionary
government of workers and soldiers' councils was set up.
Max Weber was against those professors who at the moment of col-
lapse placed the blame upon the German home front by rationalizing the
collapse as 'a stab in the back,' Yet he was also against 'the revolution,'
which he called 'this bloody carnival' and which he felt could only secure
worse peace terms than might otherwise have been possible. At the same
time, he realized that the revolution could not lead to lasting socialistic
institutions.
His wife has stated that his sympathy with the struggle of the prole-
tariat for a human and dignified existence had for decades been so great
that he often pondered whether or not he should join their ranks as a
party member — but always with negative conclusions. His reasoning,
according to his wife, 'was that one could be an honest socialist, just
like a Christian, only if one was ready to share the way of life of the
unpropertied, and in any case, only if one was ready to forego a cultured
existence based upon their work. Since his disease, this was impossible
for Weber. His scholarship simply depended upon capital rent. Further-
more, he remained personally an "individualist." '
He accompanied the German peace delegation to Versailles as an ex-
pert. He suggested that 'the designated war criminals,' Ludendorff,
Tirpitz, Capelle, Bethman, should voluntarily offer their heads to the
enemy; only then, he thought, the German officer corps could again rise
to glory. He wrote LudendorfT a letter to this effect, but Ludendorfl
curtly refused. Weber then arranged to meet Ludendorfl personally and
disputed with him for several hours. He reproached him with the politi-
cal mistakes committed by the general staff and was in turn reproached
by LudendorfT for the sins of the revolution and the new regime. Weber
asked Ludendorff to offer his head to the enemy.
ludendorff: How can you expect me to do anything of the sort?
weber: The honor of the nation can only be saved if you give yourself up.
ludendorff: The nation can go jump in the lake. Such ingratitude!
weber: Nevertheless, you ought to render this last service.
ludendorff: I hope to be able to render more important services to the nation.
weber: In that case, your remark is not meant so seriously. For the rest,
^2 THE MAN AND HIS WORK
it is not only a matter of the German people but a matter of restoring
the honor of the officer corps and of the army.
ludendorff: Why don't you go and see Hindenburg? After all he was the
General Field Marshal.
WEBER : Hindenburg is seventy years of age, and besides, every child knows
that at the time you were Number One in Germany.
ludendorff: JThank goodness.
The conversation soon drifted into politics, LudendorfiF blaming Weber
and the Frankjurter Zeitung for the 'democracy.'
weber: Do you believe that I think this swinish condition which we have
at present is democracy.?
ludendorff: If you talk that way, maybe we can reach an agreement.
weber: But the preceding swinish condition was not a monarchy either.
ludendorff: Then, what do you mean by democracy?
t weber: In a democracy the people choose a leader in whom they trust. Then
i the chosen leader says, 'Now shut up and obey me.' People and party
I are then no longer free to interfere in his business.
ludendorff: I could like such democracy.
weber: Later the people can sit in judgment. If the leader has made mistakes
— ^to the gallows with him!
Weber was profoundly disappointed in Ludendorflf's human stature.
'Perhaps,' he wrote, 'it is better for Germany that he does not give
himself up. His personal impression would be unfavorable. The enemy
would again find that the sacrifices of a war which put this type out of
commission were worth their while. I now understand why the world
defends itself against the attempts of men like him to place their heel
upon the necks of others. If he should again mingle in politics, one will
have to fight him remorselessly.' ^^
Max Weber thus looked upon German party Ufe with disdain. It struck
him as petty and as suffocating in the atmosphere of guild squabbles. In
this respect, he shared the attitude of Carl Jentsch.^®
Having absorbed the Marxist criticism of 'bourgeois democracy,'
Weber turned away from conservatism, Pan-Germanism, and monarchi-
cal loyalties. He did so not because he had learned to believe in the in-
trinsic value of democratic constitutional government as a 'government
of the people, for the people, and by the people,' but because he believed
constitutional democracy was the only solution for Germany's problems
at home and abroad. In April 1917, he wrote:
POLITICAL CONCERNS 43
I would not fire a single shot and I would not buy a penny war bond if
this war were anything but a national war; if it concerned the form of the
state and possibly was a war for retaining this incapable monarchy and this
apolitical bureaucracy, I don't give a damn for the form of the State, if only
politicians were to rule the country and not such vain simpletons as Wil-
liam II and his like. . . For me constitutions are techniques just like any
other machines. I would be just as ready to strike against parliament and for
the monarch if he were a politician or if he gave promise of becoming one.^^
Weber agitated for constitutional democracy because he hoped the
Reichstag might become a balancing factor against the overwhelming
weight of Prussian, and therewith German, bureaucracy and its mental-
ity. A parliamentary competition of parties should bring political leaders
of perspective and of passionate will to power. They should possess the
technical know-how required for subduing the bureaucracy to their will.
They should steer the bureaucracy, which for Weber made sense only as
a technical means and never as a policy-making and politically responsible
agency. In the best case, Weber hoped for the rise of charismatic leaders,
though he felt the drift towards ever-denser and indestructible institu-
tions in modern society narrowed the opportunity for this 'purely per-
sonal element' to be decisive in the social structure.
It is, of course, quite vain to speculate whether Weber with his
Machiavellian attitude might ever have turned Nazi. To be sure, his
philosophy of charisma — his skepticism and his pragmatic view of demo-
cratic sentiment — might have given him such affinities. But his human-
ism, his love for the underdog, his hatred of sham and lies, and his un-
ceasing campaign against racism and anti-Semitic demagoguery would
have made him at least as sharp a 'critic,' if not a sharper one, of Hitler
than his brother Alfred has been. " ^~
Weber was far from following Troeltsch, who felt it necessary to
speak of the 'most basic dispositions and volitional tendencies' ultimately
underlying the social institutions, and ideological structures of history:
'We have no words for this and, in this case, speak of races, of plastic,
historical forces, or of primeval impulses.' ^^ Weber was far from this
quest for a metaphysical anchorage in 'blind nature.' One may sum up
Weber's dispersed and repeated disclaimers of racial arguments in the
words of John Stuart Mill: 'Of all vulgar modes of escaping from the
consideration of the effect of social and moral influences on the human
mind, the most vulgar is that of attributing the diversities of conduct and
character to inherent natural differences.'^^
4^ THE MAN AND HIS WORK
Weber, one might say, was constitutionally incapable of making 'the
intellectual sacrifice' that he believed all 'faith' demands. The nightmare
of faith represented by modern fascism would hardly have intrigued as
passionate a servant of rational social science as Max Weber. The basic
style of thought that informs his work is Western positivism, a heritage
of the enlightenment. The basic volitional tendency of his thought is
not, with the Ranke school, artistically to construct great tableaux of
periods each of which is 'equally near to God,' but to fashion intel-
lectual tools that would yield hindsights serviceable to foresights: savoir
pottr prevoir, prevoir pour pouvoir — this impulse of Comte's positive
philosophy was basic to Weber's outlook. Even though he stemmed from
the 'historical school' he had no use for any edifying attitude towards
history and its uniqueness. By-passing the hostility of historians, he po-
litely suggested an enquiry into 'lawful regularities' as an 'auxiliary'
science to history. He then proceeded to write social history in the grand
manner.
Urbanism, legal history, economics, music, world religions — there is
hardly a field which he left untouched. He thus continued the tradition
of encyclopedic scholarship of Wundt and Ratzel, of Roscher and
Schmoller.
He worked through masses of data not in order to seek in the con-
templation of man's historical estate a quietistic refuge for a homeless
religious need, comparable to the Rousseauistic sentiment of nature, but
rather in order to snatch from comparative enquiries a set of rules which
would serve him in his search for political orientation in the contempo-
rary world. That knowledge is somehow power — that is the impulse
behind this quest of a powerless man for knowledge. And it is in view
of this political concern that one may understand his intellectual orienta-
tions.
111. Intellectual Orientations
The intellectual situation in Germany during Weber's lifetime was
singularly unfavorable for the development of academic sociology. His-
toriography was largely dominated by the traditions of Hegel and Ranke,
and conservative thinking was extremely potent in checking any de-
velopment of theory in the social sciences. This was especially the case in
economics. For in this field, the historical school discouraged systematic
theory by opposing to it a massive treasure of historical detail, legal fact,
and institutional description.
Liberalism, on the other hand, had been developed by an intelligentsia
that was independent o£~any entrepreneurial middle class. Compared
with the Western countries, from which the models of thought for
German liberalism had been derived, everything in Germany seemed
topsy-turvy. The agrarian Junkers and their following clamored for
Adam Smith and free trade, that is, for free grain exports to England
rather than sales to the emerging industrial cities of Germany. The liberal
Friedrich List advocated protective tariffs. Bismarck and the German \
princes, rather than the middle classes, had geared the German people i
into a national state.
The liberal academic intelligentsia had scarcely recovered from the
shock of 1848 and the reaction to it, when Lassalle inaugurated a Socialist
party that soon turned Marxist and attracted a brilliant group of journal-
ists and organizers, historians and sociologists. These men took pride
in their detachment from national loyalties. And, in Germany, Marxism
was able to establish a tradition that tried to draw into its orbit the social
and political history of all ages, the interpretation of literature and phi-
losophy, as well as the ♦development of social and economic theory.
In 1848 the liberals bad been afraid of the bearded, itinerant journey-
men; under Bismarck they were afraid of Bebel and Liebknecht. Even
in 1878 the doctrinaire liberal Eugen Richter advised his followers to
vote for the Conservative rather than for the Social Democratic candi-
45
46 THE MAN AND HIS WORK
date, should their choice be Hmited to these two.^ And ten years later,
when Ferdinand Tonnies published his Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft,
a work rightly considered basic for modern German sociology, he made
himself a hopeless outsider from 'respectable' society. For sociology
smacked of socialism. Even so discerning a mind as Ludwig Bamberger
spoke of the 'internal affinity of militarism and socialism.' ^ Thus the in-
tellectual traditions of Germany were channeled into conservative, liberal,
and socialist ways of thought.
German political parties, having no opportunity to wield power, re-
mained doctrinaire parties of principled world views, each rather strictly
oriented towards special classes and status groups. Agrarian conservatives
were in coalition with Lutheran orthodoxy, urban merchants and bankers
with liberal professional men, socialist wage workers with a low-browed
intelligentsia who elaborated high-browed Marxism. The get-rich-quick
atmosphere of the new industrialism, the intoxication of the parvenu
with power after 1870, the Philistinism of the socially arriving burghers
working their ways into dueling corps, baronial estates, and the officer
corps — all this bred political apathy and fear of the upthrust of labor.
And it led to a wide political accommodation to the power of the
Junker.
Within this context of conflicting classes, parties, and intellectual cur-
rents. Max Weber worked out his intellectual orientations. He aimed
at the comprehensiveness of a common ground. And he did so in spite
of the intellectual departmentalization of sharply opposed world views.
By reflecting upon some of his analytic conceptions and broad historical
views, we may be able to indicate how conservative, liberal, and socialist
elements of thought were assimilated, transformed, and integrated into
the complex pattern of his work. As a liberal, fighting against both con-
servative and Marxist thought. Max Weber opened himself to certain in-
fluences from each of his opponents.
i: Marx and Weber
Upon taking over the editorship of the Archiv Fitr Sozialwissenschajt
und Sozialpolitif{, Weber proposed systematically to devote attention to
the questions the Marxists had raised. Much of Weber's own work is of
course informed by a skilful application of Marx's historical method.
Weber, however, used this method as a 'heuristic principle.' As a view
of world history, Marxism seemed to him an untenable monocausal the-
INTELLECTUAL ORIENTATIONS 47
ory and thus prejudicial to an adequate reconstruction of social and his-
torical connections. He felt that Marx as an economist had made the
same mistake that, during Weber's days, anthropology was making:
raising a segmental perspective to paramount importance and reducing
the multiplicity of causal factors to a single-factor theorem.
Weber does not squarely oppose historical materialism as altogether
wrong; he merely takes exception to its claim of establishing a single
and universal causal sequence. Apart from whether or not he 'under-
stood' dialectical thought in his reduction of it to a causal proposition,
the approach did prove eminently fruitful.
Part of Weber's own work may thus be seen as an attempt to 'round
out' Marx's economic materialism by a political and mihtary materialism.
The Weberian approach to political structures closely parallels the Marx-
ian approach to economic structures. Marx constructed economic periods
and located major economic classes in them; he related the several social
and political factors to the means of production. In political matters,
Weber looks for the disposition over weapons and over means of admin-
istration.
Feudalism, for example, is characterized by Weber in terms of pri-
vate property of the means of military violence (self-equipped armies)
and in the corporate appropriation of the means of administration. The
'ruler' could not monopolize administration and warfare because he had
to delegate the implements required for such a monopoly to the several
privileged groupings. In time, these latter become 'owners' in their own
right. This attention to the control of the material means of political
power is as crucial for grasping the types of political structure as is
attention to the means of production in the case of Marx for grasping
economic structures.*
Whereas Marx is less careful in distinguishing between economic
power and political power, Weber, as a liberal, is eager to keep these
spheres clearly distinct. Thus, his criticism of most Marxist contributions
is that they fail soberly to distinguish between what is strictly 'economic,'
what is 'economically determined,' and what is merely 'economically
relevant.' Pilgrimages to Rome are certainly relevant for the money
market, but that does not make them economic enterprises. The im-
port of religious or of poHtical ideas for economic institutions does not
* See in this volume: 'Politics as a Vocation,' 'Bureaucracy,' and 'The Social Psychology
of World Religions.'
48 THE MAN AND HIS WORK
thereby transform these ideas into economic factors: the question con-
cerns their 'economic relevance.'
Having focused upon the struggle for the means of poHtical rule,
Weber sees European political history since the feudal period' as an in-
tricate parade of rulers, each attempting to appropriate the financial and
military means that in feudal society were relatively dispersed. In fact,
Weber formulates the very concept of the 'state' in terms of a 'monopoly'
of the use of legitimate force over a given territory. The territorial aspect
enters into the conception of the state in that Weber distinguishes coastal
and inland states, great river states, and states of the plains. The geo-
graphical factor also seems to have a dispositional bearing in that the
coastal, and hence maritime, state offers opportunities for city democracy,
overseas empire; whereas the state of the plains — for example, Russia and
the United States — seems to favor schematization and bureaucracy, al-
though of course this tendency is not without exceptions.
With Marx, Weber shares an attempt to bring 'ideological' phenomena
into some correlation with the 'material' interests of the economic and
political orders. Weber has a keen eye for 'rationalizations,' that is, for
'fictitious superstructures,' and for incongruities between the verbal as-
sertion and the actual intention. He fought imperial and bureaucratic
bombast, and especially the phrases of the Pan-Germanists and/or revo-
lutionary 'literati,' with a wrath comparable to Marx's campaign against
Victorian cant.
The debunking technique by which ideological assertions are revealed
as false cloaks for less respectable interests is obvious in Weber's attack
upon the revolutionary left of 1918. Weber expressly stated at this time
that Marxism is not a carriage, which one may arrest at will: he wished
to extend the debunking of ideologies to include the 'proletarian interest,'
and he attempted to narrow down this interest to the interests of the
^literati, politicians, and revolutionary guardsmen in 'the spoils of vic-
tory.' His debunking of socialist aspirations is also obvious in his reflec-
tions on imperialism. Here he obviously accepts national units as histori-
cal ultimates that can never be integrated into more comprehensive and
harmonious wholes. At best there will be strong socialist nation-states
energetically exploiting weaker states. The concept of the nation and of
national interest is thus the limit of Weber's political outlook and at the
same time constitutes his ultimate value. Yet it is characteristic of his
restless analysis that he breaks down 'national sentiment' into a com-
posite of various communal sentiments and attitudes.
INTELLECTUAL ORIENTATIONS 49
In addition to this attention to 'interests' and 'ideologies,' Weber's
sociology is related to Marx's thought in the common attempt to grasp
the interrelations on all institutional orders making up a social structure.
In Weber's work, military and religious, political and juridical institu-
tional systems are functionally related to the economic order in a variety
of ways. Yet, the political judgments and evaluations involved differ
entirely from those of Marx. For Marx, the modern economy is basically
irrational; this irrationality of capitalism results from a contradiction
between the rational technological advances of the productive forces
and the fetters of private property, private profit, and unmanaged market
competition. The system is characterized by an 'anarchy of production.'.
For Weber, on the other hand, modern capitali^mis not 'irrational';
indeed, its institutions appear to him as the very embodiment of ration-
ality. As a type of bureaucracy, the large corporation is rivaled only by
the state bureaucracy in promoting rational efficiency, continuity of oper-
ation, speed, precision, and calculation of results. And all this goes on
within institutions that are rationally managed, and in which combined
and specialized functions occupy the center of attention. The whole
structure is dynamic, and by its anonymity compels modern man to be-
come a specialized expert, a 'professional' man qualified for the accom-
plishment of a special career within pre-scheduled channels. Man is thus
prepared for his absorption in the clattering process of the bureaucratic
machinery.
The concept of rational bureaucracy is played off against the Marxist
concept of the class struggle. As is the case with 'economic materialism,'
so with 'class struggle': Weber does not deny class struggles and their
part in history, but he does not see them as the central dynamic. Nor
does he deny the possibility of a socialization of the means of produc-
tion. He merely relegates this demand to a far distant future and dis-
putes any hope of 'socialism for our time.' He does not see anything
attractive in socialism. In his eyes, socialism would merely complete in
the economic order what had already happened in the sphere of political
means. The feudal estates had been expropriated of their political means
and had been displaced by the salaried officialdom of the modern bureau-
cratic state. The state had 'nationalized' the possession of arms and of i/
administrative means. Socialization of the means of production would
merely subject an as yet relatively autonomous economic life to the
bureaucratic management of the state. The state would indeed become 7'
total, and Weber, hating bureaucracy as a shackle upon the liberal indi-
50 THE MAN AND HIS WORK
vidual, felt that socialism would thus lead to a further serfdom. Tor the
time being,' he wrote, 'the dictatorship of the official and not that of
the worker is on the march.' ^
Weber thus saw himself as holding paradoxical opinions. He could
not but recognize the inevitability of bureaucratic management in public
administration, in large capitalist enterprises, and in politically efficient
party machines. During the war he personally scolded the stupidity of
the Berlin bureaucrats, yet in his classic account of bureaucracy he is
very far from John Stuart Mill's verdict against 'pedantocracy.' On the
contrary, for Weber nothing is more efficient and more precise than
bureaucratic management. Again in his pride in bureaucracy, 'in spite
of all,' one may discern an attitude comparable to Marx's admiration for
the achievements of bourgeois capitalism in wiping out feudal survivals,
the 'idiocy' of rural life, and various spooks of the mind.
Marx's emphasis upon the wage worker as being 'separated' from the
means of production becomes, in Weber's perspective, merely one special
case of a universal trend. The modern soldier is equally 'separated' from
the means of violence; the scientist from the means of enquiry, and the
civil servant from the means of administration. Weber thus tries to
relativize Marx's work by placing it into a more generalized context and
showing that Marx's conclusions rest upon observations drawn from a
dramatized 'special case,' which is better seen as one case in a broad series
of similar cases. The series as a whole exemplifies the comprehensive
underlying trend of bureaucratization. Socialist class struggles are merely
a vehicle implementing this trend.
Weber thus identifies bureaucracy with rationality, and the process
of rationalization with mechanism, depersonalization, and oppressive
routine. Rationality, in this context, is seen as adverse to personal free-
dom. Accordingly, Weber is a nostalgic liberal, feeling himself on the
defensive. He deplores the type of man that the mechanization and the
routine of bureaucracy selects and forms. The narrowed professional,
publicly certified and examined, and ready for tenure and career. His
craving for security is balanced by his moderate ambitions and he is re-
warded by the honor of official status. This type of man Weber deplored
as a petty routine creature, lacking in heroism, human spontaneity, and
inventiveness : 'The Puritan willed to be the vocational man that we have
to be.'
INTELLECTUAL ORIENTATIONS
2: Bureaucracy and Charisma: A Philosophy of History
The principle of rationalization is the most general element in Weber's
philosophy of historyJFor the rise and fall of institutional structures, the
ups and downs of classes, parties, and rulers implement the general
drift of secular rationalization. In thinking of the change of human atti-
tudes and mentalities that this process occasions, Weber liked to quote
Friedrich Schiller's phrase, the 'disenchantment of the world.' The extent
and direction of 'rationalization' is thus measured negatively in terms
of the degree to which magical elements of thought are displaced, or
positively by the extent to which ideas gain in systematic coherence and
naturalistic consistency.
The urge towards such a comprehensive and meaningful interpreta-
tion of the universe is ascribed to groups of intellectuals, to religious
prophets and teachers, to sages and philosophers, to jurists and experi-
mental artists, and finally, to the empirical scientist. 'Rationalization,'
socially and historically differentiated, thus comes to have a variety of
meanings. In this connection Weber makes a masterful contribution to
what has come to be known as the ^sociology of knowledge.' *
Weber's view of 'disenchantment' embodies an element of liberalism
and of the enlightenment philosophy that construed man's history as a
unilinear 'progress' towards moral perfection (sublimation), or towards
cumulative technological rationalization. Yet his skeptical aversion to any
'pHiIos6phic~af~eIement in empirical science precluded any explicit con-
structions of historical time in terms of 'cycles' or 'unilinear' evolution.
'Thus far the continuum of European culture development has known
neither completed cyclical movements nor an unambiguously oriented
"unilinear development." ' * We nevertheless feel justified in holding
that a unilinear construction is clearly implied in Weber's idea of the
bureaucratic trend. Even so 'inward' and apparently subjective an area
of experience as that of music lends itself to a sociological treatment
under Weber's concept of 'rationalization.' The fixation of clang pat-
terns, by a more concise notation and the establishment of the well-
tempered scale; 'harmonious' tonal music and the standardization of the
quartet of wood winds and string instruments as the core of the sym-
phony orchestra. These are seen as progressive 'rationalizations.' The
* We have included one chapter from Weber's study of China for the sake of acquaint-
ing the reader with this aspect of his work.
X
52 THE MAN AND HIS WORK
musical systems of Asia, of preliterate Indian tribes, of Antiquity, and
of the Middle East are compared in regard to their scope and degree
of 'rationalization,' The same comparative focus is of course used in the
account of religious systems, as may be seen in the typological sketch
contained in 'The Social Psychology of World Religions.'
This process of rationalization is punctured, however, by certain dis-
continuities of history. Hardened institutional fabrics may thus disinte-
grate and routine forms of life prove insufficient for mastering a growing
state of tension, stress, or suffering. It is in such crises that Weber intro-
duces a balancing conception for bureaucracy: the concept of 'charisma.'
Weber borrowed this concept from Rudolf Sohm, the Strassburg
church historian and jurist. Charisma, meaning literally 'gift of grace,'
is used by Weber to characterize self-appointed leaders who are fol-
lowed by those who are in distress and who need to follow the leader
because they believe him to be extraordmarily qualified. The founders
of world religions and the prophets as well as military and political
heroes are the archetypes of the charismatic leader. Miracles and revela-
tions, heroic feats of valor and baffling success are characteristic marks of
their stature. Failure is their ruin.
Although Weber is aware of the fact that social dynamics result from
many social forces, he nevertheless places great emphasis upon the rise
of charismatic leaders. Their movements are enthusiastic, and in such
extraordinary enthusiasms class and status barriers sometimes give way
to fraternization and exuberant community sentiments.^ Charismatic
heroes and prophets are thus viewed as truly revolutionary forces in
history.®
Bureaucracy and other institutions, especially those of the household,
/are seen as routines of workaday life; charisma is opposed to all institu-
tional routines, those of tradition and those subject to rational manage-
ment. This holds for the economic order: Weber characterizes conquista-
dores and robber barons as charismatic figures. When used in a strictly
technical manner, the concept of charisma is free of all evaluations. Stefan
George as well as Jeremiah, Napoleon as well as Jesus Christ, a raving
berserk warrior of Arabia as well as the founder of Mormonism — all these
are typified as charismatic leaders, for they have in common the fact that
</ people obey them because of faith in their personally extraordinary quali-
ties.
A genuinely charismatic situation is direct and inter-personal. In the
contrast of the everyday life of institutions with the personalized and
INTELLECTUAL ORIENTATIONS 53
spontaneous nature of charismatic leadership, one may readily discern
the heritage of liberalism that has always confronted similar dichotomies:
mass versus personality, the 'routine' versus the 'creative' entrepreneur, the
conventions of ordinary people versus the inner freedom of the pioneer-
ing and exceptional man, institutional rules versus the spontaneous indi-
vidual, the drudgery and boredom of ordinary existence versus the
imaginative flight of the genius. In spite of the careful nominalism of
his method, Weber's conception of the charismatic leader is a continua-
tion of a 'philosophy of history' which, after Carlyle's Heroes and Hero
Worship, influenced a great deal of nineteenth-century history writing.
In such an emphasis, the monumentalized individual becomes the sover-
eign of history.
Weber's conception of the charismatic leader is in continuity with the
concept of 'genius' as it was applied since the Renaissance to artistic and
intellectual leaders. Within the confines of 'moral' history, W. E. H.
Lecky broadened the conception in such a way as to apply it to leaders
of human conduct rather than merely to creators of symbols. Not only
men^of ideasJbuLJdeal men thus came into focus, as the following pas-
sage indicatGfrfp, v-
There arise from time to time men who bear to the moral condition of
their age much the same relations as men of genius bear to its intellectual
condition. They anticipate the moral standard di a later age, cast abroad con-
ceptions of disinterested virtue, of philanthropy, or of self-denial that seem
to have no relation to the spirit of their time, inculcate duties and suggest
motives of action that appear to most men altogether chimericaU Yet the
magnetism of their perfections tells powerfully upon their contemporaries.
An enthusiasm is kindled, a group of adherents is formed, and many are
emancipated from the moral condition of their age. Yet the full effects of such
a movement are but transient. The first enthusiasm dies away, surrounding
circumstances resume their ascendency, the pure faith is materialised, en-
crusted with conceptions that are alien to its nature, dislocated, and distorted,
till its first features have almost disappeared. The moral teaching, being un-
suited to the time, becomes inoperative until its appropriate civilisation has
dawned; or at most it faintly and imperfectly filters through an accumulation
of dogmas, and thus accelerates in some measure the arrival of the condition
it requires. ''^
It is clear that Lecky was interested in the genius as an extraordinary
man who transcends the bounds of everyday routines; and in this, his
eA THE MAN AND HIS WORK
^ Statement foreshadows one of the key theories of Weber: the routiniza-
tion of charisma.
I Like Lecky, Weber sees the genuine charismatic situation quickly give
way to incipient institutions, which emerge from the coohng off of ex-
traordinary states of devotion and fervor. As the original doctrines are
democratized, they are intellectually adjusted to the needs of that stratum
^which becomes the primary carrier of the leader's message. If these ideas
are not adaptable in this way, then, regardless of their intrinsic merit,
either their message will fail to influence the conduct of everyday life
or those whom they do influence will remain enclosed in a special way
of life and alien to the larger social body. The religions of India, accord-
ing to Weber, have very often ended up as the doctrines of such aristoc-
racies of salvation.*
Emphasis upon the 'sovereignty of the charismatic man' does not
minimize the mechanics of institutions; on the contrary, by tracing out
the routinization of charisma, Weber is able to assign a heavy causal
weight to institutional routines. Thus he retains a social determinism
by emphasizing charisma's routinization. His handling of this problem
testifies to his constant endeavor to maintain a causal pluralism and to
bring the economic order into the balance.
In general, Weber's construction of historical dynamics in terms of
charisma and routinization is an attempt to answer the paradox of
unintended consequences. For the charisma of the first hour may incite
the followers of a warrior hero or prophet to forsake expediency for ulti-
mate values. But during the routinization of charisma, the material in-
terests of an increased following are the compelling factor,
fc-^ A charismatic movement may be routinized into traditionalism or into
\ bureaucratization. Which course is taken does not depend primarily
upon the subjective intentions of the followers or of the leader; it is
y . dependent upon the institutional framework of the movement, and espe-
? cially upon the economic order. 'The routinization of charisma, in quite
essential respects, is identical with adjustment to the conditions of the
economy, that is, to the continuously effective routines of workaday life.
In this, the economy leads and is not led.' ^ Just as in this particular con-
text a leading role is given to the economy, so does the very title of his
key work. Economics and Society, bespeak an appreciation of the de-
termining weight of the economic bases.
* See chapter xi, 'The Social Psychology of World Religions.'
INTELLECTUAL ORIENTATIONS 55
The 'philosophical' element in Weber's construction of history is this \
antinomic balance of charismatic movements (leaders and ideas) with A
rational routinization (enduring institutions and material interests). |
Man's spontaneity and freedom are placed on the side of heroic enthusi- I
asm, and thus there is an aristocratic emphasis upon elites ('virtuosos'!). /
This emphasis is intimately associated with Weber's attitude towards"^
modern democracy, which we have already indicated.
Yet Weber sees in the concept of 'personality' a much-abused notion
referring to a profoundly irrational center of creativity, a center before
which analytical inquiry comes to a halt. And he combats this poeticized
and romantic element." For his conceptual nominalism and his prag-
matic outlook are opposed to all reification of 'unanalyzed' processes. The
ultimate unit of analysis for him is the understandable motivations of "^
the single individual. His concepts are analytical tools with which he»-^
reconstructs various mechanisms. They are not descriptive categories, with
which one tries to 'taste' the color and grasp the surface image of the
'spirit of the times.' They are not concepts that contemplate the supposed
substances of great men and epochs. In fact, despite Weber's emphasis
on charisma, he is not likely to focus on 'the great figures of history.'
Napoleon, Calvin and Cromwell, Washington and Lincoln appear in his
texts only in passing. He tries to grasp what is retained of their work x/^
in the institutional orders and continuities of history. Not Julius Caesar,
but Caesarism; not Calvin, but Calvinism is Weber's concern. In order
to understand this fully, we have to understand his conceptual tools:
the constructed type, the typological series, the comparative method. j[
3: Methods of Social Science , '^^ii
Weber's methodological reflections are clearly indebted to the philos- ,
ophy of the enlightenment. His point of departure and the ultimate unit (
of his analysis is the individual person:
Interpretative sociology considers the individual [Einzelindtviduum] and
his action as the basic unit, as its 'atom' — if the disputable comparison for
once may be permitted. In this approach, the individual is also the upper
limit and the sole carrier of meaningful conduct. . . In general, for sociology,
such concepts as 'state,' 'association,' 'feudalism,' and the like, designate
certain categories of human interaction. Hence it is the task of sociology to
reduce these concepts to 'understandable' action, that is, without exception,
to the actions of participating individual men.^"
^[
56 THE MAN AND HIS WORK
The 'Robinson-Crusoe approach' of the classical economists and the
rationalist philosophers of the contract is echoed in this emphasis upon
the individual. But within Weber's thought such emphasis stands in
opposition to the tradition of Hegel and Ranke.
This latter tradition attempts to 'interpret' the individual person, insti-
tution, act, or style of work by seeing it as a 'document,' 'manifestation,'
or an 'expression' of a larger morphological unit that underlies particular
data. 'Interpretation' thus consists in understanding the union of the
more comprehensive totality with its part. The aspect partakes of the
quality of the whole. Thus Sombart, writing a book on The Jews and
Economic Life, tries to show the contribution and the paramount signifi-
cance of Jewry for the rise and workings of modern capitalism by 'under-
standing' Jewry and capitalism as partaking of the same 'spirit.' This
mode of 'understanding' the particular by seeing it as a document of an
underlying whole is rooted in German romantic and conservative thought
— a style that was elaborated in great detail and with surprising subtlety
and fruitfulness by Wilhelm Dilthey.
Max Weber incorporated the problem of understanding in his socio-
logical approach, which, as he was prone to emphasize, was one type of
sociology among other possibilities. He therefore called his perspective
'interpretative' or 'understanding' sociology. It is characteristic of his
rational and positivist position that he transformed the concept of under-
standing. 'Understanding' remained for him, however, a unique ap-
proach of the moral or cultural sciences, which deals with man rather
than with other animals or with lifeless nature. Man can 'understand'
or attempt to 'understand' his own intentions through introspection, and
he may interpret the motives of other men's conduct in terms of their
professed or ascribed intentions.
Weber distinguishes different 'types' of motivated actions. Character-
istically he rated as the most 'understandable' type those actions which
are in the nature of rational expediencies, and of which the conduct of
the 'economic man' is a prime example.
Less 'rational' actions are typed by Weber in terms of the pursuit of
'absolute ends,' as flowing from affectual sentiments, or as 'traditional.'
Since absolute ends are to be taken as 'given' data by the sociologist, an
action may be rational with reference to the means employed, but 'irra-
tional' with respect to the ends pursued. 'Affectual' action, which flows
purely from sentiment, is a less rational type of conduct. And finally, ap-
proaching the 'instinctual' level, there is 'traditional' conduct: unreflective
INTELLECTUAL ORIENTATIONS 57
and habitual, this type is sanctified because it 'has always been done' and
is therefore deemed appropriate. These types of 'actions' are construed
operationally in terms of a scale of rationality and irrationality. A typo-
logical device rather than a 'psychology' of motivations is thus described.
This nominalist approach, with its emphasis upon the rational relations
of ends and means as the most 'understandable' type of conduct, distin-
guishes Weber's work from conservative thought and its documentary
'understanding' by assimilating the singularity of an object into a spirit-
ualized whole. Yet, by emphasizing the understandability of human
conduct, as opposed to the mere causal explanation of 'social facts' as in
natural science, Weber draws the line between his interpretative sociology
and the 'physique sociale' in the tradition of Condorcet, which Comte
called sociologie^^ and Durkheim worked out in such an eminent man-
ner. It has correctly been observed that the basic types of social structure
that Weber uses — 'society,' 'association,' and 'community' — correspond
closely with his 'types of action' — the 'rationally expedient,' the 'affective,'
and the 'traditionalist.' ^^
Were one to accept Weber's methodological reflections on his own
work at their face value, one would not find a systematic justification
for his analysis of such phenomena as stratification or capitalism. Taken
literally, the 'method of understanding' would hardly allow for Weber's
use of structural explanations; for this type of explanation attempts to
account for the motivation of systems of action by their functions as go-
ing concerns rather than by the subjective intentions of the individuals
who act them out.
According to Weber's method of understanding, we should expect him
to adhere to a subjective theory of stratification, but he does not
do so. Similarly, one may point to Weber's refutation of a widespread
German stereotype of America as a nation of 'atomized individuals': 'In
the past and up to the very present, it has been a characteristic precisely
of the specifically American democracy that it did not constitute a form-
less sand heap of individuals but rather a buzzing complex of strictly
exclusive, yet voluntary, associations.' * Again, Weber sees the drift
towards Athenian democracy as determined by a change in military or-
ganization: Democracy emerged when the older army of Hoplites gave
way to Navalism. Similar structural explanations are displayed in the
manner in which he links the spread of bureaucracies with the task of
* See pp. 307 ff., this volume.
c8 THE MAN AND HIS WORK
administering large inland empires, such as Rome and China, Russia
and the United States.
In using the structural principle of explanation, Weber comes quite
close to the analytical procedure of Marxist thought, which, in a 'de-
spiritualized' way, makes use of the originally Hegelian and conservative
way of thinking.
In his methodological emphasis upon understanding- the individual as
the ultimate unit of explanation, Weber is polemical against this organi-
cist thought of conservatism as well as the Marxist use of objective mean-
ings of social action irrespective of the awareness of the actor.
Like Hegel and Adam Smith, Marx ascribed meanings to the process
of social interactions. Adam Smith's 'unseen hand' and Hegel's 'ruse of
the idea' appear in Marx's system as an objective logic of dynamic insti-
tutions that work themselves out behind the backs of the actors. In so far
as men know not what they do, they realize the blind forces of society.
Although these forces are the work of men, they simply remain, in
Veblen's term, 'opaque.' Thus Marx measures the subjective notions of
the actors of the system against the objective meaning as revealed by
scientific study. And in the comparison and typical incongruity between
what men think they do and the objective social functions of their acts,
Marx locates the ideological nature of the subject's 'false consciousness.'
In his writings on method, Weber rejects the assumption of any 'ob-
jective meaning.' He wished to restrict the understanding and interpre-
tation of meaning to the subjective intentions of the actor. Yet, in his
actual work, he is no less aware than is Marx of the paradoxical fact
that the results of interactions are by no means always identical with
what the actor intended to do. Thus the Purit^an wished to serve God,
but he helped to bring about modern capitalism. The point is also shown
in the following passage concerning capitalism and the individual:
This masterless slavery in which capitalism enmeshes the worker or the
debtor is only debatable ethically as an institution. In principle, the personal
conduct of those who participate, on either the side of the rulers or of the
ruled, is not morally debatable, as such conduct is essentially prescribed by
objective situations. If they do not conform, they are threatened by economic
bankruptcy which would, in every respect, be useless.^^
One might easily accumulate statements from Weber's work that
would reinforce this point, as the translations in the present volume make
clear. It is understandable that Weber felt it equally wrong to consider
INTELLECTUAL ORIENTATIONS 59
his work as an idealist interpretation of history as it was to consider
it as a case of historical materialism.
The nominalism of Weber's method may be understood in terms of V
his attempt to avoid a philosophical emphasis upon either material or \
ideal factors, or upon either structural or individual principles of ex- \
planation. His attachment to Western positivist thought is shown in his I
scorn for any 'philosophical' or 'metaphysical' elements in the social /
sciences. He wants to give these sciences the same matter-of-fact approach /
with which the natural sciences approach nature. /
A quantitative method goes hand in hand with such a conception and
stands in opposition to a perspective in which all phenomena are seen as
qualitatively unique entities. For Weber, historical and social uniqueness
results from specific combinations of general factors, which when iso-
lated are quantifiable. Thus the 'same' elements may be seen in a series
of other unique combinations. '. . . Of course, in the last analysis, all
qualitative contrasts in reality can somehow be comprehended as purely
quantitative differences made up of combinations of various single
factors.' ^* He does not say that quality can be 'reduced' to quantity; in-
deed, as a nominalist, he is quite sensitive to the qualitative uniqueness
of cultural reality and to the qualitative differences resulting from quan-
titative changes. For instance: 'From our special point of view, where
the increased fear of the world has led to a flight from occupational
pursuits in the private economy, pietism not only turns into something
differing in degree but into an element differing in quality.' ^^
The much-discussed 'ideal type,' a key term in Weber's methodologi-
cal discussion, refers to the construction of certain elements of reality
into a logically precise conception. The term 'ideal' has nothing to do
with evaluations of any sort. For analytical purposes, one may construct
ideal types of prostitution as well as of religious leaders. The term does
not mean that either prophets or harlots are exemplary or should be
imitated as representatives of an ideal way of life.
By using this term, Weber did not mean to introduce a new con-
ceptual tool. He merely intended to bring to full awareness what social
scientists and historians had been doing when they used words like 'the
economic man,' 'feudalism,' 'Gothic versus Romanesque architecture,'
or 'kingship.' He felt that social scientists had the choice of using logically
controlled and unambiguous conceptions, which are thus more removed
from historical reality, or of using less precise concepts, which are more I
closely geared to the empirical world. Weber's interest in world-wide
6o THE MAN AND HIS WORK
comparisons led him to consider extreme and 'pure cases.' These cases
became 'crucial instances' and controlled the level of abstraction that
he used in connection with any particular problem. The real meat of
history would usually fall in between such extreme types; hence Weber
would approximate the multiplicity of specific historical situations by
bringing various type concepts to bear upon the specific case under his
focus.
The quantitative approach to unique cultural constellations and the
conception of ideal types are intimately hnked with the comparative
method. This method implies that two constellations are comparable in
terms of some feature common to them both. A statement of such
common features implies the use of general concepts. The manner in
which Weber construes the world religions as variant interpretations of
'senseless suffering' displays his technique of arranging 'cases' on a typo-
logical scale.* The same technique is at work in his typology of capital-
ism, built along a scale of different avenues for profit-opportunities. As
general concepts, ideal types are tools with which Weber prepares the
descriptive materials of world history for comparative analysis. These
types vary in scope and in the level of their abstraction. When Weber
characterizes 'democracy' as 'a minimization of power,' he has the broad-
est formulation, and the least specific historically. Several techniques of
minimizing power, such as short terms of office, checks and balances,
thq referendum, and so on, are possible in particular historical cases.
These cases are worked into sub-types of democracy. By incorporating
selected historical features into the general conception of democracy, he
is able to restrict this general type and approximate historical cases
more closely.
His concern with specific historical problems and his interest in a com-
parative sociology of a generalizing nature are thus related; the difference
between them is one of emphasis. By the use of a battery of ideal types,
he builds up a conception of a particular historical case. In his compara-
tive studies, he uses the same ideal type conceptions, but he uses history
as a storehouse of examples for these concepts. In short, the respective
research interest — in elaborating a concept or in constructing a historical
object — determines his procedure.
(In any case, Weber is concerned with using generalized conceptions
n order to understand society as subject to lawful regularities. For such
* See chapter xi, 'The Social Psychology of World Religions.'
INTELLECTUAL ORIENTATIONS 5 1
regularities are necessary in order to satisfy an interest in causation. To
understand a sequence of regular events causally, one must examine
comparable conditions. Thus, in an attempt to validate his causal analy-
sis of religion and capitalism in the Occident, Weber examined many
other civilizations. Although capitalist beginnings could be observed
in these other civilizations, capitaHsm in the Western sense did not
emerge. Weber wished to find those factors in other civilizations which
blocked the emergence of capitalism, even though there were many
favorable conditions present for its emergence. By such a comparative
analysis of causal sequences, Weber tried to find not only the neces-
sary but the sufficient conditions of capitalism. Only in the Occident, par-
ticularly where inner-worldly asceticism produced a specific personality
type, were the sufficient conditions present. In his pluralism, he naturally
did not consider this type of personality the only factor involved in the
origin of capitalism; he merely wished to have it included among the
conditions of capitalism.
4: The Sociology of Ideas and Interests
The discussion of bureaucratic institutions and personal leaders, of
workaday routines and extraordinariness, is paralleled by Weber's con-
ception of the relations between ideas and interests. Both Marx and
Nietzsche had contributed to a theory of the function and content of
ideas; both of them shifted the traditional emphasis upon the content
of ideas to an emphasis upon the pragmatic connection of ideas with
their results. They developed techniques for interpreting ideas in terms
of their intended or actual service rather than in terms of their face value.
Marx viewed ideas in terms of their public function in the struggles
of classes and parties. Nietzsche approached ideas in terms of their
psychological service to the individual thinker, or at least when he did
speak of the public context, his sociological tools were so crude that only
the psychological mechanisms were fruitfully brought out in his analysis.
If for Marx ideas of practical import became ideologies as weapons in
the struggles of groups, for Nietzsche^ they turned into the rationaliza-
tions of individuals, or at best of 'masters and slaves.' Marx commented
that ideas become material forces as soon as they take hold of the
masses; he linked the historical vitality of ideas to their role in justifying
economic interests. Nietzsche modified Matthew's statement, 'He who
humbles himself shall be raised,' into 'He who humbles himself wants
62 THE MAN AND HIS WORK
to be raised.' Thus he ascribed voHtions to the speaker which lay be-
neath the content of his ideas. ' "I did that," says my memory, "I could
not have done that," says my pride and remains inexorable. Eventually —
the memory yields.' ^^
Weber attempts to incorporate the points of view both of Marx and
of Nietzsche in his discussion: With Marx, he shares the sociological
approach to ideas: they are powerless in history unless they are fused
with material interests: And with Nietzsche, he is deeply concerned
with the importance of ideas for psychic reactions.*
Yet, in contrast to both Nietzsche and Marx, Weber refuses to con-
ceive of ideas as being 'mere' reflections of psychic or social interests. All
spheres — intellectual, psychic, political, economic, religious — to some ex-
tent follow developments of their own. Where Marx and Nietzsche are
quick to see a correspondence between ideas and interests, Weber is also
eager to state possible tensions between ideas and interests, between one
sphere and another, or between internal states and external demands.
iThus, in analyzing Hebrew prophecy, he seeks to balance psychological
and historical influences:
In any case, one can hardly assume that an unambiguous psychic determi-
nation of 'political hypochondria' has been the source of the prophets' stand.
The prophecy of doom has to be deduced, to a large extent, from the psychical
disposition of the prophets, as determined by constitutional endowments and
personal experiences. Yet, it is no less certain that the historical destinies of
Israel have indeed given the prophecies of doom their place in religious de-
velopment. And this is so, not only in the sense that tradition has of course
preserved those oracles of the prophets that were fulfilled, which have ap-
peared to be fulfilled, or whose advent could still be expected. The increas-
ingly unshatterable prestige of prophecy in general has rested upon those
few cases that were terribly impressive for the prophet's contemporaries,
and in which the prophets by their success were unexpectedly in the right.^^
The decisive conception by which Weber relates ideas and interests
is that of 'elective affinity,' rather than 'correspondence,' 'reflection,' or
'expression.' For Marx, ideas 'express' interests; thus, the hidden God
of the Puritans expresses the irrationality and anonymity of the market.
For Nietzsche, asceticist Christianity 'reflects' the resentment of the
slaves, who thus 'express' their 'revolt in morals.' For Weber, there is
hardly ever a close connection between the interests or the social origin
* A brief discussion of Nietzsche's theory of resentment will be found in chapter xi,
'Social Psychology of World Religions,' and chapter vii, 'Class, Status, Party.'
INTELLECTUAL ORIENTATIONS 63
of the speaker or of his following with the content of the idea during
its inception. The ancient Hebrew prophets, the leaders of the Reforma-
tion, or the revolutionary vanguard of modern class movements were
not necessarily recruited from the strata which in due course be-
came the prime bearers of their respective ideas. Only during the process
of routinization do the followers 'elect' those features of the idea with
which they have an 'affinity,' a 'point of coincidence' or 'convergence.'
There is no pre-established correspondence between the content of an
idea and the interests of those who follow from the first hour. But, in
time, ideas are discredited in the face of history unless they point in the
direction of conduct that various interests promote. Ideas, selected and
reinterpreted from the original doctrine, do gain an affinity with the
interests of certain members of special strata; if they do not gain such an
affinity, they are abandoned. Thus by distinguishing the phases of the
personal and charismatic origin of ideas and their routinization and
social impact, Weber is able to take into account a number of complica-
tions, which are reflected in changing shades of meaning. Both the ideas
and their publics are seen as independent; by a selective process ele-
ments in both find their affinities.
Throughout his Hfe, Max Weber was engaged in a fruitful battle
with historical materialism. In his last course of lectures in Munich at
the time of the Revolution, he presented his course under the title, 'A
Positive Critique of Historical Materialism.' Yet there is a definite drift
of emphasis in his intellectual biography towards Marx.
When writing the Protestant Ethic, Weber was eager to emphasize
the autonomous role of ideas in the origin of modern capitalism —
though not, of course, in the sense of Hegel. He felt that modern capi-
talism in its beginnings required a certain type of personality. This
personality type, in turn, was psychologically construed as a result of
belief in a set of ideas that unwittingly resulted in the development
of those specific personality traits useful in capitalist conduct. Thus in
giving 'a spiritualist construction' of the background of modern capital-
ism, Weber begins with religious conceptions. In his last essays, how-
ever, he begins his analysis of China, for instance, with chapters on the
economic basis. The more embittered Weber became with German
politics, the more he came to appreciate the weight of material interests
in the success of ideas, however lofty in content and intention they might
be. Thus during the war he wrote: 'Not ideas, but material and ideal
interests directly govern man's conduct. Yet very frequently the "world
64 THE MAN AND HIS WORK
images" which have been created by "ideas" have, like switchmen, de-
termined the tracks along which action has been pushed by the dynamic
o£ interests.' ^®
Such passages remind one of the mechanical metaphors of Marx,
with his revolutions as the 'locomotives of history,' or of Trotsky with
his 'ideological switchmen.' ^^ Mechanical imagery of this sort seems
to stand opposite the organic metaphors of growth and development
favored by more conservative writers. Where images of organic nature
are utilized they are not images of gradualism and vegetative growth,
but of incubation and birth.
In Weber's handling of specific ideas, one may discern different levels
of sociological interpretation at work. In a sweeping way, he locates
entire 'world images' as symbol constructions associated with the social
conditions of specific strata. Thus he sees a connection between the re-
ligious conception of a quietistic and passive Being and the mystic
states and contemplative techniques of genteel and literary intellectuals,
especially in India and China. He tries to establish an intimate relation
between the nature of a predominant psychological state, the structure
of an act of perception, and the meaning of an object. All three aspects,
in turn, are facilitated by and have an affinity to the social-historical situ-
ation of the intellectuals within the social structure. This historical struc-
ture, by itself, does not determine the direction in which the strata of
intellectuals may elaborate their conceptions; rather it permits or blocks
the attempt, characteristic of intellectuals, to tackle the senselessness of
suffering and of the world.\ln the Occident, intellectuals also experi-
mented in the direction of mystic contemplation; but such endeavors,
according to Weber, were repeatedly frustrated. A more volitional and
active search for meaning became predominant in the Occident. ^
The active interests of Occidental intellectuals in mastering political
events have been connected with the volitional and anthropomorphic
image of a wrathful yet benign God. The main stream of Christianity
is thus seen in continuity with Hebrew prophecy. The prophets of
ancient Judaism are characterized as active demagogues, who by the
power of the word aimed at a mastery of the course of historical events.
The priesthood was not strong enough to suppress effectively such self-
appointed religious demagogues.
Weber, in his sociology of knowledge, was not, however, exclusively
concerned with such world images. He also concerned himself with
INTELLECTUAL ORIENWTIONS 67
many particular ideologies, which he saw as->f land, as well as com-
motivate materially interested strata. matically led raids on
Here are some examples: The acceptance of the reiiyres may be ex-
o£ the Crusades is linked to the imperialist aspirations oiiered princes,
who were interested in securing fiefs for their progeny. Calry of the
of course, displayed other motives. The emergence and diffusion Hemi-
mendicant monk order, or Franciscans, is linked to the interests otites
ula^ power leaders in exploiting their skill as unpaid teachers, or as
urban demagogues who during crises were able to tame urban masses.
Whether or not these mendicant monks would have survived against
the opposition of the Pope and the priesthood without having had these
skills is an open question. The same situation applies to the Jesuit order,
after the Pope outlawed them and Frederick the Great gave them asylum
in Prussia. The advocacy of the intrinsic value of a particular language
is often associated with the material interests of publishers in national-
ism. The commands of modern bureaucracies assume the form of
'general rules' rather than of 'particular decrees,' as may be seen in con-
nection with their general rationalizing tendency. When Weber deals
with political problems, he seems to use this mode of interpreting ideas
as simple justifications. When he handles religious problems, he is more
likely to emphasize the concept of 'elective affinity.'
5: Social Structures and Types of Capitalism
The pragmatic view of ideas, which Max Weber shares with Karl
Marx and John Dewey, is associated with a refutation of the Hegelian
tradition. Weber thus rejects such conceptions as 'national character'
and 'folk spirit,' which have permeated German historiography and
which, in conservative thinking, have served as tools of interpretation.
He construes social dynamics in terms of a pluralistic analysis of factors,
which may be isolated and gauged in terms of their respective causal
weights.. He does this by comparative analyses of comparable units,
which are found in different cultural settings.
This does not mean that he has no total conceptions of social struc-
tures. On the contrary, the more Weber comes to an analysis of the con-
temporary era, the more ready he is to speak of capitalism as a unit.
The unit is seen as a configuration of institutions, which by the logic
of their own requirements increasingly narrow the range of effective
choices open to men.
66 THE MAN AND HIS WORK
For Weber, a unit, such as capitalism, is not an undifferentiated whole
to be equated with 'an acquisitive instinct' or with 'pecuniary society.'
Rather it is seen, as Marx and Sorel saw it, as a scale of types, each of
which has peculiar institutional features. The further back Weber goes
historically, the more he is willing to see capitalism as one feature of a
historical situation; the more he approaches modern industrial capitalism,
the more willing he is to see capitalism as a pervasive and unifying affair.
High capitalism absorbs other institutions into its own image, and nu-
merous institutional crisscrosses give way to a set of parallel forces head-
ing in the same direction. This direction is towards the rationalization
of all spheres of life. In such an increasingly unilinear construction of
history, one may discern a sublimated conception of the liberal notion
of 'progress.'
In conformity with liberal thinking, which is interested in separating
politics and economics, ^ypbf-r djsringiiishes between two basic types of
capitalism : 'political capitalism' and 'modern industrial' or 'bourgeois
capitali^p.' * Capitalism, of course, can only emerge when at least the
beginnings of a money-economy exists.
In political capitalism, opportunities for profit are dependent upon the
preparation for and the exploitation of warfare, conquest, and the pre-
rogative power of political administration. Within this type are imperial-
ist, colonial, adventure or booty, and fiscal. In addition, with a view of
locating the peculiar marginal situation of trading groups, Weber speaks
of pariah capitalism. This concept is applied to Occidental Jewry from
later Antiquity to the present, and to the Parsees in India. Although
functionally indispensable, for reasons of ethnic and religious back-
ground, such strata are socially segregated and reduced to a pariah status.
By imperialist capitalism, Weber refers to a situation in which profit
interests are either the pacemakers or the beneficiaries of political ex-
pansion. The greatest examples are the Roman and the British Empires,
and the competitive imperialism of the present epoch. Colonial capital-
ism, intimately connected with political imperialism, refers to those
capitalisms which profit from the commercial exploitation of political
prerogatives over conquered territories. Such prerogatives include po-
litically guaranteed trading monopolies, shipping privileges, the politi-
* 'In my opinion Sombart has, in important respects, quite adequately characterized
what should be understood by the early capitalist epoch. There are no "definitive" his-
torical concepts. I do not share the vanity of contemporary authors who conduct them-
selves in the face of a terminology used by some one else as if it were his toothbrush.'
Archiv jiir Soziahvissenschaft tind Sozialpolitik., 1906, p. 348.
INTELLECTUAL ORIENTATIONS 67
cally determined acquisition and exploitation of land, as well as com-
pulsory labor. Adventure capitalism refers to charismatically led raids on
foreign countries for the sake of treasure. Such treasures may be ex-
tracted from temples, tombs, mines, or the chests of conquered princes,
or they may be raised as levies on the ornaments and jewelry of the
population. The heroic period of the conquest of the Western Hemi-
sphere by the Spaniards, the overseas enterprises of the Italian city-states
during the Middle Ages, the Hanseatic League, and the merchant ad-
venturers of England are pre-eminent historical examples. Whereas ad-
venture capitalism emphasizes the discontinuous and charismatic nature
of these operations, the term booty capitalism emphasizes the objectives
sought.
In certain contexts, Weber is eager to distinguish the extraordinary
capitalist from the routine activities of the workaday enterpriser; in the
former case he speaks of charismatic capitalists as 'economic supermen.^'
Such figures have occurred in many historical contexts: in the new
empire of ancient Egypt, in ancient China, India, in western Antiquity,
in the waning of the Middle Ages, as well as in nineteenth-century
America. The Fuggers and Rockefeller, Mellon, and Cecil Rhodes are
examples. The difference between such charismatic capitalists and 'sober
bourgeois' capitalists has been overlooked quite frequently in contro-
versies over the problem of the Protestant ethic and its causal relevance
for the rise of 'modern capitalism.' "°
Fiscal capitalism, as used by Weber, refers to certain profit opportuni-
ties that accrue from the exploitation of political prerogatives. The most
important phenomenon of this type is the farming out of tax collection
to private enterprisers, as was the rule in ancient Rome and the ancien
regime in France. The leasing of the sale of indulgences to Italian mer-
chants as compensations for their loans to the Vatican; the entrepreneurial
organization of military and naval forces by condottieri; the leasing of
the right to com money to private enterprisers, such as Jacob Fugger, are
further examples.
These analytical types of capitalism serve to emphasize different
aspects of historical situations that are themselves quite fluid. The unique-
ness of modern industrial capitalism consists in the fact that a specific
production establishment emerges and is enlarged at the expense of pre-
capitalist production units. This production establishment has its legal,
political, and ideological preconditions, but it is nevertheless historically
unique. It is based on the organization of formally free labor and the
68 THE MAN AND HIS WORK
fixed plant. The owner of the plant operates at his own risk and pro-
duces commodities for anonymous and competitive markets. His opera-
tions are usually controlled rationally by a constant balancing of costs
and returns. All elements, including his own entrepreneurial services,
are brought to book as items in the balance of his accounts.
I X,ike Marx, Weber insists upon locating the basic institutional unit
■ of modern capitalism in production rather than in commerce or finance.
A system of capitalism grows from these units of production. This
system undergoes various historical phases; its highest stage is char-
acterized by the separation of ownership and management and the
financing of corporations by sales to the public of shares in the possible
returns from future operations. For this late stage of capitalism, Weber
accepts Sombart's term, 'High Capitalism.'
Unlike Marx, however, Weber is not interested in investigating the
problems of capitalist dynamics. The problem of the business cycle and
the capitalist crises, which were so essential for Marx's characterization
of capitalism as 'an anarchy of production,' have httle part in Weber's
analysis. This omission is of consequence for Weber's conception of ra-
tionality in modern society. For Marx, the rational elements of society
were the means which served, yet which increasingly contradicted, un-
mastered and irrational elements. For Weber, capitalism is the highest
form of rational operations; yet it is implemented by two irrationalities:
the remains of an originally religiously anchored attitude: the irrational
calling and drive for continuous work; and modern socialism, seen as the
'utopia' of those who cannot stand up under what seems to them the
senseless injustice of an economic order which makes them dependent
upon propertied entrepreneurs. Being keenl) aware of the institutional
pressures of modern capitalism, Weber, at this point, is ready to make
use of the category of social totalities as 'going concerns.' Once in the
saddle, for instance, capitalism no longer needs religious motives.
In sociological theory, a 'subjective' theory of the stratification of
capitalism has often been opposed to an 'objective' one. The classic Eng-
Hsh economists, prominently Ricardo, as well as Marx represented the
objective theory, defining 'class' in terms of typically recurrent incomes:
rent, profit, wage. Accordingly, for them, landlord, entrepreneur, and
worker make up the class structure. It does not matter whether these
agents conceive of themselves as Britons, highlanders, or what not; their
class positions are strictly located by their place and function within
the objective economic order. Marx, adhering to this tradition, added a
INTELLECTUAL ORIENTATIONS 69
historical aspect by emphasizing the specifically modern nature of
bourgeois and proletarian classes.
Subjective theories of class, on the other hand, have placed great em-
phasis upon the psychic traits of 'class members.' Those holding this
subjective theory have been eager to speak of the 'fourth estate' as
emerging side by side w^ith the older estates. Conceptions of respecta-
bility and of social honor, descriptive elements of political and religious
opinions, and sentiments corinec'ted with local and regional ways of life
displace the strict theoretical approach of the economists. It was left to
Moeller van den Bruck, author of The Third Reich, to carry the sub-
jective theory of classes to absurdity: 'He is a proletariat who wants to
think of himself as one. The proletarian consciousness makes man a
proletariat, not the machine, not the mechanization of labor, not wage-
dependency on the capitalist mode of production.' ^^
Max Weber is not ready to let man overcome hard economic fate by
such acrobatics of will power. Class situations are determined by the
relations of the market; in the last analysis, they go back to the differ-
ences between the propertied and the non-propertied. He thus shares
with the objective school the emphasis upon the economic order and
the strict distinction between objectively characterized positions and a
variety of shifting and subjective attitudes that may be related to such
positions.
In locating the class problem in the market and in the streams of
income and property, Weber points towards production and its modern
unit, the capitalist enterprise. He is prepared to give full credit to Marx
for his insight into the historical nature of the modern class structure.
Only when subjective opinions can be attributed to men in an objective
class situation does Weber speak of 'class-consciousness'; and when he
focuses upon problems of 'conventions,' 'styles of life,' of occupational
attitudes, he prefers to speak of prestige or of 'status groups.' These latter
problems, of course, point towards consumption, which, to be sure, de-
pends upon income derived from production or from property, but
which goes beyond this sphere. By making this sharp distinction between
class and status, and by differentiating between types of classes and
types of status groups, Weber is able to refine the problems of stratifica-
tion to an extent which thus far has not been surpassed.*
* See chapter vii, 'Class, Status, Party,' for his analjsis.
70 the man and his work
6: Conditions of Freedom and the Image of Man
The habit of the modern pohtical inteUigentsia of cloaking the aspira-
tions of their parties under historical necessity, and of advancing such
constructions with the pathos of 'iron necessity,' is characteristic of con-
servatism as well as Marxism. In both cases the concept of freedom fol-
lows Hegel's 'Fata nolentem trahunt, volentem ducunt' (The fates drag
the one who does not will; they lead the one who does). On the political
right, the pre-eminent prophet of doom was Oswald Spengler, whose
morphological construction of culture cycles Weber criticized as arbi-
trary intuitions exploiting historical literature for non-scientific ends.
Weber's liberal heritage and urge prevented him from taking a
determinist position. He felt that freedom consists not in realizing alleged
historical necessities but rather in making deliberate choices between open
alternatives. The future is a field for strategy rather than a mere repeti-
tion or unfolding of the past. Yet the possibilities of the future are not
infinite, nor are they clay in the hands of the wilful man.
Weber saw social life as a polytheism of values in combat with one
another, and choices were possible among these values.* The decision-
making, morally responsible individual is, of course, a specifically modern
and Occidental type of personality. This man can be more than a
mere cog in his occupational groove. If he is responsible, he will have to
make informed decisions. To Weber, sociological knowledge is of a
kind that the complexity of modern civilization requires of one who
would take intelligent stands on public issues. Such responsible decisions
are equally remote from the emotional fanaticism of followers of dema-
gogues as from the cynical sophistication of the snob or the blase smug-
ness of the Philistine.
As he was not willing to see bureaucrats as harbingers of freedom,
Weber felt that the field of responsible freedom was shrinking. He saw
himself, in this connection, as an old-fashioned liberal, unafraid of being
on the defensive or of swimming against the stream. The following pas-
sage, which we reproduce at length, may illustrate Weber's fears as
well as his assertion of the conditions of modern freedom. It was written
in 1906.
* See chapter v, 'Science as a Vocation,' and chapter xiii, 'Rehgious Rejections of the
World.'
INTELLECTUAL ORIENTATIONS 7I
The opportunities for democracy and individualism would look very bad
today were we to rely upon the lawful effects of material interests for their
development. For the development of material interests points, as distinctly
as possible, in the opposite direction: in the American 'benevolent feudalism,'
in the so-called 'welfare institutions' of Germany, in the Russian factory con-
stitution . . . everywhere the house is ready-made for a new servitude. It
only waits for the tempo of technical economic 'progress' to slow down and
for rent to triumph over profit. The latter victory, joined with the exhaustion
of the remaining free soil and free market, will make the masses 'docile.'
Then man will move into the house of servitude. At the same time, the in-
creasing complexity of the economy, the partial governmentalization of eco-
nomic activities, the territorial expansion of the population — these processes
create ever-new work for the clerks, an ever-new specialization of functions,
and expert vocational training and administration. All this means caste.
Those American workers who were against the 'Civil Service Reform'
knew what they were about. They wished to be governed by parvenus of
doubtful morals rather than by a certified caste of mandarins. But their pro-
test was in vain.
In the face of all this, those who constantly fear that in the world of the
future too much democracy and individualism may exist and too little author-
ity, aristocracy, esteem for office, or such like, may calm down. Only too much
provision has been made to see to it that the trees of democratic individualism
do not shoot into the sky. According to all experience, history relentlessly
gives rebirth to aristocracies and authorities; and those who deem it necessary
for themselves, or for 'the people,' may cling to them. If only material con-
ditions and interest-constellations directly or indirectly created by them
mattered, then every sober reflection would convince us that all economic
weathercocks point in the direction of increasing servitude.
It is utterly ridiculous to see any connection between the high capitalism
of today — as it is now being imported into Russia and as it exists in Amer-
ica— with democracy or with freedom in any sense of these words. Yet this
capitalism is an unavoidable result of our economic development. The ques-
tion is: how are freedom and democracy in the long run at all possible under
the domination of highly developed capitalism? Freedom and democracy
are only possible where the resolute will of a nation not to allow itself to be
ruled like sheep is permanently alive. We are 'individualists' and partisans
of 'democratic' institutions 'against the stream' of material constellations. He
who wishes to be the weathercock of an evolutionary trend should give up
these old-fashioned ideals as soon as possible. The historical origin of modern
freedom has had certain unique preconditions which will never repeat them-
selves. Let us enumerate the most important of these:
First, the overseas expansions. In the armies of Cromwell, in the French
72 THE MAN AND HIS WORK
constituent assembly, in our whole economic life even today this breeze from
across the ocean is felt . . . but there is no new continent at our disposal.
Irresistibly the point of gravity of the population of Western civilization ad-
vances toward the great inland areas of the North American continent on
the one side and of Russia on the other. This happened once before, in late
antiquity. The monotonous plains of Russia and the United States facilitate
schematism.
Second, the uniqueness of the economic and social structure of the early
capitalist epoch in western Europe.
Third, the conquest of life by science, 'the self-realization of the spirit.'
The rational construction of institutional life, doubtless after having de-
stroyed innumerable 'values,' today, at least in principle, has done its work.
In the wake of the standardization of production, it has made the external
way of life uniform. Under present conditions of business, the impact of such
standardization is universal. Today, science itself no longer creates universal
personalities.
Finally, certain conceptions of ideal values, grown out of a world of defi-
nite religious ideas, have stamj)ed the ethical peculiarity and cultural values
of modern man. They have done so by working with numerous political con-
stellations, themselves quite unique, and with the material preconditions of
early capitalism. One need merely ask whether any material development or
even any development of the high capitalism of today could maintain or create
again these unique historical conditions of freedom and democracy in order
to know the answer. No shadow of probability speaks for the fact that
economic 'socialization' as such must harbor in its lap either the development
of inwardly 'free' personalities of 'altruistic' ideals."^
The defensive pessimism for the future of freedom, which is displayed
in this passage and which is a major theme of Weber's work, is rein-
forced by the fate he sees for charisma in the modern world. Although
he gives a quite nominalist definition of charisma, it rs clear that the
concept serves him as a metaphysical vehicle of man's freedom in history.
That freedom, as carried by charisma, is doomed is evident by his nostal-
gic remark concerning the French Revolution. After tracing and. classify-
ing modern liberties, Weber indicates that such liberties find their ulti-
mate justification in the concept of the natural law of reason; and then:
'The charismatic glorification of "reason" found its characteristic expres-
sion in Robespierre's apotheosis. This is the last form which charisma
has assumed in its long road of varied and rich destinies.' ^^ Weber's
concern with freedom was not only historical; it influenced his image
of contemporary man as an individual.
INTELLECTUAL ORIENTATIONS 73
He conceived of individual man as a composite of general character-
istics derived from social institutions; the individual as an actor of social
roles. However, this holds only for men in so far as they do not-
transcend the routines of everyday institutions. The concept of charisma
serves to underline Weber's view that all men everywhere are not to be
comprehended merely as social products.
Just as for George H. Mead the T is ordinarily in tension with the social
roles derived from the expectations of others, so for Weber the potentially
charismatic quality of man stands in tension with the external demands
of institutional life. For Mead, the tension between the I and the role-
demands is resolved in the creative response of the genius. For Weber,
the response of the charismatic leader to distress unifies external demands
and internal urges. In a broad sense, one may say that externality is
identified with constraint and charisma with freedom. Weber's concep-
tion of human freedom thus partakes of the humanist tradition of
liberalism which is concerned with the freedom of the individual to
create free institutions. Having incorporated the Marxist critique of capi-
talism, he sees the economic system as a compulsive apparatus rather
than as the locus of freedom.
For Weber, capitaHsm is the embodiment of rational impersonality;
the quest for freedom is identified with irrational sentiment and privacy.
Freedom is at best a tarrying for loving companionship and for the ca-
thartic experience of art as a this-worldly escape from institutional
routines. It is the privilege of the propertied and educated: it is freedom
without equality.
In this conception of freedom as a historically developed phenomena,
now on the defensive against both capitalism and bureaucracy, Weber
represents humanist and cultural liberalism rather than economic liberal-
ism. The humanist tradition in which Schiller wrote that 'Der Mensch
ist freigeschaffen, ist frei, und wiird' er in ketten geboren' is evidenced in
Weber's concern with the decline of the cultivated man as a well-rounded
personality in favor of the technical expert, who, from the human point
of view, is crippled.* Weber's own work is a realization of his self-image
as a cultivated man concerned with all things human. And the decline of
the humanist and the ascendancy of the expert is another documentation
for Weber of the diminished chances for freedom.
In terms of these two types of men, Weber sees modern civilization
as unique in world history. Past civilizations produced various types of
* See chapter viii, 'Bureaucracy.'
74 THE MAN AND HIS WORK
humanist elites: in China, the mandarin, a stratum of gentlemanly
literati; in antiquity, a leisured stratum o£ athletic and cultured men; in
England, the modern conventional gentlemen, a result of compromises
between 'merry old England' and middle-class Puritanism consummated
in the masculine club; in Latin civilizations, the French cavalier and the
Italian cortegiano, compromises between court nobilities and urban pa-
tricians, consummated in the salon of the lady. Such cultivated types
are now unfit for the management of economic and political affairs; they
are being displaced by the specialist bureaucrat and the professional poli-
tician. Weber gave little weight to followers of artistic and literary cult
leaders, who must belong to or depend upon circles of rentiers, or else
serve the literary fashions promoted by shrewd publishers.
In contrast to the liberalism of Kant and Fichte, and some modern
American educators. Max Weber saw education and the social produc-
tion of personalities as dependent upon politics and economics. His pes-
simism about political and economic freedom is thus supplemented by
his pessimism about the realms of art, cultivation, and the personality
types possible for contemporary man.
Parti
SCIENCE AND POLITICS
IV. Politics as a Vocation
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 posi-
tion 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 ques-
tions 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 under-
stand 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 po-
litical ones: today the state, or historically, those associations which have
been the predecessors of the modern state. Ultimately, one can define
'Politik als Beruf,' Gesammelte PoUtische Schriften (Muenchen, 1921), pp. 396-450.
Originally a speech at Munich University, 191 8, published in 191 9 by Duncker & Hum-
blodt, Munich.
77
^8 SCIENCE AND POLITICS
the modern state sociologically only in terms o£ 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 condi-
tion 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 — be-
ginning 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 com-
munity 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 ques-
tions 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 legiti-
mate (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
/
POLITICS AS A VOCATION 79
through the unimaginably ancient recognition and habitual orientation
to conform. This is 'traditionaT jomination exercised by the patriarch
and the patrimonial prince o£ 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 dema-
gogue, 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 dis-
charging 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 threejpure' J^es : 'traditional,' 'charis-
matic,' 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 variants, transitions, and combinations of these pure
types, which problems belong to 'political science.' Here we are inter-
ested 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 ex-
pression.
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.
So SCIENCE AND POLITICS
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 dema-
gogue is peculiar to the Occident and especially to Mediterranean cul-
ture. 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, re-
quires 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 con-
trol of the personal executive staff and the material implements of ad-
ministration.
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 legiti-
macy, 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 soli-
darity 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 monopo-
lization of office — and there are politically determined profits and
POLITICS AS A VOCATION 8 1
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 accord-
ing 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 ad-
ministrative means may consist of money, building, war material, ve-
hicles, horses, or whatnot. The question is whether or not the power-
holder himself directs and organizes the administration while delegating
executive power to personal servants, hired officials, or personal favor-
ites and confidants, who are non-owners, i.e. who do not use the mate-
rial 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 adminis-
tration 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 sub-
vassals 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 forma-
tions, 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
82 SCIENCE AND POLITICS
hence shares his domination with it; the lord who personally administers
is supported either by members of his household or by plebeians. These
are property less strata having no social honor of their own; materially,
they are completely chained to him and are not backed up by any com-
peting 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; in 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 inde-
pendent 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 contempo-
rary '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 com-
pleted. Here the most modern development begins, and we see with our
own eyes the attempt to inaugurate the expropriation of this expropria-
tor of the political means, and therewith of political power.
The revolution [of Germany, 191 8] 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 gov-
erned. Whether the leaders, on the basis of this at least apparent success,
can rightfully entertain the hope of also carrying through the expropria-
tion 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
POLITICS AS A VOCATION 83
to monopolize the legitimate use o£ physical force as a means of domina-
tion 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 an-
other 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 instru-
ment 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 rela-
tion 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 po-
litical 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 administra-
tion, 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,
I
84 SCIENCE AND POLITICS
they exploited their prerogatives in the interest of gaining rent or even
profits; and they became active in the service of poHtical 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
Hans 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 neces-
sity, the prince sought to create a staflF 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 mem-
bers constituted themselves politically as (so-called) 'free' communes un-
der 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'
poHtics makes politics his life, in an internal sense. Either he enjoys the
naked possession of the power he exerts, or he nourishes his inner balance
and self-feeling by the consciousness that his life has meaning in the
service of a 'cause.' In this internal sense, every sincere man who lives
for a cause also lives off this cause. The distinction hence refers to a
much more substantial aspect of the matter, namely, to the economic. He
who strives to make politics a permanent source of income lives 'off'
politics as a vocation, whereas he who does not do this lives 'for' politics.
Under the dominance of the private property order, some — if you wish —
POLITICS AS A VOCATION 85
very trivial preconditions must exist in order for a person to be able to
live 'for' politics in this economic sense. Under normal conditions, the
politician must be economically independent of the income politics can
bring him. This means, quite simply, that the politician must be wealthy
or must have a personal position in life which yields a sufficient income.
This is the case, at least in normal circumstances. The war lord's fol-
lowing is just as Uttle concerned about the conditions of a normal
economy as is the street crowd following of the revolutionary hero.
Both hve oflf booty, plunder, confiscations, contributions, and the imposi-
tion of worthless and compulsory means of tender, which in essence
amounts to the same thing. But necessarily, these are extraordinary
phenomena. In everyday economic life, only some wealth serves the
purpose of making a man economically independent. Yet this alone does
not suffice. The professional politician must also be economically 'dis-
pensable,' that is, his income must not depend upon the fact that he
constantly and personally places his ability and thinking entirely, or at
least by far predominantly, in the service of economic acquisition. In
the most unconditional way, the rentier is dispensable in this sense.
Hence, he is a man who receives completely unearned income. He may
be the territorial lord of the past or the large landowner and aristocrat
of the present who receives ground rent. In Antiquity and the Middle
Ages they who received slave or serf rents or in modern times rents
from shares or bonds or similar sources — these are rentiers.
Neither the worker nor — and this has to be noted well — the entre-
preneur, especially the modern, large-scale entrepreneur, is economically
dispensable in this sense. For it is precisely the entrepreneur who is tied
to his enterprise and is therefore not dispensable. This holds for the
entrepreneur in industry far more than for the entrepreneur in agricul-
ture, considering the seasonal character of agriculture. In the main, it is
very difficult for the enterpreneur to be represented in his enterprise
by someone else, even temporarily. He is as little dispensable as is the
medical doctor, and the more eminent and busy he is the less dispensable
he is. For purely organizational reasons, it is easier for the lawyer to
be dispensable; and therefore the lawyer has played an incomparably
greater, and often even a dominant, role as a professional politician. We
shall not continue in this classification; rather let us clarify some of its
ramifications.
The leadership of a state or of a party by men who (in the economic
sense of the word) live exclusively for politics and not off politics means
86 SCIENCE AND POLITICS
necessarily a 'plutocratic' recruitment of the leading political strata. To
be sure, this does not mean that such plutocratic leadership signifies at
the same time that the politically dominant strata will not also seek to
live 'off politics, and hence that the dominant stratum will not usually
exploit their political domination in their own economic interest. All that
is unquestionable, of course. There has never been such a stratum that
has not somehow lived 'off politics. Only this is meant: that the profes-
sional politician need not seek remuneration directly for his political
work, whereas every politician without means must absolutely claim this.
On the other hand, we do not mean to say that the propertyless politician
will pursue private economic advantages through politics, exclusively, or
even predominantly. Nor do we mean that he will not think, in the
first place, of 'the subject matter.' Nothing would be more incorrect. Ac-
cording to all experience, a care for the economic 'security' of his exist-
ence is consciously or unconsciously a cardinal point in the whole life
orientation of the wealthy man. A quite reckless and unreserved political
ideaHsm is found if not exclusively at least predominantly among those
strata who by virtue of their propertylessness stand entirely outside of
the strata who are interested in maintaining the economic order of a
given society. This holds especially for extraordinary and hence revolu-
tionary epochs. A non-plutocratic recruitment of interested politicians, of
leadership and following, is geared to the self-understood precondition
that regular and reliable income will accrue to those who manage
politics.
Either politics can be conducted 'honorifically' and then, as one usually
says, by 'independent,' that is, by wealthy, men, and especially by
rentiers. Or, political leadership is made accessible to propertyless men
who must then be rewarded. The professional politician who lives 'off
politics may be a pure 'prebendary' or a salaried 'official.' Then the poli-
tician receives either income from fees and perquisites for specific serv-
ices— tips and bribes are only an irregular and formally illegal variant
of this category of income — or a fixed income in kind, a money salary,
or both. He may assume the character of an 'entrepreneur,' like the
condottiere or the holder of a farmed-out or purchased office, or like the
American boss who considers his costs a capital investment which he
brings to fruition through exploitation of his influence. Again, he may
receive a fixed wage, like a journalist, a party secretary, a modern cabinet
minister, or a political official. Feudal fiefs, land grants, and prebends of
all sorts have been typical, in the past. With the development of the
POLITICS AS A VOCATION 87
money economy, perquisites and prebends especially are the typical re-
wards for the following of princes, victorious conquerors, or successful
party chiefs. For loyal services today, party leaders give offices of all sorts
— in parties, newspapers, co-operative societies, health insurance, munici-
paUties, as well as in the state. All party struggles are struggles for the
patronage of office, as well as struggles for objective goals.
In Germany, all struggles between the proponents of local and of
central government are focused upon the question of which powers shall
control the patronage of office, whether they are of Berlin, Munich,
Karlsruhe, or Dresden. Setbacks in participating in offices are felt more
severely by parties than is action against their objective goals. In France,
a turnover of prefects because of party politics has always been con-
sidered a greater transformation and has always caused a greater uproar
than a modification in the government's program — the latter almost hav-
ing the significance of mere verbiage. Some parties, especially those in
America since the disappearance of the old conflicts concerning the inter-
pretation of the constitution, have become pure patronage parties hand-
ing out jobs and changing their material program according to the chances
of grabbing votes.
In Spain, up to recent years, the two great parties, in a conventionally
fixed manner, took turns in office by means of 'elections,' fabricated from
above, in order to provide their followers with offices. In the Spanish
colonial territories, in the so-called 'elections,' as well as in the so-called
'revolutions,' what was at stake was always the state bread-basket from
which the victors wished to be fed.
In Switzerland, the parties peacefully divided the offices among them-
selves proportionately, and some of our 'revolutionary' constitutional
drafts, for instance the first draft of the Badenian constitution, sought
to extend this system to ministerial positions. Thus, the state and state
offices were considered as pure institutions for the provision of spoilsmen.
Above all, the Catholic Center party was enthusiastically for this draft.
In Badenia, the party, as part of the party platform, made the distribution
of offices proportional to confessions and hence without regard to achieve-
ment. This tendency becomes stronger for all parties when the number
of offices increase as a result of general bureaucratization and when the
demand for offices increases because they represent specifically secure
livelihoods. For their followings, the parties become more and more a
means to the end of being provided for in this manner.
The development of modern officialdom into a highly qualified, pro-
SCIENCE AND POLITICS
fessional labor force, specialized in expertness through long years of
preparatory training, stands opposed to all these arrangements. Modern
bureaucracy in the interest of integrity has developed a high sense of
status honor; without this sense the danger of an awful corruption and
a vulgar Philistinism threatens fatally. And without such integrity, even
the purely technical functions of the state apparatus would be endan-
gered. The significance of the state apparatus for the economy has been
steadily rising, especially with increasing socialization, and its significance
will be further augmented.
In the United States, amateur administration through booty politicians
in accordance with the outcome of presidential elections resulted in the
exchange of hundreds of thousands of officials, even down to the mail
carrier. The administration knew nothing of the professional civil-
servant-for-life, but this amateur administration has long since been
punctured by the Civil Service Reform. Purely technical, irrefrageable
needs of the administration have determined this development.
In Europe, expert officialdom, based on the division of labor, has
emerged in a gradual development of half a thousand years. The Italian
cities and seigniories were the beginning, among the monarchies, and
the states of the Norman conquerors. But the decisive step was taken
in connection with the administration of the finances of the prince. With
the administrative reforms of Emperor Max, it can be seen how hard it
was for the officials to depose successfully of the prince in this field, even
under the pressure of extreme emergency and of Turkish rule. The
sphere of finance could afford least of all a ruler's dilettantism — a ruler
who at that time was still above all a knight. The development of war
technique called forth the expert and specialized officer; the differentia-
tion of legal procedure called forth the trained jurist. In these three
areas — finance, war, and law — expert officialdom in the more advanced
states was definitely triumphant during the sixteenth century. With the
ascendancy of princely absolutism over the estates, there was simultane-
ously a gradual abdication of the prince's autocratic rule in favor of an
expert officialdom. These very officials had only facilitated the prince's
victory over the estates.
The development of the 'leading politicians' was realized along with
the ascendancy of the specially trained officialdom, even if in far less
noticeable transitions. Of course, such really decisive advisers of the
princes have existed at all times and all over the world. In the Orient,
the need for relieving the Sultan as far as possible from personal respon-
POLITICS AS A VOCATION 89
sibility for the success of the government has created the typical figure
of the 'Grand Vizier.' In the Occident, influenced above all by the reports
of the Venetian legates, diplomacy first became a consciously cultivated
art in the age of Charles V, in Machiavelli's time. The reports of the
Venetian legates were read with passionate zeal in expert diplomatic
circles. The adepts of this art, who were in the main educated humanis-
tically, treated one another as trained initiates, similar to the humanist
Chinese statesmen in the last period of the warring states. The neces-
sity of a formally unified guidance of the whole policy, including that
of home affairs, by a leading statesman finally and compellingly arose
only through constitutional development. Of course, individual personal-
ities, such as advisers of the princes, or rather, in fact, leaders, had
again and again existed before then. But the organization of adminis-
trative agencies even in the most advanced states first proceeded along
other avenues. Top collegial administrative agencies had emerged. In
theory, and to a gradually decreasing extent in fact, they met under the
personal chairmanship of the prince who rendered the decision. This
collegial system led to memoranda, counter-memoranda, and reasoned
votes of the majority and the minority. In addition to the official and
highest authorities, the prince surrounded himself with purely personal
confidants — the 'cabinet' — and through them rendered his decisions, after
considering the resolutions of the state counsel, or whatever else the
highest state agency was called. The prince, coming more and more into
the position of a dilettante, sought to extricate himself from the unavoid-
ably increasing weight of the expertly trained officials through the col-
legial system and the cabinet. He sought to retain the highest leadership
in his own hands. This latent struggle betv/een expert officialdom and
autocratic rule existed everywhere. Only in the face of parliaments and
the power aspirations of party leaders did the situation change. Very
different conditions led to the externally identical result, though to be
sure with certain differences. Wherever the dynasties retained actual
power in their hands — as was especially the case in Germany — the inter-
ests of the prince were joined with those of officialdom against parlia-
ment and its claims for power. The officials were also interested in hav-
ing leading positions, that is, ministerial positions, occupied by their own
ranks, thus making these positions an object of the official career. The
monarch, on his part, was interested in being able to appoint the min-
isters from the ranks of devoted officials according to his own discretion.
Both parties, however, were interested in seeing the political leadership
90 SCIENCE AND POLITICS
confront parliament in a unified and solidary fashion, and hence in
seeing the collegial system replaced by a single cabinet head. Further-
more, in order to be removed in a purely formal way from the struggle
of parties and from party attacks, the monarch needed a single person-
ality to cover him and to assume responsibility, that is, to answer to par-
liament and to negotiate with the parties. All these interests worked
together and in the same direction: a minister emerged to direct the
officialdom in a unified way.
Where parliament gained supremacy over the monarch — as in England
— the development of parliamentary power worked even more strongly
in the direction of a unification of the state apparatus. In England, the
'cabinet,' with the single head of Parliament as its 'leader,' developed
as a committee of the party which at the time controlled the majority.
This party power was ignored by official law but, in fact, it alone was
politically decisive. The official collegial bodies as such were not organs
of the actual ruling power, the party, and hence could not be the bearers
of real government. The ruling party required an ever-ready organiza-
tion composed only of its actually leading men, who would confidentially
discuss matters in order to maintain power within and be capable of
engaging in grand politics outside. The cabinet is simply this organi-
zation. However, in relation to the public, especially the parliamentary
public, the party needed a leader responsible for all decisions — the cabinet
head. The English system has been taken over on the Continent in the
form of parliamentary ministries. In America alone, and in the de-
mocracies influenced by America, a quite heterogeneous system was
placed into opposition with this system. The American system placed
the directly and popularly elected leader of the victorious party at the head
of the apparatus of officials appointed by him and bound him to the
consent of 'parliament' only in budgetary and legislative matters.'
The development of politics into an organization which demanded
training in the struggle for power, and in the methods of this struggle
as developed by modern party policies, determined the separation of
public functionaries into two categories, which, however, are by no
means rigidly but nevertheless distinctly separated. These categories are
'administrative' officials on the one hand, and 'political' officials on the
other. The 'political' officials, in the genuine sense of the word, can
regularly and externally be recognized by the fact that they can be
transferred any time at will, that they can be dismissed, or at least
temporarily withdrawn. They are like the French prefects and the com-
POLITICS AS A VOCATION 9I
parable officials of other countries, and this is in sharp contrast to the
'independence' of officials with judicial functions. In England, officials
who, according to fixed convention, retire from office when there is a
change in the parliamentary majority, and hence a change in the cabi-
net, belong to this category. There are usually among them some whose
competence includes the management of the general 'inner administra-
tion.' The political element consists, above all, in the task of maintaining
'law and order' in the country, hence maintaining the existing power re-
lations. In Prussia these officials, in accordance with Puttkamer's decree
and in order to avoid censure, were obliged to 'represent the policy of
the government.' And, like the prefects in France, they were used as an
official apparatus for influencing elections. Most of the 'political' officials
of the German system — in contrast to other countries — were equally
qualified in so far as access to these offices required a university educa-
tion, special examinations, and special preparatory service. In Germany,
only the heads of the poHtical apparatus, the ministers, lack this specific
characteristic of modern civil service. Even under the old regime, one
could be the Prussian minister of education without ever having at-
tended an institution of higher learning; whereas one could become
V ortragender Rat^ in principle, only on the basis of a prescribed exami-
nation. The specialist and trained Dezernent^ and* V ortragender Rat
were of course infinitely better informed about the real technical prob-
lems of the division than was their respective chief — for instance, under
Althofl in the Prussian ministry of education. In England it was not
different. Consequently, in all routine demands the divisional head was
more powerful than the minister, which was not without reason. The
minister was simply the representative of the political power constella-
tion; he had to represent these powerful political staffs and he had to
take measure of the proposals of his subordinate expert officials or give
them directive orders of a political nature.
After all, things in a private economic enterprise are quite similar: the
real 'sovereign,' the assembled shareholders, is just as little influential in
the business management as is a 'people' ruled by expert officials. And
the personages who decide the policy of the enterprise, the bank-con-
trolled 'directorate,' give only directive economic orders and select persons
for the management without themselves being capable of technically
directing the enterprise. Thus the present structure of the revolutionary
state signifies nothing new in principle. It places power over the admin-
istration into the hands of absolute dilettantes, who, by virtue of their
92 SCIENCE AND POLITICS
control o£ the machine-guns, would hke to use expert officials only as
executive heads and hands. The difficulties of the present system lie else-
where than here, but today these difficulties shall not concern us. We
shall, rather, ask for the typical peculiarity of the professional politicians,
of the 'leaders' as well as their followings. Their nature has changed and
today varies greatly from one case to another.
We have seen that in the past 'professional politicians' developed
through the struggle of the princes with the estates and that they served
the princes. Let us briefly review the major types of these professional
politicians.
Confronting the estates, the prince found support in politically exploit-
able strata outside of the order of the estates. Among the latter, there was,
first, the clergy in Western and Eastern India, in Buddhist China and
Japan, and in Lamaist Mongolia, just as in the Christian territories of the
Middle Ages. The clergy were technically useful because they were
literate. The importation of Brahmins, Buddhist priests. Lamas, and the
employment of bishops and priests as political counselors, occurred with
an eye to obtaining administrative forces who could read and write and
who could be used in the struggle of the emperor, prince, or Khan
against the aristocracy. Unlike the vassal who confronted his overlord,
the cleric, especially the celibate cleric, stood outside the machinery of
normal political and economic interests and was not tempted by the
struggle for political power, for himself or for his descendants. By virtue
of his own status, the cleric was 'separated' from the managerial imple-
ments of princely administration.
The humanistically educated literati comprised a second such stratum.
There was a time when one learned to produce Latin speeches and
Greek verses in order to become a political adviser to a prince and,
above all things, to become a memorialist. This was the time of the first
flowering of the humanist schools and of the princely foundations of
professorships for 'poetics.' This was for us a transitory epoch, which has
had a quite persistent influence upon our educational system, yet no
deeper results politically. In East Asia, it has been different. The Chinese
mandarin is, or rather originally was, what the humanist of our Renais-
sance period approximately was: a literator humanistically trained and
tested in the language monuments of the remote past. When you read
the diaries of Li Hung Chang you will find that he is most proud of
having composed poems and of being a good calligrapher. This stratum,
with its conventions developed and modeled after Chinese Antiquity, has
POLITICS AS A VOCATION 93
determined the whole destiny of China; and perhaps our fate would have
been similar if the humanists in their time had had the slightest chance
of gaining a similar influence.
The third stratum was the court nobility. After the princes had suc-
ceeded in expropriating political power from the nobility as an estate,
they drew the nobles to the court and used them in their political and
diplomatic service. The transformation of our educational system in
the seventeenth century was partly determined by the fact that court
nobles as professional politicians displaced the humanist literati and
entered the service of the princes.
The fourth category was a specifically English institution. A patrician
stratum developed there which was comprised of the petty nobility and
the urban rentiers; technically they are called the 'gentry.' The English
gentry represents a stratum that the prince originally attracted in order
to counter the barons. The prince placed the stratum in possession of the
offices of 'self-government,' and later he himself became increasingly
dependent upon them. The gentry maintained the possession of all offices
of local administration by taking them over without compensation in the
interest of their own social power. The gentry has saved England from
the bureaucratization which has been the fate of all continental states.
A fifth stratum, the university-trained jurist, is peculiar to the Occi-
dent, especially to the European continent, and has been of decisive
significance for the Continent's whole political structure. The tremendous
after-efFect of Roman law, as transformed by the late Roman bureau-
cratic state, stands out in nothing more clearly than the fact that every-
where the revolution of political management in the direction of the
evolving rational state has been borne by trained jurists. This also oc-
curred in England, although there the great national guilds of jurists
hindered the reception of Roman law. There is no analogy to this process
to be found in any area of the world.
All beginnings of rational juristic thinking in the Indian Mimamsa
School and all further cultivation of the ancient juristic thinking in
Islam have been unable to prevent the idea of rational law from being
overgrown by theological forms of thought. Above all, legal trial pro-
cedure has not been fully rationalized in the cases of India and of
Islamism. Such rationalization has been brought about on the Conti-
nent only through the borrowing of ancient Roman jurisprudence by
the Italian jurists. Roman jurisprudence is the product of a political
structure arising from the city state to world domination — a product
94 SCIENCE AND POLITICS
of quite unique nature. The usus modernus of the late medieval pandect
jurists and canonists was blended with theories of natural law, which
were born from juristic and Christian thought and which were later
secularized. This juristic rationalism has had its great representatives
among the ItaHan Podesta, the French crown jurists (who created the
formal means for the undermining of the rule of seigneurs by royal
power), among the canonists and the theologians of the ecclesiastic
councils (thinking in terms of natural law), among the court jurists
and academic judges of the continental princes, among the Netherland
teachers of natural law and the monarchomachists, among the English
crown and parliamentary jurists, among the noblesse de robe of the
French Parliament, and finally, among the lawyers of the age of the
French Revolution.
Without this juristic rationalism, the rise of the absolute state is just
as little imaginable as is the Revolution. If you look through the
remonstrances of the French Parliaments or through the cahiers of the
French Estates-General from the sixteenth century to the year 1789,
you will find everywhere the spirit of the jurists. And if you go over
the occupational composition of the members of the French Assembly,
you will find there — although the members of the Assembly were elected
through equal franchise — a single proletarian, very few bourgeois enter-
prisers, but jurists of all sorts, en fnasse. Without them, the specific men-
tality that inspired these radical intellectuals and their projects would be
quite inconceivable. Since the French Revolution, the modern lawyer
and modern democracy absolutely belong together. And lawyers, in our
sense of an independent status group, also exist only in the Occident.
They have developed since the Middle Ages from the Fiirsprech of the
formalistic Germanic legal procedure under the impact of the rationali-
zation of the trial.
The significance of the lawyer in Occidental politics since the rise
of parties is not accidental. The management of politics through parties
simply means management through interest groups. We shall soon see
what that means. The craft of the trained lawyer is to plead effectively
the cause of interested clients. In this, the lawyer is superior to any 'offi-
cial,' as the superiority of enemy propaganda [Allied propaganda 1914-18]
could teach us. Certainly he can advocate and win a cause supported by
logically weak arguments and one which, in this sense, is a 'weak' cause.
Yet he wins it because technically he makes a 'strong case' for it. But
only the lawyer successfully pleads a cause that can be supported by logi-
POLITICS AS A VOCATION 95
cally strong arguments, thus handling a 'good' cause 'well.' All too often
the civil servant as a politician turns a cause that is good in every sense
into a 'weak' cause, through technically 'weak' pleading. This is what we
have had to experience. To an outstanding degree, politics today is in
fact conducted in public by means of the spoken or written word. To
weigh the effect of the word properly falls within the range of the law-
yer's tasks; but not at all into that of the civil servant. The latter is no
demagogue, nor is it his purpose to be one. If he nevertheless tries to
become a demagogue, he usually becomes a very poor one.
According to his proper vocation, the genuine official — and this is
decisive for the evaluation of our former regime — will not engage in
politics. Rather, he should engage in impartial 'administration.' This
also holds for the so-called 'political' administrator, at least officially,
in so far as the raison d'etat, that is, the vital interests of the ruling
order, are not in question. Sine ira et studio, 'without scorn and bias,'
he shall administer his office. Hence, he shall not do precisely what the
politician, the leader as well as his following, must always and neces-
sarily do, namely, fight.
To take a stand, to be passionate — ira et studium — is the politician's
element, and above all the element of the political leader. His conduct
is subject to quite a different, indeed, exactly the opposite, principle
of responsibility from that of the civil servant. The honor of the civil
servant is vested in his ability to execute conscientiously the order of the
superior authorities, exactly as if the order agreed with his own con-
viction. This holds even if the order appears wrong to him and if,
despite the civil servant's remonstrances, the authority insists on the
order. Without this moral discipline and self-denial, in the highest sense,
the whole apparatus would fall to pieces. The honor of the political
leader, of the leading statesman, however, lies precisely in an exclusive
personal responsibility for what he does, a responsibility he cannot and
must not reject or transfer. It is in the nature of officials of high moral
standing to be poor politicians, and above all, in the political sense of
the word, to be irresponsible politicians. In this sense, they are poli-
ticians of low moral standing, such as we unfortunately have had again
and again in leading positions. This is what we have called Beamtenherr-
schajt [civil-service rule], and truly no spot soils the honor of our offi-
cialdom if we reveal what is politically wrong with the system from the
standpoint of success. But let us return once more to the types of political
figures.
96 SCIENCE AND POLITICS
Since the time of the constitutional state, and definitely since democ-
racy has been established, the 'demagogue' has been the typical political
leader in the Occident. The distasteful flavor of the word must not
make us forget that not Cleon but Pericles was the first to bear the
name of demagogue. In contrast to the offices of ancient democracy that
were filled by lot, Pericles led the sovereign Ecclesia of the demos of
Athens as a supreme strategist holding the only elective office or without
holding any office at all. Modern demagoguery also makes use of
oratory, even to a tremendous extent, if one considers the election
speeches a modern candidate has to deliver. But the use of the printed
word is more enduring. The political publicist, and above all the
journalist, is nowadays the most important representative of the dema-
gogic species.
Within the limits of this lecture, it is quite impossible even to sketch
the sociology of modern political journalism, which in every respect con-
stitutes a chapter in itself. Certainly, only a few things concerning it are
in place here. In common with all demagogues and, by the way, with the
lawyer (and the artist), the journalist shares the fate of lacking a fixed
social classification. At least, this is the case on the Continent, in contrast
to the English, and, by the way, also to former conditions in Prussia.
The journalist belongs to a sort of pariah caste, which is always estimated
by 'society' in terms of its ethically lowest representative. Hence, the
strangest notions about journalists and their work are abroad. Not every-
body reahzes that a really good journalistic accomplishment requires at
least as much 'genius' * as any scholarly accomplishment, especially be-
cause of the necessity of producing at once and 'on order,' and because
of the necessity of being effective, to be sure, under quite different condi-
tions of production. It is almost never acknowledged that the responsi-
bility of the journalist is far greater, and that the sense of responsibility
of every honorable journalist is, on the average, not a bit lower than
that of the scholar, but rather, as the war has shown, higher. This is be-
cause, in the very nature of the case, irresponsible journalistic accom-
plishments and their often terrible effects are remembered.
Nobody believes that the discretion of any able journalist ranks above
the average of other people, and yet that is the case. The quite incompa-
rably graver temptations, and the other conditions that accompany jour-
nalistic work at the present time, produce those results which have con-
ditioned the public to regard the press with a mixture of disdain and
pitiful cowardice. Today we cannot discuss what is to be done. Here we
POLITICS AS A VOCATION 97
are interested in the question of the occupational destiny of the poHtical
journahst and of his chance to attain a position of poUtical leadership.
Thus far, the journalist has had favorable chances only in the Social
Democratic party. Within the party, editorial positions have been pre-
dominantly in the nature of official positions, but editorial positions have
not been the basis for positions of leadership.
In the bourgeois parties, on the whole, the chances for ascent to politi-
cal power along this avenue have rather become worse, as compared
with those of the previous generation. Naturally every politician of con-
sequence has needed influence over the press and hence has needed
relations with the press. But that party leaders would emerge from the
ranks of the press has been an absolute exception and one should not
have expected it. The reason for this lies in the strongly increased 'indis-
pensability' of the journahst, above all, of the propertyless and hence
professionally bound journalist, an indispensability which is determined
by the tremendously increased intensity and tempo of journalistic oper-
ations. The necessity of gaining one's livelihood by the writing of daily
or at least weekly articles is like lead on the feet of the politicians. I
know of cases in which natural leaders have been permanently paralyzed
in their ascent to power, externally and above all internally, by this com-
pulsion. The relations of the press to the ruling powers in the state and
in the parties, under the old regime [of the Kaiser], were as detrimental
as they could be to the level of journalism; but that is a chapter in itself.
These conditions w^ere different in the countries of our opponents [the
Allies]. But there also, and for all modern states, apparently the jour-
nahst worker gains less and less as the capitalist lord of the press, of the
sort of 'Lord' Northcliffe, for instance, gains more and more political
influence.
Thus far, however, our great capitalist newspaper concerns, which at-
tained control, especially over the 'chain newspapers,' with 'want ads,'
have been regularly and typically the breeders of political indifference.
For no profits could be made in an independent policy; especially no
profitable benevolence of the politically dominant powers could be ob-
tained. The advertising business is also the avenue along which, during
the war, the attempt was made to influence the press politically in a grand
style — an attempt which apparently it is regarded as desirable to continue
now. Although one may expect the great papers to escape this pressure,
the situation of the small ones will be far more difficult. In any case, for
the time being, the journalist career is not among us, a normal avenue
98 SCIENCE AND POLITICS
for the ascent of political leaders, whatever attraction journalism may
otherwise have and whatever measure of influence, range of activity, and
especially political responsibility it may yield. One has to wait and see.
Perhaps journalism does not have this function any longer, or perhaps
journalism does not yet have it. Whether the renunciation of the principle
of anonymity would mean a change in this is difficult to say. Some jour-
nalists— ^not all — believe in dropping principled anonymity. What we
have experieiictd during the war in the German press, and in the
'management' of newspapers by especially hired personages and talented
writers who always expressly figured under their names, has unfortu-
nately shown, in some of the better known cases, that an increased aware-
ness of responsibility is not so certain to be bred as might be believed.
Some of the papers were, without regard to party, precisely the notoriously
worst boulevard sheets; by dropping anonymity they strove for and at-
tained greater sales. The publishers as well as the journalists of sensation-
alism have gained fortunes but certainly not honor. Nothing is here
being said against the principle of promoting sales; the question is indeed
an intricate one, and the phenomenon of irresponsible sensationaUsm does
not hold in general. But thus far, sensationalism has not been the road to
genuine leadership or to the responsible management of politics. How
conditions will further develop remains to be seen. Yet the journalist
career remains under all circumstances one of the most important ave-
nues of professional political activity. It is not a road for everybody, least
of all for weak characters, especially for people who can maintain their
inner balance only with a secure status position. If the life of a young
scholar is a gamble, still he is walled in by firm status conventions, which
prevent him from slipping. But the journalist's life is an absolute gamble
in every respect and under conditions that test one's inner security in a
way that scarcely occurs in any other situation. The often bitter experi-
ences in occupational life are perhaps not even the worst. The inner
demands that are directed precisely at the successful journalist are
especially difficult. It is, indeed, no small matter to frequent the salons
of the powerful on this earth on a seemingly equal footing and often to
be flattered by all because one is feared, yet knowing all the time that
having hardly closed the door the host has perhaps to justify before his
guests his association with the 'scavengers from the press.' Moreover, it
is no small matter that one must express oneself promptly and con-
vincingly about this and that, on all conceivable problems of life — what-
ever the 'market' happens to demand — and this without becoming abso-
POLITICS AS A VOCATION 99
lutely shallow and above all without losing one's dignity by baring
oneself, a thing which has merciless results. It is not astonishing that
there are many journalists who have become human failures and worth-
less men. Rather, it is astonishing that, despite all this, this very stratum
includes such a great number of valuable and quite genuine men, a fact
that outsiders would not so easily guess.
If the journalist as a type of professional politician harks back to a
rather considerable past, the figure of the party official belongs only to
the development of the last decades and, in part, only to recent years. In
order to comprehend the position of this figure in historical evolution,
we shall have to turn to a consideration of parties and party organiza-
tions.
In all political associations which are somehow extensive, that is, asso-
ciations going beyond the sphere and range of the tasks of small rural
districts where power-holders are periodically elected, political organiza-
tion is necessarily managed by men interested in the management of
politics. This is to say that a relatively small number of men are pri-
marily interested in political life and hence interested in sharing political
power. They provide themselves with a following through free recruit-
ment, present themselves or their proteges as candidates for election, col-
lect the financial means, and go out for vote-grabbing. It is unimagi-
nable how in large associations elections could function at all without
this managerial pattern. In practice this means the division of the citizens
with the right to vote into politically active and politically passive ele-
ments. This difference is based on voluntary attitudes, hence it cannot be
abolished through measures like obligatory voting, or 'occupational status
group' representation, or similar measures that are expressly or actually
directed against this state of affairs and the rule of professional politicians.
The active leadership and their freely recruited following are the neces-
sary elements in the life of any party. The following, and through it
the passive electorate, are necessary for the election of the leader. But the
structure of parties varies. For instance, the 'parties' of the medieval
cities, such as those of the Guelfs and the Ghibellines, were purely per-
sonal foUowings. If one considers various things about these medieval
parties, one is reminded of Bolshevism and its Soviets. Consider the
Statuta della perta Guelja, the confiscations of the Nobili's estates — which
originally meant all those families who lived a chivalrous life and who
thus qualified for fiefs — consider the exclusion from office-holding and
the denial of the right to vote, the inter-local party committees, the
100 SCIENCE AND POLITICS
Strictly military organizations and the premiums for informers. Then
consider Bolshevism with its strictly sieved military and, in Russia espe-
cially, informer organizations, the disarmament and denial of the politi-
cal rights of the 'bourgeois,' that is, of the entrepreneur, trader, rentier,
clergyman, descendants of the dynasty, police agents, as well as the
confiscation policy.
This analogy is still more striking when one considers that, on the one
hand, the military organization of the medieval party constituted a pure
army of knights organized on the basis of the registered feudal estates
and that nobles occupied almost all leading positions, and, on the other
hand, that the Soviets have preserved, or rather reintroduced, the highly
paid enterpriser, the group wage, the Taylor system, military and work-
shop discipline, and a search for foreign capital. Hence, in a word, the
Soviets have had to accept again absolutely all the things that Bolshevism
had been fighting as bourgeois class institutions. They have had to do
this in order to keep the state and the economy going at all. Moreover,
the Soviets have reinstituted the agents of the former Ochrana [Tsarist
Secret Police] as the main instrument of their state power. But here we
do not have to deal with such organizations for violence, but rather
with professional politicians who strive for power through sober and
'peaceful' party campaigns in the market of election votes.
Parties, in the sense usual with us, were at first, for instance in Eng-
land, pure followings of the aristocracy. If, for any reason whatever, a
peer changed his party, everybody dependent upon him likewise changed.
Up to the Reform Bill [of 1832], the great noble families and, last
but not least, the king controlled the patronage of an immense number
of election boroughs. Close to these aristocratic parties were the parties of
notables, which develop everywhere with the rising power of the bour-
geois. Under the spiritual leadership of the typical intellectual strata of
the Occident, the propertied and cultured circles differentiated themselves
into parties and followed them. These parties were formed partly accord-
ing to class interest, partly according to family traditions, and partly for
ideological reasons. Clergymen, teachers, professors, lawyers, doctors,
apothecaries, prosperous farmers, manufacturers — in England the whole
stratum that considered itself as belonging to the class of gentlemen —
formed, at first, occasional associations at most local political clubs. In
times of unrest the petty bourgeoisie raised its voice, and once in a while
the proletariat, if leaders arose who, however, as a rule did not stem from
their midst. In this phase, parties organized as permanent associations
POLITICS AS A VOCATION lOI
between localities do not yet exist in the open country. Only the parlia-
mentary delegates create the cohesion; and the local notables are de-
cisive for the selection of candidates. The election programs originate
partly in the election appeals of the candidates and partly in the meetings
of the notables; or, they originate as resolutions of the parliamentary
party. Leadership of the clubs is an avocation and an honorific pursuit,
as demanded by the occasion.
Where clubs are absent (as is mostly the case), the quite formless
management of pohtics in normal times lies in the hands of the few
people constantly interested in it. Only the journalist is a paid profes-
sional politician; only the management of the newspaper is a continuous
political organization. Besides the newspaper, there is only the parlia-
mentary session. The parliamentary delegates and the parliamentary
party leaders know to which local notables one turns if a political action
seems desirable. But permanent associations of the parties exist only in
the large cities with moderate contributions of the members and periodi-
cal conferences and public meetings where the delegate gives account
of the parliamentary activities. The party is alive only during election
periods.
The members of parliament are interested in the possibility of inter-
local electoral compromises, in vigorous and unified programs endorsed by
broad circles and in a unified agitation throughout the country. In general
these interests form the driving force of a party organization which be-
comes more and more strict. In principle, however, the nature of a party
apparatus as an association of notables remains unchanged. This is so,
even though a network of local party affiliations and agents is spread
over the whole country, including middle-sized cities. A member of the
parhamentary party acts as the leader of the central party office and main-
tains constant correspondence with the local organizations. Outside of
the central bureau, paid officials are still absent; thoroughly 'respectable'
people head the local organizations for the sake of the deference which
they enjoy anyway. They form the extra-parliamentary 'notables' who
exert influence alongside the stratum of poHtical notables who happen
to sit in parliament. However, the party correspondence, edited by the
party, increasingly provides intellectual nourishment for the press and for
the local meetings. Regular contributions of the members become indis-
pensable; a part of these must cover the expenses of headquarters.
Not so long ago most of the German party organizations were still
in this stage of development. In France, the first stage of party develop-
102 SCIENCE AND POLITICS
ment was, at least in part, still predominant, and the organization of the
members of parliament was quite unstable. In the open country, we find
a small number of local notables and programs drafted by the candidates
or set up for them by their patrons in specific campaigns for office. To
be sure, these platforms constitute more or less local adaptations to the
resolutions and programs of the members of parliament. This system was
only partially punctured. The number of full-time professional politicians
was small, consisting in the main of the elected deputies, the few em-
ployees of headquarters, and the journalists. In France, the system has
also included those job hunters who held 'political office' or, at the mo-
ment, strove for one. Politics was formally and by far predominantly
an avocation. The number of delegates qualifying for ministerial office
was also very restricted and, because of their position as notables, so was
the number of election candidates.
However, the number of those who indirectly had a stake in the man-
agement of politics, especially a material one, was very large. For, all
administrative measures of a ministerial department, and especially all
decisions in matters of personnel, were made partly with a view to their
influence upon electoral chances. The realization of each and every kind
of wish was sought through the local delegate's mediation. For better or
for worse the minister had to lend his ear to this delegate, especially
if the delegate belonged to the minister's majority. Hence everybody
strove for such influence. The single deputy controlled the patronage
of office and, in general, any kind of patronage in his election district.
In order to be re-elected the deputy, in turn, maintained connections
with the local notables.
Now then, the most modern forms of party organizations stand in
sharp contrast to this idyllic state in which circles of notables and, above
all, members of parliament rule. These modern forms are the children
of democracy, of mass franchise, of the necessity to woo and organize
the masses, and develop the utmost unity of direction and the strictest
discipline. The rule of notables and guidance by members of parliament
ceases. 'Professional' politicians outside the parliaments take the organ-
ization in hand. They do so either as 'entrepreneurs' — the American boss
and the English election agent are, in fact, such entrepreneurs — or as
officials with a fixed salary. Formally, a fargoing democratization takes
place. The parliamentary party no longer creates the authoritative pro-
grams, and the local notables no longer decide the selection of candidates.
Rather assemblies of the organized party members select the candidates
POLITICS AS A VOCATION IO3
and delegate members to the assemblies o£ a higher order. Possibly there
are several such conventions leading up to the national convention of
the party. Naturally power actually rests in the hands of those who,
within the organization, handle the work continuously. Otherwise, power
rests in the hands of those on whom the organization in its processes
depends financially or personally — for instance, on the Maecenases or
the directors of powerful political clubs of interested persons (Tammany
Hall). It is decisive that this whole apparatus of people — characteristically
called a 'machine' in Anglo-Saxon countries — or rather those who direct
the machine, keep the members of the parliament in check. They are in
a position to impose their will to a rather far-reaching extent, and that is
of special significance for the selection of the party leader. The man
whom the machine follows now becomes the leader, even over the head
of the parliamentary party. In other words, the creation of such machines
signifies the advent of plebiscitarian democracy.
The party following, above all the party official and party entrepre-
neur, naturally expect personal compensation from the victory of their
leader — ^that is, offices or other advantages. It is decisive that they expect
such advantages from their leader and not merely from the individual
member of parliament. They expect that the demagogic effect of the
leader's personality during the election fight of the party will increase
votes and mandates and thereby power, and, thereby, as far as possible,
will extend opportunities to their followers to find the compensation for
which they hope. Ideally, one of their mainsprings is the satisfaction of
working with loyal personal devotion for a man, and not merely for an
abstract program of a party consisting of mediocrities. In this respect, the
'charismatic' element of all leadership is at work in the party system.
In very different degrees this system made headway, although it was
in constant, latent struggle with local notables and the members of par-
liament who wrangled for influence. This was the case in the bourgeois
parties, first, in the United States, and, then, in the Social Democratic
party, especially of Germany. Constant setbacks occur as soon as no gen-
erally recognized leader exists, and, even when he is found, concessions of
all sorts must be made to the vanity and the personal interest of the party
notables. The machine may also be brought under the domination of the
party officials in whose hands the regular business rests. According to
the view of some Social Democratic circles, their party had succumbed
to this 'bureaucratization.' But 'officials' submit relatively easily to a
leader's personality if it has a strong demagogic appeal. The material
104 SCIENCE AND POLITICS
and the ideal interests of the officials are intimately connected with
the effects of party power which are expected from the leader's appeal,
and besides, inwardly it is per se more satisfying to work for a leader.
The ascent of leaders is far more difficult where the notables, along
with the officials, control the party, as is usually the case in the bourgeois
parties. For ideally the notables make 'their way of life' out of the
petty chairmanships or committee memberships they hold. Resentment
against the demagogue as a homo nouns, the conviction of the superi-
ority of political party 'experience' (which, as a matter of fact, actually
is of considerable importance), and the ideological concern for the
crumbling of the old party traditions — these factors determine the con-
duct of the notables. They can count on all the traditionalist elements
within the party. Above all, the rural but also the petty bourgeois
voter looks for the name of the notable familiar to him. He distrusts the
man who is unknown to him. However, once this man has become
successful, he clings to him the more unwaveringly. Let us now con-
sider, by some major examples, the struggle of the two structural forms
— of the notables and of the party — and especially let us consider the
ascendancy of the plebiscitarian form as described by Ostrogorsky.
First England: there until i(S68 the party organization was almost
purely an organization of notables. The Tories in the country found
support, for instance, from the Anglican parson, and from the school-
master, and above all from the large landlords of the respective county.
The Whigs found support mostly from such people as the nonconformist
preacher (when there was one), the postmaster, the blacksmith, the tailor,
the ropemaker — that is, from such artisans who could disseminate political
influence because they could chat with people most frequently. In the
city the parties differed, partly according to economics, partly according
to religion, and partly simply according to the party opinions handed
down in the families. But always the notables were the pillars of the
political organization.
Above all these arrangements stood Parliament, the parties with the
cabinet, and the 'leader,' who was the chairman of the council of min-
isters or the leader of the opposition. This leader had beside him the
'whip' — the most important professional politician of the party organiza-
tion. Patronage of office was vested in the hands of the 'whip'; thus the
job hunter had to turn to him and he arranged an understanding with
the deputies of the individual election boroughs. A stratum of profes-
sional politicians gradually began to develop in the boroughs. At first
POLITICS AS A VOCATION IO5
the locally recruited agents were not paid; they occupied approximately
the same position as our Vertrauens manner.^ However, along with them,
a capitalist entrepreneurial type developed in the boroughs. This was the
'election agent,' whose existence was unavoidable under England's mod-
ern legislation which guaranteed fair elections.
This legislation aimed at controlling the campaign costs of elections
and sought to check the power of money by making it obligatory for
the candidate to state the costs of his campaign. For in England, the
candidate, besides straining his voice — far more so than was formerly
the case with us [in Germany] — enjoyed stretching his purse. The elec-
tion agent made the candidate pay a lump sum, which usually meant a
good deal for the agent. In the distribution of power in Parliament and
the country between the 'leader' and the party notables, the leader in
England used to hold a very eminent position. This position was based
on the compelling fact of making possible a grand, and thereby steady,
political strategy. Nevertheless the influence of the parliamentary party
and of party notables was still considerable.
That is about what the old party organization looked like. It was half
an affair of notables and half an entrepreneurial organization with
salaried employees. Since 1868, however, the 'caucus' system developed,
first for local elections in Birmingham, then all over the country. A
nonconformist parson and along with him Joseph Chamberlain brought
this system to life. The occasion for this development was the democrati-
zation of the franchise. In order to win the masses it became necessary
to call into being a tremendous apparatus of apparently democratic asso-
ciations. An electoral association had to be formed in every city district
to help keep the organization incessantly in motion and to bureaucratize
everything rigidly. Hence, hired and paid officials of the local electoral
committees increased numerically; and, on the whole, perhaps 10 per
cent of the voters were organized in these local committees. The elected
party managers had the right to co-opt others and were the formal bear-
ers of party politics. The driving force was the local circle, which was,
above all, composed of those interested in municipal politics — from which
the fattest material opportunities always spring. These local circles were
also first to call upon the world of finance. This newly emerging machine,
which was no longer led by members of Parliament, very soon had to
struggle with the previous power-holders, above all, with the 'whip.' Be-
ing supported by locally interested persons, the machine came out of the
fight so victoriously that the whip had to submit and compromise with
I06 SCIENCE AND POLITICS
the machine. The result was a centraHzation of all power in the hands
o£ the few and, ultimately, of the one person who stood at the top of the
party. The whole system had arisen in the Liberal party in connection
with Gladstone's ascent to power. What brought this machine to such
swift triumph over the notables was the fascination of Gladstone's 'grand'
demagogy, the firm belief of the masses in the ethical substance of his
policy, and, above all, their belief in the ethical character of his person-
ality. It soon became obvious that a Caesarist plebiscitarian element in
politics — the dictator of the battlefield of elections — had appeared on the
plain. In 1877 the caucus became active for the first time in national
elections, and with brilliant success, for the result was Disraeli's fall at
the height of his great achievements. In 1866, the machine was already
so completely oriented to the charismatic personality that when the ques-
tion of home rule was raised the whole apparatus from top to bottom
did not question whether it actually stood on Gladstone's ground; it
simply, on his word, fell in line with him: they said, Gladstone right or
wrong, we follow him. And thus the machine deserted its own creator,
Chamberlain.
Such machinery requires a considerable personnel. In England there
are about 2,000 persons who live directly off party politics. To be sure,
those who are active in politics purely as job seekers or as interested
persons are far more numerous, especially in municipal politics. In addi-
tion to economic opportunities, for the useful caucus politician, there are
the opportunities to satisfy his vanity. To become 'J-P-' or even 'M.P.' is,
of course, in line with the greatest (and normal) ambition; and such
people, who are of demonstrably good breeding, that is, 'gentlemen,' at-
tain their goal. The highest goal is, of course, a peerage, especially for
the great financial Maecenases. About 50 per cent of the finances of the
party depend on contributions of donors who remained anonymous.
Now then, what has been the effect of this whole system? Nowadays
the members of Parliament, with the exception of the few cabinet
members (and a few insurgents), are normally nothing better than well-
disciplined 'yes' men. With us, in the Reichstag, one used at least to
take care of one's private correspondence on his desk, thus indicating
that one was active in the weal of the country. Such gestures are not de-
manded in England; the member of Parliament must only vote, not
commit party treason. He must appear when the whips call him, and do
what the cabinet or the leader of the opposition orders. The caucus ma-
chine in the open country is almost completely unprincipled if a strong
POLITICS AS A VOCATION IO7
leader exists who has the machine absolutely in hand. Therewith the
plebiscitarian dictator actually stands above Parliament. He brings the
masses behind him by means of the machine and the members of ParUa-
ment are for him merely poHtical spoilsmen enrolled in his following.
How does the selection of these strong leaders take place? First, in
terms of what abihty are they selected? Next to the qualities of will —
decisive all over the world — naturally the force of demagogic speech is
above all decisive. Its character has changed since the time speakers like
Cobden addressed themselves to the intellect, and Gladstone who mas-
tered the technique of apparently 'letting sober facts speak for themselves.'
At the present time often purely emotional means are used — the means
the Salvation Army also exploits in order to set the masses in motion.
One may call the existing state of affairs a 'dictatorship resting on the
exploitation of mass emotionality.' Yet, the highly developed system of
committee work in the English Parliament makes it possible and com-
pelling for every politician who counts on a share in leadership to co-
operate in committee work. All important ministers of recent decades have
this very real and effective work-training as a background. The practice
of committee reports and public criticism of these deliberations is a con-
dition for training, for really selecting leaders and eliminating mere
demagogues.
Thus it is in England. The caucus system there, however, has been
a weak form, compared with the American party organization, which
brought the plebiscitarian principle to an especially early and an espe-
cially pure expression.
According to Washington's idea, America was to be a commonwealth
administered by gentlemen.' In his time, in America, a gentleman was
also a landlord, or a man with a college education — this was the case at
first. In the beginning, when parties began to organize, the members of
the House of Representatives claimed to be leaders, just as in England at
the time when notables ruled. The party organization was quite loose
and continued to be until 1824. In some communities, where modern de-
velopment first took place, the party machine was in the making even
before the eighteen-twenties. But when Andrew Jackson was first elected
President — the election of the western farmers' candidate — the old tradi-
tions were overthrown. Formal party leadership by leading members of
Congress came to an end soon after 1840, when the great parliamen-
tarians, Calhoun and Webster, retired from political life because Congress
had lost almost all of its power to the party machine in the open coun-
I08 SCIENCE AND POLITICS
try. That the plebiscitarian 'machine' has developed so early in America
is due to the fact that there, and there alone, the executive — this is what
mattered — the chief of office-patronage, was a President elected by pleb-
iscite. By virtue of the 'separation of powers' he was almost inde-
pendent of parliament in his conduct of office. Hence, as the price of
victory, the true booty object of the office-prebend was held out pre-
cisely at the presidential election. Through Andrew Jackson the 'spoils
system' was quite systematically raised to a principle and the conclusions
were drawn.
What does this spoils system, the turning over of federal offices to the
following of the victorious candidate, mean for the party formations of
today? It means that quite unprincipled parties oppose one another; they
are purely organizations of job hunters drafting their changing platforms
according to the chances of vote-grabbing, changing their colors to a de-
gree which, despite all analogies, is not yet to be found elsewhere. The
parties are simply and absolutely fashioned for the election campaign
that is most important for office patronage: the fight for the presidency
and for the governorships of the separate states. Platforms and candidates
are selected at the national conventions of the parties without interven-
tion by congressmen. Hence they emerge from party conventions, the
delegates of which are formally, very democratically elected. These dele-
gates are determined by meetings of other delegates, who, in turn, owe
their mandate to the 'primaries,' the assembling of the direct voters of
the party. In the primaries the delegates are already elected in the name
of the candidate for the nation's leadership. Within the parties the most
embittered fight rages about the question of 'nomination.' After all,
300,000 to 400,000 official appointments lie in the hands of the President,
appointments which are executed by him only with the approval of the
senators from the separate states. Hence the senators are powerful politi-
cians. By comparison, however, the House of Representatives is, politi-
cally, quite impotent, because patronage of office is removed from it and
because the cabinet members, simply assistants to the President, can con-
duct office apart from the confidence or lack of confidence of the people.
The President, who is legitimatized by the people, confronts everybody,
even Congress; this is a result of 'the separation of powers.'
In America, the spoils system, supported in this fashion, has been
technically possible because American culture with its youth could afford
purely dilettante management. With 300,000 to 400,000 such party men
who have no qualifications to their credit other than the fact of having
POLITICS AS A VOCATION IO9
performed good services for their party, this state of affairs of course
could not exist without enormous evils. A corruption and wastefulness
second to none could be tolerated only by a country with as yet unlimited
economic opportunities.
Now then, the boss is the figure who appears in the picture of this
system of the plebiscitarian party machine. Who is the boss? He is a
political capitalist entrepreneur who on his own account and at his own
risk provides votes. He may have established his first relations as a
lawyer or a saloonkeeper or as a proprietor of similar establishments, or
perhaps as a creditor. From here he spins his threads out until he is
able to 'control' a certain number of votes. When he has come this far
he establishes contact with the neighboring bosses, and through zeal,
skill, and above all discretion, he attracts the attention of those who have
already further advanced in the career, and then he climbs. The boss is
indispensable to the organization of the party and the organization is cen-
tralized in his hands. He substantially provides the financial means. How
does he get them ? Well, partly by the contributions of the members, and
especially by taxing the salaries of those officials who came into office
through him and his party. Furthermore, there are bribes and tips. He
who wishes to trespass with impunity one of the many laws needs the
boss's connivance and must pay for it; or else he will get into trouble.
But this alone is not enough to accumulate the necessary capital for
political enterprises. The boss is indispensable as the direct recipient of
the money of great financial magnates, who would not entrust their
money for election purposes to a paid party official, or to anyone else
giving public account of his affairs. The boss, with his judicious discre-
tion in financial matters, is the natural man for those capitalist circles
who finance the election. The typical boss is an absolutely sober man. He
does not seek social honor; the 'professional' is despised in 'respectable
society,' He seeks power alone, power as a source of money, but also
power for power's sake. In contrast to the English leader, the American
boss works in the dark. He is not heard speaking in public; he suggests
to the speakers what they must say in expedient fashion. He himself,
however, keeps silent. As a rule he acfepts no office, except that of senator.
For, since the senators, by virtue of the Constitution, participate in
office patronage, the leading bosses often sit in person in this body. The
distribution of offices is carried out, in the first place, according to services
done for the party. But, also, auctioning offices on financial bids often
occurs and there are certain rates for individual offices; hence, a system
no SCIENCE AND POLITICS
of selling offices exists which, after all, has often been known also to
the monarchies, the church-state included, of the seventeenth and eight-
eenth centuries.
The boss has no firm political 'principles'; he is completely unprin-
cipled in attitude and asks merely: What will capture votes? Frequently
he is a rather poorly educated man. But as a rule he leads an inoffen-
sive and correct private life. In his political morals, however, he naturally
adjusts to the average ethical standards of political conduct, as a great
many of us also may have done during the hoarding period in the field of
economic ethics.*^ That as a 'professional' politician the boss is socially de-
spised does not worry him. That he personally does not attain high federal
offices, and does not wish to do so, has the frequent advantage that
extra-party intellects, thus notables, may come into candidacy when the
bosses believe they will have great appeal value at the polls. Hence the
same old party notables do not run again and again, as is the case in Ger-
many. Thus the structure of these unprincipled parties with their so-
cially despised power-holders has aided able men to attain the presidency
— men who with us never would have come to the top. To be sure, the
bosses resist an outsider who might jeopardize their sources of money
and power. Yet in the competitive struggle to win the favor of the vot-
ers, the bosses frequently have had to condescend and accept candidates
known to be opponents of corruption.
Thus there exists a strong capitalist party machine, strictly and thor-
oughly organized from top to bottom, and supported by clubs of ex-
traordinary stability. These clubs, such as Tammany Hall, are like
Knight orders. They seek profits solely through political control, espe-
cially of the municipal government, which is the most important object
of booty. This structure of party life was made possible by the high de-
gree of democracy in the United States — a 'New Country.' This connec-
tion, in turn, is the basis for the fact that the system is gradually dying
out. America can no longer be governed only by dilettantes. Scarcely fif-
teen years ago, when American workers were asked why they allowed
themselves to be governed by politicians whom they admitted they de-
spised, the answer was: 'We prefer having people in office whom we can
spit upon, rather than a caste of officials who spit upon us, as is the case
with you.' This was the old point of view of American 'democracy.' Even
then, the socialists had entirely different ideas and now the situation is
no longer bearable. The dilettante administration does not suffice and
the Civil Service Reform establishes an ever-increasing number of posi-
POLITICS AS A VOCATION III
tions for life with pension rights. The reform works out in such a way
that university-trained officials, just as incorruptible and quite as capable
as our officials, get into office. Even now about 100,000 offices have ceased
being objects of booty to be turned over after elections. Rather, the
offices quahfy their holders for pensions, and are based upon tested quali-
fications. The spoils system will thus gradually recede into the back-
ground and the nature of party leadership is then likely to be transformed
also — but as yet, we do not know in what way.
In Germany, until now, the decisive conditions of political manage-
ment have been in essence as follows:
First, the parliaments have been impotent. The result has been that
no man with the qualities of a leader would enter Parhament perma-
nently. If one wished to enter Parliament, what could one achieve there ?
When a chancellery position was open, one could tell the administrative
chief: 'I have a very able man in my election district who would be suit-
able; take him.' And he would have concurred with pleasure; but that
was about all that a German member of Parliament could do to satisfy
his instincts for power — if he possessed any.
To this must be added the tremendous importance of the trained ex-
pert officialdom in Germany. This factor determined the impotence of
Parhament. Our officialdom was second to none in the world. This im-
portance of the officialdom was accompanied by the fact that the officials
claimed not only official positions but also cabinet positions for them-
selves. In the Bavarian state legislature, when the introduction of parlia-
mentary government was debated last year, it was said that if members
of the legislature were to be placed in cabinet positions talented people
would no longer seek official careers. Moreover, the civil-service adminis-
tration systematically escaped such control as is signified by the English
committee discussions. The administration thus made it impossible for
parliaments — with a few exceptions — to train really useful administrative
chiefs from their own ranks.
A third factor is that in Germany, in contrast to America, we have had
parties with principled political views who have maintained that their
members, at least subjectively, represented bona-fide Weltanschauungen.
Now then, the two most important of these parties, the Catholic Centre
Party and the Social Democratic party, have, from their inceptions, been
minority parties and have meant to be minority parties. The leading circles
of the Centre party in the Reich have never concealed their opposition to
parliamentarian democracy, because of fear of remaining in the minority
112 SCIENCE AND POLITICS
and thus facing great difficulties in placing their job hunters in office as
they have done by exerting pressure on the government. The Social
Democratic party v^^as a principled minority party and a handicap to the
introduction of parliamentary government because the party did not
wish to stain itself by participating in the existing bourgeois political
order. The fact that both parties dissociated themselves from the parlia-
mentary system made parliamentary government impossible.
Considering all this, what then became of the professional politicians
in Germany? They have had no power, no responsibility, and could play
only a rather subordinate role as notables. In consequence, they have
been animated anew by the guild instincts, which are typical everywhere.
It has been impossible for a man who was not of their hue to climb
high in the circle of those notables who made their petty positions their
Hves. I could mention many names from every party, the Social Demo-
cratic party, of course, not excepted, that spell tragedies of political
careers because the persons had leadership qualities, and precisely because
of these qualities were not tolerated by the notables. All our parties have
taken this course of development and have become guilds of notables.
Bebel, for instance, was still a leader through temperament and purity
of character, however modest his intellect. The fact that he was a
martyr, that he never betrayed confidence in the eyes of the masses, re-
sulted in his having the masses absolutely behind him. There was no
power in the party that could have seriously challenged him. Such leader-
ship came to an end, after his death, and the rule of officials began.
Trade-union officials, party secretaries, and journalists came to the top.
The instincts of officialdom dominated the party — a highly respectable
officialdom, of rare respectability one may say, compared to conditions
in other countries, especially the often corruptible trade-union officials in
America. But the results of control by officialdom, which we discussed
above, also began in the party.
Since the eighteen-eighties the bourgeois parties have completely be-
come guilds of notables. To be sure, occasionally the parties had to
draw on extra-party intellects for advertising purposes, so that they could
say, 'We have such and such names.' So far as possible, they avoided
letting these names run for election; only when it was unavoidable and
the person insisted could he run for election. The same spirit prevailed
in Parliament. Our parliamentary parties were and are guilds. Every
speech delivered from the floor of the Reichstag is thoroughly censored
in the party before it is delivered. This is obvious from their unheard-of
POLITICS AS A VOCATION II3
boredom. Only he who is summoned to speak can have the word. One
can hardly conceive of a stronger contrast to the English, and also — for
quite opposite reasons — the French usage.
Now, in consequence of the enormous collapse, which is customarily
called the Revolution, perhaps a transformation is under way. Perhaps —
but not for certain. In the beginning there were new kinds of party ap-
paratuses emerging. First, there were amateur apparatuses. They are
especially often represented by students of the various universities, who
tell a man to whom they ascribe leadership qualities: we want to do the
necessary work for you; carry it out. Secondly, there are apparatuses of
businessmen. It happened that men to whom leadership qualities were
ascribed were approached by people willing to take over the propaganda,
at fixed rates for every vote. If you were to ask me honestly which of
these two apparatuses I think the more reliable, from the purely techni-
cal-political point of view, I believe I would prefer the latter. But both
apparatuses were fast-emerging bubbles, which swiftly vanished again.
The existing apparatuses transformed themselves, but they continued to
work. The phenomena are only symptoms of the fact that new appa-
ratuses would come about if there were only leaders. But even the
technical peculiarity of proportionate representation precluded their
ascendancy. Only a few dictators of the street crowds arose and fell again.
And only the following of a mob dictatorship is organized in a strictly
disciplined fashion: whence the power of these vanishing minorities.
Let us assume that all this were to change; then, after what has been
said above, it has to be clearly realized that the plebiscitarian leadership
of parties entails the 'soullessness' of the following, their intellectual pro-
letarianization, one might say. In order to be a useful apparatus, a ma-
chine in the American sense — undisturbed either by the vanity of no-
tables or pretensions to independent views — the following of such a leader
must obey him blindly. Lincoln's election was possible only through this
character of party organization, and with Gladstone, as mentioned be-
fore, the same happened in the caucus. This is simply the price paid
for guidance by leaders. However, there is only the choice between leader-
ship democracy with a 'machine' and leaderless democracy, namely, the
rule of professional politicians without a calling, without the inner
charismatic qualities that make a leader, and this means what the
party insurgents in the situation usually designate as 'the rule of the
clique.' For the time being, we in Germany have only the latter. For
the future, the permanence of this situation, at least in the Reich, is pri-
114 SCIENCE AND POLITICS
marily facilitated by the fact that the Bundesrat ^ will rise again and will
of necessity restrict the power of the Reichstag and therewith its sig-
nificance as a selective agency of leaders. Moreover, in its present form,
proportional representation is a typical phenomenon of leaderless democ-
racy. This is the case not only because it facilitates the horse-trading of
the notables for placement on the ticket, but also because in the future it
will give organized interest groups the possibility of compelling parties to
include their officials in the list of candidates, thus creating an unpolitical
Parliament in which genuine leadership finds no place. Only the President
of the Reich could become the safety-valve of the demand for leadership
if he were elected in a plebiscitarian way and not by Parliament. Lead-
ership on the basis of proved work could emerge and selection could
take place, especially if, in great municipalities, the plebiscitarian city-
manager were to appear on the scene with the right to organize his
bureaus independently. Such is the case in the U.S.A. whenever one
wishes to tackle corruption seriously. It requires a party organization
fashioned for such elections. But the very petty-boucgeois hostility of
all parties to leaders, the Social Democratic party certainly included,
leaves the future formation of parties and all these chances still com-
pletely in the dark.
rrherefore, today, one cannot yet see in any way how the manage-
ment of politics as a 'vocation' will shape itself. Even less can one see
along what avenue opportunities are opening to which political talents
can be put for satisfactory political tasks. He who by his material circum-
stances is compelled to live 'off' politics will almost always have to con-
sider the alternative positions of the journalist or the party official as the
typical direct avenues. Or, he must consider a position as representative
of interest groups — such as a trade union, a chamber of commerce, a farm
bureau,* a craft association,^ a labor board, an employer's association,
et cetera, or else a suitable municipal position. Nothing more than this
can be said about this external aspect: in common with the journalist,
the party official bears the odium of being declasse. 'Wage writer' or
'wage speaker' will unfortunately always resound in his ears, even
though the words remain unexpressed. He who is inwardly defenseless
and unable to find the proper answer for himself had.better stay away
from this career. For in any case, besides grave temptations, it is an
avenue that may constantly lead to disappointments. Now then, what
inner enjoyments can this career offer and what personal conditions are
presupposed for one who enters this avenue?
POLITICS AS A VOCATION II5
Well, first of all the career of politics grants a feeling of power. The
knowledge of influencing men, of participating in power over them,
and above all, the feeling of holding in one's hands a nerve fiber of his-
torically important events can elevate the professional politician above
everyday routine even when he is placed in formally modest positions.
But now the question for him is: Through what qualities can I hope to
do justice to this power (however narrowly circumscribed it may be in
the individual case) ? How can he hope to do justice to the responsi-
bility that power imposes upon him? With this we enter the field of
ethical questions, for that is where the problem belongs: What kind of a
man must one be if he is to be allowed to put his hand on the wheel
of history?
One can say that three pre-eminent qualities are decisive for the poli-
tician : passion, a feeling of responsibility, and a sense of proportion.
This means passion in the sense of matter-of-jactness, of passionate de-
votion to a 'cause,' to the god or demon who is its overlord. It is not
passion in the sense of that inner bearing which my late friend, Georg
Simmel, used to designate as 'sterile excitation,' and which was peculiar
especially to a certain type of Russian intellectual (by no means all of
them!). It is an excitation that plays so great a part with our intellectuals
in this carnival we decorate with the proud name of 'revolution.' It is a
'romanticism of the intellectually interesting,' running into emptiness
devoid of all feeling of objective responsibility.
To be sure, mere passion, however genuinely felt, is not enough. It
does not make a politician, unless passion as devotion to a 'cause' also
makes responsibility to this cause the guiding star of action. And for this,
a sense of proportion is needed. This is the decisive psychological quality
of the poHtician: his ability to let realities woric upon him with inner
concentration and calmness. Hence his -distance to thino-s and men. 'Lack
o
of distance' per se is one of the deadly sins of every politician. It is one
of those qualities the breeding of which will condemn the progeny of
our intellectuals to political incapacity. For the problem is simply how
can warm passion and a cool sense of proportion be forged together in
one and the same soul? Politics is made with the head, not with other
parts of the body or soul. And yet devotion to politics, if it is not to be
frivolous intellectual play but rather genuinely human conduct, can be
born and nourished from passion alone.- However, that firm taming of
the soul, which distinguishes the passionate politician and diflferentiates
him from the 'sterilely excited' and mere political dilettante, is possible
Il6 SCIENCE AND POLITICS
only through habituation to detachment in every sense of the word. The
'strength' of a pohtical 'personaHty' means, in the first place, the posses-
sion of these qualities of passion, responsibility, and proportion.
Therefore, daily and hourly, the politician inwardly has to overcome
a quite trivial and all-too-human enemy: a quite vulgar vanity, the
deadly enemy of all matter-of-fact devotion to a cause, and of all dis-
tance, in this case, of distance towards one's self.
Vanity is a very widespread quality and perhaps nobody is entirely
free from it. In academic and scholarly circles, vanity is a sort of occu-
pational disease, but precisely with the scholar, vanity — however disagree-
ably it may express itself — is relatively harmless; in the sense that as a
rule it does not disturb scientific enterprise. With the poHtician the case
is quite different. He works with the striving for power as an unavoid-
able means. Therefore, 'power instinct,' as is usually said, belongs indeed
to his normal qualities. The sin against the lofty spirit of his vocation,
however, begins where this striving for power ceases to be objective and
becomes purely personal self-intoxication, instead of exclusively entering
the service of 'the cause.' For ultimately there are only two kinds of
deadly sins in the field of politics: lack of objectivity and — often but not
always identical with it — irresponsibility. Vanity, the need personally to
stand in the foreground as clearly as possible, strongly tempts the poli-
tician to commit one or both of these sins. This is more truly the case
as the demagogue is compelled to count upon 'effect.' He therefore
is constantly in danger of becoming an actor as well as taking lightly
the responsibility for the outcome of his actions and of being concerned
merely with the 'impression' he makes. His lack of objectivity tempts
him to strive for the glamorous semblance of power rather than for
actual power. His irresponsibility, however, suggests that he enjoy power
merely for power's sake without a substantive purpose. Although, or
rather just because, power is the unavoidable means, and striving for
power is one of the driving forces of all politics, there is no more harmful
distortion of political force than the parvenu-like braggart with power,
and the vain self-reflection in the feeling of power, and in general
every worship of power per se. The mere 'power politician' may get
strong effects, but actually his work leads nowhere and is seifseless.
(Among us, too, an ardently promoted cult seeks to glorify him.) In this,
the critics of 'power politics' are absolutely right. From the sudden
inner collapse of typical representatives of this mentality, we can see
what inner weakness and impotence hides behind this boastful but en-
POLITICS AS A VOCATION II 7
tirely empty gesture. It is a product of a shoddy and superficially
blase attitude towards the meaning of human conduct; and it has no re-
lation whatsoever to the knowledge of tragedy with which all action,
but especially political action, is truly interwoven.
The final result of political action often, no, even regularly, stands
in completely inadequate and often even paradoxical relation to its
original meaning. This is fundamental to all history, a point not to be
proved in detail here. But because of this fact, the serving of a cause
must not be absent if action is to have inner strength. Exactly what
the cause, in the service of which the politician strives for power and
uses power, looks like is a matter of faith. The politician may serve
national, humanitarian, social, ethical, cultural, worldly, or religious
ends. The politician may be sustained by a strong belief in 'progress' —
no matter in which sense — or he may coolly reject this kind of belief.
He may claim to stand in the service of an 'idea' or, rejecting this in
principle, he may want to serve external ends of everyday life. However,
some kind of faith must always exist. Otherwise, it is absolutely true that
the curse of the creature's worthlessness overshadows even the externally
strongest political successes.
With the statement above we are already engaged in discussing the
last problem that concerns us tonight: the ethos of politics as a 'cause.'
What calling can politics fulfil quite independently of its goals within
the total ethical economy of human conduct — which is, so to speak,
the ethical locus where politics is at home? Here, to be sure, ultimate
W eltanschauungen clash, world views among which in the end one has
to make a choice. Let us resolutely tackle this problem, which recently
has been opened again, in my view in a very wrong way.
But first, let us free ourselves from a quite trivial falsification: namely,
that ethics may first appear in a morally highly compromised role. Let
us consider examples. Rarely will you find that a man whose love turns
from one woman to another feels no need to legitimate this before him-
self by saying: she was not worthy of my love, or, she has disappointed
me, or whatever other like 'reasons' exist. This is an attitude that, with
a profound lack of chivalry, adds a fancied 'legitimacy' to the plain fact
that he no longer loves her and that the woman has to bear it. By virtue
of this 'legitimation,' the man claims a right for himself and besides
causing the misfortune seeks to put her in the wrong. The successful
amatory competitor proceeds exactly in the same way: namely, the
opponent must be less worthy, otherwise he would not have lost out.
Il8 SCIENCE AND POLITICS
It is no different, of course, if after a victorious war the victor in undig-
nified self-righteousness claims, 'I have won because I was right.' Or,
if somebody under the frightfulness of war collapses psychologically, and
instead of simply saying it was just too much, he feels the need of legiti-
mizing his war weariness to himself by substituting the feeling, 'I could
not bear it because I had to fight for a morally bad cause.' And likewise
with the defeated in war. Instead of searching like old women for the
'guilty one' after the war — in a situation in which the structure of society
produced the war — everyone with a manly and controlled attitude would
tell the enemy, 'We lost the war. You have won it. That is now all over.
Now let us discuss what conclusions must be drawn according to the
objective interests that came into play and what is the main thing in
view of the responsibility towards the future which above all burdens
the victor.' Anything else is undignified and will become a boomerang.
A nation forgives if its interests have been damaged, but no nation
forgives if its honor has been offended, especially by a bigoted self-
righteousness. Every new document that comes to light after decades
revives the undignified lamentations, the hatred and scorn, instead of
allowing the war at its end to be buried, at least morally. This is possible
only through objectivity and chivalry and above all only through dig-
nity. But never is it possible through an 'ethic,' which in truth signifies
a lack of dignity on both sides. Instead of being concerned about what
the politician is interested in, the future and the responsibility towards
the future, this ethic is concerned about politically sterile questions of
past guilt, which are not to be settled politically. To act in this way is
politically guilty, if such guilt exists at all. And it overlooks the unavoid-
able falsification of the whole problem, through very material interests:
namely, the victor's interest in the greatest possible moral and material
gain; the hopes of the defeated to trade in advantages through confes-
sions of guilt. If anything is 'vulgar,' then, this is, and it is the result of
this fashion of exploiting 'ethics' as a means of 'being in the right.'
Now then, what relations do ethics and politics actually have.'' Have
the two nothing whatever to do with one another, as has occasionally
been said? Or, is the reverse true: that the ethic of political conduct is
identical with that of any other conduct ? Occasionally an exclusive choice
has been believed to exist between the two propositions — either the one
or the other proposition must be correct. But is it true that any ethic
of the world could establish commandments of identical content for
erotic, business, familial, and official relations; for the relations to one's
POLITICS AS A VOCATION II 9
wife, to the greengrocer, the son, the competitor, the friend, the defend-
ant? Should it really matter so little for the ethical demands on politics
that politics operates with very special means, namely, power backed up
by violence? Do we not see that the Bolshevik and the Spartacist ideolo-
gists bring about exactly the same results as any militaristic dictator just
because they use this political means? In what but the persons of the
power-holders and their dilettantism does the rule of the workers' and
soldiers' councils differ from the rule of any power-holder of the old
regime? In what way does the polemic of most representatives of the
presumably new ethic differ 'from that of the opponents which they
criticized, or the ethic of any other demagogues ? In their noble intention,
people will say. Good! But it is the means about which we speak here,
and the adversaries, in complete subjective sincerity, claim, in the very
same way, that their ultimate intentions are of lofty character. 'All they
that take the sword shall perish with the sword' and fighting is every-
where fighting. Hence, the ethic of the Sermon on the Mount.
By the Sermon on the Mount, we mean the absolute ethic of the
gospel, which is a more serious matter than those who are fond of
quoting these commandments today believe. This ethic is lio joking
matter. The same holds for this ethic as has been said of causality in
science: it is not a cab, which one can have stopped at one's pleasure; it is
all or nothing. This is precisely the meaning of the gospel, if trivialities
are not to result. Hence, for instance, it was said of the wealthy young
man, 'He went away sorrowful : for he had great possessions.' The evange-
list commandment, however, is unconditional and unambiguous: give
what thou hast — absolutely everything. The politician will say that this
is a socially senseless imposition as long as it is not carried out every-
where. Thus the politician upholds taxation, confiscatory taxation, out-
right confiscation; in a word, compulsion and regulation for all. The
ethical commandment, however, is not at all concerned about that, and
this unconcern is its essence. Or, take the example, 'turn the other
cheek': This command is unconditional and does not question the source
of the other's authority to strike. Except for a saint it is an ethic of
indignity. This is it: one must be saintly in everything; at least in inten-
tion, one must live like Jesus, the apostles, St. Francis, and their like.
Then this ethic makes sense and expresses a kind of dignity; otherwise
it does not. For if it is said, in line with the acosmic ethic of love,
'Resist not him that is evil with force,' for the politician the reverse
proposition holds, 'thou shalt resist evil by force,' or else you are re-
120 SCIENCE AND POLITICS
sponsible for the evil winning out. He who wishes to follow the ethic
of the gospel should abstain from strikes, for strikes mean compulsion;
he may join the company unions. Above all things, he should not talk
of 'revolution.' After all, the ethic of the gospel does not wish to teach
that civil war is the only legitimate war. The pacifist who follows the
gospel will refuse to bear arms or will throw them down; in Germany
this was the recommended ethical duty to end the war and therewith all
wars. The politician would say the only sure means to discredit the
war for all foreseeable time would have been a status quo peace. Then
the nations would have questioned, what was this war for? And then
the war would have been argued ad ahsurdum, which is now impossible.
For the victors, at least for part of them, the war will have been politically
profitable. And the responsibility for this rests on behavior that made all
resistance impossible for us. Now, as a result of the ethics of absolutism,
when the period of exhaustion will have passed, the peace will be dis-
credited, not the war.
Finally, let us consider the duty of truthfulness. For the absolute ethic
it holds unconditionally. Hence the conclusion was reached to publish
all documents, especially those placing blame on one's own country. On
the basis of these one-sided publications the confessions of guilt followed
— and they were one-sided, unconditional, and without regard to con-
sequences. The politician will find that as a result truth will not be
furthered but certainly obscured through abuse and unleashing of pas-
sion; only an all-round methodical investigation by non-partisans could
bear fruit; any other procedure may have consequences for a nation
that cannot be remedied for decades. But the absolute ethic just does not
asJ{^ for 'consequences.' That is the decisive point.
We must be clear about the fact that all ethically oriented conduct may
be guided by one of two fundamentally differing and irreconcilably op-
posed maxims: conduct can be oriented to an 'ethic of ultimate ends'
or to an 'ethic of responsibility.' This is not to say that an ethic of ultimate
ends is identical with irresponsibility, or that an ethic of responsibility
is identical with unprincipled opportunism. Naturally nobody says that.
However, there is an abysmal contrast between conduct that follows the
maxim of an ethic of ultimate ends — that is, in religious terms, 'The
Christian does rightly and leaves the results with the Lord' — and conduct
that follows the maxim of an ethic of responsibility, in which case one
has to give an account of the foreseeable results of one's action.
You may demonstrate to a convinced syndicalist, believing in an ethic
POLITICS AS A VOCATION 121
of ultimate ends, that his action will result in increasing the oppor-
tunities of reaction, in increasing the oppression of his class, and ob-
structing its ascent — and you will not make the slightest impression upon
him. If an action of good intent leads to bad results, then, in the actor's
eyes, not he but the world, or the stupidity of other men, or God's will
who made them thus, is responsible for the evil. However a man who
believes in an ethic of responsibility takes account of precisely the aver-
age deficiences of people; as Fichte has correctly said, he does not even
have the right to presuppose their goodness and perfection. He does not
feel in a position to burden others with the results of his own actions so
far as he was able to foresee them; he will say: these results are ascribed
to my action. The believer in an ethic of ultimate ends feels 'responsible'
only for seeing to it that the flame of pure intentions is not quelched:
for example, the flame of protesting against the injustice of the social
order. To rekindle the flame ever anew is the purpose of his quite
irrational deeds, judged in view of their possible success. They are acts
that can and shall have only exemplary value.
But even herewith the problem is not yet exhausted. No ethics in the
world can dodge the fact that in numerous instances the attainment of
'good' ends is bound to the fact that one must be willing to pay the
price of using morally dubious means or at least dangerous ones — and
facing the possibility or even the probability of evil ramifications. From
no ethics in the world can it be concluded when and to what extent
the ethically good purpose 'justifies' the ethically dangerous means and
ramifications.
The decisive means for politics is violence. You may see the extent
of the tension between means and ends, when viewed ethically, from the
following: as is generally known, even during the war the revolutionary
socialists (Zimmerwald faction) professed a principle that one might
strikingly formulate: 'If we face the choice either of some more years
of war and then revolution, or peace now and no revolution, we choose —
some more years of war!' Upon the further question: 'What can this
revolution bring about?' every scientifically trained socialist would have
had the answer: One cannot speak of a transition to an economy that
in our sense could be called socialist; a bourgeois economy will re-emerge,
merely stripped of the feudal elements and the dynastic vestiges. For this
very modest result, they are willing to face 'some more years of war.' One
may well say that even with a very robust socialist conviction one might
reject a purpose that demands such means. With Bolshevism and Spar-
122 SCIENCE AND POLITICS
tacism, and, in general, with any kind of revolutionary socialism, it is pre-
cisely the same thing. It is of course utterly ridiculous if the power poli-
ticians of the old regime are morally denounced for their use of the
same means, however justified the rejection of their aims may be.
The ethic of ultimate ends apparently must go to pieces on the problem
of the justification of means by ends. As a matter of fact, logically it has
only the possibility of rejecting all action that employs morally dangerous
means — in theory! In the world of realities, as a rule, we encounter the
ever-renewed experience that the adherent of an ethic of ultimate ends
suddenly turns into a chiliastic prophet. Those, for example, who have
just preached 'love against violence' now call for the use of force for the
last violent deed, which would then lead to a state of affairs in which all
violence is annihilated. In the same manner, our officers told the soldiers
before every offensive: 'This will be the last one; this one will bring
victory and therewith peace.' The proponent of an ethic of absolute ends
cannot stand up under the ethical irrationality of the world. He is a
cosmic-ethical 'rationalist.' Those of you who know Dostoievski will re-
member the scene of the 'Grand Inquisitor,' where the problem is poign-
antly unfolded. If one makes any concessions at all to the principle
that the end justifies the means, it is not possible to bring an ethic
of ultimate ends and an ethic of responsibility under one roof or to
decree ethically which end should justify which means.
My colleague, Mr. F. W. Forster, whom personally I highly esteem
for his undoubted sincerity, but whom I reject unreservedly as a politi-
cian, beheves it is possible to get around this difficulty by the simple
thesis: 'from good comes only good; but from evil only evil follows.'
In that case this whole complex of questions would not exist. But it is
rather astonishing that such a thesis could come to light two thousand
five hundred years after the Upanishads. Not only the whole course of
world history, but every frank examination of everyday experience
points to the very opposite. The development of religions all over the
world is determined by the fact that the opposite is true. The age-old
problem of theodicy consists of the very question of how it is that a
power which is said to be at once omnipotent and kind could have
created such an irrational world of undeserved suffering, unpunished
injustice, and hopeless stupidity. Either this power is not omnipotent or
not kind, or, entirely different principles of compensation and reward
govern our life — principles we may interpret metaphysically, or even
principles that forever escape our comprehension.
POLITICS AS A VOCATION 1 23
This problem — the experience of the irrationahty of the world — has
been the driving force of all religious evolution. The Indian doctrine of
karma, Persian dualism, the doctrine of original sin, predestination
and the deiis ahsconditiis, all these have grown out of this experience.
Also the early Christians knew full well the world is governed by
demons and that he who lets himself in for politics, that is, for power and
force as means, contracts with diabolical powers and for his action it is
not true that good can follow only from good and evil only from evil,
but that often the opposite is true. Anyone who fails to see this is,
indeed, a political infant.
We are placed into various life-spheres, each of which is governed
by different laws. Religious ethics have settled with this fact in different
ways. Hellenic polytheism made sacrifices to Aphrodite and Hera ahke,
to Dionysus and to Apollo, and knew these gods were frequently in con-
flict with one another. The Hindu order of life made each of the differ-
ent occupations an object of a specific ethical code, a Dharma, and for-
ever segregated one from the other as castes, thereby placing them into
a fixed hierarchy of rank. For the man born into it, there was no escape
from it, lest he be twice-born in another life. The occupations were thus
placed at varying distances from the highest religious goods of salva-
tion. In this way, the caste order allowed for the possibility of fashioning
the Dharma of each single caste, from those of the ascetics and Brahmins
to those of the rogues and harlots, in accordance with the immanent and
autonomous laws of their respective occupations. War and politics were
also included. You will find war integrated into the totality of life-spheres
in the Bhagavad-Gita, in the conversation between Krishna and Arduna.
'Do what must be done,' i.e. do that work which, according to the
Dharma of the warrior caste and its rules, is obligatory and which, ac-
cording to the purpose of the war, is objectively necessary. Hinduism be-
lieves that such conduct does not damage religious salvation but, rather,
promotes it. When he faced the hero's death, the Indian warrior was
always sure of Indra's heaven, just as was the Teuton warrior of Val-
halla. The Indian hero would have despised Nirvana just as much as the
Teuton would have sneered at the Christian paradise with its angels'
choirs. This specialization of ethics allowed for the Indian ethic's quite
unbroken treatment of politics by following poHtics' own laws and even
radically enhancing this royal art.
A really radical 'Machiavellianism,' in the popular sense of this word,
is classically represented in Indian literature, in the Kautaliya Arthasastra
124 SCIENCE AND POLITICS
(long before Christ, allegedly dating from Chandragupta's time). In con-
trast with this document Machiavelli's Principe is harmless. As is known
in Catholic ethics — to which otherwise Professor Forster stands close —
the consilia evangelica are a special ethic for those endowed with the
charisma of a holy life. There stands the monk who must not shed
blood or strive for gain, and beside him stand the pious knight and the
burgher, who are allowed to do so, the one to shed blood, the other to
pursue gain. The gradation of ethics and its organic integration into the
doctrine of salvation is less consistent than in India. According to the
presuppositions of Christian faith, this could and had to be the case.
The wickedness of the world stemming from original sin allowed with
relative ease the integration of violence into ethics as a disciplinary means
against sin and against the heretics who endangered the soul. However,
the demands of the Sermon on the Mount, an acosmic ethic of ulti-
mate ends, implied a natural law of absolute imperatives based upon
religion. These absolute imperatives retained their revolutionizing force
and they came upon the scene with elemental vigor during almost all
periods of social upheaval. They produced especially the radical pacifist
sects, one of which in Pennsylvania experimented in establishing a polity
that renounced violence towards the outside. This experiment took a
tragic course, inasmuch as with the outbreak of the War of Independence
the Quakers could not stand up arms-in-hand for their ideals, which
were those of the war.
Normally, Protestantism, however, absolutely legitimated the state as a
divine institution and hence violence as a means. Protestantism, espe-
cially, legitimated the authoritarian state. Luther relieved the individual
of the ethical responsibility for war and transferred it to the authorities.
To obey the authorities in matters other than those of faith could never
constitute guilt. Calvinism in turn knew principled violence as a means
of defending the faith; thus Calvinism knew the crusade, which was
for Islam an element of life from the beginning. One sees that it is by
no means a modern disbehef born from the hero worship of the Renais-
sance which poses the problem of political ethics. All religions have
wrestled with it, with highly differing success, and after what has been
said it could not be otherwise. It is the specific means of legitimate
violence as such in the hand of human associations which determines
the peculiarity of all ethical problems of politics.
Whosoever contracts with violent means for whatever ends — and every
poUtician does — is exposed to its specific consequences. This holds espe-
POLITICS AS A VOCATION I25
cially for the crusader, religious and revolutionary alike. Let us confi-
dently take the present as an example. He who wants to establish abso-
lute justice on earth by force requires a following, a human 'machine.'
He must hold out the necessary internal and external premiums, heavenly
or worldly reward, to this 'machine' or else the machine will not func-
tion. Under the conditions of the modern class struggle, the internal
premiums consist oi. the satisfying of hatred and the craving for re-
venge; above all, resentment and the need for pseudo-ethical self-right-
eousness: the opponents must be slandered and accused of heresy. The
external rewards are adventure, victory, booty, power, and spoils. The
leader and his success are completely dependent upon the functioning of
his machine and hence not on his own motives. Therefore he also de-
pends upon whether or not the premiums can be permanently granted
to the following, that is, to the Red Guard, the informers, the agitators,
whom he needs. What he actually attains under the conditions of his
work is therefore not in his hand, but is prescribed to him by the foUow-
ing's motives, which, if viewed ethically, are predominantly base. The
following can be harnessed only so long as an honest belief in his person
and his cause inspires at least part of the following, probably never on
earth even the majority. This belief, even when subjectively sincere, is in
a very great number of cases really no more than an ethical 'legitimation'
of cravings for revenge, power, booty, and spoils. We shall not be de-
ceived about this by verbiage; the materialist interpretation of history is
no cab to be taken at will; it does not stop short of the promoters of
revolutions. Emotional revolutionism is followed by the traditionalist
routine of everyday life; the crusading leader and the faith itself fade
away, or, what is even more effective, the faith becomes part of the con-
ventional phraseology of political Philistines and banausic technicians.
This development is especially rapid with struggles of faith because they
are usually led or inspired by genuine leaders, that is, prophets of revolu-
tion. For here, as with every leader's machine, one of the conditions for
success is the depersonalization and routinization, in short, the psychic
proletarianization, in the interests of discipline. After coming to power the
following of a crusader usually degenerates very easily into a quite com-
mon stratum of spoilsmen.
Whoever wants to engage in politics at all, and especially in politics
as a vocation, has to realize these ethical paradoxes. He must know that
he is responsible for what may become of himself under the impact of
these paradoxes. I repeat, he lets himself in for the diabolic forces lurking
126 SCIENCE AND POLITICS
in all violence. The great virtuosi of acosmic love of humanity and good-
ness, whether stemming from Nazareth or Assisi or from Indian royal
castles, have not operated with the political means of violence. Their
kingdom was 'not of this world' and yet they worked and still work
in this world. The figures of Platon Karatajev and the saints of Dostoiev-
ski still remain their most adequate reconstructions. He who seeks
the salvation of the soul, of his own and of others, should not seek
it along the avenue of politics, for the quite different tasks of politics
can only be solved by violence. The genius or demon of politics lives in
an inner tension with the god of love, as well as with the Christian God
as expressed by the church. This tension can at any time lead to an
irreconcilable conflict. Men knew this even in the times of church rule.
Time and again the papal interdict was placed upon Florence and at
the time it meant a far more robust power for men and their salvation
of soul than (to speak with Fichte) the 'cool approbation' of the Kantian
ethical judgment. The burghers, however, fought the church-state. And
it is with reference to such situations that Machiavelli in a beautiful
passage, if I am not mistaken, of the History of Florence, has one of his
heroes praise those citizens who deemed the greatness of their native
city higher than the salvation of their souls.
If one says 'the future of socialism' or 'international peace,' instead of
native city or 'fatherland' (which at present may be a dubious value
to some), then you face the problem as it stands now. Everything that
is striven for through political action operating with violent means and
following an ethic of responsibility endangers the 'salvation of the soul.'
If, however, one chases after the ultimate good in a war of beliefs, fol-
lowing a pure ethic of absolute ends, then the goals may be damaged
and discredited for generations, because responsibility for consequences
is lacking, and two diabolic forces which enter the play remain un-
known to the actor. These are inexorable and produce consequences for
his action and even for his inner self, to which he must helplessly sub-
mit, unless he perceives them. The sentence: 'The devil is old; grow old
to understand him!' does not refer to age in terms of chronological years.
I have never permitted myself to lose out in a discussion through a
reference to a date registered on a birth certificate; but the mere fact
that someone is twenty years of age and that I am over fifty is no
cause for me to think that this alone is an achievement before which I am
overawed. Age is not decisive; what is decisive is th'e trained relentless-
POLITICS AS A VOCATION 1 27
ness in viewing the realities of life, and the ability to face such realities
and to measure up to them inwardly.
Surely, politics is made with the head, but it is certainly not made
with the head alone. In this the proponents of an ethic of ultimate ends
are right. One cannot prescribe to anyone whether he should follow an
ethic of absolute ends or an ethic of responsibility, or when the one
and when the other. One can say only this much: If in these times,
which, in your opinion, are not times of 'sterile' excitation — excitation is
not, after all, genuine passion — if now suddenly the W eltanschauungs-
politicians crop up en masse and pass the watchword, 'The world is
stupid and base, not I,' 'The responsibility for the consequences does
not fall upon me but upon the others whom I serve and whose stupidity
or baseness I shall eradicate,' then I declare frankly that I would first
inquire into the degree of inner poise backing this ethic of ultimate
ends. I am under the impression that in nine out of ten cases I deal with
windbags who do not fully realize what they take upon themselves but
who intoxicate themselves with romantic sensations. From a human
point of view this is not very interesting to me, nor does it move me
profoundly. However, it is immensely moving when a mature man —
no matter whether old or young in years — is aware of a responsibility
for the consequences of his conduct and really feels such responsibility
with heart and soul. He then acts by following an ethic of responsibility
and somewhere he reaches the point where he says: 'Here I stand; I can
do no other.' That is something genuinely human and moving. And
every one of us who is not spiritually dead must realize the possibility of
finding himself at some time in that position. In so far as this is true,
an ethic of ultimate ends and an ethic of responsibility are not absolute
contrasts but rather supplements, which only in unison constitute a
genuine man — a man who can have the 'calling for politics.'
Now then, ladies and gentlemen, let us debate this matter once
more ten years from now. Unfortunately, for a whole series of reasons,
I fear that by then the period of reaction will have long since broken
over us. It is very probable that little of what many of you, and (I
candidly confess) I too, have wished and hoped for will be fulfilled;
little — perhaps not exactly nothing, but what to us at least seems little.
This will not crush me, but surely it is an inner burden to realize it.
Then, I wish I could see what has become of those of you who now feel
yourselves to be genuinely 'principled' politicians and who share in the
128 SCIENCE AND POLITICS
intoxication signified by tiiis revolution. It would be nice if matters
turned out in such a way that Shakespeare's Sonnet 102 should hold
true:
Our love was new, and then but in the spring,
When I was wont to greet it with my lays;
As Philomel in summer's front doth sing,
And stops her pipe in growth of riper days.
But such is not the case. Not summer's bloom lies ahead of us, but
rather a polar night of icy darkness and hardness, no matter which
group may triumph externally now. Where there is nothing, not only the
Kaiser but also the proletarian has lost his rights. When this night shall
have slowly receded, who of those for whom spring apparently has
bloomed so luxuriously will be alive? And what will have become of
all of you by then? Will you be bitter or banausic? Will you simply and
dully accept world and occupation? Or will the third and by no means
the least frequent possibility be your lot: mystic flight from reality for
those who are gifted for it, or — as is both frequent and unpleasant — for
those who belabor themselves to follow this fashion? In every one of
such cases, I shall draw the conclusion that they have not measured up to
their own doings. They have not measured up to the world as it really
is in its everyday routine. Objectively and actually, they have not ex-
perienced the vocation for politics in its deepest meaning, which they
thought they had. They would have done better in simply cultivating
plain brotherliness in personal relations. And for the rest — they should
have gone soberly about their daily work.
Politics is a strong and slow boring of hard boards. It takes both pas-
sion and perspective. Certainly all historical experience confirms the truth
— that man would not have attained the possible unless time and again
he had reached out for the impossible. But to do that a man must be a
leader, and not only a leader but a hero as well, in a very sober sense
of the word. And even those who are neither leaders nor heroes must
arm themselves with that steadfastness of heart which can brave even
the crumbling of all hopes. This is necessary right now, or else men
will not be able to attain even that which is possible today. Only he has
I the calling for politics who is sure that he shall not crumble when the
world from his point of view is too stupid or too base for what he wants
to offer. Only he who in the face of all this can say 'In spite of all!' has
the calling for politics.
V . ocience as a V ocation
You wish me to speak about 'Science as a Vocation.' Now, we political
economists have a pedantic custom, which I should like to follow, of
always beginning with the external conditions. In this case, we begin
with the question: What are the conditions of science as a vocation in
the material sense of the term? Today this question means, practically
and essentially: What are the prospects of a graduate student who is
resolved to dedicate himself professionally to science in university life.?
In order to understand the peculiarity of German conditions it is ex-
pedient to proceed by comparison and to realize the conditions abroad.
In this respect, the United States stands in the sharpest contrast with
Germany, so we shall focus upon that country.
Everybody knows that in Germany the career of the young man who
is dedicated to science normally begins with the position of Privatdozent.
After having conversed with and received the consent of the re-
spective specialists, he takes up residence on the basis of a book and,
usually, a rather formal examination before the faculty of the university.
Then he gives a course of lectures without receiving any salary other
than the lecture fees of his students. It is up to him to determine, within
his venia legendi, the topics upon which he lectures.
In the United States the academic career usually begins in quite a
different manner, namely, by employment as an 'assistant.' This is
similar to the great institutes of the natural science and medical faculties
in Germany, where usually only a fraction of the assistants try to habili-
tate themselves as Privatdozenten and often only later in their career.
Practically, this contrast means that the career of the academic man in
Germany is generally based upon plutocratic prerequisites. For it is ex-
tremely hazardous for a young scholar without funds to expose himself
'Wissenschaft als Beruf,' Gesammelte Aufsaetze zitr Wissenschaftslelire (Tubingen, 1922),
pp. 524-55. Originally a speech at Munich University, 1918, published in 1919 by Duncker
& Humblodt, Munich.
129
130 SCIENCE AND POLITICS
to the conditions of the academic career. He must be able to endure this
condition for at least a number of years without knowing whether he
will have the opportunity to move into a position which pays well
enough for maintenance.
In the United States, where the bureaucratic system exists, the young
academic man is paid from the very beginning. To be sure, his salary
is modest; usually it is hardly as much as the wages of a semi-skilled
laborer. Yet he begins with a seemingly secure position, for he draws
a fixed salary. As a rule, however, notice may be given to him just as
with German assistants, and frequently he definitely has to face this
should he not come up to expectations.
These expectations are such that the young academic in America must
draw large crowds of students. This cannot happen to a German decent;
once one has him, one cannot get rid of him. To be sure, he cannot raise
any 'claims.' But he has the understandable notion that after years of
work he has a sort of moral right to expect some consideration. He also
expects — and this is often quite important — that one have some regard
for him when the question of the possible habilitation of other Privat-
dozenten comes up.
Whether, in principle, one should habilitate every scholar who is quali-
fied or whether one should consider enrollments, and hence give the
existing staff a monopoly to teach — that is an awkward dilemma. It is asso-
ciated with the dual aspect of the academic profession, which we shall
discuss presently. In general, one decides in favor of the second alter-
native. But this increases the danger that the respective full professor,
however conscientious he is, will prefer his own disciples. If I may
speak of my personal attitude, I must say I have followed the principle
that a scholar promoted by me must legitimize and habilitate himself
with somebody else at another university. But the result has been that
one of my best disciples has been turned down at another university
because nobody there believed this to be the reason.
A further difference between Germany and the United States is that
in Germany the Privatdozent generally teaches fewer courses than he
wishes. According to his formal right, he can give any course in his
field. But to do so would be considered an improper lack of considera-
tion for the older docents. As a rule, the full professor gives the 'big'
courses and the docent confines himself to secondary ones. The ad-
vantage of these arrangements is that during his youth the academic
SCIENCE AS A VOCATION I3I
man is free to do scientific work, although this restriction of the oppor-
tunity to teach is somewhat involuntary.
In America, the arrangement is different in principle. Precisely during
the early years of his career the assistant is absolutely overburdened just
because he is paid. In a department of German, for instance, the full
professor will give a three-hour course on Goethe and that is enough,
whereas the young assistant is happy if, besides the drill in the German
language, his twelve weekly teaching hours include assignments of, say,
Uhland. The officials prescribe the curriculum, and in this the assistant
is just as dependent as the institute assistant in Germany.
Of late we can observe distinctly that the German universities in the
broad fields of science develop in the direction of the American system.
The large institutes of medicine or natural science are 'state capitalist'
)nsesPwhich cannot be managed without very considerabje funds.
Here we encounter the sarrie conHition that is found wherever capitalist
enterprise comes into operation: the 'separation of the worker from his
means of production.' 'ihe worker, that is, the assistant, is dependent
upon the implements that the state puts'at Iiis disposal; hence he is just
as dependent upon the head of the institute as is the employee in a
factory upon the management. For, subjectively and in good faith, the
director believes that this institute is 'his,' and he manages its affairs.
Thus the assistant's position is often as precarious as is that of any
'quasi-proletarian' existence and just as precarious as the position of the
assistant in the American university.
In very important respects German university life is being American-
ized, as is German life in general. This development, I am convinced,
will engulf those disciplines in which the craftsman personally owns the
tools, essentially the library, as is still the case to a large extent in my
own field. This development corresponds entirely to what happened to
the artisan of the past and it is now fully under way.
As with all capitalist and at the same time bureaucratized enterprises,
there are indubitable advantages in all this. But the 'spirit' that rules in
these affairs is different from the historical atmosphere of the German
university. An extraordinarily wide gulf, externally and internally, exists
between the chief of these large, capitalist, university enterprises and
the usual full j)rofessor of the old style. This contrast also holds for the
inner attitude, a matter that I shall not go into here. Inwardly as well
as externally, the old university constitution has become fictitious. What
has remained and what has been essentially increased is a factor peculiar
132 SCIENCE AND rOLlTICS
to the university career: the question whether or not such a Privatdozent,
and still more an assistant, will ever succeed in moving into the position
of a full professor or even become the head of an institute. That is
simply a hazard. Certainly, chance does not rule alone, but it rules to an
unusually high degree. I know of hardly any career on earth where
chance plays such a role. I may say so all the more since I personally
owe it to some mere accidents that during my very early years I was ap-
pointed to a full professorship in a discipline in which men of my genera-
tion undoubtedly had achieved more tha^ I had. And, indeed, I fancy,
on the basis of this experience, that I have a sharp eye for the undeserved
fate of the many whom accident has cast in the opposite direction and
who within this selective apparatus in spite of all their ability do not
attain the positions that are due them.
The fact that hazard rather than ability plays so large a role is not
alone or even predominantly owing to the 'human, all too human'
factors, which naturally occur in the process of academic selection as in
any other selection. It would be unfair to hold the personal inferiority of
faculty members or educational ministries responsible for the fact that
so many mediocrities undoubtedly play an eminent role at the universities.
The predominance of mediocrity is rather due to the laws of human
co-operation, especially of the co-operation of several bodies, and, in this
case, co-operation of the faculties who recommend and of the ministries
of education.
A counterpart are the events at the papal elections, which can be
traced over many centuries and which are the most important control-
lable examples of a selection of the same nature as the academic selection.
The cardinal who is said to be the 'favorite' only rarely has a chance to
win out. The rule is rather that the Number Two cardinal or the
Number Three wins out. The same holds for the President of the
United States. Only exceptionally does the first-rate and most prominent
man get the nomination of the convention. Mostly the Number Two and
often the Number Three men are nominated and later run for elecdon.
The Americans have already formed technical sociological terms for
these categories, and it would be quite interesting to enquire into the
laws of selection by a collective will by studying these examples, but we
shall not do so here. Yet these laws also hold for the collegiate bodies
of German universities, and one must not be surprised at the frequent
mistakes that are made, but rather at the number of correct appoint-
ments, the proportion of which, in spite of all, is very considerable. Only
SCIENCE AS A VOCATION I33
where parliaments, as in some countries, or monarchs, as in Germany
thus far (both work out in the same way), or revolutionary power-hold-
ers, as in Germany now, intervene for political reasons in academic selec-
tions, can one be certain that convenient mediocrities or strainers will
have the opportunities all to themselves.
No university teacher likes to be reminded of discussions of appoint-
ments, for they are seldom agreeable. And yet I may say that in the
numerous cases known to me there was, without exception, the good
will to allow purely objective reasons to be decisive.
One must be clear about another thing: that the decision over academic
fates is so largely a 'hazard' is not merely because of the insufficiency
of the selection by the collective formation of will. Every young man
who feels called to scholarship has to realize clearly that the task before
him has a double aspect. He must qualify not only as a scholar but
also as a teacher. And the two do not at all coincide. One can be a pre-
eminent scholar and at the same time an abominably poor teacher. May
I remind you of the teaching of men like Helmholtz or Ranke; and
they are not by any chance rare exceptions.
Now, matters are such that German universities, especially the small
universities, are engaged in a most ridiculous competition for enroll-
ments. The landlords of rooming houses in university cities celebrate
the advent of the thousandth student by a festival, and they would love
to celebrate Number Two Thousand by a torchhght procession. The
interest in fees^and one should openly admit it — is affected by appoint-
ments in the neighboring fields that 'draw crowds.' And quite apart
from this, the number of students enrolled is a test of qualification, which
may be grasped in terms of numbers, whereas the qualification for
scholarship is imponderable and, precisely with audacious innovators,
often debatable — that is only natural. Almost everybody thus is affected
by the suggestion of the immeasurable blessing and value of large en- ,
rollments. To say of a docent that he is a poor teacher is usually to
pronounce an academic sentence of death, even if he is the foremost
scholar in the world. And the question whether he is a good or a poor
teacher is answered by the enrollments with which the students conde- •■-
scendingly honor him. V
It is a fact that whether or not the students flock to a teacher is de-
termined in large measure, larger than one would believe possible, by
purely external things: temperament and even the inflection of his
voice. After rather extensive experience and sober reflection, I have a
134 SCIENCE AND POLITICS
deep distrust of courses that draw crowds, however unavoidable they
may be. Democracy should be used only where it is in place. Scientific
training, as we are held to practice it in accordance with the tradition of
German universities, is the affair of an intellectual aristocracy, and we
should not hide this from ourselves. To be sure, it is true that to present
scientific problems in such a manner that an untutored but receptive
mind can understand them and — what for us is alone decisive — can come
to think about them independently is perhaps the most difficult peda-
gogical task of all. But whether this task is or is not realized is not de-
cided by enrollment figures. And — to return to our theme — this very art
is a personal gift and by no means coincides with the scientific qualifica-
tions of the scholar.
In contrast to France, Germany has no corporate body of 'immortals'
in science. According to German tradition, the universities shall do justice
to the demands both of research and of instruction. Whether the abilities
for both are found together in a man is a matter of absolute chance.
Hence academic life is a mad hazard. If the young scholar asks for my
advice with regard to habihtation, the responsibiHty of encouraging him
can hardly be borne. If he is a Jew, of course one says lasciate ogni
speranza. But o'le must ask every other man: Do you in all conscience
believe that ^ou can stand seeing mediocrity after mediocrity, year after
year, climb beyond you, without becoming embittered and without com-
ing to grief? Naturally, one always receives the answer: 'Of course, I live
only for my "calling." ' Yet, I have found that only a few men could
endure this situation without coming to grief.
This much I deem necessary to say about the external conditions of the
academic man's vocation. But I believe that actually you wish to~hear \^,~^
of something else, namely, of the inward calling for science. In our^tim^
the internal situation, in contrast to the organization of_sciejiC£_as_a
vocation, is first of all conditioned by the facts that science has entered
a phase of specialization previously unknown and that this wfH-fDrever
remain the case. Not only externally, but inwardly, matters stand at a
point where the individual can acquire the sure consciousness of achiev-
ing something truly perfect in the field of science only in case he is a
strict specialist.
All work that overlaps neighboring fields, such as we occasionally
undertake and which the sociologists must necessarily undertake again
and again, is burdened with the resigned realization that at best one
provides the specialist with useful questions upon which he would not
SCIENCE AS A VOCATION I35
SO easily hit from his own speciaHzed point of view. One's own work
must inevitably remain highly imperfect. Only by strict specialization
can the scientific worker become fully conscious, for once and perhaps
never again in his lifetime, that he has achieved something that will en-
dure. A really definitive and good accomplishment is today always a.
specialized accomplishment. And whoever lacks the capacity to put on
blinders, so to speak, and to come up to the idea that the fate of his)
"soul depends upon whether or not he makes the correct conjecture"'at
this passage of this manuscript may as well stay away from science. He
will never have what one may call the 'personal experience' of science.
Without this strange intoxicatio)i, ridiculed by every outsider; without
this passion, this 'thousands of years must pass before you enter into life
and thousands more wait in silence' — according to whether or not you
succeed in making this conjecture; without this, you have no calling for
science and you should do something else. For nothing is worthy of man
as man unless he can pursue it with passionate devotion.
Yet it is a fact that no amount of such enthusiasm, however sincere
and profound it may be, can compel a problem to yield scientific results.
Certainly enthusiasm is a prerequisite of the 'inspiration' which is de-
cisive. Nowadays in circles of youth there is a widespread notion that
science has become a problem in calculation, fabricated in laboratories or
statistical filing systems just as 'in a factory,' a calculation involving
only the cool ilntellect and not one's 'heart and soul.' First of all one must
say that such comments lack all clarity about what goes on in a factory
or in a laboratory. In both some idea has to occur to someone's mind,
and it has to be a correct idea, if one is to accomplish anything worth-
while. An3 such Intuition cannot be forced. It has nothing to do with
any cold calculation. Certainly calculation is also an indispensable prereq-
uisite. No sociologist, for instance, should think himself too good, even
in his old age, to make tens of thousands of quite trivial computations
in his head and perhaps for months at a time. One cannot with impunity
try to transfer this task entirely to mechanical assistants if one wishes
to figure something, even though the final result is often small indeed.
But if no 'idea' Occurs to his mind about the direction of his computations
and, during his computations, about the bearing of the emergent single
results, then even this small result will not be yielded.
Normally such an 'idea' is prepared only on the soil of very hard
work, but certainly this is not always the case. Scientifically, a dilet-
tante's idea may have the very same or even a greater bearing for
136 SCIENCE AND POLITICS
science than that o£ a specialist. Many of our very best hypotheses and
insights are due precisely to dilettantes. The dilettante differs from the
expert, as Helmholtz has said of Robert Mayer, only in that he lacks a
firm and reliable work procedure. Consequently he is usually not in the
position to control, to estimate, or to exploit the idea in its bearings. The
idea is not a substitute for work; and work, in turn, cannot substitute
for or compel an idea, just as little as enthusiasm can. Both, enthusiasm
and work, and above all both of them jointly, can entice the idea.
Ideas occur to us when they please, not when it pleases us. The best
ideas do indeed occur to one's mind in the way in which Ihering de-
scribes it: when smoking a cigar on the sofa; or as Helmholtz states of
himself with scientific exactitude: when taking a walk on a slowly
ascending street; or in a similar way. In any case, ideas come when we
do not expect them, and not when we are brooding and searching at our
desks. Yet ideas would certainly not come to mind had we not brooded at
our desks and searched for answers with passionate devotion.
However this may be, the scientjfic^ worker has_to_jtake into Jiis
bargain the risk that enters into all scientific _work : Does an 'idea'
occur or does it not ? He may be an excellent worker and yet never have
had any valuable idea of his own. It is a grave error to believe that this
is so only in science, and that things for instance in a business office are
different from a laboratory. A merchant or a big industrialist without
'business imagination/ that is, without ideas or ideal intuitions, will for
all his life remain a man who would better have remained a clerk or a
technical official. He will never be truly creative in organization. Inspira-
tion in the field of science by no means plays any greater role, as academic
conceit fancies, than it does in the field of mastering problems of practi-
cal life by a modern entrepreneur. On the other hand, and this also
is often misconstrued, inspiration playj no less a role in science than it
does in the realm of art. It is a childish notion to think that a mathe-
matician attains any scientifically valuable results by sitting at his desk
with a ruler, calculating machines or other mechanical means. The
mathematkal imagination of a Weierstrass is naturally quite differently
oriented in meaning and result than is the imagination of an artist, and
differs basically in quality. But the psychological processes do not differ.
Both are frenzy (in the sense of Plato's 'mania') and 'inspiration.'
Now, whether we have scientific inspiration depends upon destinies
that are hidden from us, and besides upon 'gifts.' Last but not least,
because of this indubitable truth, a very understandable attitude has
SCIENCE AS A VOCATION 137
become popular, especially among youth, and has put them in the serv-
ice of idols whose cult today occupies a broad place on all street corners
and in all periodicals. Tliese^dols^rejpersonality^
rience.' Both are intimately connected, the notion prevails that the
latter constitutes the former and belongs to it. People belabor themselves
in trying to 'experience' life — for that befits a personality, conscious of
its rank and station. And if we do not succeed in 'experiencing' life, we
must at least pretend to have this gift of grace. Formerly we called this
'experience,' in plain German, 'sensation'; and I believe that we then
had a more adequate idea of what personality is and what it signifies.
Ladies and gentlemen. In the field of science only he who is devoted
solely to the work at_hand has 'personality.' And this holds not only
for the field of science; we know of no great artist who has ever done
anything but serve his work and only his work. As far as his art is
concerned, even with a personality of Goethe's rank, it has been detri-
mental to take the liberty of trying to make his 'life' into a work of art.
And even if one doubts this, one has to be a Goethe in order to dare
permit oneself such liberty. Everybody will admit at least this much:
that even with a man like Goethe, who appears once in a thousand years,
this liberty did not go unpaid for. In politics matters are not different,
but we shall not discuss that today. In the field of science, however, the
man who makes himself the impresario of the subject to which he
should be devoted, and steps upon the stage and seeks to legitimate him-
self through 'experience,' asking: How can I prove that I am something .
other than a mere 'specialist' and how can I manage to say something o/'
in form or in content that nobody else has ever said? — such a man is no
'personality.' Today such conduct is a crowd phenomenon, and it al-
ways makes a petty impression and debases the one who is thus con-
cerned. Instead of this, an inner devotion to the task, and that alone,
should lift the scientist to the height and dignity of the subject he pre-
tends to serve. And in_ this it is not different with the artist. .
In contrast with these preconditions which scientific work shares with '■~-^ ■
art, science has a fate that profoundly distinguishes" it from artistic work.
Scientific work is chained to the course ot progress; whereas in the realm
of art there is no progress in the same sense. It is not true that the
work of art of a period that has worked out new technical means, or,
for instance, the laws of perspective, stands therefore artistically higher
than a work of art devoid of all knowledge of those means and laws —
if its form does justice to the material, that is, if its object has been
1^8 SCIENCE AND POLITICS
chosen and formed so that it could be artistically mastered without
applying those conditions and means. A work of art which is genuine
'fulfilment' is never surpassed; it will never be antiquated. Individuals
may differ in appreciating the personal significance of works of art, but
no one will ever be able to say of such a work that it is 'outstripped by
another work which is also 'fulfilment.'
In science, each of us knows that vvhat he has accomplished^will be
antiquated in ten, twenty, fifty years. That is the fate to which science
is subjected; it is the very jneaning of scientific work, to which it is de-
voted in a quite specific sense, as compared with other spheres of cul-
ture for which in general the same holds. Every scientific 'fulfilment'
raises new 'questions'; it as{s to be 'surpassed' and^outdated Whoever
wishes to serve science has to resign himself to this fact. Scientific works
certainly can last as 'gratifications' because of their artistic quality, or they
may remain important as a means of training. Yet they will be surpassed
scientifically — let that be repeated — for it is our common fate and, more,
our common goal. We cannot work without hoping that others will ad-
vance further than we have. In principle, this progress goes on ad
infinitum. And with this we come to inquire into the meaning of
science. For, after allTlt^Ts noF self-evident that something subordinate
to such a law is sensible and meaningful in itself. Why does one engage
in doing something that in reality never comes, and never can come,
to an end?
\lp One does it, first, for purely practical, in the broader sense of the
word, for technical, purposes: in order to be able to orient our practical
activities to the expectations that scientific experience places at our dis-
posal. Good. Yet this has meaning only to practitioners. Whatjsjhe^atti-
tude of the academic man towaj;ds his vocation — that is, if he is at all in
quest of such a personal attitude? He maintains that he engages in
'science for science's sake' and not merely because others, by exploiting
science, bring about commercial or technical success and can better feed,
dress, illuminate, and govern. But what does he who allows himself to be
integrated into this specialized organization, running on ad infinitum,
hope to accomplish that is significant in these productions that are al-
ways destined to be outdated? This question requires a few general
considerations.
Scientific progress is a fraction, the most important fraction, of the
process of intel^tualization which we haveT)een undergoing for thou-
sands of years and which nowadays is usually judged in such an ex-
SCIENCE AS A VOCATION I39
tremely negative way. Let us first clarify what this intellectuaUst ration-
ahzation, created by science and by scientifically oriented technology,
means practically.
Does it mean that we, today, for instance, everyone sitting in this hall,
have a^reater Jyigwle^ge of the conditions of life under which we exist
than has an American Indian or a Hottentot? Hardly. Unless he is a
physicist, one who rides on the streetcar has no idea how the car happened
to get into motion. And he does not need to know. He is satisfied that he
may 'count' on the behavior of the streetcar, and he orients his conduct
according to this expectation; but he knows nothing about what it takes
to produce such a car so that it can move. The savage knows incom-
parably more about his tools. When we spend money today I Let that
even if there are colleagues of political economy here in the hall, almost
every one of them will hold a different answer in readiness to the ques-
tion: How does it happen that one can buy something for money — some-
times more and sometimes less? The savage knows what he does in order
to get his daily food and which institutions serve him in this pursuit.
The increasing^ intellectualization and rationalization do 7iot, therefore, j.
/^ indicate an increased and general knowledge of the conditions under 'V^
which one lives.
It means something else, namely, the knowledge or belief that if one |
but wished one could learn it at any time. Hence, it means that prin- '
cipally there are no mysterious incalculable forces that come into play, :
but rather that one can, in principle, master all things by calculation, i
This means that the world is disenchanted. One need no longer have
recourse to magical means in order to master or implore the spirits, as did
the savage, for whom such mysterious powers existed. Technical means
and calculations perform the service. This above all is what intellectuali- L,
zation means.
Now, this process of disenchantment, which has continued to exist in
Occidental culture for millennia, and, in general, this 'progress,' to which
science belongs as a link and motive force, do they have any meanings
that go beyond the purely practical and technical? You will find this
question raised in the most principled form in the works of Leo Tolstoi.
He came to raise the question in a peculiar way. All his broodings in-
creasingly revolved around the problem of whether or not death is a
meaningful phenomenon. And his answer was: for civilized man death
has no meaning. It has none because the individual Hfe of civilized man,
placed into an infinite 'progress,' according to its own imminent mean-
/l
140 SCIENCE AND POLITICS
ing should never come to an end; for there is always a further step ahead
of one who stands in the march of progress. And no man who comes
to die stands upon the peak which lies in infinity. Abraham, or some
peasant of the past, died 'old and satiated with life' because he stood
in the organic cycle of life; because his life, in terms of its meaning and
on the eve of his days, had given to him what life had to offer; because
for him there remained no puzzles he might wish to solve; and there-
fore he could have had 'enough' of life. Whereas civilized man, placed
in the midst of the continuous enrichment of culture by ideas, knowl-
edge, and problems, may become 'tired of life' but not 'satiated with life.'
He catches only the most minute part of what the life of the spirit brings
forth ever anew, and what he seizes is always something provisional
and not definitive, and therefore death for him is a meaningless occur-
rence. And because death is meaningless, civilized life as such is mean-
ingless; by its very 'progressiveness' it gives death the imprint of mean-
inglessness. Throughout his late novels one meets with this thought as
the keynote of the Tolstoyan art.
What stand should one take? Has 'progress' as such a recognizable
meaning that goes beyond" tEF technical, so that tO-serve it is a meaning-
ful vocation? The question must be raised. But this is no longer merely
the question of man's calUng for science, hence, the problem of what
science as a vocation means to its devoted disciples. To raise this question
is to ask for the vocation of science within the totaj life q£. humanity.
What is the value of science?
Here the contrast between the past and the present is tremendous.
You will recall the wonderful image at the beginning of the seventh
book of Plato's Republic: those enchained cavemen whose faces are
turned toward the stone wall before them. Behind them lies the source
of the light which they cannot see. They are concerned only with the
shadowy images that this light throws upon the wall, and they seek
to fathom their interrelations. Finally one of them succeeds in shattering
his fetters, turns around, and sees the sun. Blinded, he gropes about and
stammers of what he saw. The others say he is raving. But gradually he
learns to behold the light, and then his task is to descend to the cavemen
and to lead them to the light. He is the philosopher; the sun, however,
is the truth of science, which alone seizes not upon iHusions and shadows
but upon the true being.
Well, who today views science in such a manner? Today youth
feels rather the reverse: the intellectual constructions of science consti-
SCIENCE AS A VOCATION ° I41
tute an unreal realm of artificial abstractions, which with their bony
hands seek to grasp the blood-and-the-sap of true life without ever catch-
ing up with it. But here in life, in what for Plato was the play of
shadows on the walls of the cave, genuine reality is pulsating; and the
rest are derivatives of life, lifeless ghosts, and nothing else. How did this
change come about?
Plato's passionate enthusiasm in The Republic must, in the last analy-
sis, be explained by the fact that for the first time the concept, one of the
great tools of all scientific knowledge, had been consciously discovered.
Socrates had discovered it in its bearing. He was not the only man
in the world to discover it. In India one finds the beginnings of a logic
that is quite similar to that of Aristotle's. But nowhere else do we find
this realization of the significanceof the concept. In Greece, for the first
time, appeared a handy means by which one could put the logical
screws upon somebody so that he could not come out without admitting
either that he knew nothing or that this and nothing else was truth, the
eternal truth that never would vanish as the doings of the blind men
vanish. That was the tremendous experience which dawned upon the
disciples of Socrates. And from this it seemed to follow that if one only
found the right concept of the beautiful, the goo'd, or, foFlnstance, of
bravery, of~tKe soul — or whatever — that then one could also grasp its
true being. Andjhis, jn turn, seenied_to open the way for knowing and
for teaching: how_to act rightly in life and, above all, how to act as a
citizen of the state; for this question was everything to the Hellenic man,
whose thinking was political throughout. And for these reasons one
engaged in science.
The second great tool of scientific work, the rational experiment, made
its appearance at the side of this discovery of the Hellenic spirit during
the Renaissance period. The experiment is a means of reliably controlling
experience. Without it, present-day empirical science would be impos-
sible. There were experiments earlier; for instance, in India physiological
experiments were made in the service of ascetic yoga technique; in
Hellenic antiquity, mathematical experiments were made for purposes of
war technology; and in the Middle Ages, for purposes of mining. But
to raise the experiment to a principle of research was the achievement
o£_the_JE£iiaissance. They were the great innovators in art, who were
the pioneers of experiment. Leonardo and his like and, above all, the
sixteenth-century experimenters in music with their experimental pianos
were characteristic. From these circles the experiment entered science,
142 • SCIENCE AND POLITICS
especially through Galileo, and it entered theory through Bacon; and
then it was taken over by the various exact disciplines of the continental
universities, first of all those of Italy and then those of the Netherlands.
What did science mean to these men who stood at the threshold
of modern times? To artistic experimenters of the type of Leonardo
and the musical innovators, science meant the path to^ue art, and
that meant for them the path to true nature. Art was to be raised to the
rank of a science, and this meant at the same time and above all to raise
the artist to the rank of the doctor, socially and with reference to~tKe
meaning of his life. This is the ambition on which, for instance, Leo-
nardo's sketch book was based. And today ? 'Science as the way to nature'
would sound like blasphemy to youth. Today, youth proclaims the oppo-
site: redemption from the intellectualism of science in order to return
to one's own nature and therewith to nature in general. Science as a way
to art? Here no criticism is even needed.
But during the period of the rise of the exact .sciences one^ejcpected
a great deal more. If you recall Swammerdam's statement, 'Here I bring
you the proof of God's providence in the anatomy of a louse,' you will
see what the scientific worker, influenced (indirectly) by^JProtestantism
and Puritanism, conceived to be his task: to show the path to^God.
People no longer found this path among the philosophers, with their
concepts and deductions. All pietist theology of the time, above all
Spener, knew that God was not to be found along the road by which the
Middle Ages had sought him. God is hidden, His ways are not our
ways. His thoughts are not our thoughts. In the exact sciences, however,
where one could physically grasp His works, one hoped to come upon
the traces of what He planned for the world. And today? Who-^aside
from certain big children who are indeed found in the natural sciences —
still believes that the findings of astronomy, biology, physics, or chemis-
try could teach us anything about the meaning of the world? If there is
any such 'meaning,' along what road could one come upon its tracks?
If these natural sciences lead to anything in this way, they are apt to
make the belief that there is such a thing as the 'meaning' of the uni-
verse die out at its very roots.
And finally, science as a way 'to God'? Science, this specifically irreli-
gious power? That science today is irreligious no one will doubt in his
innermost being, even if he will not admit it to himself. Redemption
from the rationalism and intellectualism of science is the fundamental
presupposition of living in union with the divine. This, or something
SCIENCE AS A VOCATION I43
similar in meaning, is one of the fundamental watchwords one hears
among German youth, whose feelings are attuned to religion or who
crave religious experiences. They crave not only religious experience '
but experience as such. The only thing that is strange is the method
that is now followed: the spheres of the irrational, the only spheres that
intellectualism has not yet touched, are now raised into consciousness
and put under its lens. For in practice this is where the modern intel-
lectualist form of romantic irrationalism leads. This method of emanci-
pation from intellectualism may well bring about the very opposite of
what those who take to it conceive as its goal.
After Nietzsche's devastating criticism of those 'last men' who 'in-
vented happiness,' I may leave aside altogether the naive optimism in
which science — that isTlHF technique of mastering life which rests upon
science — has been celebrated as the way to happiness. Who believes in
this? — aside from a few big children in university chairs or editorial
offices. Let us resume our argument.
Under these internal presuppositions, what is th£ meamng of science
as a^yo^tion, now after all these former illusions, the 'way to true be-
ing,' the 'way to true art,' the 'way to true nature,' the 'way to true God,'
the 'way to true happiness,' have been dispelled? Tolstoi has given the
simplest answer, with the words: 'Science is meaningless because it gives
no answer to our question, the only question important for us: "What
shall we do and how shall we live?"' That science does not give an
answer to this is indisputable. The only question that remains is the
sense_in which science gives 'no' answer, and whether or not science
might jet be of some use to the one who puts the question correctly.
Today one usually speaks of science as 'free from presuppositions.'
Is there such a thing? It depends upon what one understands thereby.
All scientific work presupposes that the rules of logic and method are
valid; these are the general foundations of our orientation in the world;
and, at least for our special question, these presuppositions are the least
problematic aspect of science. Science further presupposes that what
is yielded by scientific work is important in the sense that it~is 'worth
being known.' In this, obviously, are contained all our problems. For
this^presupposition cannot be proved by scientific means. It can only
be interpreted with reference to its ultimate meaning, which we must
reject or accept~accordIng to our ultirnate position towards life. ^
Furthermore, the nature of the relationship of scientific work and its
presuppositions varies widely according to their structure. The natural
144 SCIENCE AND POLITICS
sciences, for instance, physics, chemistry, and astronomy, presuppose
as self-evident that it is worth while to know the ultimate laws oT cosmic
events as far as science can construe them. This is the case not only
because with such knowledge one can attain technical results but for
its own sake, if the quest for such knowledge is to be a 'vocation.' Yet
this presupposition can by no means be proved. And still less can it be
provedHthat^the existence of The world which these sciences describe is
worth while, that it has any 'meaning,' or that it makes sense to Uve
in such a world. Science does not ask for the answers to such questions.
Consider modern medicine, a practical technology which is highly de-
veloped scientifically. The general 'presupposition' of the medical enter-
prise is stated trivially in the assertion that medical science has the task of
maintaining life as such and of diminishing suffering as such to the
greatest possible degree. Yet this is problematical. By his means the medP
cal man preserves the life of the mortally ill man, even if the patient
implores us to relieve him of life, even if his relatives, to whom his life
is worthless and to whom the costs of maintaining his worthless life
grow unbearable, grant his redemption from suffering. Perhaps a poor
lunatic is involved, whose relatives, whether they admit it or not, wish
and must wish for his death. Yet the presuppositions of medicine, and
the penal code, prevent the physician from relinquishing his therapeutic
efforts. Whether life is worth while living and when — this guestjon i£
not asked by medicine. Natural science gives us an answer to the ques-
tion of what we must do if we wish to master life technically. It leaves
quite aside, or assumes for its purposes, whether we should and do wish
to master life technically and whether it ultimately makes sense to do so.
Consider a discipline such as aesthetics. The fact that there are works
of art is given for aesthetics. It seeks to find out under what conditions
this fact exists, but it does not raise the question whether or not the
realm of art is perhaps a realm of diabolical grandeur, a realm of this
world, and therefore, in its core, hostile to God and, in its innermost and
aristocratic spirit, hostile to the brotherhood of man. Hence3__aesthetks
does not ask whether there should be works of jrt.
Consider jiirisprudence. It establishes what is valid according to the
rules of juristic thought, which is partly bound by logically compelling
and partly by conventionally given schemata. Juridical thought holds
when certain legal rules and certain methods of interpretations are recog-
nized as binding. Whether there should be law and vyhether one should
establish just these rules — such questions jurisprudence does not answer.
SCIENCE AS A VOCATION I45
It can only state: If one wishes this result, according to the norms of our
legal thought, this legal rule is the appropriate means of attaining it.
Consider the jiistorical and cultural sciences. They teach us how to
understand and interpret polTdan^irrTTstrcTTiterary, and social phenomena
in terms of their origins. But they give us no answer to the question,
whether the existence of these cultural phenomena have been and are
worth while. And they do not answer the further question, whether it is
worth the effort required to know them. They presuppose that there is
an interest in partaking, through this procedure, of the community of
'civilized men.' But they cannot prove 'scientifically' that this is the case;
and that they presuppose this interest by no means proves that it goes
without saying. In fact it is not at all self-evident.
Finally, let us consider the disciplines close to me: sociology, historyj^
economics, political science, and those types of cultural philosophy that^
make it their task to interpret these sciences. It is said, and I agree, that
politics is out of place in the lecture-room. It does not belong there
on the part of the students. If, for instance, in the lecture-room of my
former colleague Dietrich Schiifer in Berlin, pacifist students were to
surround his desk and make an uproar, I should deplore it just as much
as I should deplore the uproar which anti-pacifist students are said to
have made against Professor Forster, whose views in many ways are
as remote as could be from mine. Neither does politics, however, belong
in the lecture-room on the part of the docents, and when the docent is
scientifically concerned with politics, it belongs there least of all.
To take a practical political stand is one thing, and to analyze political
structures and party positions is another. When speaking in a political
meeting about democracy, one does not hide one's personal standpoint;
indeed, to come out clearly and take a stand is one's damned duty. The
words one uses in such a m^e^eting are not means of scientific analysis but
means of canvassing votes and winning over others. They are not plow-
shares to loosen the soil of contemplative thought; they are swords
against the enemies: such words are weapons. It would be an outrage,
however, to use words in this fashion in a lecture or in the lecture-room.
If, for instance, 'democracy' is under discussion, one considers its various
forms, analyzes them in the way they function, determines what results
for the conditions of life the one form has as compared with the other.
Then one confronts the forms of democracy with non-democratic forms
of political order and endeavors to come to a position where the student
may find the point from which, in terms of his ultimate ideals, he can
146 SCIENCE AND POLITICS
take a stand. But the true teacher will beware of imposing from the plat-
form any political position upon the student, whether it is expressed
or suggested. 'To let the facts speak for themselves' is the mostunfair
way of putting over a political position to the student.
Why should we abstain from doing this? I state in advance that some
highly esteemed colleagues are of the opinion that it is not possible to
carry through this self-restraint and that, even if it were possible, it
would be a whim to avoid declaring oneself. Now one cannot demon-
strate scientifically what the duty of an academic teacher is. One can
only demand of the teacher that he have the intellectual integrity to see '
that it is one thing to state facts, to determine mathematical or logical
relations or the internal structure of cultural values, while it is another
thing to answer questions of the value of culture and its individual con-
tents and the question of how one should act in the cultural community
and in political associations. These are quite heterogeneous problems. If
he asks further why he should not deal with both types of problems in
the lecture-room, the answer is: because the prophet and the demagogue
do not belong on the academic platform.
To the prophet and tlie demagogue, it is said: 'Go your ways out into
the streets and speak openly to the world,' that is, speak where criticism
is possible. In the lecture -room we stand opposite our audience, and it
has to remain silent. I deem it irresponsible to exploit the circumstance
that for the sake of their career the students have to attend a teacher's
course while there is nobody present to oppose him with criticism. The
task of the teacher is to serve the students with his knowledge and scien-
tific experience and not to imprint upon them his personal political
views. It is certainly possible that the individual teacher will not entirely
succeed in eliminating his personal sympathies. He is then exposed to the
sharpest criticism in the forum of his own conscience. And this deficiency
does not prove anything; other errors are also possible, for instance,
erroneous statements of fact, and yet they prove nothing against the duty
of searching for the truth. I also reject this in the very interest of science.
I am ready to prove from the works of our historians that whenever the
man of science introduces his personal value judgment, a full under-
standing of the facts ceases. But this goes beyond tonight's topic and
would require lengthy elucidation.
I ask only: How should a devout Catholic, on the one hand, and a
Freemason, on the other, in a course on the forms of church and state
or on religious history ever be brought to evaluate these subjects alike?
SCIENCE AS A VOCATION I47
This is out of the question. And yet the academic teacher must desire
and must demand of himself to serve the one as well as the other by his
knowledge and methods. Now you will rightly say that the devout
Catholic will never accept the view of the factors operative in bringing
about Christianity which a teacher who is free of his dogmatic presup-
positions presents to him. Certainly! The difference, however, lies in the
following: Science 'free from presuppositions,' in the sense of a rejection
of religious bonds, does not know of the 'miracle' and the 'revelation.'
If it did, science would be unfaithful to its own 'presuppositions.' The
believer knows both, miracle and revelation. And science -^free from^
presuppositions' expects from him no less — and no more — than acknowl-
edgment that // the process can be explained without those supernatural
interventions, wliich an empirical explanation has to eliminate as causal
factors, the process has to be explained the way science attempts to do.
And the believer can do this without being disloyal to his faith.
But has the contribution of science no meaning at all for a man who
does not care to know facts as such and to whom only the practical
standpoint matters? Perhaps science nevertheless contributes something.
The__primary task of a useful teacher is tojeach his students jtoj-ecog-
nize 'inconvenient' facts — I mean facts that are inconvenient for their
party opinions. And for every party opinion there are facts that are
extremely inconvenient, for my own opinion no less than for others. I
believe the teacher accomplishes more than a mere intellectual task if he
compels his audience to accustom itself to the existence of such facts. I
would be so immodest as even to apply the expression 'moral achieve-
ment,' though perhaps this may sound too grandiose for something
that should go without saying.
Thus far I have spoken only of practical reasons for avoiding the im-
position of a personal point of view. But these are not the only reasons.
The impossibility of 'scientifically' pleading for practical and interested
stands — except in discussing the means for a firmly given and presup-
posed end — rests upon reasons that lie far deeper.
'Scientific' pleading js meaningless in principle because the various',
value spheres of the world stand in irreconcilable conflict with each
other.TTie elder Mill, whose philosophy I will not praise otherwise, was
on this point right when he said: If one proceeds from pure experience,
one arrives at polytheism. This is shallow in formulation and sounds
paradoxical, and yet there is truth in it. If anything, we realize again
today that something can be sacred not only in spite of its not being
148 SCIENCE AND POLITICS
beautiful, but rather because and in so far as it is not beautiful. You
will find this documented in the fifty-third chapter of the book of Isaiah
and in the twenty-first Psalm. And, since Nietzsche, we realize that
something can be beautiful, not only in spite of the aspect in which it is
not good, but rather in that very aspect. You will find this expressed
earlier in the Fl.eurs du mal, as Baudelaire named his volume of poems.
It is commonplace to observe that something may be true although
it is not beautiful and not holy and not good. Indeed it may be true
in precisely those aspects. But all these are only the most elementary
cases of the struggle that the gods of the various orders and values are
engaged in. I do not know how one might wish to decide 'scientifically'
the value of French and German culture; for here, too, different gods
struggle with one another, now and for all times to come. %/ /
We live as did the ancients when their world was not yet disenchanted
of its gods and demons, only we live in a different sense. As Hellenic
man at times sacrificed to Aphrodite and at other times to Apollo, and,
above all, as everybody sacrificed to the gods of his city, so do we still
nowadays, only the bearing of man has been disenchanted and denuded
of its mystical but inwardly genuine plasticity. Fate, and certainly not
'science,' holds sway over these gods and their struggles. One can on|y
understand what the godhead is for the one order or for the ot^er, or
better, what godhead is in the one or in the other order. With_this
understanding, however, the matter has reached its limit so far as it can
be discussed in a lecture-room and by a professprj Yet the great and vital
problem that is contained therein is, of course, very far from being con-
cluded. But forces other than university chairs have their say in this
matter.
What man will take upon himself the attempt to 'refute scientifically'
the ethic of the Sermon on the Mount? For instance, the sentence, 'resist
no evil,' or the image of turning the other cheek? And yet it is clear,
in mundane perspective, that this is an ethic of undignified conduct; one
has to choose between the religious dignity which this ethic confers and
the dignity of manly conduct which preaches something quite different;
'resist evil — lest you be co-responsible for an overpowering evil.' Ac-
cording to our ultimate standpoint, the one is the devil and the other
the God, and the individual has to decide which is God for him and
which is the devil. And so it goes throughout all the orders of life.
The grandiose rationalism of an ethical and methodical conduct of life
which flows from every religious prophecy has dethroned this polytheism
SCIENCE AS A VOCATION I49
in favor of the 'one thing that is needful.' Faced with the realities of
outer and inner life, Christianity has deemed it necessary to make those
compromises and relative judgments, which we all know from its his-
tory. Today the routines of everyday life challenge religion. Many old
gods ascend from their graves; they are disenchanted and hence take
the form of impersonal forces. They strive to gain power over our lives
and again they resume their eternal struggle with one another. What is
hard for modern man, and especially for the younger generation, is to
measure up to workaday existence. The ubiquitous chase for 'experience'
stems from this weakness; for it is weakness not to be able to countenance
the stern seriousness of our fateful times.
Our civilization destines us to realize more clearly these struggles
again, after our eyes have been blinded for a thousand years — ^blinded by
the allegedly or presumably exclusive orientation towards the grandiose
moral fervor of Christian ethics. — '■ /
But enough of these questions which lead far away. Those of our
youth are in error who react to all this by saying, 'Yes, but we happen ,
to come to lectures in order to experience something more than mere
analyses and statements of fact.' The error is that they seek in the pro- ^^A
fessor something different from what stands before them. iThey crave a ,•
leader and not a teacher. But we are placed upon the platform solely ,as_.,.^^-s^/
teachers. And these are two different things, as one can readily see. Permit
me to take you once more to America, because there one can often ob-
serve such matters in their most massive and original shape.
The American boy learns unspeakably less than the German boy.
In spite of an incredible number of examinations, his school life has not
had the significance of turning him into an absolute creature of ex-
aminations, such as the German. For in America, bureaucracy, which
presupposes the cxaminatieai, diploma as a ticket of admission to the
realm of office prebends, is only in its beginnings. The young American
has no respect for anything or anybody, for tradition or for public office —
unless it is for the personal achievement of individual men. This is what
the American calls 'democracy.' This is the meaning of democracy, how-
ever distorted its intent may in reality be, and this intent is what
matters here. The American's conception of the teacher who faces him
is: he sells me his knowledge and his methods for my father's money,
just as the greengrocer sells my mother cabbage. And that is all. To be
sure, if the teacher happens to be a football coach, then, in this field, he is
a leader. But if he is not this (or something similar in a different field
150 SCIENCE AND POLITICS
of sports), he is simply a teacher and nothing more. And no young
American would think of having the teacher sell him a Weltanschauung
or a code of conduct. Now, when formulated in this manner, we should
reject this. But the question is whether there is not a grain of salt
contained in this feeling, which I have deliberately stated in extreme
with some exaggeration.
Fellow students! You come to our lectures and demand from us the
qualities of leadership, and you fail to realize in advance that of a
M hundred professors at least ninety-nine do not and must not claim to
I be football masters in the vital problems of life, or even to be 'leaders'
in matters of conduct. Please, consider that a man's value does not de-
pend on whether or not he has leadership qualities. And in any case, the
qualities that make a man an excellent scholar and academic teacher
are not the qualities that make him a leader to give directions in prac-
tical life or, more specifically, in politics. It is pure accident if a
teacher also possesses this quality, and it is a critical situation if every
teacher on the platform feels himself confronted with the students' ex-
pectation that the teacher should claim this quality. It is still more critical
if it is left to every academic teacher to set himself up as a leader in the
lecture-room. For those who most frequently think of themselves as
leaders often qualify least as leaders. But irrespective of whether they are
or are not, the platform situation simply offers no possibility of proving
themselves to be leaders. The professor who feels called upon to act as a
counselor of youth and enjoys their trust may prove himself a man in
personal human relations with them. And if he feels called upon to in-
tervene in the struggles of world views and party opinions, he may do so
outside, in the market place, in the press, in meetings, in associations,
wherever he wishes. But after all, it is somewhat too convenient to
demonstrate one's courage in taking a stand where the audience and
possible opponents are condemned to silence.
Finally, you will put the question: 'If this is so, what then does
science actually and positively contribute to practical and personal "life".?'
Therewith we are back again at the problem of science as a 'vocation.'
First, of course, science contributes_tojdhe_tech^
life by calculating external objects_as .welLas man's activities. Well, you
will say, that, after all, amounts to no more than the greengrocer of the
American boy. I fully agree.
Second, science can contribute something that the greengrocer can-
not: methods of thinking, the tools and the training for thought. Per-
SCIENCE AS A VOCATION I5I
haps you will say: well, that is no vegetable, but it amounts to no more
than the means for procuring vegetables. Well and good, let us leave it
at that for today.
Fortunately, however, the contribution of science does not reach its
limit with this. We are in a position to help you to a third objective:
to gain clarity. Of course, it is presupposed that we ourselves possess
clarity. As far as~~this is the case, we can make clear to you the
following:
In practice, you can take this or that position when concerned with a
problem of value — for simplicity's sake, please think of social phenomena
as examples. // you take such and such a stand, then, according to scien-
tific experience, you have to use such and such a means in order to
carry out your conviction practically. Now, these means are perhaps
such that you believe you must reject them. Then you simply must
choose between the end and the inevitable means. Does the end 'justify'
the means? Or does it not? The teacher can confront you with the
necessity of this choice. He cannot do more, so long as he wishes to re-
main a teacher and not to become a demagogue. He can, of course,
also tell you that if you want such and such an end, then you must take
into the bargain the subsidiary consequences which according to all
experience will occur. Again we find ourselves in the same situation
as before. These are still problems that can also emerge for the
technician, who in numerous instances has to make decisions according
to the principle of the lesser evil or of the relatively best. Only to him one
thing, the main thing, is usually given, namely, the end. But as soon
as truly 'ultimate' problems are at stake for us this is not the case.
With this, at long last, we come to the final service that science as such
can render to the aim of clarity, and at the same time we come to the
limits of science.
Besides we can and we should state: In terms of its meaning, such
and such a practical stand can be derived with inner consistency, and
hence integrity, from this or that ultimate weltanschauliche position.
Perhaps it can only be derived from one such fundamental position, or
maybe from several, but it cannot be derived from these or those other
positions. Figuratively speaking, you serve this god and you offend the
other god when you decide to adhere to this position. And if you remain
faithful to yourself, you will necessarily come to certain final conclusions
that subjectively make sense. This much, in principle at least, can be
accomplished. Philosophy, as a special discipline, and the essentially
152 SCIENCE AND POLITICS
philosophical discussions of principles in the other sciences attempt to
achieve this. Thus, if we are competent in our pursuit (which must be
presupposed here) we can force the individual, or at least we can help
him, to give himself an account of the ultimate meaning of his own
conduct. This appears to me as not so trifling a thing to do, even for
one's own personal life. Again, I am tempted to say of a teacher who
succeeds in this: he stands in the service of 'moral' forces; he fulfils the
duty of bringing about self-clarification and a sense of responsibility.
And I believe he will be the more able to accomplish this, the more
conscientiously he avoids the desire personally to impose upon or sug-
gest to his audience his own stand.
This proposition, which I present here, always takes its point of
departure from the one fundamental fact, that so long as life remains
immanent and is interpreted in its own terms, it knows only of an un-
ceasing struggle of these gods with one another. Or speaking directly,
the ultimately possible attitudes toward Hfe are irreconcilable, and
hence their struggle can never be brought to a final conclusion. Thus
it is necessary to make a decisive choice. Whether, under such condi-
tions, science is a worth while Vocation' for somebody, and whether
science itself has an objectively valuable Vocation' are again value judg-
ments about which nothing can be said in the lecture-room. To affirm
the value of science is a presupposition for teaching there. I personally
by my very work answer in the affirmative, and I also do so from
precisely the standpoint that hates intellectualism as the worst devil, as
youth does today, or usually only fancies it does. In that case the
word holds for these youths: 'Mind you, the devil is old; grow old to
understand him.' This does not mean age in the sense of the birth
certificate. It means that if one wishes to settle with this devil, one must
not take to flight before him as so many like to do nowadays. First of
all, one has to see the devil's ways to the end in order to realize his power
and his limitations.
Science today is a 'vocation' organized in special disciphnes in the
service of self-clarification and knowledge of interrelated facts. It is not
the gift of grace of seers and prophets dispensing sacred values and
revelations, nor does it partake of the contemplation of sages and phi-
losophers about the meaning of the universe. This, to be sure, is the
inescapable condition of our historical situation. We cannot evade it so
long as we remain true to ourselves. And if Tolstoi's question recurs to
you: as science does not, who is to answer the question: 'What shall we
SCIENCE AS A VOCATION I53
do, and, how shall we arrange our lives?' or, in the words used here
tonight: 'Which of the warring gods should we serve? Or should we
serve perhaps an entirely different god, and who is he?' then one can
say that only a prophet or a savior can give the answers. If there is no
such man, or if his message is no longer believed in, then you will cer-
tainly not compel him to appear on this earth by having thousands of
professors, as privileged hirelings of the state, attempt as petty prophets
in their lecture-rooms to take over his role. All they will accomplish is
to show that they are unaware of the decisive state of affairs: the prophet
for whom so many of our younger generation yearn simply does not
exist. But this knowledge in its forceful significance has never become
vital for them. The inward interest of a truly religiously 'musical' man
can never be served by veiling to him and to others the fundamental
fact that he is destined to live in a godless and prophetless time by
giving him the ersatz of armchair prophecy. The integrity of his re-
ligious organ, it seems to me, must rebel against this.
Now you will be inclined to say: Which stand does one take towards
the factual existence of 'theology' and its claims to be a 'science'? Let us
not flinch and evade the answer. To be sure, 'theology' and 'dogmas' do
not exist universally, but neither do they exist for Christianity alone.
Rather (going backward in time), they exist in highly developed
form also in Islam, in Manicheanism, in Gnosticism, in Orphism, in
Parsism, in Buddhism, in the Hindu sects, in Taoism, and in the
Upanishads, and, of course, in Judaism. To be sure their systematic
development varies greatly. It is no accident that Occidental Christianity
— in contrast to the theological possessions of Jewry — has expanded and
elaborated theology more systematically, or strives to do so. In the Occi-
dent the development of theology has had by far the greatest historical
significance. This is the product of the Hellenic spirit, and all theology
of the West goes back to it, as (obviously) all theology of the East goes
back to Indian thought. All theology represents an intellectual ration-
alization of the possession of sacred values. No science is jbsolutely free i^j
from, presuppositions, and no science can prove its fundamental value
to the man who rej erts th ese pre?^i ippo^sitionsr~Every~tKeology', however,
adds a few specific presuppositions for its work and thus for the justifica-
tion of its^eHstehce. Their meaning and scope vary. Every theology, in-
cluding for instance Hinduist theology, presupposes that the world must
have a meaning, and the question is how to interpret this meaning so
tjiat it is intellectually conceivable.
154 SCIENCE AND POLITICS
It is the same as with Kant's epistemology. He took for his point of
departure the presupposition: 'Scientific truth exists and it is valid7
and then asked: 'Under which presuppositions of thought is truTE^
possible and meaningful?' The modern aestheticians (actually or ex-
pressly, as for instance, G. v. Lukacs) proceed from the presupposition
that 'works of art exist,' and then ask: 'How is their existence meaning-
ful and possible?'
As a rule, theologies, however, do not content themselves with this
(essentially religious and philosophical) presupposition. They regularly
proceed from the further presupposition that certain 'revelations' are
facts relevant for salvation and as such make possible a meaningful
conduct of life. Hence, these revelations must be believed in. Moreover,
theologies presuppose that certain subjective states and acts possess the
quality of holiness, that is, they constitute a way of Ufe, or at least ele-
ments of one, that is religiously meaningful. Then the question of the-
ology is: How can these presuppositions, which must simply be accepted
be meaningfully interpreted in a view of the universe? For theology,
these presuppositions as such lie beyond the limits of 'science.' They do
not represent 'knowledge,' in the usual sense, but rather a 'possession.'
Whoever does not 'possess' faith, or the other holy states, cannot have
theology as a substitute for them, least of all any other science. On the
contrary, in every 'positive' theology, the devout reaches the point where
the Augustinian sentence holds : credo non quod, sed quia absurdum est.
The capacity for the accomplishment of religious virtuosos — the 'intel-
lectual sacrifice' — is the decisive characteristic of the positively religious
man. That this is so is shown by the fact that in spite (or rather in con-
sequence) of theology (which unveils it) the tension between the value-
spheres of 'science' and the sphere of 'the holy' is unbridgeable. Legiti-
mately, only the disciple offers the 'intellectual sacrifice' to the prophet,
the believer to the church. Never as yet has a new prophecy emerged
(and I repeat here deliberately this image which has offended some) by
way of the need of some modern intellectuals to furnish their souls with,
so to speak, guaranteed genuine antiques. In doing so, they happen to
remember that religion has belonged among such antiques, and of all
things religion is what they do not possess. By way of substitute, however,
they play at decorating a sort of domestic chapel with small sacred images
from all over the world, or they produce surrogates through all sorts of
psychic experiences to which they ascribe the dignity of mystic holiness,
which they peddle in the book market. This is plain humbug or self-
SCIENCE AS A VOCATION 1 55
deception. It is, however, no humbug but rather something very sincere
and genuine if some of the youth groups who during recent years have
quietly grown together give their human community the interpretation
of a reUgious, cosmic, or mystical relation, although occasionally perhaps
such interpretation rests on misunderstanding of self. True as it is that
every act of genuine brotherliness may be linked with the awareness
that it contributes something imperishable to a super-personal realm, it
seems to me dubious whether the dignity of purely human and com-
munal relations is enhanced by these religious interpretations. But that
is no longer our theme.
The fate of our times is characterized by rationalization and intel-
lectualization and, above all^__bY^]^e~^disenchantmunr~6f the world.'
Precisely the ultimate and most sublime values have repeated" "fronT
public life either into the transcendental realm of mystic life or into the
brotherliness of direct and personal human relations. It is not accidental
that our greatest art is intimate and not monumental, nor is it accidental
that today only within the smallest and intimate circles, in personal
human situations, in pianissimo, that something is pulsating that corre-
sponds to the prophetic pneuma, which in former times swept through
the great communities like a firebrand, welding them together. If we
attempt to force and to 'invent' a monumental style in art, such miserable
monstrosities are produced as the many monuments of the last twenty
years. If one tries intellectually to construe new religions without a new
and genuine prophecy, then, in an inner sense, something similar will
result, but with still worse effects. And academic prophecy, finally, will
create only fanatical sects but never a genuine community.
To the person who cannot bear the fate of the times like a man, one
must say: may he rather return silently, without the usual publicity
build-up of renegades, but simply and plainly. The arms of the old
churches are opened widely and compassionately for him. After all, they
do not make it hard for him. One way or another he has to bring his
'intellectual sacrifice' — that is inevitable. If he can really do it, we shall
not rebuke him. For such an intellectual sacrifice in favor of an uncon-
ditional religious devotion is ethically quite a different matter than the
evasion of the plain duty of intellectual integrity, which sets in if one
lacks the courage to clarify one's own ultimate standpoint and rather
facilitates this duty by feeble relative judgments. In my eyes, such re-
ligious return stands higher than the academic prophecy, which does not
clearly realize that in the lecture-rooms of the university no other virtue
156 SCIENCE AND POLITICS
holds but plain intellectual integrity. Integrity, however, compels us to
state that for the many who today tarry for new prophets and saviors,
the situation is the same as resounds in the beautiful Edomite watchman's
song of the period of exile that has been included among Isaiah's oracles:
He calleth to me out of Seir, Watchman, what of the night? The watch-
man said, The morning cometh, and also the night: if ye will enquire, en-
quire ye: return, come.
The people to whom this was said has enquired and tarried for more
than two millennia, and we are shaken when we realize its fate. From this
we want to draw the lesson that nothing is gained by yearning and
tarrying alone, and we shall act differently. We shall set to work and
meet the 'demands of the day,' in human relations as well as in our
vocation. This, however, is plain and simple, if each finds and obeys
the demon who holds the fibers of his very life.
Part II
POWER
V I. ^Structures ol x ower
I : The Prestige and Power of the 'Great Powers'
All political structures use force, but they differ in the manner in which -».
and the extent to which they use or threaten to use it against other po-
litical organizations. These differences play a specific role in determining
the form and destiny of political communities. Not all political structures
are equally 'expansive.' They do not all strive for an outward expansion
of their power, or keep their force in readiness for acquiring political
power over other territories and communities by incorporating them or
making them dependent. Hence, as structures of power, political organiza-
tions vary in the extent to which they are turned outward.
The political structure of Switzerland is 'neutralized' through a col-
lective guarantee of the Great Powers. For various reasons, Switzerland
is not very strongly desired as an object for incorporation. Mutual jeal-
ousies existing among neighboring communities of equal strength pro-
tect it from this fate. Switzerland, as well as Norway, is less threatened
than is the Netherlands, which possesses colonies; and the Netherlands
is less threatened than Belgium, for the latter's colonial possessions are
especially exposed, as is Belgium herself in case of war between her
powerful neighbors. Sweden too is quite exposed.
The attitude of political structures towards the outside may be more
'isolationist' or more 'expansive.' And such attitudes change. The power
of poHtical structures has a specific internal dynamic. On the basis of
this power, the members may pretend to a special 'prestige,' and their /^
pretensions may influence the external conduct of the power structures.
Wirtschaft und Gesellschajt (Tubingen, 1922 edition), part iii, chap. 3, pp. 619-30; and
Gesammelte Aufsaetze ztir Soziologie und Sozialpoliti\ (Tubingen, 1924), pp. 484-6.
Wirtschaft und Gesellschajt appeared posthumously (1921) as part of the Grund-
riss fiir Sozialokonomik, handled by J. C. B. Mohr (P. Siebeck), Tubingen. Weber worked
on the descriptive parts of Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft from 1910, and most of the chapters
were essentially written before 1914.
i
1 60 POWER
Experience teaches that claims to prestige have always played into the
origin of wars. Their part is difficult to gauge; it cannot be determined
in general, but it is very obvious. The realm of 'honor,' which is com-
parable to the 'status order' within a social structure, pertains also to the
interrelations of poUtical structures.
Feudal lords, like modern officers or bureaucrats, are the natural and
primary exponents of this desire for power-oriented prestige for one's
own political structure. Power for their political community means
power for themselves, as well as the prestige based on this power.
For the bureaucrat and the officer, an expansion of power, however,
means more office positions, more sinecures, and better opportunities
for promotion. (This last may be the case even for the officer in a lost
war.) For the feudal vassal, expansion of power means the acquisition
of new objects for inteudation and more provisions for his progeny. In
his speech promoting the crusades, Pope Urban focused attention on
these opportunities and not, as has been said, on 'overpopulation.'
Besides and beyond these direct economic interests, which naturally
exist everv where among strata hving off the exercise of poHtical power,
V,the striving for prestige pertains to all specific power structures and hence
to all political structures. This striving is not identical simply with 'na-
tional pride' — of this, more later — and it is not identical with the mere
pride in the excellent quaUties, actual or presimied, of one's own political
community or in the mere possession of such a polit\'. Such pride can be
highly developed, as is the case among the Swiss and the Norwegians,
yet it may actually be strictly isolationist and free from pretension to
political prestige.
The prestige of power, as such, means in practice the glory of power
over other communities; it means the expansion of power, though not
always by way of incorporation or subjection. The big poHtical com-
munities are the natural exponents of such pretensions to prestige.
Every political structure naturally prefers to have weak rather than
strong neighbors. Furthermore, as everv big poHtical community is a
potential aspirant to prestige and a potential threat to all its neighbors,
the big poHtical community, simply because it is big and strong, is la-
tently and constantly endangered. Finally, by virtue of an unavoidable
'dynamic of power,' wherever claims to prestige flame up — and this
normally results from an acute poHtical danger to peace — they chaUenge
and call forth the competition of all other possible bearers of prestige.
The history of the last decade,^ especially the relations between Germany
STRUCTURES OF POWER l6l
and France, shows the prominent effect of this irrational element in all
political foreign relations. The sentiment of prestige is able to strengthen
the ardent belief in the actual existence of one's own might, for this
behef is important for positive self-assurance in case of conflict. Therefore,
all those having vested interests in the political structure tend systemati-
cally to cultivate this prestige sentiment. Nowadays one usually refers
to those polities that appear to be the bearers of power prestige as the
'Great Powers.'
Among a plurality of co-existing polities, some, the Great Powers,
usually ascribe to themselves and usurp an interest in poHtical and
economic processes over a wide orbit. Today such orbits encompass the
whole surface of the planet.
During Hellenic Antiquity, the 'King,' that is, the Persian king, de-
spite his defeat, was the most widely recognized Great Power. Sparta
turned to him in order to impose, with his sanction, the King's Peace
(Peace of Antalcidas) upon the Hellenic world. Later on, before the
establishment of an empire, the Roman poHty assumed such a role.
For general reasons of 'power dynamics' per se, the Great Powers are
very often expansive powers; that is, they are associations aiming at ex-
panding the territories of their respective poHtical communities bv the
use or the threat of force or bv both. Great Powers, however, are not
necessarily and not always oriented towards expansion. Their attitude
in this respect often changes, and in these changes economic factors play
a weighty part.
For a time British policy, for instance, quite deliberately renimciated
further political expansion. It renounced even the retention of colonies
by means of force in favor of a 'Uttle England' poHcy, resting upon an
isolationist limitation and a reHance on an economic primacy held to be
unshakable. Influential representatives of the Roman rule bv notables
would have liked to carry through a similar program of a 'httle Rome'
after the Punic Wars, to restrict Roman pohtical subjection to Italv and
the neighboring islands.
The Spartan aristocrats, so far as they were able, quite deliberately
limited their political expansion for the sake of isolation. They restricted
themselves to the smashing of all other political structures that endan-
gered their power and prestige. They favored the particularism of city
states. Usually, in such cases, and in many similar ones, the ruling groups
of notables (the Roman nobilitv of office, the English and other liberal
notables, the Spartan overlords) harbor more or less distinct fears lest
1 62 POWER
an 'Imperator,' that is, a charismatic war lord, emerge. A tendency to-
wards centraHzation o£ power goes very readily with a chronically con-
quering 'imperialism,' and the war lord might gain the ascendancy at
the expense of the power of the ruling notables.
Like the Romans, the British, after a short time, were forced out of
their policy of self-restraint and pressed into political expansion. This
occurred, in part, through capitalist interests in expansion.
2: The Economic Foundations of 'Imperialism'
yune might be inclined to beUeve that the formation as well as the
expansion of Great Power structures is always and primarily determined
economically. The assumption that trade, especially if it is intensive and
if it already exists in an area, is the normal prerequisite and the reason
for its poHtical unification might readily be generalized. In individual
cases this assumption does actually hold. The example of the Zollverein "
lies close at hand, and there are numerous others. Closer attention, how-
ever, very often reveals that this coincidence is not a necessary oneTand
that the causal nexus by no means always points in a single direction.
Germany, for instance, has been made into a unified economic terri-
tory only through custom frontiers at her borders, which, in their course,
were determined in a purely political manner.i/If the inhabitants of a
territory seek to sell their products primarily in their own market, we
may speak of an economically unified territory. Were all custom barriers
eliminated, the economically determined market for the Eastern German
cereal surplus, poor in gluten, would not be Western Germany but
rather England. The economically determined market of the mining
products and the heavy iron goods of Western Germany is by no means
Eastern Germany; and Western Germany is not, in the main, the eco-
nomically determined supplier of the industrial products for Eastern
Germany. Above all, the interior lines of communications (railroads) of
Germany would not be — and, in part, are not now — economically deter-
mined routes for transporting heavy goods between east and west.
Eastern Germany, however, would be the economic location for strong
industries, the economically determined market and hinterland for
which would be the whole of Western Russia. Such industries are now ^
cut off by Russian custom barriers and have been moved to Poland,
directly behind the Russian custom frontier. Through this development,
as is known, the political Anschluss of the Russian Poles to the Russian
STRUCTURES OF POWER 1 63
imperial idea, which seemed to be poHtically out o£ the question, has
been brought into the realm of possibility. Thus, in this case, purely
economically determined market relations have a politically unifying
effect.
Germany, however, has been politically united against the economic
determinants as such. It is not unusual for the frontiers of a polity to
conflict with the mere geographically given location of industries; the
political frontiers may encompass an area that, in terms of economic
factors, strives to separate from it. In such situations, tensions between
economic interests nearly always arise. However, if the political bond is
once created, it is very often, yet not always, so incomparably stronger
that under otherwise favorable conditions (e.g. the existence of a com-
mon language) nobody would even think of political separation because
of such economic tensions. This applies, for instance, to Germany.
'' The formation of great states does not always follow the routes of
export trade, although nowadays we are inclined to see things in this
imperialist wayi As a rule, the 'continental' imperialism — European, Rus-
sian, and American — just like the 'overseas imperialism' of the British
and of those modeled after it, follow the tracks of previously existing
capitalist interests, especially in foreign areas that are politically weak.
And of course, at least for the formation of great overseas dominions of
the past — in the overseas empires of Athens, Carthage, and Rome — export
trade played its decisive part.
Yet, even in these state organizations of Antiquity other economic inter-
ests were at least of equal and often of far greater importance than were
commercial profits: ground rents, farmed-out taxes, office fees, and simi-
lar gains were especially desired. In foreign trade, in turn, the interest in
selling within foreign territories definitely receded into the background
as a motive for expansion. In the age of modern capitalism the interest
in exporting to foreign territories is dominant, but in the ancient states
the interest was rather in the possession of territories from which goods
(raw materials) could be imported.
Among the great states that have formed on the inland plains, the ex-
change of goods played no regular or decisive part. The trading of goods
was most relevant for the river-border states of the Orient, especially for
Egypt; that is, for states that in this respect were similar to overseas states.
The 'empire' of the Mongols, however, certainly did not rest on any
intensive trade in goods. There, the mobility of the ruling stratum
of horsemen made up for the lack of material means of communication
164 POWER
and made centralized administration possible. Neither the Chinese, nor
the Persian, nor the Roman Empire after its transition from a coastal
to a continental empire, originated and maintained itself on the basis
of a pre-existing and a particularly intensive inland traffic in goods or
highly developed means of communication. The continental expansion
of Rome was undoubtedly very strongly, though not exclusively, deter-
mined by capitalist interests; and these interests were above all the
interests of tax-farmers, office hunters, and land speculators. They were
not, in the first place, the interests of groups pursuing a particularly in-
tensive trade in goods.
The expansion of Persia was not in any way served by capitalist inter-
est groups. Such groups did not exist there as motivating forces or as
pace-makers, and just as little did they serve the founders of the Chi-
nese Empire or the founders of the Carolingian Monarchy,
Of course, even in these cases, the economic importance of trade was
not altogether absent; yet other motives have played their part in every
political overland expansion of the past, including the Crusades. These
motives have included the interest in higher princely incomes, in preb-
ends, fiefs, offices, and social honors for the vassals, knights, officers,
officials, the younger sons of hereditary officeholders, and so on. The
interests of trading seaports have not, of course, been so decisive as has
overland expansion, although they were important as additional factors
playing their secondary parts. The First Crusade was mainly an overland
campaign.
By no means has trade always pointed the way for political expansion.
The causal nexus has very often been the reverse. Among the empires
named above, those which had an administration technically able to
establish at least overland means of communication did so for adminis-
trative purposes. In principle, this has often been the exclusive purpose,
regardless of whether or not the means of communication were ad-
vantageous for existing or future trading needs.
^ Under present-day conditions, Russia may well be considered a polity
whose means of communication (railroads today) have been primarily
determined not economically but rather politically. /The Austrian south-
ern railroad, however, is another example. (Its shares are still called
'lombards,' a term loaded with political reminiscences.) And there is
hardly a polity without 'strategic railroads,' Nevertheless, great achieve-
ments of this kind have been made with the concomitant expectation
of a traffic giiaranteeing long-run profitableness. It was no different in
STRUCTURES OF POWER 1 65
the past: it cannot be proved that the ancient Roman miUtary highroads
served a commercial purpose; and it certainly was not the case for the
Persian and Roman mail posts, which served exclusively political pur-
poses, ifi spite of this, however, the development of trade in the past has
of course been the normal result of political unification. Political uni-
fication first placed trade upon an assured and guaranteed legal basis.
Even this rule, however, is not without exceptions. For, besides depend-
ing on pacification and formal guarantees of law enforcement, the de-
velopment of trade has been bound to certain economic conditions (espe-
cially the development of capitalism).
The evolution of capitalism may be strangled by the manner in which
a unified political structure is administered. This was the case, for in-
stance, in the late Roman Empire. Here a unified structure took the
place of a league of city states; it was based upon a strong subsistence
agrarian economy. This increasingly made for liturgies as the way of
raising the means for the army and the administration; and these directly
suffocated capitalism.
Yet, if trade in itself is by no means the decisive factor in political
expansion, the economic structure in general does co-determine the extent
and manner of political expansion. Besides women, cattle, and slaves,
scarce land is one of the original and foremost objects of forceful acquisi-
tion. For conquering peasant communities, the natural way is to take the
land directly and to wipe out its settled population.
The Teutonic people's movement has, on the whole, taken this course
only to a moderate degree. As a compact mass, this movement probably
went somewhat beyond the present linguistic frontiers, but only in scat-
tered zones. How far a 'land scarcity,' caused by overpopulation, con-
tributed, how far the political pressure of other tribes, or simply good
opportunities, must be left open. In any case, some of the individual
groups who went out for conquest over a long period of time reserved
their claims to the arable land back home, in case they should return. The
.^and of foreign territories has been politically incorporated in more or
less violent fashion. /
Since land is important for the way in which the victor will exploit
his rights, it also plays an important role for other economic structures.
As Franz Oppenheimer again and again has rightly emphasized, ground
rent is frequently the product of violent political subjection. Given a
subsistence economy and a feudal structure this subjection means, of
course, that the peasantry of the incorporated area will not be wiped
1 66 POWER
out but rather will be spared and made tributary to the conqueror, who
becomes the landlord. This has happened wherever the army was no
longer a V olkjheerbann composed of self-equipped freemen, or yet a
mercenary or bureaucratic mass army, but rather an army of self-
equipped knights, as was the case with the Persians, the Arabs, the Turks,
the Normans, and the Occidental feudal vassals in general.
The interest in ground rent has also meant a great deal for plutocratic
trading communities engaged in conquest. As commercial profits were
preferably invested in land and in indebted bondsmen, the normal aim of
warfare, even in Antiquity, was to gain fertile land fit to yield ground
rent. The Lelantine War,'* which marked a sort of epoch in early Hellenic
history, was almost wholly carried on at sea and among trading cities.
But the original object of dispute between the leading patricians of
Chalcis and Eretria, besides tributes of various sorts, was the fertile
Lelantine plain. One of the most important privileges that the Attic
Maritime League evidently offered to the demos of the ruling city was
to break up the land monopoly of the subject cities. The Athenians were
to receive the right to acquire and mortgage land anywhere.
The establishment of commercitim among cities allied to Rome meant
in practice the same thing. Also, the overseas interests of the mass of
Italics settled throughout the Roman sphere of influence certainly repre-
sented, at least in part, land interests of an essentially capitalist nature,
as we know them from the Verrinic speeches.
During its expansion, the capitalist interest in land may come into
conflict with the land interest of the peasantry. Under a policy of expan-
sion, such a conflict has played its part in the struggles between the
Roman estates in the long epoch ending with the Gracchi. The big hold-
ers of money, cattle, and men naturally wished the newly gained land
to be dealt with as public land for lease {ager publicus). As long as the
regions were not too remote, the peasants demanded that the land be
partitioned in order to provide for their progeny. The compromises be-
tween these two interests are distinctly reflected in tradition, although the
details are certainly not very reliable.
Rome's overseas expansion, as far as it was economically determined,
shows features that have since recurred in basic outline again and
again and which still recur today. These features occurred in Rome in
pronounced fashion and in gigantic dimensions, for the first time in
history. However fluid the transitions to other types may be, these
'Roman' features are peculiar to a specific type of capitalist relations,
STRUCTURES OF POWER 1 67
or rather, they provide the conditions for the existence of this specific
type, which we wish to call imperialist capitalism.
These features are rooted in the capitalist interests of tax-farmers, of
state creditors, of suppliers to the state, of overseas traders privileged
by the state, and of colonial capitalists. The profit opportunities of all
these groups rest upon the direct exploitation of executive powers, that is,
of political power directed towards expansion.
By forcibly enslaving the inhabitants, or at least tying them to the
soil {glebae adscriptio) and exploiting them as plantation labor, the
acquisition of overseas colonies brings tremendous opportunities for
profit for capitalist interest-groups. The Carthaginians seem to have
been the first to have arranged such an organization on a large scale;
the Spaniards in South America, the English in the Southern States of
the Union, and the Dutch in Indonesia were the last to do it in the grand
manner. The acquisition of overseas colonies also facilitates the forceful
monopolization of trade with these colonies and possibly with other
areas. Wherever the administrative apparatus of the polity is not suited
for the collection of taxes from the newly occupied territories — of this,
later — the taxes give opportunities for profit to capitalist tax-farmers.
The material implements of war may be part of the equipment pro-
vided by the army itself, as is the case in pure feudalism. But if these im-
plements are furnished by the polity, rather than by the army, then ex-., f
pansion through war and the procurement of armaments to prepare for '
war represent by far the most profitable occasion for the raising of loans
on the largest scale. The profit opportunities of capitalist state creditors
then increase. Even during the Second Punic War capitalist state credi-
tors prescribed their own conditions to the Roman polity.
Where the ultimate state creditors are a mass stratum of state rentiers
(bondholders), such credits provide profit opportunities for bond-issuing
banks, as is characteristic of our day. The interests of those who supply
the materials of war point in the same direction. In all this, economic
forces interested in the emergence of military conflagrations per se, no
matter what be the outcome for their own community, are called into
life.
Aristophanes distinguished between industries interested in war and
industries interested in peace, although, as is evident from his enumera-
tion, the center of gravity in his time was still the self-equipped army.
The individual citizen gave orders to artisans such as the sword-maker
and the armourer. But even then the large private commercial store-
1 68 POWER
houses, often designated as 'factories,' were above all stores of armaments.
Today the polity as such is almost the sole agent to order war material
and the engines of war. This enhances the capitalist nature of the
process. Banks, which finance war loans, and today large sections of
heavy industry are quand meme economically interested in warfare; the
direct suppliers of armour plates and guns are not the only ones so
interested^'A lost war, as well as a successful war, brings increased busi-
ness to these banks and industries.
The partners within a polity are politically and economically interested
in the existence of large home factories for war engines. This interest
compels them to allow these factories to provide the whole world with
their products, political opponents included.
The extent to which the interests of imperialist capitalism are counter-
balanced depends above all on the profitableness of imperialism as com-
pared with the capitalist interests of pacifist orientation, in so far as purely
capitalist motives here play a direct part. And this in turn is closely
connected with the extent to which economic needs are satisfied by a
private or a collective economy. The relation between the two is highly
decisive for the nature of expansive economic tendencies backed up by
political communities.
In general and at all times, imperialist capitalism, especially colonial
booty capitahsm based on direct force and compulsory labor, has offered
by far the greatest opportunities for profit. They have been greater by far
than those normally open to industrial enterprises which worked for
exports and which oriented themselves to peaceful trade with members
of other polities. Therefore, imperialist capitalism has always existed
wherever to any relevant degree the polity per se, or its subdivisions
(municipalities), has engaged in a public collective economy for satisfying
demands. The stronger such collective economy has been, the more
important imperialist capitalism has been.
Increasing opportunities for profit abroad emerge again today, espe-
cially in territories that are 'opened up' politically and economically,
that is, brought into the specifically modern forms of public and private
'enterprise.' These opportunities spring from 'public commissions' of
arms; from railroad and other construction tasks carried out by the
polity or by builders endowed with monopoly rights; from monopolist
organizations for the collection of levies for trade and industry; from
monopolist concessions; and from government loans.
Such opportunities for profits may be more important and may be
STRUCTURES OF POWER 169
gained at the expense of profits from the usual private trade. The more
that pubhc, collective enterprises gain in economic importance as a gen-
eral form of supplying needs, the more this preponderance increases. This
tendency is directly paralleled by the tendency of politically backed eco-
nomic expansion and competition among individual polities whose part-
ners control investment capital. They aim at securing for themselves
such monopolies and shares in public commissions. And the importance
of the mere 'open door' for the private importation of goods recedes into
the background.
The safest way of guaranteeing these monopolized profit opportunities
to the members of one's own polity is to occupy it or at least to subject
the foreign political power in the form of a 'protectorate' or some such
arrangement. Therefore, this\ 'imperiaUst' tendency increasingly displaces
the 'pacifist' tendency of expansion; which aims merely at 'freedom of
trade.' The latter gained the upper hand only so long as the organization
of supply by private capitalism shifted the optimum of capitalist profit
opportunities towards pacifist trade and not towards monopolist trade,
or at least trade not monopolized by political power.
The universal revival of 'imperialist' capitalism, which has always been
the normal form in which capitalist interests have influenced poHtics,
and the revival of political drives for expansion are thus not accidental.
For the predictable future, the prognosis will have to be made in their
favor.
This situation would hardly change fundamentally if for a moment
we were to make the mental experiment of assuming the individual , ^
polities to be somehow 'state-socialist' communities, that is, associations
supplying a maximum amount of their needs through a collective
economy. All political associations of such a collective economy would
seek to buy as cheaply as possible indispensable goods not produced on
their own territory (cotton in Germany, for instance) from communities
that have natural monopolies which these communities would seek to
exploit. It is probable that force would be used where it would lead
easily to favorable conditions of exchange; the weaker party would
thereby be obliged to pay tribute, if not formally then at least actually.
For the rest, one cannot see why the strong state-socialist communities
should disdain to squeeze tribute out of the weaker communities for
their own partners where they could do so, just as happened everywhere /Tv
during early history.
1 70 POWER
Economically, in a polity without state-socialism the 'mass' of partners
need be as little interested in pacifism as is any single stratum.
The Attic demos— and not they alone— lived economically ofl war.
War brought them soldiers' pay and, in case of victory, tribute from the
subjects. This tribute was actually distributed among the full citizens in
the hardly veiled form of attendance-fees at popular assemblies, court
hearings, and public festivities. Here, every full citizen could directly
grasp the interest in imperialist policy and power. Nowadays, the yields
flowing from abroad to the partners of a polity, including those of im-
perialist origin and those actually representing 'tribute,' do not result in
a constellation of interests so comprehensible to the masses. For under
the present economic order, the tribute to 'creditor nations' assumes the
form of interest payments on debts or of capital profits transferred from
abroad to the propertied strata of the 'creditor nation.' Were one to think
these tributes cancelled for countries like England, France, and Germany,
it would mean a very palpable decline of purchasing power for home
products. This would influence the labor market of the respective work-
ers in an unfavorable manner.
In spite of this,Tabor in creditor nations is of strongly pacifist mind
and on the whole shows no interest whatsoever in the continuation and
compulsory collection of such tributes from foreign debtor communities
that are in arrears.\ Nor does labor show an interest in forcibly participat-
ing in the exploitation of foreign colonial territories and in sharing public
commissions. If this is the case, it is a natural outcome of the immediate
class situation, on the one hand, and, on the other, of the internal social
and political situation of communities in a capitalist era. Those entitled
to tribute belong to the opponent class, who dominate the community.
Every successful imperialist policy of coercing the outside normally — or
at least at first — also strengthens the domestic 'prestige' and therewith
the power and influence of those classes, status groups, and parties, under
whose leadership the success has been attained.
In addition to the sources determined by the social and political con-
stellation, there are economic sources of pacifist sympathy among the
masses, especially among the proletariat. Every investment of capital in
the production of war engines and war material creates job and income
opportunities; every administrative agency may become a factor directly
contributing to prosperity in a particular case and, even more so, indirectly
contributing to prosperity by increasing demand and fostering the inten-
sity of business enterprise. This may become a source of enhanced confi-
STRUCTURES OF POWER IJl
dence in the economic opportunities of the participating industries, which
may lead to a speculative boom.
The administration, however, withdraws capital from alternate uses
and makes it more difficult to satisfy demands in other fields. Above all,
the means of war are raised by way of levies, which the ruling strata, by
virtue of their social and political power, usually know how to transfer
to the masses, quite apart from the limits set to the regimentation of
property for 'mercantilist' considerations.
Countries little burdened by military expenses (the United States) and
especially the small countries (Switzerland, for example) often experience
a stronger economic expansion than do other Powers. Moreover, occa-
sionally small countries are more readily admitted to the economic exploi-
tation of foreign countries because they do not arouse the fear that po-
litical intervention might follow economic intrusion.
Experience shows that the pacifet interests of petty bourgeois and pro-
letarian strata very often and very easily fail. This is partly because of
the easier accessibility of all unorganized 'masses' to emotional influences
and partly because of the indefinite notion (which they entertain) of
some unexpected opportunity somehow arising through war. Specific
interests, like the hope entertained in overpopulated countries of acquir-
ing territories for emigration, are, of course, also important in this con-
nection. Another contributing cause is the fact that the 'masses,' in con-
trast to other interest-groups, subjectively risk a smaller stake in the game.
In case of a lost war, the 'monarch' has to fear for his throne, republican
power-holders and groups having vested interests in a 'republican consti-
tution' have to fear the victorious 'general.' The majority of the proper-
tied bourgeoisie have to fear economic loss from the brakes' being placed
upon 'business as usual.' Under certain circumstances, should disorganiza-
tion follow defeat, the ruling stratum of notables has to fear a violent
shift in power in favor of the propertyless. The 'masses' as such, at least
in their, subjective conception and in the extreme case, have nothing
concrete to lose but their lives. The valuation and effect of this danger
strongly fluctuates in their own minds. On the whole, it can easily be
reduced to zero through emotional influence.
3: The Nation
' The fervor cf this emotional influence does not, in the main, have
an economic origin. It is based upon sentiments of prestige, which often
^
172 POWER
extend deep down to the petty bourgeois masses of political structures
rich in the historical attainment of power-positions. The attachment to
all this poHtical prestige may fuse with a specific belief in responsibilty
towards succeeding generations. The great power structures per se are
then held to have a responsibility of their own for the way in which
power and prestige are distributed between their own and foreign polities.
It goes without saying that all those groups who hold the power to
steer common conduct within a polity will most strongly instill them-
selves with this ideal fervor of power prestige. They remain the specific
and most reliable bearers of the idea of the state as an imperialist power
structure demanding unqualified devotion.
/ In addition to the direct and material imperialist interests, discussed
above, there are partly indirect and material and partly ideological in-
terests of strata that are in various ways intellectually privileged within
a polity and, indeed, privileged by its very existence.' They comprise
especially all those who think of themselves as being the specific 'partners'
of a specific 'culture' diflfused among the members of the polity. Under
the influence of these circles, the naked prestige of power' is unavoidably
transformed into other special fo: ms of prestige and especially into the
idea of the 'nation.'
If the concept of 'nation' can in any way be defined unambiguously, it
certainly cannot be stated in terms of empirical qualities common to those
who count as members of the nation. In the sense of those using the term
at a given time, the concept undoubtedly means, above all, that one may
exact from certain groups of men a specific sentiment of solidarity in the
face of other groups. Thus, the concept belongs in the sphere of values.
Yet, there is no agreement on how these groups should be delimited or
about what concerted action should result from such solidarity.
In ordinary language, 'nation' is, first of all, not identical with the
'people of a state,' that is, with the membership of a given polity. Numer-
ous polities comprise groups among whom the independence of their
'nation' is emphatically asserted in the face of the other groups; or, on
the other hand, they comprise parts of a group whose members declare
this group to be one homogeneous 'nation' (Austria before 1918, for ex-
ample). Furthermore, a 'nation' is not identical with a community speak-
ing the same language; that this by no means always suliices is indicated
by the Serbs and Croats, the North Americans, the Irish, and the English.
On the contrary, a common language does not seem to be absolutely
STRUCTURES OF POWER' I73
necessary to a 'nation.' In official documents, besides 'Swiss People' one
also finds the phrase 'Swiss Nation.' And some language groups do not
think of themselves as a separate 'nation,' for example, at least until re-
cently, the white Russians. The pretension, however, to be considered a
special 'nation' is regularly associated with a common language as a cul-
ture value of the masses; this is predominantly the case in the classic
country of language conflicts, Austria, and equally so in Russia and in
eastern Prussia. But this linkage of the common language and 'nation' is
of varying intensity; for instance, it is very low in the United States'. as
well as in Canada.
. 'National' solidarity among men speaking the same language may be
just as well rejected as accepted. Solidarity, instead, may be linked
with differences in the other great 'culture value of the masses,' namely,
a religious creed, as is the case with the Serbs and Croats. National
solidarity may be connected with differing social structure and mores
and hence with 'ethnic' elements, as is the case with the German Swiss
and the Alsatians in the face of the Germans of the Reich, or with the
Irish facing the British. Yet above all, national solidarity may be linked
to memories of a common political destiny with other nations, among
the Alsatians with the French since the revolutionary war which repre-
sents their common heroic age, just as among the Baltic Barons with the
Russians whose political destiny they helped to steer. ^'
It goes without saying that 'national' affiliation need not be based upon
common blood. Indeed, everywhere the especially radical 'nationalists'
are often of foreign descent. Furthermore, although a specific common
anthropological type is not irrelevant to nationality, it is neither sufficient
nor a prerequisite to found a nation. Nevertheless, the idea of the 'na-
tion' is apt to include the notions of common descent and of an essen- [ /r -.
tial, though frequently indefinite, homogeneity. The nation has these no-
tions in common with the sentiment of solidarity of ethnic communities,
which is also nourished from various sources. But the sentiment of ethnic
solidarity does not by itself make a 'nation.' Undoubtedly, even the white
Russians in the face of the Great Russians have always had a sentiment of
ethnic solidarity, yet even at the present time they would hardly claim
to qualify as a separate 'nation.' The Poles of Upper Silesia, until re-
cently, had hardly any feeling of solidarity with the 'Polish Nation.' They
felt themselves to be a separate ethnic group in the face of the Germans,
but for the rest they were Prussian subjects and nothing else.
Whether the Jews may be called a 'nation' is an old problem. The mass
Hn
174 POWER
o£ the Russian Jews, the assimilating West-European-American Jews, the
Zionists — these would in the main give a negative answer. In any case,
their answers would vary in nature and extent. In particular, the ques-
tion would be answered very differently by the peoples of their environ-
ment, for example, by the Russians on the one side and by the Americans
on the other — or at least by those Americans who at the present time still
maintain American and Jewish nature to be essentially similar, as an
American President has asserted in an official document.
Those German-speaking Alsatians who refuse to belong to the German
'nation' and who cultivate the memory of political union with France do
not thereby consider themselves simply as members of the French 'na-
tion.' The Negroes of the United States, at least at present, consider
themselves members of the American 'nation,' but they will hardly ever
be so considered by the Southern Whites.
Only fifteen years ago, men knowing the Far East, still denied that
the Chinese qualified as a 'nation'; they held them to be only a 'race.' Yet
today, not only the Chinese political leaders but also the very same ob-
servers would judge differently. 'Thus it seems that a group of people
J under certain conditions may attain the quality of a nation through
'^'. specific behavior, or they may claim this quality as an 'attainment' — and
i within short spans of time at that.
There are, on the other hand, social groups that profess indifference to,
and even directly relinquish, any evaluational adherence to a single na-
tion. At the present time, certain leading strata of the class movement of
the modern proletariat consider such indifference and relinquishment to
be an accomplishment. Their argument meets with varying success, de-
pending upon political and linguistic affiliations and also upon different
strata of the proletariat; on the whole, their success is rather diminishing
at the present time.
An unbroken scale of quite varied and highly changeable attitudes to-
ward the idea of the 'nation' is to be found among social strata and also
within single groups to whom language usage ascribes the quality of
'nations.' The scale extends from emphatic affirmation to emphatic nega-
tion and finally complete indifference, as may be characteristic of the
citizens of Luxembourg and of nationally 'unawakened' peoples. Feudal
strata, strata of officials, entrepreneurial bourgeois strata of various cate-
gories, strata of 'intellectuals' do not have homogeneous or historically
constant attitudes towards the idea.
The reasons for the belief that one represents a nation vary greatly,
STRUCTURES OF POWER I75
just as does the empirical conduct that actually results from affiliation or
lack of it with a nation. The 'national sentiments' of the German, the
Englishman, the North American, the Spaniard, the Frenchman, or the
Russian do not function in an identical manner. Thus, to take only the
simplest illustration, national sentiment is variously related to political
associations, and the 'idea' of the nation may become antagonistic to the
empirical scope of given poUtical associations. This antagonism may lead
to quite different results.
Certainly the Italians in the Austrian state-association would fight
Italian troops only if coerced into doing so. Large portions of the Ger-
man Austrians would today fight against Germany only with the great-
est reluctance; they could not be relied upon. The German Americans,
however, even those valuing their 'nationality' most highly, would fight
against Germany, not gladly, yet, given the occasion, unconditionally.
The Poles in the German State would fight readily against a Russian
Polish army but hardly against an autonomous Polish army. The Austrian
Serbs would fight against Serbia with very mixed feelings and only in
the hope of attaining common autonomy. The Russian Poles would fight
more reliably against a German than against an Austrian army.
V It is a well-known historical fact that within the same nation the in-
tensity of solidarity felt toward the outside is changeable and varies
greatly in strengths On the whole, this sentiment has grown even where
internal conflicts of interest have not diminished. Only sixty years ago
the Kreuzzeitung^ still appealed to the intervention of the emperor of
Russia in internal German affairs; today, in spite of increased class
antagonism, this would be difficult to imagine.
In any case, the differences in national sentiment are both significant
and fluid and, as is the case in all other fields, fundamentally different
answers are given to the question: What conclusions are a group of
people willing to draw from the 'national sentiment' found among them }
No matter how emphatic and subjectively sincere a pathos may be formed
among them, what sort of specific joint action are they ready to develop.''
The extent to which in the diaspora a convention is adhered to as a
'national' trait varies just as much as does the importance of common
conventions for the belief in the existence of a separate 'nation.' In the
face of these value concepts of the 'idea of the nation,' which empirically
are entirely ambiguous, a sociological typology would have to analyze all
sorts of community sentiments of solidarity in their genetic conditions
176 POWER
and in their consequences for the concerted action of the participants.
This cannot here be attempted.
Instead, we shall have to look a little closer into the fact that the
.^dea of the nation for its advocates stands in very intimate relation to
'prestige' interests. The earliest and most energetic manifestations of the
idea, in some form, even though it may have been veiled, have contained
the legend of a providential 'mission.' Those to whom the representatives
of the idea zealously turned were expected to shoulder this mission. An-
other element of the early idea was the notion that this mission was
facilitated solely through the very cultivation of the peculiarity of the
group set off as a nation. Therewith, in so far as its self-justification is
sought in the value of its content, this mission can consistently be
thought of only as a specific 'culture' mission. The significance of the
'nation' is usually anchored in the superiority, or at least the irreplaceabil-
ity, of the culture values that are to be preserved and developed only
through the cultivation of the peculiarity of the group. It therefore goes
without saying that the intellectuals, as we have in a preliminary fashion
called them, are to a specific degree predestined to propagate the 'national
idea,' just as those who wield power in the polity provoke the idea of
the state.
By 'intellectuals' we understand a group of men who by virtue of their
peculiarity have special access to certain achievements considered to be
'culture values,' and who therefore usurp the leadership of a 'culture
community.' ^
* * #
In so far as there is at all a common object lying behind the obviously
ambiguous term 'nation,' it is apparently located in the field of politics.)
One might well define the concept of nation in the following way: a
nation is a community of sentiment which would adequately manifest
itself in a state of its own; hence, a nation is a community which
normally tends to produce a state of its own.
The causal components that lead to the emergence of a national
sentiment in this sense may vary greatly. If we for once disregard re-
ligious belief— which has not yet played its last role in this matter, espe-
cially among Serbs and Croats— then common purely political destinies
have first to be considered. Under certain conditions, otherwise hetero-
geneous peoples can be melted together through common destinies. The
reason for the Alsatians' not feeling themselves as belonging to the
German nation has to be sought in their memories. Their political
STRUCTURES OF POWER I77
destiny has taken its course outside the German sphere for too long;
their heroes are the heroes of French history. If the custodian of the
Kolmar museum wants to show you which among his treasures he cher-
ishes most, he takes you away from Griinewald's altar to a room filled
with tricolors, pompier, and other helmets and souvenirs of a seemingly
most insignificant nature; they are from a time that to him is a heroic
age.
An existing state organization whose heroic age is not felt as such
by the masses can nevertheless be decisive for a powerful sentiment of
solidarity, in spite of the greatest internal antagonisms. The state is
valued as the agency that guarantees security, and this is above all the
case in times of external danger, when sentiments of national solidarity
flare up, at least intermittently. Thus we have seen how the elements
of the Austrian state, which apparently strove to separate without re-
gard for consequences, united during the so-called Nibelung danger."
It was not only the officials and officers, who were interested in the state
as such, who could be relied upon, but also the masses of the army.
The conditions of a further component, namely, the influence of race,
is especially complex. Here we had better disregard entirely the mystic
effects of a community of blood, in the sense in which the racial fanati-
cists use the phrase. The differences among anthropological types are
but one factor of closure, social attraction, and repulsion. They stand
with equal right beside differences acquired through tradition. There
are characteristic differences in these matters. Every Yankee accepts the
civilized quarter-breed or octoroon Indian as a member of the nation; he
may himself claim to have Indian blood. But he behaves quite differently
toward the Negro, and he does so especially when the Negro adopts
the same way of life as he and therewith develops the same social aspira-
tions. How can we explain this fact.''
Aesthetic aversions may come into play. The 'odor of Negroes,' how-
ever, of which so many fables are told, is, according to my experience,
not to be discovered. Black wet-nurses, black coachmen riding shoulder
to shoulder with the lady steering the cabriolet, and above all, several
million mixed bloods are all too clear proof against the allegedly natural
repulsion between these races. This aversion is social in nature, and I
have heard but one plausible explanation for it: the Negroes have been
slaves; the Indians have not.
Of those cultural elements that represent the most important positive
basis for the formation of national sentiment everywhere, a common
lyS POWER
language takes first place. But even a common language is not entirely
indispensable nor sufficient by itself. One may state that there was a
specific Swiss national sentiment in spite of the lack of common lan-
guage; and, in spite of a common language, the Irish have no common
national sentiment with the British. The importance of language is neces-
sarily increasing along with the democratization of state, society, and
culture. For the masses a common language plays a more decisive eco-
nomic part than it does for the propertied strata of feudal or bourgeois
stamp. For these latter, at least in the language areas of an identical cul-
ture, usually speak the foreign language, whereas the petty bourgeois
and the proletarian in a foreign language area are much more dependent
upon cohesion with those speaking the same language. Above all, the
language, and that means the literature based upon it, is the first and
for the time being the only cultural value at all accessible to the masses
who ascend toward participation in culture. The enjoyment of art re-
quires a far greater degree of education, and art has a far more aristo-
cratic nature than has literature. This is precisely the case in literature's
greatest achievements. It is for this reason that the notion held in Austria
that democratization must soften the language conflicts was so Utopian.
The facts have, in the meanwhile, thoroughly disproved such notions.
Common cultural values can provide a unifying national bond. But for
this the objective quality of the cultural values does not matter at all, and
therefore one must not conceive of the 'nation' as a 'culture community.'
\ Newspapers, which certainly do not assemble what is most sublime in
literary culture, cement the masses most strongly.j Concerning the actual
social conditions that make for the rise of a unified literary language
and for a literature in the vernacular, which is something else, all re-
search is now only in its beginnings. For the case of France, one may
refer to the essays of my esteemed friend Vossler.
I should like to point to only one typical supporter of this development,
because it is one seldom recognized as such, namely, women. They con-
tributed specifically to the formation of national sentiment linked to
language. An erotic lyric addressed to a woman can hardly be written
in a foreign language, because then it would be unintelligible to the ad-
dressee. The courtly and chivalrous lyric was neither singular, nor always
the first literature to displace Latin by the national language, as happened
in France, Italy, Germany, or to displace Chinese, as happened in Japan.
Nevertheless, the courtly lyric has frequently and permanently done so,
and has subHmated national languages into literary languages. I cannot
STRUCTURES OF POWER 1 79
here describe how after this initial displacement the importance of the
vernacular steadily progressed under the influence of the broadening
administrative tasks of state and church, hence as the language of ad-
ministration and of the sermon. I may, however, add one more word
about the economic determination of modern language conflicts.
Today quite considerable pecuniary and capitalist interests are
anchored in the maintenance and cultivation of the popular language:
the interests of the publishers, editors, authors, and the contributors to
books and periodicals and, above all, to newspapers. Once Polish and
Latvian newspapers existed, the language fight conducted by govern-
ments or ruling strata of another language community had become as
good as hopeless, for reasons of state are powerless against these forces.
And to the interests in profits of the capitalist another material interest
of great weight has to be added: the bilingual candidates in competing
for office throw their bilingualism into the balance and seek to lay claim
upon as large an area of patronage as possible. This occurred among
the Czechs in Austria with their surplus of intellectual proletariat bred
en masse. The tendency as such is old.
The conciliar, and at the same time nationalist, reaction against the
universalism of the papacy in the waning Middle Ages had its origin,
to a great extent, in the interests of the intellectuals who wished to see
the prebends of their own country reserved for themselves and not occu-
pied by strangers via Rome. After all, the name natio as a legal concept
for an organized community is found first at the universities and at the
reform councils of the church. At that time, however, the linkage to the
national language per se was lacking; this linkage, for the reasons stated,
is specifically modern.
If one believes that it is at all expedient to distinguish national senti-
ment as something homogeneous and specifically set apart, one can do
so only by referring to a tendency toward an autonomous state. And one
must be clearly aware of the fact that «entiments of solidarity, very
heterogeneous in both their nature and their origin, are comprised within
national sentiments.
V II. Class, otatus, x arty^
i: Economically Determined Power and the Social Order
Law exists when there is a probabiHty that an order will be upheld by a
specific staff of men who will use physical or psychical compulsion with
the intention of obtaining conformity with the order, or of inflicting
sanctions for infringement of it.^ The structure of every legal order di-
rprflT,rinfliipnrf^ '^hp divt rilvnlnn nf ppw^'-j economic or Otherwise, within
its respective community. This is true of all legal orders and not only
that of the state. In general, we understand by 'power* the chance of a
man or of a number ofjueiL-to realize their own will in a communal
action even_agaigsL-tl*e-^esisI;ance_of others who are participating in the
action.
'Economically conditioned' power is not, of course, identical with
'power' as such. On the contrary, the emergence of economic power may
be the consequence of power existing on other grounds. Man does not
strive for power only in order to enrich himself economically. Power,
including economic power, may be valued 'for its own sake.' Very fre-
quently the striving for power is also conditioned by the social 'honor'
it entails. Not all power, however, entails social honor : The typical Amer-
ican Boss, as well as the typical big speculator, deliberately relinquishes
social honor. Quite generally, 'mere economic' power, and especially
'naked' money power, is by no means a recognized basis of social
honor. Nor is power the only basis of social honor. Indeed, social honor,
or prestige, may even be the basis of political or economic power, and
very frequently has been. Power, as well as honor, may be guaranteed by
the legal order, but, at least normally, it is not their primary source. The
*Wirtschnjt and Gesellschaft, part iii, chap. 4, pp. 631-40. The first sentence in para-
graph one and the several definitions in this chapter which are in brackets do not appear
in the original text. They have been taken from other contexts of Wirtschajt und Gesell-
schaft.
180
CLASS, STATUS, PARTY l8l
fegal order is rather an additional factor jhatj£jaliaiices^the_chance to hold
pnwer_or honor; but it cannot always secure thernJ__
The way in whicK social honor is distributed in a community between
typical groij0~particij3ating intHis'llTsrribution^'weTnay^afrthe^^S&ci^
order.' The social order and the economic order are, of course, similarly
related to the 'legal order.' However, the social and the economic order
I are not identical. The economic order is for us fnerely the way In which
econorflic^goods and services are distributed and used. The social order is
of course conditioned by the economic order to a high degree, and in its
' turn reacts upon it.
' Now: 'classes,' 'status ffloups,' and 'parties' are phenomenaof the dis-
[ tribution of power within a community.
2; Determination of Class-Situation by Market-Situation
In our terminology, 'classes' are not communities; they merely repre-
sent possible, and frequent, bases for communal action. We may speak
of a 'classlwhen (i) o-iiumber of people JiavLejn common_a^specific causal
component of their life chances, in so far as (2) this component_is_r£pre-
sented exclusively by economic interests in the possession of^opds _and
opportunities for income, andr^3} is represented ulider the conditions of
the_£ommodity or labor markets. [These points refer to 'class situation,'
which we~may~express more briefly as the^tygkaj^ chance fQLJ-.-JlJ'PP^y
oi_gpodSj external living conditions. and_gersonal lif^ fyppripHrpy, m- so
far as this chance is determined by the amount and kind oJ^oweTjOr
lack of sucb^tQjdispose of goods or skills for the jake of jncome in a given
€concuiiic_iu:der-. The term 'class' refers to any group of people that is^
found in the same class situation.]
It is the most elemental economic fact that the way in which the dis-
position over material property is distributed among a plurality of people,
meeting competitively in the market for the purpose of exchange, in itself
creates specific life chances. According to the law of marginal utility this
mode o£ distribution excludes the non-a\vners from competing for highly
valued goods; it favors the owners and, in fact, gives to them a monopoly
to acquire such goods. Other things being equal, this mode of distribu-
tion monopolizes the opportunities for profitable deals for all those who,
provided with goods, do not necessarily have to exchange them. It in-
creases, at least generally, their power in price wars with those who, being
propertyless, have nothing to offer but their services in native form or
VA^
1 82
POWER
^
goods in a form constituted through their own labor, and who above all
are compelled to get rid of these products in order barely to subsist.
This mode of distribution gives to the_ propertied a monopoly on ^he
*^6sslbility'31ra^fonng propert}^Jrom the sphere of use as a 'fortune,'
-roTKejpKere^f 'capital goods'; that is, it gives them the entrepreneurial
iunction and all chances to share direcdy or indirectlyjn_returns on capi-
talTAirtliis holds true within the area in which pure market condition?
fcfprevail.- 'Property' and 'lack of property' are, therefore, the basic cate-
~ m gories of all class situations! iFdoes not matter whether these two cate-
gories become effective in price wars or in competitive struggles.
Within these categories, hov(^ever^__dass situations are further difiFer-
enriated:^on_the_one handT according to the kind of property that is us-
aEle^for returns; and, on the other hand, according to the kind of services
tHaTcan beoffered in the market. Ownership of domestic buildings; pro-
ductiVe- ciLabhAhinuiLl>; "wafehouses; stores; agriculturally usable land,
large and small holdings — quantitative differences with possibly qualita-
tive consequences — ; ownership of mines; cattle; men (slaves); disposi-
tion over mobile instruments of production, or capital goods of all sorts,
especially money or objects that can be exchanged for money easily and
at any time; disposition over products of one's own labor or of others'
labor differing according to their various distances from consumability;
disposition over transferable monopolies of any kind — all these distinc-
tions differentiate the class situations of the propertied just as does^he
'meaning^ which [hey can and do give to the~ utihzation ^f~property,
especiall}r~to property which has moliey equivalence. Accordingly, the
^propertied, for instance, may belong to the class of rentiers or to the
class of entrepreneurs.
Those who have no property but who of^er services are_differentiat^d^_
just as mucti accordmg to their kinds of services as according to the way
in which they make use of these services, in a continuous or discontinu-
ous relation to a recipient. But always this is the generic connotation of
the concept of class: that the kind of chance in the marf^et is the decisive
moment which presents a common condition for the individual's fate.
'Class situation' is. m_this sense, ultimately 'market situation.' The effect
of naked possession per j-e, which among cattle~br'eeders gives the non-
owmrig slave^oFlefrihto the power of the cattle owner, is only a fore-
runner of real 'class' formation. However, in the cattle loan and in the
naked severity of the law of debts in such communities, for the first time
mere^ossession' as such emerges as decisive for the fate of the indi-
CLASS, STATUS, PARTY 1 83
vidual. This is very much in contrast to the agricultural communities
based on labor. The creditor-debtor relation becomes the basis of 'class
situations' only in those cities where a 'credit market,' however primi-
tive, with rates of interest increasing according to the extent of dearth
and a factual monopolization of credits, is developed by a plutocracy.
Therewith 'class struggles' begin.
Those men whose fate is not determined by the chance of using goods
or services for themselves on the market, e.g. slaves, are not, however, a
'class' in the technical sense of the term. They are, rather, a 'status group.'
\/ 3: Communal Action Flowing from Class Interest
According to our terminology, the factor that creates 'class' is unam-
biguously economic interest, and indeed, only those interests involved
irrtTie~existence of the 'market.' Nevertheless, the concept of 'class-interest'
is an ambiguous one: even as an empirical concept it is ambiguous as
soon as one urid^e'rstands by it something other than the factual direction
of interests following with a certain probability from the class situation
for a certain 'average' of those people subjected to the class situation. The
class situation and other circumstances remaining the same, the direction
in which the individual worker, for instance, is likely to pursue his in-
terests may vary widely, according to whether he is constitutionally quali-
fied for the task at hand to a high, to an average, or to a low degree.
In the same way, the direction of interests may vary according to
whether or not a communal action of a larger or smaller portion of those
. comm©nly-a£fe£ted by the 'class sittrationr-or-even-^n association among
them, e.g. a 'trade union,' has grown out of the class situation from which
the individual may or may not expect promising results. [Communal
action jefers to that action which is oriented to the feeling of the actors
that they belong together. Societal action, on the other hand, is oriented
to a rationaliy-Uiotivated adjustment of interests.;] The rise of societal or
even of communal action fromj^commonrlasssitnatinn is by no means
a universal phenomenon.
le class situation may be restricted in its effects to the generation of
essentially similar reactions, that is to say, within our terminology, of 'mass
actions.' However, it may not have even this result. Furthermore, often
merely an amorphous communal action emerges. For example, the 'mur-
muring' of the workers known in ancient oriental ethics : the moral disap-
proval of the work-master's conduct, which in its practical significance was
184 POWER
probably equivalent to an increasingly typical phenomenon of precisely the
latest industrial development, namely, the 'slow down' (the deliberate lim-
iting of work effort) of laborers by virtue of tacit agreement. The degreejn
which 'communaLaction^^and possibly 'societal action,' emei-ggT^^om^the
'mass actions' of the members of a class is linked to general cultural con-
dTttons, especialty to those"of 'aiTtntellectual sort. It Ts~also~niiked"To"t1ie
'extent of the xcnitrags-"ThM"^£ve^~atreaH>r^olved, and is especially
linked tolhe transparency ofjthe connections between the causes an^jKe
consequences'oFme 'class situation.'. For however different life chances
may be, this fact in itself, according to all experience^ by no jneans^ives
birthjQ-£lass-a€tion' (communal^actioirbjrthe members of a class). The
fact of being conditioned and the results of the class situation must be
distinctly recognizable. For only then the contrast of life chances can be
felt not as an absolutely given fact to be accepted, but as a resultant from
either (i) the given distribution of property, or (2) the structure of
the concrete economic order. It is only then that people may react against
the class structure not only through acts of an intermittent and irrational
protest, but in the form of rational association. There have been 'class
situations' of the first category (i), of a specifically naked and transparent
sort, in the urban centers of Antiquity and during the Middle Ages; espe-
cially then, when great fortunes were accumulated by factually monopo-
lized trading in industrial products of these localities or in foodstuffs.
Furthermore, under certain circumstances, in the rural economy of the
most diverse periods, when agriculture was increasingly exploited in a
profit-making manner. The most important historical example of the
second category (2) is the class situation of the modern 'proletariat.'
4: Types of 'Class Struggle'
Thus every class may be the carrier of any one of the possibly in-
numerable forms of 'class action,' but this is not necessarily so. In any
case, a class does not in itself constitute a community. To treat 'class'
conceptually as having" the same value as 'community' leads to distor-
tion. That men in the same class situation regularly react in mass actions
to such tangible situations as economic ones in the direction of those
interests that are most adequate to their average number is an important
and after all simple fact for the understanding of historical events. Above
all, this fact must not lead to that kind of pseudo-scientific operation with
the concepts of 'class' and 'class interests' so frequently found these days.
CLASS, STATUS, PARTY 1 85
and which has found its most classic expression in the statement of a tal-
ented author, that the individual may be in error concerning his interests
but that the 'class' is 'infallible' about its interests. Yet, if classesassuch
are not communities, nevertheless class situations emerge only on the
basis~of'communaliza^on. The communal action that brings forth class
situations, how^ever, is noj_ basically action between membefs~6f~the
identical class; it is an action between members of different classes. Com-
munal actions that directly determine the class situation of the worker
and-tbe entrepreneur are: the labor market, the commodities rnarket,
and the capitalistic enterprise. But, in its turn, the existence of a capital-
istic enterprise presupposes that a very specific communal action exists
and that it is specifically structured to protect the possession of goods
per se, and especially the power of individuals to dispose, in principle
freely, over the means of production. The existence of a capitalistic enter-
prise is preconditioned by a specific kind of 'legal order.' Each kind of j
class situation, and above all when it rests upon the power of property
per se, will become most clearly efficacious when all other determinants
of reciprocal relations are, as far as possible, eliminated in their signifi-
cance. It is in this way that the utilization of the power of property in the
market obtains its most sovereign importance.
Now 'status groups' hinder the strict carrying through of the sheer
market principleT In the present context they are of interest to us only
from this one point of view. Before we briefly consider them, note that
not much of a general nature can be said about the more specific kinds
of antagonism between 'classes' (in our meaning of the term). The great
shift, which has been going on continuously in the past, and up to our
times, may be summarized, although at the cost of some precision: the
struggle in which class situations are effective has progressively shifted
from consumption credit toward, first, competitive struggles in the com-
modity market and, then, toward price wars on the labor market.] The
'class struggles' of antiquity — to the extent that they were genuine class
struggles and not struggles between status groups — were initially carried
on by indebted peasants, and perhaps also by artisans threatened by debt
bondage and struggling against urban creditors. For debt bondage is the j
normal result of the differentiation of wealth in commercial cities, espe-
cially in seaport cities. A similar situation has existed among cattle
breeders. Debt relationships as such produced class action up to the time
of Cataline. Along with this, and with an increase in provision of grain
for the city by transporting it from the outside, the struggle over the
l86 POWER
means of sustenance emerged. It centered in the first place around the
provision of bread and the determination of the price of bread. It lasted
throughout antiquity and the entire Middle Ages. The propertyless as
such flocked together against those who actually and supposedly were
interested in the dearth of bread. This fight spread until it involved all
those commodities essential to the way of life and to handicraft produc-
tion. There were only incipient discussions of wage disputes in antiquity
and in the Middle Ages. But they have been slowly increasing up into
modern times. In the earlier periods they were completely secondary to
slave rebellions as well as to fights in the commodity market.
The propertyless of antiquity and of the Middle Ages protested against
monopolies, pre-emption, forestalling, and the withholding of goods from
the market in order to raise prices. Today the central issue is the deter-
mination of the price of labor.
This transition is represented by the fight for access to the market
and for the determination of the price of products. Such fights went on
between merchants and workers in the putting-out system of domestic
handicraft during the transition to modern times. Since it is quite a gen-
eral phenomenon we must mention here that the class antagonisms that
are conditioned through the market situation are usually most bitter
between those who actually and directly participate as opponents in price
wars. It is not the rentier, the share-holder, and the banker who suffer
the ill will of the worker, but almost exclusively the manufacturer and
the business executives who are the direct opponents of workers in price
wars. This is so in spite of the fact that it is precisely the cash boxes of
the rentier, the share-holder, and the banker into which the more or less
'unearned' gains flow, rather than into the pockets of the manufacturers
or of the business executives. This simple state of affairs has very fre-
quently been decisive for the role the class situation has played in the
formation of political parties. For example, it has made^ possible the
varieties of patriarchal socialism and the frequent attemptJ-^formerly, at
least — of threatened status groups to form alliances with the proletariat
against the 'bourgeoisie.'
5: Status Honor
Nii' In contrast to classes, status groups are normally communities. They
are, however, often "of an amorphous kind. In contrast to the purely
economically determined 'class situation' we wish to designate as 'status
I
CLASS, STATUS, PARTY 187
situation' everYjypical component ,Q£,th.£, life fate of men jhat Js deter-
mined by a specific, positive^oiuiegative, social estimation of honor. This
honor rnay^be connected with any quaHty shared by a pluraHty, and, of
course, it can be knit to a class situation: class distinctions are linked in
the most varied ways with status distinctions. Property as such is not al-
ways recognized as a status qualification, but in the long run it is, and
with extraordinary regularity. In the subsistence economy of the organ-
ized neighborhood, very often the richest man is simply the chieftain.
However, this often means only an honorific preference. For example,
in the so-called pure modern 'democracy,' that is, one devoid of any ex-
pressly ordered status privileges for individuals, it may be that only the
families coming under approximately the same tax class dance with one
another. This example is reported of certain smaller Swiss cities. But
status honor need not necessarily be linked with a 'class situation.' On the
contrary, it normaITv~ stands, in sharp nppoa'tinn to the pretensions^
sheer property.
Both propertied and propertyless people can belong to the same
status group, and frequently they do with very tangible consequences.
This 'equality' of social esteem may, however, in the long run become
quite precarious. The 'equality' of status among the American 'gentle-
men,' for instance, is expressed by the fact that outside the subordination
determined by the different functions of 'business,' it would be considered
strictly repugnant — wherever the old tradition still prevails — if even the
richest 'chief,' while playing billiards or cards in his club in the evening,
would not treat his 'clerk' as in every sense fully his equal in birthright.
It would be repugnant if the American 'chief would bestow upon his
'clerk' the condescending 'benevolence' marking a distinction of 'posi-
tion,' which the Gerrpan chief can never dissever from his attitude. This
is one of the most important reasons why in America the German
'clubby-ness' has never been able to attain the attraction that the Ameri-
can clubs have.
6: Guarantees of Status Stratification
Ig^content, status honor is normally expressed by the fact_that_above_
all else a specific style of life can be expected tfom all tKose who wish to
belong to the circlerLirilced with this expectatioiT~are "restrictions on
'social!, intercourse (that is, intercourse which is not subservient to eco-
nomic or any other of business's 'functional' purposes). These restric-
POWER
tions may confine normal marriages to within the status circle and may
lead to complete endogamous closure. As soon as there is not a mere
individual and socially irrelevant imitation of another style of hfe, but an
agreed-upon communal action of this closing character, the 'status' de-
Velopmgit2_.under way.
In its characteristic form, stratification by 'status groups' on the basis
of conventional styles of life evolves at the present time in the United
States out of the traditional democracy. For example, only the resident
of a certain street ('the street') is considered as belonging to 'society,'
is qualified for social intercourse, and is visited and invited. Above all,
this differentiation evolves in such a way as to make for strict submis-
sion to the fashion that is dominant at a given time in society. This sub-
mission to fashion also exists among men in America to a degree un-
known in Germany. Such submission is considered to be an indication
/V of the fact that a given man pretends to qualify as a gentleman. This sub-
mission decides, at least prima facie, that he will be treated as such. And
this recognition becomes just as important for his employment chances
in 'swank' establishments, and above all, for social intercourse and mar-
riage with 'esteemed' families, as the qualification for dueling among
Germans in the Kaiser's day. As for the rest : certain families resident for
a long time, and, of course, correspondingly wealthy, e.g. 'F. F. V., i.e.
First Families of Virginia,' or the actual or alleged descendants of the
'Indian Princess' Pocahontas, of the Pilgrim fathers, or of the Knicker-
bockers, the members of almost inaccessible sects and all sorts of circles
setting themselves apart by means of any other characteristics and
badges ... all these elements usurp 'status' honor. yThe development of
A A\ status is essentially a question of stratification resting upon usurpation.
Such usurpation is the normal origin of almost all status honor. But the
road from this purely conventional situation to legal privilege, positive
, or negative, is easily traveled as soon as a certain stratification of the
social order has in fact been 'lived in' and has achieved stability by virtue
of a stable distribution of economic pov»'er.
7: 'Ethnic' Segregation and 'Caste'
I Where the consequences have been realized to their full extent, the
I status group evolves into a closed 'caste.' Status distinctions are then
I guaranteed not merely by conventions and laws, but also by rituals. This
occurs in such a way that every physical contact with a member of any
CLASS, STATUS, PARTY 1 89
caste that is considered to be 'lower' by the members of a 'higher' caste is
considered as making for a rituahstic impurity and to be a stigma which
must be expiated by a rehgious act. Individual castes develop quite dis-
tinct cults and gods.
V In general, however, the status structure reaches such extreme conse-
quences only where there are underlying differences which are held to
be 'ethnic' The 'caste' is, indeed, the normal form in which ethnic com-
munities usually live side by side in a 'societalized' manner. These ethnic
communities believe in blood relationship and exclude exogamous mar-
riage and social intercourse. Such a caste situation is part of the phe-
nomenon of 'pariah' peoples and is found all over the world. These people
form communities, acquire specific occupational traditions of handicrafts
or of other arts, and cultivate a belief in their ethnic community. They
live in a 'diaspora' strictly segregated from all personal intercourse, ex-
cept that of an unavoidable sort, and their situation is legally precarious.
Yet, by virtue of their economic indispensability, they are tolerated, in-
deed, frequently privileged, and they live in interspersed political com-
munities. The Jews are the most impressive historical example.
A 'status' segregation grown into a 'caste' diiJers in its structure from
a mere 'ethnic' segregation: the caste structure transforms the horizontal
and unconnected coexistences of ethnically segregated groups into a verti-
cal social system of super- and subordination. Correctly formulated: a
comprehensive societalization integrates the ethnically divided communi-
ties into specific political and communal action. In their consequences
they differ precisely in this way./tihmc coexistences condition a mutual
repulsion and disdain but allow each ethnic community to consider its
own honor as the highest one; the caste structure brings about a social
subordination and an acknowledgment of 'more honor' in favor of the
privileged caste and status groups. This is due to the fact that in the
caste structure ethnic distinctions as such have become 'functional' dis-
tinctions within the political societalization (warriors, priests, artisans
that are politically important for war and for building, and so on). But
even pariah people who are most despised are usually apt to continue
cultivating in some manner that which is equally peculiar to ethnic and
to status communities: the belief in their own specific 'honor.' This is
the case with the Jews.
i, Only with the negatively privileged status groups does the 'sense of
dignity' take a specific deviation. A sense of dignity is the precipitation
in individuals of social honor and of conventional demands which a
1 00 POWER
positively privileged status group raises for the deportment of its mem-
bers. Xhe sense of dignity thft rhnrprfprJT-pg pn<;i>ivp]y privileged status
groups is naturally related to their 'being' which does not transcend itself,
that is, it is to their 'beauty and excellence' (xaAo->cdYa'&ia),jrheirJ^ing-
dornis 'of this world.' They livefor the present and hj exploiting their
great past. The sense of dignity of the negatively privileged strata natu-
rally-fcfcrs to afog^ejpag-heyondiitfae" present, whether it is of this life
or oT^another] In other words, it must be nurtured by the belief in a
^pTrvidential 'mission' and by a belief in a specific honor before God.
The 'chosen people's' dignity is nurtured by a belief either that in the
beyond 'the last will be the first,' or that in this life a Messiah will appear
to bring forth into the light of the world which has cast them out the
hidden honor of the pariah people. This simple state of affairs, and not
the 'resentment' which is so strongly emphasized in Nietzsche's much
admired construction in the Genealogy cf Morals, is the source of the
religiosity cultivated by pariah status groups. In passing, we may note
that resentment may be accurately applied only to a limited extent; for
one of Nietzsche's main examples, Buddhism, it is not at all applicable.
/Incidentally, the development of status groups from ethnic segrega-
tions is by no means the normal phenomenon. On the contrary, since
objective 'racial differences' are by no means basic to every subjective
sentiment of an ethnic community, the ultimately racial foundation of
status structure is rightly and absolutely a question of the concrete indi-
vidual case. Very frequently a status group is instrumental in thepro-
duction of a thoroughbred anthfopolc^atType. tl!ertainly a status group
is to aKigndegree effective in producing extreme types, for they select
personally qualified individuals (e.g. the Knighthood selects those who
are fit for warfare, physically and psychically). But selection is far from
being the only, or the predominant, way in which status groups are
formed: Political membership or class situation has at all times been at
J least as frequendy decisive. And today the class situation is by far
the predominant factor, for of course the possibility of a style of hfe
expected for members of a status group is usually conditione'd eco-
nomically.
8: Status Privileges
For all practical purposes, stratification by status goes hand in hand
i^ witb-ajnonopolization of idealand~mareml--goods or opportunities; in a
manner we have come to know as typical. Besides the specific status
CLASS, STATUS, PARTY I9I
honor, which always rests upon distance and exclusiveness, we find all \/**
sorts of material monopolies. Such honorific preferences may consist
of the privilege of wearing special costumes, of eating special dishes
taboo to others, of carrying arms — which is most obvious in its conse-
quences— the right to pursue certain non-professional dilettante artistic
practices, e.g. to play certain musical instruments. Of course, material
monopolies provide the most effective motives for the exclusiveness of a
status group; although, in themselves, they are rarely sufficient, almost
always they come into play to some extent. Within a status circle there
is the question of intermarriage: the interest of the families in the
monopolization of potential bridegrooms is at least of equal importance
and is parallel to the interest in the monopolization of daughters. The
daughters of the circle must be provided for. With an increased inclosure
of the status group, the conventional preferential opportunities for special
employment grow into a legal monopoly of special offices for the mem-
bers. Certain goods become objects for monopolization by status groups.
In the typical fashion these include 'entailed estates' and frequently also
the possessions of serfs or bondsmen and, finally, special trades. This
monopolization occurs positively when the status group is exclusively en-
titled to own and to manage them; and negatively when, in order to
maintain its specific way of life, the status group must not own and
manage them.
i^Qi^ decisive role of a 'style of life' in status 'honor' means that status
groups are the specific bearers^jaf _aliJcpnventions.' In^wEatever way it i
may be manifest, all 'stylization' of life either originates in status groups 1
or is at least conserved by them. Even if the principles of status conven-
tions differ greatly, they reveal certain typical traits, especially among
those strata which are most privileged. Quite generally, among privileged
status groups there is a status disqualification that operates against the
performance of common physical labor. This disqualification is now
'setting in' in America against the old tradition of esteem for labor.
Very frequently every rational economic pursuit, and especially 'entre-
preneurial activity,' is looked upon as a disqualification of status. Artistic
and literary activity is also considered as degrading work as soon as it is
exploited for income, or at least when it is connected with hard physical
exertion. An example is the sculptor working like a mason in his dusty
smock as over against the painter in his salon-like 'studio' and those
forms of musical practice that are acceptable to the status group.
192 POWER
9: Economic Conditions and Effects of Status Stratification
The frequent disqualification of the gainfully employed as such is a
direct result of the principle of status stratification peculiar to the social
order, and of course, of this principle's opposition to a distribution of
power which is regulated exclusively through the market. These two
factors operate along with various individual ones, which will be touched
upon below.
We have seen above that the market and its processes 'knows no per-
sonal distinctions': 'functional' interests dominate it. It knows nothing
of 'honor.' The status order means precisely the reverse, viz.: stratifica-
tion in terms of 'honor' and of styles^_life peculiar tOL-Status groups as
such. If mere economic acquisition and naked economic power still
bearing the stigma of its extra-status origin could bestow upon anyone
who has won it the same honor as those who are interested in status by
virtue of style of life claim for themselves, the status order would be
threatened at its very root. This is the more so as, given equality of status
honor, property per se represents an addition even if it is not overtly
acknowledged to be such. Yet if such economic acquisition and power
gave the agent any honor at all, his wealth would result in his attaining
more hqnor than those who successfully claim honor by virtue of style
of life. (Therefore all groups having interests ^n the stajtus^prder react
(.with special sKarpness precisely against the pretensions of purely eco-
""Sylnnrnic arqiiisitinn- In most cases they react the more vigorously the
more they feel themselves threatened. Calderon's respectful treatment of
the peasant, for instance, as opposed to Shakespeare's simultaneous and
ostensible disdain of the canaille illustrates the different way in which
a firmly structured status order reacts as compared with a status order
that has become economically precarious. This is an example of a state
of affairs that recurs everywhere. Precisely because of the rigorous reac-
tions against the claims of property per se, the 'parvenu' is never ac-
cepted, personally and without reservation, by the privileged status
groups, no matter how completely his style of life has been adjusted to
theirs. They wiU^only^ accept Jiis descendants who have been ediicated.
in the conventions of theit. status group and_wEo~havejieYer_besmirched
itsjignor by their own economic labor.
I As to the general e^ect^ of the status order, only one consequence can
/ be stated, but it is a very important one: the hindrance of the free de-
CLASS, STATUS, PARTY 1 93
velopment of the market occurs^ first for those goods which status groups
directly withhel3"troiTrfree exchange by monopohzation. This monopoH-
zation may be effected eithTfiegaMy- or convcntionallyT^W example, in
many Hellenic cities during the epoch of status groups, and also originally
in Rome, the inherited estate (as is shown by the old formula for indic-
tion against spendthrifts) was monopolized just as were the estates of
knights, peasants, priests, and especially the clientele of the craft and
merchant guilds. The market is restricted, and the power of naked prop-
erty per se, which gives its stamp to 'class formation,' is pushed into the
background. The results of this process can be most varied. Of course,
they do not necessarily weaken the contrasts in the economic situation.
Frequently they strengthen these contrasts, and in any case, where strati-
fication by status permeates a community as strongly as was the case
in all political communities of antiquity and of the Middle Ages, one can
never speak of a genuinely free market competition as we understand
it today. There are wider effects than this direct exclusion of special
goods from the market. From the contrariety between the status order
and the purely economic order mentioned above, it follows that in
most instances the notion of honor peculiar to status absolutely
abhors that which is essential to the market: higgling. Honor abhors
higgling among peers and occasionally it taboos higgling for the mem-
bers of a status group in general. Therefore, everywhere some status
groups, and usually the most influential, consider almost any kind of
overt participation in economic acquisition as absolutely stigmatizing.
With some over-simplification, one might thus say that 'classes' are
stratified according to their relations to the production and acquisition
of goods; whereas 'status groups' are stratified accordmg to the principles
of^_their consumption of goods as represented by special 'styles of life.'
An 'occupational group' is also a status group. For normally, it"success-
fully claims social honor only by virtue of the special style of life which
may be determined by it. The differences between classes and status
groups frequently overlap. It is precisely those status communities most
strictly segregated in terms of honor (viz. the Indian castes) who today
show, although within very rigid limits, a relatively high degree of in-
difference to pecuniary income. However, the Brahmins seek such in-
come in many different ways.
As to the general economic conditions making for the predominance
of stratification by 'status,' only very little can be said. When the bases of
the acquisition and distribution of goods are relatively stable, stratifica-
194 POWER
tion by status is favored. Every technological repercussion and economic
transformation threatens stratification by status and pushes the class situ-
ation into the foreground. Epochs and countries in which the naked class
J \ ; , situation is of predominant significance are regularly the periods of tech-
nical and economic transformations. And every slowing down of the
shifting of economic stratifications leads, in due course, to the growth of
status structures and makes for a resuscitation of the important role of
social honor.
id: Parties
Whereas the genuine place of 'classes' is within the economic order, the
place of 'status groups' is within the social order, that is, within the
sphere of the distribution of 'honor.' From within these spheres, classes
and status groups influence one another and they influence the legal order
and are in turn influenced by it. But ('parties' live in a house of 'power,'
Their action is oriented toward the acquIsitIon25f~^cral 'power,' that
is to say, toward influencing a communal action no matter what its con-
tent-Diay^be. In principle, parties may exist in a sociaF^lub' as well as
in a 'state.' As over against the actions of classes and status groups, for
which this is not necessarily the case, the communal actions of 'parties'
always mean a societalization. For party actions are, always' directed to-
ward a goal which is striven for in planned manner. This goal may be a
'cause' (the party may aim at reahzing a program for ideal or material
purposes), or the goal may be 'personal' (sinecures, power, and from
these, honor for the leader and the followers of the party). Usually
the party action aims at all these simultaneously. Parties are, therefore,
only^possible within communities^jthaL_5ie societal i zed, that is, whicli
have some rational order and a staff of persons available_who are ready
tocnlorce it. For parties ajm precisely at influencing this staf^j, and if pos-
siblcj to^recruit it from party followers.
In any individuar~case7~partTesmay represent interests determined
through 'class situation' or 'status situation,' and they may recruit their
following respectively from one or the other. But they need be neither
purely 'class' nor purely 'status' parties. In most cases they are partly
class parties and partly status parties, but sometimes they are neither.
They may represent ephemeral or enduring structures. Their means of
attaining power may be quite varied, ranging from naked violence of
^ny sort to canvassmg tor^yotes with coarse or subtTe~means: money,
social influence, the force of speech, suggestion, clumsy hoax, and so on to
CLASS, STATUS, PARTY I95
the rougher or more artful tactics of obstruction in parHamentary
bodies.
The sociological structure of parties differs in a basic way according to
the kind of communal actioir~which they struggle to influenceTPaiTi'es
also differ according to whether or not the community is stratified by
status or by classes. Above all else, they (vary according to the structure U/%-.
of domination within the community. For their leaders normally deal
with the conquest of a community. They are, in the general concept
which is maintained here, not only products of specially modern forms
of domination. We shall also designate as parties the ancient and me-
dieval 'parties,' despite the fact that their structure differs basically from
the structure of modern parties. By virtue of these structural differences
of domination it is impossible to say anything about the structure of
parties without discussing the structural forms of social domination
per se. Parties, which are always structures struggling for domination,
are very frequently organized in a very strict 'authoritarian' fashion. . .
/Concerning 'classes,' 'status groups,' and 'parties,' it must be said in
general that they necessarily presuppose a comprehensive societalization,
and especially a political framework of communal action, within which
they operate^ This does not mean that parties would be confined by the
frontiers of any individual political community. On the contrary, at all
times it has been the order of the day that the societalization (even when
it aims at the use of military force in common) reaches beyond the
frontiers of politics. This has been the case in the solidarity of interests
among the Oligarchs and among the democrats in Hellas, among the
Guelfs and among Ghibellines in the Middle Ages, and within the Calvin-
ist party during the period of religious struggles. It has been the case up
to the solidarity of the landlords (international congress of agrarian land-
lords), and has continued among princes (holy alliance, Karlsbad de-
crees), socialist workers, conservatives (tht longing of Prussian conserva-
tives for Russian intervention in 1850), But their aim is not necessarily
the establishment of new international political, i.e. territorial, dominion.
In the main they aim to influence the existing dominion.*
* The posthumously published text breaks off here. We omit an incomplete sketch of
types of 'warrior estates.'
V iii. Jjureaucracy
I : Characteristics of Bureaucracy
Modern officialdom functions in the following specific niannerj
I. There isthe principle of fixed and official jurisdictional areas^-
^iihiciu^e generally ordered by rules, that is, bylaws or admimsfrative
regulations.
1. The regular activities required for the purposes of the bureau-
cratically governed structure are distributed in a fixed way as official
duties.
2. The authority to give the commands required for the discharge
of these duties is distributed in a stable way and is strictly delimited by
rules concerning the coercive means, physical, sacerdotal, or otherwise,
which may be placed at the disposal of officials.
3. Methodical provision is made for the regular and continuous fulfil-
ment of these duties and for the execution of the corresponding rights;
only persons who have the generally regulated qualifications to serve
are employed.
In public and lawful governmentthese three elern£n.ts constiLiite
^bureaucfaiic authority.' In private economicJomi nation, they constitute
bureaucratic njanagemeiTtr"Bureaucracy. thus understood, is fully de-
veloped in political and ecclesiastical communities only in the modern
state, and, in the private economy, only in the most advanced institutions
of capitalism.\Permanent and public office authority, with fixed jurisdic-
tion, is not the historical rule but rather the exception.. This is so even
in large political structures such as those of the ancient Orient, the Ger-
manic and Mongolian empires of conquest, or of many feudal structures
of state. In all these cases, the ruler executes the most important measures
through personal trustees, table-companions, or court-servants. Their
Wirtschaft itnd Gesellschajt, part in, chap. 6, pp. 650-78.
196
BUREAUCRACY I97
commissions and authority are not precisely delimited and are tempo-
rarily called into being for each case.
II. The principles of office ^hierarchy \and of levels of graded authority
mean a firrnly ordered system of super- and subordination in which
there is a supervision of the lower offices by the higher ones. Such a sys-*
tern offers the governed the possibility of appealing the decisiori~6f a
lower office to its higher authority, in a definitely regulated manner.
With the full development of the bureaucratic type, the office hierarchy
is monocratically organized. The princj^leo/hierarchical pffice authority
is found in all bureaucratic structures : in state and ecclesiasticaTstructures •
as well as in large party organizations and private enterprises. It does
not matter for the character of bureaucracy whether its authority is
called 'private' or 'public'
When the principle of jurisdictional 'competency' is fully carried
through, hierarchical subordination — at least in public office — does not
mean that the 'higher' authority is simply authorized to take over the
business of the 'lower.' Indeed, the opposite is the rule. Qnce_established
and having fulfilled its task, an office tends to continue in existence and
be heId"5^IinQther incumbent. ^~
III. The management of the modern office is based upon written
documents X^the files')^ which are ^preserved in their original or draught
form. There is, therefore, a staff of sub^ern officials and scribes of all
sorts. The body of officials actively engaged in a 'public' office, along
with the respective apparatus of material implements and the files,
make up a 'bureau.' In private enterprise, 'the bureau' is often called 'the
ofEge.' " ■
In principle, the modern organization of the civil service separates the
bureau from the private domicile of the official, and, in general, bureau-
cracy segregates official activity as something distinct from the sphere
oF^private life. Public momes and equipment are divorced from the
private property of the official. This condition is everywhere the product
of a long development. Nowadays, it is found in public as well as in
private enterprises; in the latter, the principle extends even to the leading
entrepreneur. In prinsiple, the executive office is separated from the
household, business from private correspondence, and business assets
from private fortunes. The more consistently the modern type of busi-
ness management has been carried through the more are these separa-
tions the case. The beginnings of this process are to be found as early
as the Middle Ages.
198 POWER
It is the peculiarity of tlie modern entrepreneur that he conducts him-
self as the 'first official' of his enterprise, in the very same way in which
the ruler of a specifically modern bureaucratic state spoke of himself as
'the first servant' of the state.^ The idea that the bureau activities of the
state are intrinsically different in character from the management of
private economic offices is a continental European notion and, by way of
contrast, is totally foreign to the American way.
IV. Office management, at least all specialized office management —
and such management is distinctly modern — usuiHIyTpresupposes thor-
ough and expert training. ^This increasingly holds for the modern execu-
tive and employee of private enterprises, in the same manner as it holds
for the state official.
V_.W1^^" ^^^ nfFire is fully__j.eveloped, official^actiyity demands the
full working capacity of the official, irrespective of the fact tKat his oblig-
atory time inrtRe_bureauTjnay be firmly deUmited. InTlKe normal case,
this is only the product of a long development, in the public as well as
in the private office. Formerly, in all cases, the normal state of affairs
was reversed: official business was discharged as a secondary activity.
VI. The management of the office follows general rules, which are
more" or less stable, rnore or less exhaustive, and wKictrTaTr~bc-icarned.
Knowledge of these rules represents a special technical learning which
the officials possess. It involves jurisprudence, or administrative or busi-
ness management.
' The reduetioHr of ^?aodern-office' management to rules is deeply ein- _
.bedded .in its very nature. The theory of modern public administration,
for instance, assumes that the authority to order certain matters by de-
cree— which has been legally granted to public authorities — does not en-
title the bureau tojxgulate- the matter by commands given for each case,
buL-XMily.-to regulate. the matter abstractly. This stands in extreme con-
trast to the regulation of all relationships through individual privileges
and bestowals of favor, which is absolutely dominant in patrimonialism,
at least in so far as such relationships are not fixed by sacred tradition.
2: The Position of the Official
All thisresults in the following for the internal, and external position
of tjie.,official:
I. Office holding is a 'vocation.' This is shown, first, in the requirement
of a firmly prescribed course of training, which demands the entire
BUREAUCRACY I99
capacity for work for a long period of time, and in the generally pre-
scribed and special examinations which are prerequisites of employment. ^ TE^"^
Furthermore, the position of the ogicial is in the nature of a duty. This |- e^- '^^
determines the internal structure of his relations, in the following man-
ner: Legally and actually, office holding is not considered a source to be
exploited for rents or emoluments, as was normally the case during the
Middle Ages and frequently up to the threshold of recent times. Nor is
office holding considered a usual exchange of services for equivalents, -^c;^
as is the case with free labor contracts. (Entrance into an office, includm^\ ^ Vr
one in the^riyate economy, is considered an acceptance of a specific obli- L- V^
gation of faithful management in return for a secure existenceJit is de- J "v-V^''
cisive Tor the specific nature of modern loyalty to an office that, in the : ,j-^'
pure type, it does not establish a relationship to a person, like the vassal's
or disciple's faith in feudal or in patrimonial relations of authority /Mod-_
ern loyaltyjs devoted t^qjmpersonal_andfun^^^ Behind the,. -^
functional purposes, of course,, 'ideas of culture-values' usually stan J. }
These are ersatz for the earthly or supra-mundane personal master:
ideas such as 'state,' 'church,' 'community,' 'party,' or 'enterprise' are
thought of as being realized in a community; they provide an ideological
halo for the master.
The political official — at least in the fully developed modern state — is
not considered the personal servant of a ruler. Today, the bishop, the
priest, and the preacher are in fact no longer, as in early Christian times,
holders of purely personal charisma. The supra-mundane and sacred
values which they offer are given to everybody who seems to be worthy
of them and who asks for them. In former times, such leaders acted
upon the personal command of their master; in principle, they were re-
sponsible only to him. Nowadays, in spite of the partial survival of the
old theory, such religious leaders are officials in the service of a func-
tional purpose, which in the [present-day 'church' has become routinized
and, in turn, ideologically hallowed..
II. The personal position of the official is patterned in the following^
way^
I. Whether he is in a private office or a public bureau, the modern
official always strives and usually enjoys a distinct social esteem as com- .-''
pared with the governed. His social position is guaranteed by the pre-
scriptive rules_^of rank order and, for the political official, by special
deHmUions of the criminal code against 'insults of officials' and 'con-
tempt' of state and church authorities.
v<^^
200 POWER
The actual social position of the official is normallyvhighest ^here, as
in old civilized countries, the following conditions prevail: a strong de-
mand for administration by trained experts; a strong and stable social dif-
ferentiation, w^here the official predominantly derives from socially and
economically privileged strata because of the social distribution of power;
or where the costliness of the required training and status conventions are
binding upon him. The possession of educational certiEcates — to be dis-
cussed elsewhere^ — are usually linked with qualification for office.
Naturally, such certificates or patents enhance the 'status element' in the
social position of the official. For the rest this status factor in individual
cases is explicitly and impassively acknowledged; for example, in the
prescription that the acceptance or rejection of an aspirant to an official
career depends upon the consent ('election') of the members of the offi-
cial body. This is the case in the German army with the officer corps.
Similar phenomena, which promote this guild-like closure of officialdom,
are typically found in patrimonial and, particularly, in prebendal official-
doms of the past. The desire to resurrect such phenomena in changed
forms is by no means infrequent among modern bureaucrats. For in-
stance, they have played a role among the demands of the quite prole-
tarian and expert officials (the tretyj element) during the Russian revo-
lution.
Usually the social esteem of the officials as such is especially (low where
the demand for expert administration and the dominance oj^status con-
ventions are weak. This is especially the case in the United States; it is
often the case in new settlements by virtue of their wide fields for profit-
making and the great instabiHty of their social stratification.
2. The giure^tj^e of bureaucratic official is a^^ointed by a superior au-
thority. An official elected by the governed is not a purely bureaucratic
figure. Of course, the formal existence of an election does not by itself
mean that no appointment hides behind the election — in the state, espe-
cially, appointment by party chiefs. Whether or not this is the case does
not depend upon legal statutes but upon the way in which the party
mechanism functions. Once firmly organized, the parties can turn a
formally free election into the mere acclamation of a candidate designated
by the party chief. As a rule, however, a formally free election is turned
into a fi^tj conducted^ according "to^defrriite TuTesTfor votes in favor of
one of two designated candidates.
In all circumstances, the designation of officials by means of an ei^-
tiori among the governed modifies the strictness of hierarchical sub-
BUREAUCRACY 201
ordinatiort In principle, an official who is so elected has an autonomous'
position opposite the superordinate official. I^he elected officiaF does not
derive his position 'from above' but 'from below/yor at least not from a
superior authority of the official hierarchy but from powerful party men
('bosses'), who also determine his further career. The career of the
elected official is not, or a^ least not primarily, dependent upon his
chief in the administration. (The official who is not elected but appointed
by a chief normally functions more exactlyJfrom a technical point of
view, because, all other circumstances being equal, it is more likely
that purely functional points of consideration and qualities will deter-
mine his selection and career. As laymen, the governed can become
acquainted with the extent to which a candidate is expertly qualified
for office only in terms of experience, and hence only after his service.
Moreover, in every sort of selection of officials by election, parties quite
naturally give decisive weight not to expert considerations but to the
services a follower renders to the party boss. This holds for all kinds
of procurement of officials by elections, for the designation of formally
free, elected officials by party bosses when they determine the slate of
candidates, or the free appointment by a chief who has himself been
elected. The contrast, however, is relative: substantially similar conditions
hold where legitimate monarchs and their subordinates appoint officials,
except that the influence of the followings are then less controllable.
.Where the demand for administration by trained experts is consider-
able, and the party followings have to recognize an intellectually de-
veloped, educated, and freely moving 'public opinion,' the use of un-
qualified officials falls back upon the party in power at the next elec-
tion. Naturally, this is more likely to happen when the officials are ap-
pointed by the chief. The demand for a trained administration now ex-
ists in the United States, but in the large cities, where immigrant votes \
are 'corraled,' there is, of course, no educated public opinion. Therefore,
popular elections of the administrative chief and also of his subordinate
officials usually endanger the expert qualification of the official as well '^
as the precise functioning of the bureaucratic mechanism. It also weakens
the dependence of the officials upon the hierarchy. This holds at least
for the large administrative bodies that are difficult to supervise. The
superior qualification and integrity of federal judges, appointed by the
President, as over against elected judges in the United States is well
known, although both types of officials have been selected primarily in
terms of party considerations. The great changes in American metropoli-
202 POWER
tan administrations demanded by reformers have proceeded essentially
from elected mayors working with an apparatus of officials who were
appointed by them. These reforms have thus come about in a 'Caesarist'
fashion. Viewed technically, as an organized form of authority, the
efficiency of 'Caesarism,' which often grows out of democracy, rests in
general upon the position of the 'Caesar' as a free trustee of the masses
(of the army or of the citizenry), who is unfettered by tradition. The
'Caesar' is thus the unrestrained master of a body of highly qualified
military officers and officials whom he selects freely and personally with-
out regard to tradition or to any other considerations. This 'rule of the
personal genius,' however, stands in contradiction to the formally 'demo-
cratic' principle of a universally elected officialdom.
3. Normally, the position of the official is held for life, at least in pub-
lic bureaucracies; and this is increasingly the case for all similar struc-
tures. As a factual rule, tenure for life is presupposed, even where the
giving of notice or periodic reappointment occurs. In contrast to the
worker in a private enterprise, the official normally holds tenure. Legal
or actual life-tenure, however, is not recognized as the official's right
to the possession of office, as was the case with many structures of "aiP
thority in the past. Where legal guarantees against arbitrary dismissal or
transfer are developed, they merely serve to guarantee a strictly objec-
tive discharge of specific office duties free from all personal considerations.
In Germany, this is the case for all juridical and, increasingly, for all
administrative officials.
Within the bureaucracy, therefore, the measure of 'independence,'
legally guaranteed by tenure, is not always a source of increased status
for the official whose position is thus secured. Indeed, often the reverse
holds, especially in old cultures and communities that are highly differ-
entiated. In such communities, the stricter the subordination under the
arbitrary rule of the master, the more it guarantees the maintenance of
the conventional seigneurial style of living for the official. Because of
the very absence of these legal guarantees of tenure, the conventional
esteem for the official may rise in the same way as, during the Middle
Ages, the esteem of the nobility of office ^ rose at the expense of esteem
for the freemen, and as the king's judge surpassed that of the people's
judge. In Germany, the military officer or the administrative official
can be removed from office at any time, or at least far more readily than
the 'independent judge,' who never pays with loss of his office for even
the grossest offense against the 'code of honor' or against social conven-
BUREAUCRACY 2O3
tions of the salon. For this very reason, if other things are equal, in the
eyes of the master stratum the judge is considered less qualified for
social intercourse than are officers and administrative officials, whose
greater dependence on the master is a greater guarantee of their con-
formity with status conventions. ' Of course, the average official strives
for a civil-service law, which would materially secure his old age and
provide increased guarantees against his arbitrary removal from office.
This striving, however, has its limits. A very strong development of the
'right to the office' naturally makes it more difficult to stafiE them with
regard to technical efficiency, for such a development decreases the
career-opportunities of ambitious candidates for office. This makes for
the fact that officials, on the whole, do not feel their dependency upon
those at the top. This lack of a feeling of dependency, however, rests
primarily upon the inclination to depend upon one's equals rather than
upon the socially inferior and governed strata. The present conservative
movement among the Badenia clergy, occasioned by the anxiety of a
presumably threatening separation of church and state, has been expressly
determined by the desire not to be turned 'from a master into a servant
of the parish.' ^
4. The official receives the regular pecuniary compensation of a nor-
mally fixed salary and the old age security provided by a pension. The
salary is not measured like a wage in terms of work done, but accord-
ing to 'status,' that is, according to the kind of function (the 'rank') and,
in addition, possibly, according to the length of service. The relatively
great security of the official's income, as well as the rewards of social
esteem, make the office a sought-after position, especially in countries
which no longer provide opportunities for colonial profits. In such
countries, this situation permits relatively low salaries for officials.
5. The official is set for a 'career' within the hierarchical order of the
public service. He moves from the lower, less important, and lower paid
"to the higher positions. The average official naturally desires a mechani-
cal fixing of the conditions of promotion: if not of the offices, at least of
the salary levels. He wants these conditions fixed in terms of 'seniority,'
or possibly according to grades achieved in a developed system of expert
examinations. Here and there, such examinations actually form a char-
acter indelebilis of the official and have lifelong effects on his career. To
this is joined the desire to qualify the right to office and the increasing
tendency toward status group closure and economic security. All of this
makes for a tendency to consider the offices as 'prebends' of those who are
204 POWER
qualified by educational certificates. The necessity o£ taking general per-
sonal and intellectual qualifications into consideration, irrespective of the
often subaltern character of the educational certificate, has led to a con-
dition in which the highest political offices, especially the positions of
'ministers,' are principally filled without reference to such certificates.
3: The Presuppositions and Causes of Bureaucracy
The social and economic presuppositions of the modern structure of
the office are as follows:
,, The development of the money economy, in so far as a pecuniary com-
pensation of the officials is concerned, is a presupposition of bureaucracy.
Today it not only prevails but is predominant. This fact is of very great
importance for the whole bearing of bureaucracy, yet by_ itself it is by
no means decisive for the existence of bureaucracy.
Historical examples of rather distinctly developed and quantitatively
large bureaucracies are: (a) Egypt, during the period of the new Empire
which, however, contained strong patrimonial elements; (b) the later
Roman Principate, and especially the Diocletian monarchy and the
Byzantine polity which developed out of it and yet retained strong
feudal and patrimonial elements; (c) the Roman Catholic Church, in-
creasingly so since the end of the thirteenth century; (d) China, from
the time of Shi Hwangti until the present, but with strong patrimonial
and prebendal elements; (e) in ever purer forms, the modern European
states and, increasingly, all public corporations since the time of princely
absolutism; (f) the large modern capitalist enterprise, the more so as it
becomes greater and more complicated.
To a very great extent, partly even predominantly, cases (a) to (d)
have rested upon compensation of the officials in kind. Yet they have
displayed many other traits and effects characteristic of bureaucracy.
The historical model of all later bureaucracies — the new Empire of
Egypt — is at the same time one of the most grandiose examples of an
organized subsistence economy. Yet this coincidence of bureaucracy and
subsistence economy is understandable in view of the quite unique con-
ditions that existed in Egypt. And the reservations — and they are quite
considerable — which one must make in classifying this Egyptian struc-
ture as a bureaucracy are conditioned by the subsistence economy. A cer-
tain measure of a developed money economy is the normal precondition
BUREAUCRACY 205
for the unchanged and continued existence, if not for the estabUshment,
of pure bureaucratic administrations.
According to historical experience, without a money economy the
bureaucratic structure can hardly avoid undergoing substantial internal
changes, or indeed, turning into another type of structure. The allocation
of fixed income in kind, from the magazines of the lord or from his
current intake, to the officials easily means a first step toward appropria-
tion of the sources of taxation and their exploitation as private property.
This kind of allocation has been the rule in Egypt and China for thou-
sands of years and played an important part in the later Roman mon-
archy as well as elsewhere. The income in kind has protected the official
against the often sharp fluctuations in the purchasing power of money.
Whenever the lord's prerogatives have relaxed, the taxes in kind, as a
rule, have been irregular. In this case, the official has direct recourse to
the tributaries of his bailiwick, whether or not he is authorized. Close
at hand is the idea of securing the official against such oscillations by
mortgaging or transferring the levies and therewith the power to tax,
or by leasing profitable lands of the lord to the official for his own use.
Every central authority which is not strictly organized is tempted to take
this course either voluntarily or because the officials compel it to do so.
The official may satisfy himself with the use of these levies or loans up
to the level of his salary claim and then hand over the surplus. This im-
pHes strong temptation and therefore yields results chiefly unsatisfactory
to the lord. Another process involves fixing the official's salary : This often
occurred in the early history of German officialdom; and it happened on
the largest scale in all Eastern Satrap administrations: the official hands
over a stipulated amount and retains the surplus.
In such cases the official is economically in a position rather similar
to that of the entrepreneurial tax-farmer. Indeed, office-farming including
even the leasing of offices to the highest bidder is regularly found. On
the soil of a private economy, the transformation of the statutes of
villeftiage into tenancy relations is one of the most important among
numerous examples. By tenancy arrangements the lord can transfer the
trouble of changing his income-in-kind into money-income to the office
tenant or to the official who is to be given a fixed sum. This was plainly
the case with some Oriental regents in Antiquity. And above all, the
farming out of public collection of taxes in lieu of the lord's own man-
agement of taxgathering served this purpose. From this procedure there
develops the possibility for the lord to progress in the ordering of his
206 POWER
finances into a systematic budget. This is a very important advance, for
it means that a fixed estimate of the income, and correspondingly of the
expenses, c^yi taice the place of a hand-to-mouth living from incalculable
incomes in kind, a condition typical of all the early states of public
households. On the other hand, in systematizing his budget in this w^ay,
the lord renounces the control and full exploitation of his capacity to tax
for his own use. According to the measure of freedom left to the official,
to the office, or to the tax-farmer, the lasting capacity to pay taxes is en-
dangered by inconsiderate exploitation. For, unlike the political overlord,
the capitalist is not in the same way permanently interested in the sub-
ject's ability to pay.
The lord seeks to safeguard himself against this loss of control by
regulations. The mode of tax-farming or the transfer of taxes can thus
vary widely, according to the distribution of power between the lord
and the tenant. Either the tenant's interest in the free exploitation of ca-
pacity to pay taxes or the lord's interest in the permanence of this
capacity prevails.. The nature of the tax-farming system rests essentially
upon the joint or the opposing influence of these motives: the elimina-
tion of oscillations in the yields, the possibility of a budget, the safeguard-
ing of the subjects' capacity to pay by protecting them against uneco-
nomical exploitation, and a state control of the tax-farmer's yields for the
sake of appropriating the maximum possible. In the Ptolemaic empire, as
in Hellas and in Rome, the tax-farmer was still a private capitalist. The
raising of taxes, however, was bureaucratically executed and controlled
by the Ptolemaic state. The tenant's profit consisted in only a share of
the respective surplus over and above the tax-farmer's fee, which was, in
fact, only a guarantee. The tax-farmer's risk consisted in the possibility
of yields that were lower than this sum.
The purely economic conception of the office as a source of the official's
private income can also lead to the direct purchase of offices. This occurs
when the lord finds himself in a position in which he requires not only
a current income but money capital — for instance, for warfare or for
debt payments. The purchase of office as a regular institution has existed
in modern states, in the church state as well as in that of France and
England; it has existed in the cases of sinecures as well as of very serious
offices; and, in the case of officers' commissions, it lagged over until the
early nineteenth century. In individual cases, the economic meaning of
such a purchase of office can be altered so that the purchasing sum is
BUREAUCRACY 207
partly or wholly in the nature of bail deposited for faithful service, but
this has not been the rule.
Every sort of assignment of usufructs, tributes and services which are
due to the lord himself or to the official for personal exploitation, always
means a surrender of the pure type of bureaucratic organization. The
official in such positions has a personal right to the possession of his
office. This is the case to a still higher degree when official duty and
compensation are interrelated in such a way that the official does not
transfer to the lord any yields gained from the objects left to him, but
handles these objects for his private ends and in turn renders to the
lord services of a personal or a military, political, or ecclesiastical
character.
We wish to speak of 'prebends' and of a 'prebendal' organization -of
office, wherever the lord assigns to the official rent payments for life,
payments which are somehow fixed to objects or which are essentially I
economic usufruct from lands or other sources. They must be compensa- I
tions for the fulfilment of actual or fictitious office duties; they are goods f
permanently set aside for the economic assurance of the office.
The transition from such prebendal organization of office to salaried
officialdom is quite fluid. Very often the economic endowment of priest-
hoods has been 'prebendal,' as in Antiquity and the Middle Ages, and
even up to the modern period. But in almost all periods the same form
has been found in other areas. In Chinese sacerdotal law, the prebendal
character of all offices forced the mourning official to resign his office.
For during the ritual mourning period for the father or other household
authorities abstention from the enjoyment of possessions was prescribed.
Originally this prescription was aimed at avoiding the ill-will of the
deceased master of the house, for the house belonged to this master and
the office was considered purely as a prebend, a source for rent.
When not only ecpnomic rights but also lordly prerogatives are leased
for personal execution with the stipulation of personal services to the
lord, a further step away from salaried bureaucracy is taken. These
leased prerogatives vary; for instance, with the political official, they
may be in the nature of landlordism or in the nature of office authority.
In both instances, and certainly in the latter, the specific nature of bureau-
cratic organization is completely destroyed and we enter the organiza-
tional realm of feudal dominion. All kinds of assignments of services
and usufructs in kind as endowments for officials tend to loosen the
bureaucratic mechanism, and especially to weaken hierarchic subordina-
208 POWER
tion. This subordination is most strictly developed in the discipline of
modern officialdom. A precision similar to the precision of the con-
tractually employed official of the modern Occident can only be attained
— at least under very energetic leadership — where the subjection of the
officials to the lord is personally absolute, where slaves, or employees
treated like slaves, are used for administration.
The Egyptian officials were slaves of the Pharaoh, if not legally, at
least in fact. The Roman latifundia owners liked to commission slaves
with the direct management of money matters, because of the possibility
of subjecting them to torture. In China, similar results have been sought
by the prodigial use of the bamboo as a disciplinary instrument. The
chances, however, for such direct means of coercion to function with
steadiness are extremely unfavorable. According to experience, the rela-
tive optimum for the success and maintenance of a strict mechanization
of the bureaucratic apparatus is offered by a secured money salary con-
nected with the opportunity of a career that is not dependent upon mere
accident and arbitrariness. Strict discipline and -control, which at the same
time has consideration for the official's sense of honor, and the develop-
ment of prestige sentiments of the status group, as well as the possibility
of public criticism, work in the direction of strict mechanization. With
all this, the bureaucratic apparatus functions more assuredly than does
any legal enslavement of functionaries. A strong status sentiment among
officials not only agrees with the official's readiness to subordinate him-
self to the chief without any will of his own, but — just as is the case with
the officer — status sentiments are the consequence of such subordination,
for internally they balance the official's self-feeling. The purely imper-
sonal character of office work, with its principled separation of the private
sphere of the official from that of the office, facilitates the official's inte-
gration into the given functional conditions of a fixed mechanism based
upon discipline.
Even though the full development of a money economy is not an
indispensable precondition for bureaucratization, bureaucracy as a perma-
nent structure is knit to the one presupposition of a constant income for
maintaining it. Where such an income cannot be derived from private
profits, as is the case with the bureaucratic organization of large modern
enterprises, or from fixed land rents, as with the manor, a stable system
of taxation is the precondition for the permanent existence of bureau-
cratic administration. For well-known and general reasons, only a fully
developed money economy offers a secure basis for such a taxation sys-
BUREAUCRACY 200
tern. The degree of administrative bureaucratization in urban communi-
ties with fully developed money economies has not infrequently been
relatively greater in the contemporary far larger states of plains. Yet
as soon as these plain states have been able to develop orderly systems
of tribute, bureaucracy has developed more comprehensively than in
city states. Whenever the size of the city states has remained confined
to moderate limits, the tendency for a plutocratic and collegial adminis-
tration by notables has corresponded most adequately to their structure.
4: The Quantitative Development of AnMiNisTRATunE Tasks
The proper soil for the bureaucratization of an administration has al-
ways been the specific developments of administrative tasks. We shall
first discuss the quantitative extension of such tasks. In the field of
politics, the great state and the mass party are the classic soil for bureau-
cratization.
This does not mean that every historically known and genuine forma-
tion of great states has brought about a bureaucratic administration. The
permanence of a once-existing great state, or the homogeneity of a culture
borne by such a state, has not always been attached to a bureaucratic
structure of state. However, both of these features have held to a great ex-
tent, for instance, in the Chinese empire. The numerous great Negro em-
pires, and similar formations, have had only an ephemerital existence
primarily because they have lacked an apparatus of officials. And the
unity of the Carolingian empire disintegrated when its organization of
officials disintegrated. This organization, however, was predominantly
patrimonial rather than bureaucratic in nature. From a purely temporal
view, however, the empire of the Caliphs and its predecessors on Asiatic
soil have lasted for considerable periods of time, and their organization
of office was essentially patrimonial and prebendal. Also, the Holy Roman
Empire lasted for a long time in spite of the almost complete absence
of bureaucracy. All these realms have represented a cultural unity of at
least approximately the same strength as is usually created by bureau-
cratic polities.
The ancient Roman Empire disintegrated internally in spite of in-
creasing bureaucratization and even during its very execution. This was
because of the way the tax burdens were distributed by the bureaucratic
state, which favored the subsistence economy. Viewed with regard to the
intensity of their purely political unities, the temporal existences of the
210 POWER
empires o£ the Caliphs, CaroHngian and other medieval emperors were
essentially unstable, nominal, and cohesive conglomerates. On the whole,
the capacity for political action steadily diminished, and the relatively
great unity of culture flowed from ecclesiastic structures that were in part
strictly unified and, in the Occidental Middle Ages, increasingly bureau-
cratic in character. The unity of their cultures resulted partly from the
far-going homogeneity of their social structures, which in turn was the
aftermath and transformation of their former political unity. Both are
phenomena of the traditional stereotyping of culture, which favors an
unstable equilibrium. Both of these factors proved so strong a foundation
that even grandiose attempts at expansion, such as the Crusades, could be
undertaken in spite of the lack of intensive poUtical unity; they were,
one might say, performed as 'private undertakings.' The failure of the
Crusades and their often irrational political course, however, is associated
with the absence of a unified and intensive state power to back them up.
And there is no doubt that the nuclei of intensive 'modern' states in
the Middle Ages developed concomitantly with bureaucratic structures.
Furthermore, in the end these quite bureaucratic political structures
undoubtedly shattered the social conglomerates, which rested essentially
upon unstable equilibriums.
The disintegration of the Roman Empire was partly conditioned by
the very bureaucratization of its army and official apparatus. This bu-
reaucratization could only be realized by carrying through at the same
time a method of taxation which by its distribution of burdens was
bound to lead to relative increase in the importance of a subsistence
economy. Individual factors of this sort always enter the picture. Also
the 'intensity' of the external and the internal state activities play their
part. Quite apart from the relation between the state influence upon cul-
ture and the degree of bureaucratization, it may be said that 'normally' —
though not without exception — the vigor to expand is directly related to
the degree of bureaucratization. For two of the most expansive polities,
the Roman Empire and the British world empire, during their most ex-
pansive periods, rested upon bureaucratic foundations only to a small
extent. The Norman state in England carried through a strict organiza-
tion on the basis of a feudal hierarchy. To a large extent, it received its
unity and its push through the bureaucratization of the royal exchequer,
which, in comparison to other political structures of the feudal period,
was extremely strict. Later on, the English state did not share in the
continental development towards bureaucratization, but remained an
BUREAUCRACY 211
administration of notables. Just as in the republican administration of
Rome, this English rule by notables was a result of the relative absence
of a continental character, as well as of absolutely unique preconditions,
which at the present time are disappearing. The dispensability of the
large standing armies, which a continental state with equally expansive
tendencies requires for its land frontiers, is among these special pre-
conditions. In Rome, bureaucratization advanced with the transition
from a coastal to a continental ring of frontiers. For the rest, in the
domination structure of Rome, the strictly military character of the
magistrate authorities — in the Roman manner unknown to any other
people — made up for the lack of a bureaucratic apparatus with its tech-
nical efficiency,^ its precision and unity of administrative functions,
especially outside the city limits. The continuity of administration was
safeguarded by the unique position of the Senate. In Rome, as in Eng-
land, one presupposition for this dispensability of bureaucracy which
should not be forgotten was that the state authorities increasingly 'mini-
mized' the scope of their functions at home. They restricted their func-
tions to what was absolutely demanded for direct 'reasons of state.'
At the beginning of the modern period, all the prerogatives of the
continental states accumulated in the hands of those princes who most
relentlessly took the course of administrative bureaucratization. It is obvi-
ous that technically the great modern state is absolutely dependent upon
a bureaucratic basis. The larger the state, and the more it is or the more
it becomes a great power state, the more unconditionally is this the case.
The United States still bears the character of a polity which, at least
in the technical sense, is not fully bureaucratized. But the greater the
zones of friction with the outside and the more urgent the needs for
administrative unity at home become, the more this character is inevita-
bly and gradually giving way formally to the bureaucratic structure.
Moreover, the partly unbureaucratic form of the state structure of the
United States is materially balanced by the more strictly bureaucratic
structures of those formations which, in truth, dominate politically,
namely, the parties under the leadership of professionals or experts in
organization and election tactics. The increasingly bureaucratic organi-
zation of all genuine mass parties offers the most striking example of
the role of sheer quantity as a leverage for the bureaucratization of a "
social structure. In Germany, above all, the Social Democratic party, and
abroad both of the 'historical' American parties are bureaucratic in the
greatest possible degree.
212 POWER
5: Qualitative Changes of Administrative Tasks
Bureaucratization is occasioned more by intensive and qualitative
enlargement and internal deployment of the scope of administrative
! tasks than by their extensive and quantitative increase. But the direction
\[ bureaucratization takes and the reasons that occasion it vary widely.
In Egypt, the oldest country of bureaucratic state administration, the
public and collective regulation of waterways for the whole country
and from the top could not be avoided because of technical economic
factors. This regulation created the mechanism of scribes and officials.
Once established, this mechanism, even in early times, found its second
realm of business in the extraordinary construction activities which were
organized militarily. As mentioned before, 'the bureaucratic tendency has
chiefly been influenced by needs arising from the creation of standing
*-*«'! armies as determined by power politics and by the development of pub-
lic finance connected with the military establishment. In the modern
state, the increasing demands for administration rest on the increasing
complexity of civilization and push towards bureaucratization.
Very considerable expansions, especially overseas, have, of course, been
managed by states ruled by notables (Rome, England, Venice), as will
. become evident in the appropriate context. Yet the .'.inteJlsity' of the
administration, that is, the transfer of as many tasks as possible to the
organization of the state proper for continuous management and dis-
charge, has been only slightly developed among the great states ruled
, by notables, especially Rome and England, if we compare them with
!jj^ bureaucratic polities.
Both in notable and bureaucratic administrations the structure of state
''ti power has influenced culture very strongly. But it has done so relatively
slightly in the form of management and control by the state. This holds
from justice down to education. The growing demands on culture, in
turn, are determined, though to a varying extent, by the growing wealth
of the most influential strata in the state. To this extent increasing
bureaucratization is a function of the increasing possession of goods used
for consumption, and of an increasingly sophisticated technique of fash-
ioning external life — a technique which corresponds to the opportunities
provided by such wealth. This reacts upon the standard of living and
^' makes for an increasing subjective indispensability of organized, collec-
tive, inter-local, and thus bureaucratic, provision for the most varied
*''^lrf^.f^
BUREAUCRACY 2lt
wants, which previously were either unknown, or were satisfied locally
or by a private economy.
Among purely political factors, the increasing demand of a society,
accustomed to absolute pacification, for order and protection ('police')
in all fields exerts an especially persevering influence in the direction of
bureaucratization. A steady road leads from modifications of the blood
feud, sacerdotally, or by means of arbitration, to the present position of
the poHceman as the 'representative of God on earth.' The former means
placed the guarantees for the individual's rights and security squarely
upon the members of his sib, who are obligated to assist him with oath
and vengeance. Amon^ other factors, primarily the manifold tasks of the
so-called 'policy of social welfare', operate in the direction of bureaucrati-*"""*
zation, for these tasks are, in part, saddled upon the state by interest
groups and, in part, the state usurps them, either for reasons of power
policy or for ideological motives. Of course, these tasks are to a large
extent economically determined.
Among essentially technical factors, the specifically modern means of
communication enter the picture as pacemakers of bureaucratization.
Public land and water-ways, railroads, the telegraph, et cetera — they must,
in part, necessarily be administered in a public and collective way; in
part, such administration is technically expedient. In this respect, the
contemporary means of communication frequently play a role similar
to that of the canals of Mesopotamia and the regulation of the Nile in
the ancient Orient. The degree to which the means of communication
have been developed is a condition of decisive importance for the pos-
sibihty of bureaucratic administration, although it is not the only decisive
condition. Certainly in Egypt, bureaucratic centralization, on the basis
of an almost pure subsistence economy, could never have reached the
actual degree which it did without the natural trade route of the Nile.
In order to promote bureaucratic centralization in modern Persia, the
telegraph officials were officially commissioned with reporting all occur-
rences in the provinces to the Shah, over the heads of the local authori-
ties. In addition, everyone received the right to remonstrate directly by
telegraph. The modern Occidental state can be administered the way it
actually is only because the state controls the telegraph network and has —
the mails and railroads at its disposal.
Railroads, in turn, are intimately connected with the development of
an inter-local traffic of mass goods. This traffic is among the causal fac-
214 POWER
tors in the formation of the modern state. As we have already seen, this
does not hold unconditionally for the past.
6: Technical Advantages of Bureaucratic Organization
k The decisive reason for the advance of bureaucratic organization has
/ i always been its purely technical superiority over any other form of
r I'lOrganization. The fully developed bureaucratic mechamsSTTompares
with other organizations exactly as does the machine with the non-
mechanical modes of production.
Precision, speed, unambiguity, knowledge of the files, continuity, dis-
cretion, unity, strict subordination, reduction of friction and of material
and personal costs — these are raised to the optimum point in the stric^
bureaucratic administration, and especially in its monocratic form. As
compared with all collegiate, honorific, and avocational forms of admin-
istration, trained bureaucracy is superior on all these points. And as far
as complicated tasks are concerned, paid bureaucratic work is not only
more precise but, in the last analysis, it is often cheaper than even for-
mally unrernunerated honorific service. . ^
Honorific arrangements make administrative work an avocation and,
for this reason alone, honorific service normally functions more slowly;
being less bound to schemata and being more formless. Hence it is less
precise and less unified than bureaucratic work because it is less depend-
ent upon superiors and because the establishment and exploitation of
the apparatus of subordinate officials and filing services are almost un-
avoidably less economical. Honorific service is less continuous than
bureaucratic and frequently quite expensive. This is especially the case
if one thinks not only of the money costs to the public treasury — costs
which bureaucratic administration, in comparison with administration
by notables, usually substantially increases — but also of the frequent
economic losses of the governed caused by delays and lack of precision.
"^ — r The possibility of administration by notables normally and permanently
exists only where official management can be satisfactorily discharged as
(,. an avocation. With the qualitative increase of tasks the administration
I has to face, administration by notables reaches its limits — today, even in
England. Work organized by collegiate bodies causes friction and delay
and requires compromises between colliding interests and views. The
administration, therefore, runs less precisely and is more independent of
superiors; hence, it is less unified and slower. All advances of the Prus-
BUREAUCRACY 21 5
sian administrative organization have been and will in the future be
advances of the bureaucratic, and especially of the monocratic, principle.
1 Today, it is primarily the capitalist market economy which demands ^,
that the official business of the administration be discharged precisely,
unambiguously, continuously, and with as much speed as possible, Nor-
mally, the very"Targe, "modem capitalist enterprises are themselves un-
equalled models of strict bureaucratic organization. Business manage-
ment throughout rests on increasing precision, steadiness, and, above all,
the speed of operations. This, in turn, is determined by the peculiar
nature of the modern means of communication, including, among other
things, the news service of the press. The extraordinary increase in the
speed by which public announcements, as well as economic and political
facts, are transmitted exerts a steady and sharp pressure in the direction
of speeding up the tempo of administrative reaction towards various
situations. The optimum of such reaction time is normally attained only
by a strictly bureaucratic organization.*
Bureaucratization offers above all the optimum possibility for carrying
through the principle of specializing administrative functions according
to purely objective considerations. Individual performances are allocated
to functionaries who have specialized training and who by constant
practice learn more and more. The_ 'objective' discharge of business^ri-
marily means a discharge of business according to calculable rules and
*witTiout regard tor persons.'
'Without regard for persons' is also the watchword of the 'market'
and, in general, of all pursuits of naked economic interests. A consistent
execution of bureaucratic domination means the leveling of status
'honor.' Hence, if the principle of the free-market is not at the same
time restricted, it means the universal domination of the 'class situation.'
That this consequence of bureaucratic domination has not set in every-
where, parallel to the extent of bureaucratization, is due to the differences
among possible principles by which polities may meet their demands.
The second element mentioned, 'cakulable rules,' also is of paramount ^
importance for modern bureaucracy. The peculiarity of modern culture, *|'.
and specifically of its technical and economic basis, demands this very|ij
'calculability' of results. When fully developed, bureaucracy also stands,
in a specific sense, under the principle of sine ira ac studio. Its specific
* Here we cannot discuss in detail how the bureaucratic apparatus may, and actually
does, produce definite obstacles to the discharge of business in a manner suitable for the
single case.
2l6 POWER
nature, which is welcomed by capitaHsm, develops the more perfectly
the more the bureaucracy is 'dehumanized,' the more completely it^ suc-
ceeds in eliminating from official business love, hatred, and all purely
personal, irrational, and emotional elements which escape calculation.
This is the specific nature of bureaucracy and it is appraised as its special
virtue.
The more complicated and specialized modern culture becomes^ the
more its external supporting apparatus demands the personally detached^
and strictly 'objective' expert, in lieu of the master of older social struc-
tures, who was moved by personal sympathy and favor, by grace and
gratitude. Bureaucracy offers the attitudes demanded by the external
apparatus of modern culture in the most favorable combination. As a
i rule, only bureaucracy has established the foundation for the adminis-
j tration of a rational law conceptually systematized on the basis of such
' enactments as the latter Roman imperial period first created with a high
degree of technical perfection. During the Middle Ages, this law wa«
received along with the bureaucratization of legal administration, that
is to say, with the displacement of the old trial procedure which was
bound to tradition or to irrational presuppositions, by the rationally
trained and specialized expert.
7: Bureaucracy and Law
The 'rational' interpretation of law on the basis of strictly formal con-
ceptions stands opposite the kind of adjudication that is primarily bound
to sacred traditions. The single case that cannot be unambiguously de-
cided by tradition is either settled by concrete 'revelation' (oracle, pro-
phetic dicta, or ordeal — that is, by 'charismatic' justice) or — and only
these cases interest us here— fby informal judgments rendered in terms
, of concrete ethical or other practical valuations. This is 'Kadi-justice,' as
R. Schmidt has fittingly called it. Or, formal judgments are rendered,
though not by subsumption under rational concepts, but by drawing on
'analogies' and by depending upon and interpreting concrete 'prece-
dents.' This is 'empirical justicej'
Kadi-justice knows no reasoned judgment whatever. Nor docs em-
pirical justice of the pure type give any reasons which in our sense could
be called rational. The concrete valuational character of Kadi-justice can
advance to a prophetic break with all tradition. Empirical justice, on the
other hand, can be sublimated and rationalized into a 'technology,' All
BUREAUCRACY 217
rion-bureaucratic forms of domination display a peculiar coexistence: on/
the one hand, there is a sphere of strict traditionalism, and, on the other,;
a sphere of free arbitrariness and lordly grace. Therefore, combinationsll
and transitional forms between these two principles are very frequent;
they will be discussed in another context.
Even today in England, as Mendelssohn has demonstrated, a broad
substratum of justice is actually Kadi-justice to an extent that is hardly
conceivable on the Continent. The justice of German juries which pre-
clude a statement of the reasons for their verdict often functions in prac-
tice in the same way as this EngUsh justice. In general, one has to be-
ware pf^beHeving^ that 'democratic' principles of justice are identical with
'rational' adjudication (in the sense of formal rationality). Indeed, the
contrary holds, as will be shown in another context. The English and
American adjudication of the highest courts is still to a great extent
empirical; and especially is it adjudication by precedents. In England,
the reason for the failure of all efforts at a rational codification of law,
as well as the failure to borrow Roman law, was due to the successful
resistance against such rationalization offered by the great and centrally
organized lawyers' guilds. These guilds formed a monopolistic stratum
of notables from whose midst the judges of the high courts of the realm
were recruited. They retained in their hands juristic training as an
empirical and highly developed technology, and they successfully fought
all moves towards rational law that threatened their social and material
position. Such moves came especially from the ecclesiastical courts and,
for a time, also from the universities.
The fight of the common law advocates against the Roman and
ecclesiastical law and the power of the church in general was to a consid-
erable degree economically caused by the lawyer's interest in fees; this is
distinctly evidenced by the way in which the king intervened in this
struggle. But the power position of the lawyers, who emerged victori-
ously from this struggle, was conditioned by political centralization. In
Germany, primarily for political reasons, a socially powerful estate of
notables was lacking. There was no estate which, like the English law-
yers, could have been the carriers of a national administration of law,
which could have raised national law to the level of a technology with
regulated apprenticeship, and which could have offered resistance to the
intrusion of the technically superior traming of jurists in Roman law.
\ That fact that Roman law was substantively better adjusted to the
> needs of emerging capitalism did not decide its victory on the Continent.
21 8 POWER
All legal institutions specific for modern capitalism are alien to Roman
law and are medieval in origin. What was decisive was the rational
form of Roman law and, above all, the technical necessity to place the
trial procedure in the hands of rationally trained experts, which meant
men trained in the universities and learned in Roman law. This training
was necessary because the increasing complexity of practical legal cases
' and the increasingly ^Rationalized economy demanded^ a rational proce-
_^ tclure of evidence*rather than the ascertainment of true facts by concrete
revelation or sacerdotal guarantee, which, of course, are the ubiquitous
and primeval means of proof. This legal situation was also determined
to a large extent by structural changes in the economy. This factor, how-
ever, was efficacious everywhere, including England, where the royal
power introduced the rational procedure of evidence for the sake of the
merchants. The predominant reasons for the differences, which still
exist, in the development of substantive law in England and Germany
do not rest upon this economic Jactor. As is already obvious, these differ-
ences have sprung from the lawfully autonomous development of the
respective structures of domination.
In England centralized justice and notable rule have been associated;
in Germany, at the same time, there is bureaucratization and an absence
of political centralization. England, which in modern times was the first
and most highly developed capitalist country, thereby retained a less
rational and less bureaucratic judicature. Capitalism in England, how-
ever, could quite easily come to terms with this, especially because the
nature of the court constitution and of the trial procedure up to the mod-
ern period amounted in effect to a far-going denial of justice to the eco-
nomically weak group?. This fact exerted a profound influence upon the
distribution of landholdings in England by favoring the accumulation
and immobilization of landed wealth. The length and expense of real
estate transfers, determined by the economic interests of the lawyers, also
worked in the same direction.
During the time of the Republic, Roman law represented a unique
mixture of rational and empirical elements, and even of elements of
Kadi-justice. The appointment of a jury as such, and the praetor's
actiones in factum, which at first undoubtedly occurred 'from one given
case to another,' contained an element of Kadi-justice. The baihng system
of Roman justice and all that grew out of it, including even a part of the
classic jurists' practice of responses, bore an 'empirical' character. The
decisive turn of juridical thought toward rational thinking was first pre-
BUREAUCRACY 219
pared by the technical nature of the instruction for trial procedure at
the hands of the praetorian edict's formula, which were geared to legal
conceptions. Today, under the dominance of the principle of substantia-
tion, the presentation of facts is decisive, no matter from what legal point
of view they may make the complaint seem justified. A similar compul-
sion to bring out the scope of the concepts unambiguously and formally
is now lacking; but such a compulsion was produced by the technical
culture of Roman law at its very height. Technical factors of trial pro-
cedure thus played their part in the development of rational law, factors
which resulted only indirectly from the structure of the state. The ration-
alization_of_Rom^ri law into a closed system of concepts to be scientifi-
cally handled was brought to perfection only during the period when
the polity itself underwent bureaucratization. This rational and system-
atic quality sets off Roman law sharply from all law produced by tKe'^
Orient or by Hellenic Greece.
The rabbinic responses of the Talmud is a typical example of empir-
ical justice that is not rational but 'rationalist,' and at the same time
strictly fettered by tradition. Every prophetic verdict is in the end pure
Kadi-justice, unfettered by tradition, and follows the schema: 'It is writ-
ten . . . but I say unto you.' The more strongly the religious nature of
the Kadi's (or a similar judge's) position is emphasized, the more freely
the judgment of the single case prevails and the less it is encumbered by
rules within that sphere of its operation which is not fettered by sacred
tradition. For a generation after the occupation of Tunisia by the French,
for instance, a very tangible handicap for capitalism remained in that the
ecclesiastic court (the Chard) decided over land holdings by 'free discre-
tion,' as the Europeans put it. We shall become acquainted with the
sociological foundation of these older types of justice when we discuss
the structures of domination in another context.
It is perfectly true that 'matter-of-factness' and 'expertness' are sot
necessarily identical with the rule of general and abstract norms. Indeed,
this does not even hold in the case of the modern administration of
justice. In principle, the idea of *a law without gaps' is, of course, vig-
orously disputed. The conception of the modern judge as an automaton
into which the files and the costs are thrown in order that it may spill
forth the verdict at the bottom along with the reasons, read mechanically
from codified paragraphs — this conception is angrily rejected, perhaps
because a certain approximation to this type is implied by a consistent
bureaucratization of justice. In the field of court procedure there are
{
'»
220 POWER
areas in which the bureaucratic judge is directly held to 'individuaHzing'
procedures by the legislator.
For the field of administrative activity proper, that is, for all state
activities that fall outside the field of law creation and court procedure,
one is accustomed to claiming the freedom and paramountcy of indi-
vidual circumstances. General norms are held to play primarily a nega-
tive role as barriers to the official's positive and 'creative' activity, which
should never be regulated. The bearing of this thesis may be disregarded
here. Yet the point that this 'freely' creative administration (and possibly
judicature) does not constitute a realm of free, arbitrary action, of mercy,
and of personally motivated favor and valuation, as we shall find to be
the case among pre-bureaucratic forms, is a very decisive point. The
rule and the rational estimation of 'objective' purposes, as well as devo-
tion to them, always exist as a norm of conduct. In the field of executive
administration, especially where the 'cre.Ttive' arbitrariness of the official
is most strongly built up, the specifically modern and strictly 'objective'
i idea of 'reasons of state' is upheld as the supreme and ultimate guiding
star of the official's behavior.
ut course, and above all, the sure instincts of the bureaucracy for the
conditions of maintaining its power in its own state (and through
it, in opposition to other states) are inseparably fused with the canoniza-
tion of the abstract and 'objective' idea of 'reasons of state.' In the last
analysis, the power interests of the bureaucracy only give a concretely
exploitable content to this by no means unambiguous ideal; and, in du-
bious cases, power interests tip the balance. We cannot discuss this further
here. The only decisive point for us is that in £rinciple_a_system of
rationally debatable 'reasons' stands behind every act of bureaucratic
, administration, that is, either subsumption under norms or a weighing
of ends and means. "
The position of all 'democratic' currents, in the sense of currents that
would minimize 'authority,' is necessarily ambiguous. 'Equality before
, the law' and the demand for legal guarantees against arbitrariness de-
mand a formal and rational 'objectivity' of administration, as opposed to
the personally free discretion flowing from the 'grace' of the old patri-
monial domination. If, however, an 'ethos' — not to speak of instincts —
takes hold of the masses on some individual question, it postulates sub-
stantive justice oriented toward some concrete instance and person; and
such an 'ethos' will unavoidably collide with the formalism and the rule-
BUREAUCRACY 221
bound and cool 'matter-o£-factness' of bureaucratic administration. For
this reason, the ethos must emotionally reject what reason demands.
The propertyless masses especially are not served by a formal 'equality
before the law' and a 'calculable' adjudication and administration, as
demanded by 'bourgeois' interests. Naturally, in their eyes justice and
administration should serve to compensate for their economic and social
life-opportunities in the face of the propertied classes. Justice and admin-
istration can fulfil this function only if they assume an informal char-
acter to a far-reaching extent. It must be informal because it is substan-
tively 'ethical' ('Kadi-justice'). Every sort of 'popular justice' — which "^
usually does not ask for reasons and norms — as well as every sort of
intensive influence on the administration by so-called public opinion,
crosses the rational course of justice and administration just as strongly,
and under certain conditions far more so, as the 'star chamber' proceed-
ings of an 'absolute' ruler has been able to do. In this connection, that is,
under the conditions of mass democracy, public opinion is communal
conduct born of irrational 'sentiments.' Normally it is staged or directed
by party leaders and the press.
8: The Concentration of the Means of Administration
, The Jjureaucratic structure goes hand in hand with the concentration I'i
of the material means of managemenT m the hands of the master. This!"
concentration occurs, for instance, in a well-known and typical fashion,
in the development of big capitalist enterprises, which find their essential
characteristics in this process. A corresponding process occurs in public
organizations.
The bureaucratically led army of the Pharaohs, the army during the
later period of the Roman republic and the principate, and, above all,
the army of the modern military state are characterized by the fact that
their equipment and provisions are supplied from the magazines of
the war lord. This is in contrast to the folk armies of agricultural tribes,
the armed citizenry of ancient cities, the militias of early medieval cities,
and all feudal armies; for these, the self-equipment and the self-pro-
visioning of those obliged to fight was normal.
War in our time is a war of machines. And this makes magazines
technically necessary, just as the dominance of the machine in industry
promotes the concentration of the means of production and manage-
ment. In the main, however, the bureaucratic armies of the past, equipped
222 POWER
and provisioned by the lord, have risen when social and economic devel-
opment has absolutely or relatively diminished the stratum of citizens
M^ho were economically able to equip themselves, so that their number
was no longer sufficient for putting the required armies in the field.
They were reduced at least relatively, that is, in relation to the range of
power claimed for the polity. Only the bureaucratic army structure
allowed for the development of the professional standing armies which
are necessary for the constant pacification ot large states or the plains,
as well as for warfare against far-distant enemies, especially enemies
fl overseas. Specifically, miHtary discipline and technical training_c^iT_ be
f^'^^f normally and fully developed, at least to Itslnodern high level, only in
"J the bureaucratic army.
* Historically, the bureaucratization of the army has everywhere been
realized along with the transfer of army service from the propertied to
the propertyless. Until this transfer occurs, military service is an honorific
privilege of propertied men. Such a transfer was made to the native-
born unpropertied, for instance, in the armies of the generals of the late
Roman republic and the empire, as well as in modern armies up to the
nineteenth century. The burden of service has also been transferred to
strangers, as in the mercenary armies of all ages. This process typically
goes hand in hand with the general increase in material and intellectual
culture. The following reason has also played its part everywhere: the
increasing density of population, and therewith the intensity and strain
of economic work, makes for an increasing 'indispensability' of the
acquisitive strata ^ for purposes of war. Leaving aside periods of strong
ideological fervor, the propertied strata of sophisticated and especially of
urban culture as a rule are little fitted and also little inclined to do the
coarse war work of the common soldier. Other circumstances being
equal, the propertied strata of the open country are at least usually better
qualified and more strongly inclined to become professional officers.
This difference between the urban and the rural propertied is balanced
only where the increasing possibiUty of mechanized warfare requires
the leaders to qualify as 'technicians.'
The bureaucratization of organized warfare may be carried through
in the form of private capitalist enterprise, just like any other business.
Indeed, the procurement of armies and their administration by private
capitalists has been the rule in mercenary armies, especially those of the
Occident up to the turn of the eighteenth century. During the Thirty
Years' War, in Brandenburg the soldier was still the predominant owner
BUREAUCRACY 223
of the material implements of his business. He owned his weapons,
horses, and dress, although the state, in the role, as it were, of the mer-
chant of the 'putting-out system,' did supply him to some extent. Later
on, in the standing army of Prussia, the chief of the company owned
the material means of warfare, and only since the peace of Tilsit has the
concentration of the means of warfare in the hands of the state definitely
come about. Only with this concentration was the introduction of
uniforms generally carried through. Before then, the introduction of
uniforms had been left to a great extent to the arbitrary discretion of the
regimental officer, with the exception of individual categories of troops
to whom the king had 'bestowed' certain uniforms, first, in 1620, to the
royal bodyguard, then, under Frederick II, repeatedly.
Such terms as 'regiment' and 'battalion' usually had quite different
meanings in the eighteenth century from the meanings they have today.
Only the battalion was a tactical unit (today both are); the 'regiment'
was then a managerial unit of an economic organization established by
the colonel's position as an 'entrepreneur.' 'Official' maritime ventures
(like the Genoese maonae) and army procurement belong to private
capitalism's first giant enterprises of far-going bureaucratic character.
In this respect, the 'nationalization' of these enterprises by the state has
its modern parallel in the nationalization of the railroads, which have ;_
been controlled by the state from their beginnings. -^
In the same way as with army organizations, the bureaucratization of
administration goes hand in hand with the concentration of the means
of organization in other spheres. The old administration by satraps and
regents, as well as administration by farmers of office, purchasers of
office, and, most of all, administration by feudal vassals, decentralize
the material means of administration. The local demand of the province
and the cost of the army and of subaltern officials are regularly paid for
in advance from local income, and only the surplus reaches the central
treasure. The enfeoffed official administers entirely by payment out of ^
his own pocket. The bureaucratic state, however, puts its whole admin-, L
istrative expense on the budget and equips the lower authorities with the i
current means of expenditure, the use of which the state regulates and -^
controls. This has the same meaning for the 'economics' of the adminis- |
tration as for the large centralized capitalist enterprise. '^
/ In the field of scientific research and instruction, the bureaucratization
of the always existing research institutes of the universities is a function
of the increasing demand for material means of management.^Liebig's
^ A-
224 POWER
laboratory at Giessen University was the first example of big enterprise
in this field. Through the concentration of such means in the hands of
the privileged head of the institute, the mass of researchers and docents
are separated from their 'means of production,' in the same way as
capitalist enterprise has separated the workers from theirs.
In spite of its indubitable technical superiority, bureaucracy has every-
where been a relatively late development. A number of obstacles have
contributed to this, and only under certain social and political conditions
have they definitely receded into the background.
9: The Leveling of Social Differences
''' Bureaucratic organization has usually come into power on the basis_
of a leveling of economic and social differences. This leveling has been
at least relative, and has concerned the significance of social and eco-
nomic differences for the assumption of administrative functions.
V Bureaucracy inevitably accompanies modern mass democracy in con-
^ trast to the democratic self-government of small homogeneous units.
5X/'^ ' This results from the characteristic principle of bureaucracy: the abstract
-^ regularity of the execution of authority, which is a result of the demarjd
for 'equality before the law' in the personal and functional sense—hence,
of the horror of 'privilege,' and the principled rejection of doing business
'from case to case.' Such regularity also follows from the social precon-
ditions of the origin of bureaucracies. The non-bureaucratic administra-
tion of any large social structure rests in some way upon the fact that
existing social, material, or honorific preferences and ranks are connected
with administrative functions and duties. This usually means that a
direct or indirect economic exploitation or a 'social' exploitation of posi-
tion, which every sort of administrative activity gives to its bearers, is
equivalent to the assumption of administrative functions.
Bureaucratization and democratization within the administration of
^ the state therefore signify and increase the cash expenditures of -the
public treasury. And this is the case in spite of the fact that buireau-
cratic administration is usually more 'economical' in character than other
forms of administration. Until recent times — at least from the point of
view of the treasury — the cheapest way of satisfying the need for admin-
istration was to leave almost the entire local administration and lower
judicature to the landlords of Eastern Prussia. The same fact applies to
the administration of sheriffs in England. Mass democracy makes a
BUREAUCRACY 225
clean sweep of the feudal, patrimonial, and — at least in intent — the pluto-
cratic privileges in administration. Unavoidably it puts paid professional
labor in place of the historically inherited avocational administration by i|' >fe:.c^
notables.
This not only applies to structures of the state. For it is no accident
that in their own organizations, the democratic mass parties have com-
pletely broken with traditional notable rule based upon personal rela-
tionships and personal esteem. Yet such personal structures frequently
continue among the old conservative as well as the old liberal parties. / '-
Democratic mass parties are bureaucratically organized under the lead-
ership of party officials, professional party and trade union secretaries,
et cetera. In Germany, for instance, this has happened in the Social
Democratic party and in the agrarian mass-movement; and in England,
for the first time, in the caucus democracy of Gladstone-Chamberlain,
which was originally organized in Birmingham and since the 1870's has
spread. In the United States, both parties since Jackson's administration
have developed bureaucratically. In France, however, attempts to organ-
ize disciplined political parties on the basis of an election system that
would compel bureaucratic organization have repeatedly failed. The
resistance of local circles of notables against the ultimately unavoidable
bureaucratization of the parties, which would encompass the entire coun-
try and break their influence, could not be overcome. Every advance of
the simple election techniques, for instance the system of proportional elec-
tions, which calculates with figures, means a strict and inter-local bureau-
cratic organization of the parties and therewith an increasing domina-
tion of party bureaucracy and discipline, as well as the elimination of
the local circles of notables — at least this holds for great states.
The progress of bureaucratization in the state administration itself is |[ "]
a parallel phemmienorrioF^^'^^^^^^y' '^^ ^^ quite obvious in France,
North America, and now in England. Of course one must always re-
member that the term 'democratization' can be misleadmg. Ihe demos
itself, in the sense of an inarticulate mass, never 'governs' larger associa-i
tions; rather, it is governed, and its existence only changes the way ini
which the executive leaders are selected and the measure of influence
which the demos, or better, which social circles from its midst are able
to exert upon the content and the direction of administrative activities
by supplementing what is called 'public opinion.' 'Democratization,' in
the sense here intended, does not necessarily mean an increasingly active
226 POWER
share of the governed in the authority o£ the social structure. This may
be a result of democratization, but it is not necessarily the case.
We must expressly recall at this point that the political concept of
[: democracy, deduced from the 'equal rights' of the governed;,"^ includes
' these postulates: (i) prevention of the development of a closed status
group of officials in the interest of a universal accessibility of office, and
(2) minimization of the authority of officialdom in the interest of
expanding ^ the sphere of influence of 'public opinion' as far as practi-
cable. Hence, wherever possible, political democracy strives to shorten the
term of office by election and recall and by not binding the candidate to
a special expertness. Thereby democracy inevitably comes into conflict
with the bureaucratic tendencies which, by its fight against notable rule,
democracy has produced. The generally loose term 'democratization'
cannot be used here, in so far as it is understood to mean the minimiza-
tion of the civil servants' ruling power in favor of the greatest possible
'direct' rule of the demos, which in practice means the respective party
V leaders of the demos. The most decisive thing here — indeed it is rather
exclusively so — is the leveling of the governed in opposition to the ruling
and bureaucratically articulated group, which in its turn may occupy a
quite autocratic position, both in fact and in form.
In Russia, the destruction of the position of the old landed nobility
through the regulation of the Mjeshtshitelstvo (rank order) and the
permeation of the old nobility by an office nobility were characteristic
transitional phenomena in the development of bureaucracy. In China,
the estimation of rank and the qualification for office according to the
number of examinations passed mean something similar, but they have
had consequences which, in theory at least, are still sharper. In France,
the Revolution and still more Bonapartism have made the bureaucracy
all-powerful. In the Catholic Church, first the feudal and then all inde-
pendent local intermediary powers were eliminated. This was begun
by Gregory VII and continued through the Council of Trent, the Vatican
Council, and it was completed by the edicts of Pius X. The transforma-
tion of these local powers into pure functionaries of the central authority
were connected with the constant increase in the factual significance of
the formally quite dependent chaplains, a process which above all was
based on the political party organization of Catholicism. Hence this
..'process meant an advance of bureaucracy and at the same time of
'passive democratization,' as it were, that is, the leveling of the gov-
erned. The substitution of the bureaucratic army for the self-equipped
BUREAUCRACY
227
army of notables is everywhere a process of 'passive' democratization, in
the sense in which every establishment of an absolute military monarchy
in the place of a feudal state or of a republic of notables is. This has
held, in principle, even for the development of the state in Egypt in
spite of all the peculiarities involved. Under the Roman principate the
bureaucratization of the provincial administration in the field of tax
collection, for instance, went hand in hand with the elimination of the
plutocracy of a capitalist class, which, under the Republic, had been
all-powerful. Ancient capitaHsm itself was finally eliminated with this
stroke.
It is obvious that almost always economic conditions of some sort
play their part in such 'democratizing' developments. Very frequently
we meet with the influence of an economically determined origin of
new classes, whether plutocratic, petty bourgeois, or proletarian in char-
acter. Such classes may call-£)n the aid of, or they may only call to life or
recall to life, a political power, no matter whether it is of legitimate or
of Caesarist stamp. They may do so in order to attain economic or social
advantages by political assistance. On the other hand, there are equally
possible and historically documented cases in which initiative came
'from on high' and was of a purely political nature and drew advan-
tages from political constellations, especially in foreign affairs. Such
leadership exploited economic and social antagonisms as well as class
interests merely as a means for their own purpose of gaining purely
political power. [For this reason, political authority has thrown the antag-
onistic classes out of their almost always unstable equilibrium and called
their latent interest conflicts into battle. It seems hardly possible to give
a general statement of this.
The extent and direction of the course along which economic influ-
ences have moved, as well as the nature in which political power relations
exert influence, vary widely. In Hellenic Antiquity, the transition to
disciplined combat by Hoplites, and in Athens, the increasing impor-
tance of the navy laid the foundation for the conquest of political power
by the strata on whose shoulders the military burden rested. In Rome,
however, the same development shook the rule of the office nobility
only temporarily and seemingly. Although the modern mass army has
everywhere been a means of breaking the power of notables, by itself it
has in no way served as a leverage for active, but rather for merely
passive, democratization. One contributing factor, however, has been the
fact that the ancient citizen army rested economically upon self-equip-
228 POWER
ment, whereas the modern army rests upon the bureaucratic procure-
ment of requirements.
The advance of the bureaucratic structure rests upon 'technical' superi-
' ority. This fact leads here, as in the whole field of technique, to the
following: the advance has been realized most slowly where older struc-
tural forms have been technically well developed and functionally ad-
justed to the requirements at hand. This was the case, for instance, in
the administration of notables in England and hence England was the
slowest of all countries to succumb to bureaucratization or, indeed, is
still only partly in the process of doing so. The same general phenom-
enon exists when highly developed systems of gaslight or of steam rail-
roads with large and fixed capital offer stronger obstacles to electrifi-
cation than in completely new areas which are opened up for electrifi-
cation.
10 : The Permanent Character of the Bureaucratic Machine
t ' ]>^ Once it is fully estabHshed, bureaucracy is among those social struc-
tures which are the hardest to destroy. Bureaucracy is the means of carry-
\ ing 'community action' over into rationally ordered 'societal action.'
Therefore, as an instrument for 'societalizing' relations of power, bu-
reaucracy has been and is a power instrument of the first order — for
the one who controls the bureaucratic apparatus.
Under otherwise equal conditions, a 'societal action,' which is method-
ically ordered and led, is superior to every resistance of 'mass' or even
of 'communal action.' And where the bureaucratization of administra-
tion has been completely carried through, a form of power relation is
established that is practically unshatterable.
The individual bureaucrat cannot squirm out of the apparatus in
which he is harnessed. In contrast to the honorific or avocational 'nota-
ble,' the professional bureaucrat is chained to his activity by his entire
material and ideal existence. In the great majority of cases, he is only
a single cog in an ever-moving mechanism which prescribes to him
an essentially fixed route of march. The official is- entrusted with
specialized tasks and normally the mechanism cannot be put into motion
or arrested by him, but only from the very top. The individual bureau-
- crat is thus forged to the community of all the functionaries who are
integrated into the mechanism. They have a common interest in seeing
BUREAUCRACY 229
that the mechanism continues its functions and that the societally exer-
cised authority carries on.
The ruled, for their part, cannot dispense with or replace the bureau-
cratic apparatus of authority once it exists. For this bureaucracy rests
upon expert training, a functional specialization of work, and an attitude
set for habitual and virtuoso-like mastery of single yet methodically
integrated functions. If the official stops working, or if his work is force-
fully interrupted, chaos results, and it is difficult to improvise replace-
ments from among the governed who are fit to master such chaos. This
holds for public administration as well as for private economic manage-
ment./More and more the material fate of the masses depends upon the
steady and correct functioning of the increasingly bureaucratic organiza-
tions of private capitalism. The idea of eliminating these organizations
becomes more and more Utopian.
The discipHne of officialdom refers to the attitude-set of the official
for precise obedience within his habitual activity, in public as well as in
private organizations. This discipline increasingly becomes the basis of
all order, however great the practical importance of administration on
■the basis of the filed documents may be. The naive idea of Bakuninism
of destroying the basis of 'acquired rights' and 'domination' by destroy-
ing public documents overlooks the settled orientation of man for keep-
ing to the habitual rules and regulations that continue to exist independ-
ently of the documents. Every reorganization of beaten or dissolved
troops, as well as the restoration of administrative orders destroyed by
revolt, panic, or other catastrophes, is realized by appealing to the trained
orientation of obedient compliance to such orders. Such compliance has
been conditioned into the officials, on the one hand, and, on the other
hand, into the governed. If such an appeal is successful it brings, as it
were, the disturbed mechanism into gear again.
The objective indispensability of the once-existing apparatus, with its
peculiar, 'impersonal' character, means that the mechanism — in contrast
to feudal orders based upofi personal piety — is easily made to work for
anybody who knows how to gain control over it. A rationally ordered
system of officials continues to function smoothly after the enemy has
occupied the area; he merely needs to change the top officials. This body
of officials continues to operate because it is to the vital interest of every-
one concerned, including above all the enemy.
During the course of his long years in power, Bismarck brought his
ministerial colleagues into unconditional bureaucratic dependence by
230 POWER
eliminating all independent statesmen. Upon his retirement, he saw to
his surprise that they continued to manage their offices unconcerned and
undismayed, as if he had not been the master mind and creator of these
creatures, but rather as if some single figure had been exchanged for
some other figure in the bureaucratic machine. With all the changes of
masters in France since the time of the Fircf Empire, the power machine
has remained essentially the same. Such a machine makes 'revolution,'
in the sense of the forceful creation of entirely new formations of author-
ity, technically more and more impossible, especially when the apparatus
controls the modern means of communication (telegraph, et cetera) and
also by virtue of its internal rationaHzed structure. In classic fashion,
France has demonstrated how this process has substituted coups d'etat
for 'revolutions': all successful transformations in France have amounted
to coups d'etat.
11: Economic and Social (J^onsequences of Bureaucracy
It is clear that the bureaucratic organization of a social structure, and
especially of a political one, can and regularly does have far-reaching eco-
nomic consequences. But what sort of consequences.'' Of course in any
individual case it depends upon the distribution of economic and social
power, and especially upon the sphere that is occupied by the emerging
bureaucratic mechanism. The consequences of bureauaracydepend there-
fore upon the direction which the power§_ using the appaiiitus give
to it. And very frequently a crypto-plutocratic disrrihurion of power has
been the result. -^
In England, but especially in the United States, party donors regularly
stand behind the bureaucratic party organizations. They have financed
these parties and have been able to influence them to a large extent.
The breweries in England, the so-called 'heavy industry,' and in Ger-
many the Hansa League with their voting funds are well enough known
as pohtical donors to parties. In modern times bureaucratization and
social leveling within political, and particularly within state organiza-
tions in connection with the destruction of feudal and local privileges,
have very frequently benefited the interests of capitaHsm. Often bureauc-
ratization has been carried out in direct alliance with capitalist interests,
for example, the great historical alliance of the power of the absolute
prince with capitalist interests. In general, a legal leveling and destruction
of firmly established local structures ruled by notables has usually made
BUREAUCRACY 23 1
for a wider range of capitalist activity.' Yet one may expect as an effect
of bureaucratization, a policy that meets the -petty bourgeois interest in
a secured traditional 'subsistence,' or even a state socialist policy that
strangles opportunities for private profit. This has occurred in several
cases of historical and far-reaching importance, specifically during an-
tiquity; it is undoubtedly to be expected as a future development. Perhaps
it will occur in Germany.
The very different effects of political organizations which were, at
least in principle, quite similar — in Egypt under the Pharaohs and in
Hellenic and Roman times — show the very different economic signifi-
cances of bureaucratization which are possible according to the direction
of other factors. The mere fact of bureaucratic organization does not
unambiguously tell us about the concrete direction of its economic
effects, which are always in some manner present. At least it does not
tell us as much as can be told about its relatively leveling effect socially. •,*("
In this respect, one has to remember that bureaucracy as such is a pre-
cision instrument which can put itself at the disposal of quite varied —
purely political as well as purely economic, or any other sort — of interests
in domination. Therefore, the measure of its parallelism with democ-
ratization must not be exaggerated, however typical it may be. Under
certain conditions, strata of feudal lords have also put bureaucracy into
their service. There is also the possibility — and often it has become a fact, <^cA"^)r
for instance, in the Roman principate and in some forms of absolutist ^^^\.-
state structures — that a bureaucratization of administration is deliber- ^^
ately connected with the formation of estates, or is entangled with them
by the force of the existing groupings of social power. The express
reservation of offic.es for certain status groups is very frequent, and actual -
reservations are even more frequent. The democratization of society in |,
its totality, and in the modern sense of the term, whether actual or per- i|
haps mer-ely formal, is an especially favorable basis of bureaucratization, '"*t
but by no means the only possible one^ After all, bureaucracy strives
merely to level those powers that stand in its way and in those areas -
that, in the individual case, it seeks to occupy. We must remember this
fact — which we have encountered several times and which we shall have i
to discuss repeatedly: that 'democracy' as such is opposed to the 'rule' of | ^
bureaucracy, ' n spite and perhaps because of its unavoidable yet unin- f
tended promotion of bureaucratization. Under certain conditions, democ-
racy creates obvious ruptures and blockages to bureaucratic organization.
232 POWER
Hence, in every individual historical case, one must observe in what
" special direction bureaucratization has developed.
12: The Pov^^r Position of Bureaucracy
Everywhere the modern state is undergoing bureaucratization. But
whetheFthe piC^r^ of hureaucfMy'^wixhin the polity is universallyliii:,
creasing must here remain an open question.
The fact that bureaucratic organization is technically the most highly
developed means of power in the hands of the man who controls itHoes
1^ not determine the weight that bureaucracy as such is capable of having
in a particular sociaT structure. The ever-increasing 'indispensability' of
the officialdom, swollen to millions, is no more decisive for this question
than is the view of some representatives of the proletarian movement
, ^ that the economic indispensability of the proletarians is decisive for the
^ »!.V measure of their social and poHtical power position. If 'indispensability'
•^ ' were decisive, then where slave labor prevailed 'and where freemen
usually abhor work as a dishonor, the 'indispensable' slaves ought to
have held the positions of power, for they were at least as indispensable
^ as officials and proletarians are today. Whether the power of bureauc-
racy as such increases cannot be decided a priori^ixom. such reasons.
The drawing in of economic interest groups or other non-official experts,
or the drawing in of non-expert lay representatives, the establishment of
local, inter-local, or central parliamentary or other representative bodies,
or of occupational associations — these seem to run directly against the
bureaucratic tendency. How far this appearance is the truth must be
discussed in another chapter rather than in this purely formal and typo-
logical discussion. In general, only the following can be said here:
Under normal conditions, the power position of a fully developed
bureaucracy is always overtowering. The 'political master' finds himself
in the position of the 'dilettante' who stands opposite the 'expert,' facing
the trained official who stands within the management of administra-
tion. This holds whether the 'master' whom the bureaucracy serves is a
'people,' equipped with the weapons of 'legislative initiative,' the 'refer-
endum,' and the right to remove officials, or a parliament, elected on a
more aristocratic or more 'democratic' basis and equipped with the right
to vote a lack of confidence, or with the actual authority to vote it. It
holds whether the master is an aristocratic, collegiate body, legally or
BUREAUCRACY 233
actually based on self-recruitment, or whether he is a popularly elected
president, a hereditary and 'absolute' or a 'constitutional' monarch.
^ Every bureaucracy seeks to increase the superiority of the profession- \
ally informed by keeping their knowledge and intentions secret. Bureau- .'I
cratic administration always tends to be an administration of 'secret I
sessions': in so far as it can, it hides its knowledge and action from
criticism. Prussian church authorities now threaten to use disciplinary
measures against pastors who make reprimands or other admonitory
measures in any way accessible to third parties. They do this because
the pastor, in making such criticism available, is 'guilty' of facilitating a
possible criticism of the church authorities. The treasury officials of the
Persian shah have made a secret doctrine of their budgetary art and even
use secret script. The official statistics of Prussia, in general, make public
only what cannot do any harm to the intentions of the power-wielding
bureaucracy. The tendency toward secrecy in certain administrative fields
follows their material nature: everywhere that the power interests of
the domination structure toward the outside are at stake, whether it is
an economic competitor of a private enterprise, or a foreign, potentially
hostile polity, we find secrecy.,Tf it is to be successful, the management
of diplomacy can only be publicly controlled to a very Hmited extent.
The military administration must insist on the concealment of its most
important measures; with the increasing significance of purely technical
aspects, this is all the more the case. Political parties do not proceed
differently, in spite of all the ostensible publicity of Catholic congresses
and party conventions. With the increasing bureaucratization of party
organizations, this secrecy will prevail even more. Commercial policy,
in Germany for instance, brings about a concealment of production
statistics. Every fighting posture of a social structure toward the outside
tends to buttress the position of the group in power.
The pure interest of the bureaucracy in power, however, is efficacious
far beyond those areas where purely functional interests make for
secrecy. The concept of the 'official secret' is the specific invention of
bureaucracy, and nothing is so fanatically defended by the bureaucracy
as this attitude, which cannot be substantially justified beyond these
specifically qualified areas. In facing a parliament, the bureaucracy, out
of a sure power instinct, fights every attempt of the parliament to gain
234 POWER
knowledge by means of its own experts or from interest groups. The
so-called right of parliamentary investigation is one of the means by
which parliament seeks such knowledge. Bureaucracy naturally wel-
"~ comes a poorly informed and hence a powerless parliament — at least
in so far as ignorance somehow agrees with the bureaucracy's interests.
The absolute monarch is powerless opposite the superior knowledge
' of the bureaucratic expert — in a certain sense more powerless than any
other political head. All the scornful decrees of Frederick the Great con-
cerning the 'abolition of serfdom' were derailed, as it were, in the course
of their realization because the official mechanism simply ignored them
as the occasional ideas of a dilettante. When a constitutional king agrees
with a socially important part of the governed, he very frequently exerts
a greater influence upon the course of administration than does the
/'absolute monarch. The constitutional king can control these experts
- better because of what is, at least relatively, the public character of crit-
/ icism, whereas the absolute monarch is dependent for information solely
"^ upon the bureaucracy. The Russian czar of the old regime was seldom
able to accomplish permanently anything that displeased his bureaucracy
and hurt the power interests of the bureaucrats. His ministerial depart-
ments, placed directly under him as the autocrat, represented a con-
glomerate of satrapies, as was correctly noted by Leroy-Beaulieu. These
satrapies constantly fought against one another by all the means of
personal intrigue, and, especially, they bombarded one another with
voluminous 'memorials,' in the face of which, the monarch, as a dilet-
tante, was helpless.
With the transition to constitutional government, the concentration of
the power of the central bureaucracy in one head became unavoidable.
;i Officialdom was placed under a monocratic head, the prime minister,
through whose hands everything had to go before it got to the monarch.
This put the latter, to a large extent, under the tutelage of the chief of
the bureaucracy. Wilhelm II, in his well-known conflict with Bismarck,
fought against this principle, but he had to withdraw his attack very
soon. Under the rule of expert knowledge, the actual influence of the
""" monarch can attain steadiness only by a continuous communication
with the bureaucratic chiefs; this intercourse must be methodically
planned and directed by the head of the bureaucracy.
At the same time, constitutionalism binds the bureaucracy and the
ruler into a cormnunity of interests against the desires of party chiefs
for power in the parliamentary bodies. And if he cannot find support in
BUREAUCRACY 235
parliament the constitutional monarch is powerless against the bureauc-
racy. The desertion of the 'Great of the Reich,' the Prussian ministers
and top officials of the Reich in November 19 18, brought a monarch into
approximately the same situation as existed in the feudal state in 1056.
However, this is an exception, for, on the whole, the power position of
a monarch opposite bureaucratic officials is far stronger than it was in
any feudal state or in the 'stereotyped' patrimonial state. This is because
of the constant presence of aspirants for promotion, with whom the
monarch can easily replace inconvenient and independent officials. Other
circumstances being equal, only economically independent officials, that
is, officials who belong to the propertied strata, can permit themselves to
risk the loss of their offices. Today as always, the recruitment of officials
from among propertyless strata increases the power of the rulers. Only
officials who belong to a socially influential stratum, whom the mon-
arch believes he must take into account as personal supporters, like
the so-called Kanalrebellen in Prussia,® can permanently and completely
paralyse the substance of his will.
/ Only the. expert knowledge of private economic interest groups in the
\ field of 'business' is superior to the expert knowledge of the bureaucracy.
This is so because the exact knowledge of facts in their field is vital to
the economic existence of businessmen. Errors in official statistics do not
have direct economic consequences for the guilty official, but errors in
the calculation of a capitaHst enterprise are paid for by losses, perhaps by
its existence. The 'secret,' as a means of power, is, after all, more safely
hidden in the books of an enterpriser than it is in the files of public
authorities. For this reason alone authorities are held within narrow
barriers when they seek to influence economic life in the capitalist
epoch. Very frequently the measures of the state in the field of capitalism
take unforeseen and unintended courses, or they are made illusory by the
superior expert knowledge of interest groups.
13: Stages in the Development of Bureaucracy
-^Y^^^
More and more the spjciaHzed knowledge of the expert became the
foundation for the power position of the officeholder. Hence an early
concern of the ruler was how to exploit the special knowledge of experts
without having to abdicate in their favor but preserve his dominant
position. With the qualitative extension of administrative tasks and
therewith the indispensability of expert knowledge, it typically happens
236 POWER
that the lord no longer is satisfied by occasional consultation with indi-
vidual and proved confidants or even with an assembly of such men
called together intermittently and in difficult situations. The lord begins
to surround himself with collegiate bodies who deliberate and resolve in
continuous session.* The Rate von Hans aus^ is a characteristic transi-
tional phenomenon in this development.
The position of such collegiate bodies naturally varies according to
whether they become the highest administrative authority, or whether a
central and monocratic authority, or several such authorities stand at
their side. In addition, a great deal depends upon their procedure. When
/the collegiate type is fully developed, such bodies, in principle or in fic-
tion, meet with the lord in the chair and all important matters are
elucidated from all points of view in the papers of the respective experts
and their assistants and by the reasoned votes of the other members.
The matter is then settled by a resolution, which the lord will sanction
f/^ or reject by an edict. This kind of collegiate body is the typical form
/^tA . in which the ruler, who increasingly turns into a ^dilettante/ at the same
time exploits expert knowledge and — what frequently remains unnoticed
— seeks to fend off the overpowering weight of expert knowledge and
to maintain his dominant position in the face of experts. He keeps one
expert in check by others and by such cumbersome procedures he seeks
personally to gain a comprehensive picture as well .as the certainty that
nobody prompts him to arbitrary decisions. Often the prince expects to
assure himself a maximum of personal influence less from personally
presiding over the collegiate bodies than from having written memo-
randa submitted to him. Frederick William I of Prussia actually exerted
a very considerable influence on the administration, but he almost never
attended the coUegiately organized sessions of the cabinet ministers! He
rendered his decisions on written presentations by means of marginal
comments or edicts. These decisions were delivered to the ministers by
the Feld jaeger of the Cabinett, after consultation with those servants who
belonged to the cabinet and were personnally attached to the king.
The hatred of the bureaucratic departments turns against the cabinet
^ just as the distrust of the subjects turns against the bureaucrats in case
of failure. The cabinet in Russia, as well as in Prussia and in other
states, thus developed into a personal fortress in which the ruler, so to
* Consdl d'Etat, Privy Council, Generaldirektoritim , Cabinett, Divan, Tsung-li Yamen,
Wai-wti pti, etc.
BUREAUCRACY 237
speak, sought refuge in the face of expert knowledge and the impersonal
and functional routinization of administration.
v^By the collegiate principle the ruler furthermore tries to fashion a sort T
of synthesis of specialized experts into a collective unit. His success in \
doing this cannot be ascertained in general. The phenomenon itself,
however, is common to very different forms of state, from the patri-
monial and feudal to the early, bureaucratic, and it is especially typical
for early princely absolutism. [The collegiate principle has proved itself
to be one of the strongest educative means for 'matter-of-factness' in
administration. It has also made possible the drawing in of socially
influential private persons and thus to combine in some measure the
authority of notables and the practical knowledge of private enterprisers
with the specialized expertness of professional bureaucrats. The collegiate
bodies were one of the first institutions to allow the development of the
modern concept of 'public authorities,' in the sense of enduring struc-
tures independent of the person.
As long as an expert knowledge of administrative affairs was the
exclusive product of a long empirical practice^ and administrative norms
were not regulations but elements of tradition, the council of elders —
in a manner typical often with priests, 'elder statesmen,' and notables
participating — was the adequate form for collegiate authorities, which
in the beginning merely gave advice to the ruler. But as such bodies
continued to exist in the face of changing rulers, they often usurped y
actual power. The Roman Senate and the Venetian Council, as well as
the Athenian Areopag until its downfall and replacement by the rule of
the demagogos acted in this manner. We must of course sharply distin-
guish such authorities from the corporate bodies under discussion here.
,. In spite of manifold transitions, collegiate bodies, as a type, emerge on
the basis of the rational specialization of functions and the rule of expert ! »
knowledge. On the other hand, they must be distinguished from ad-
visory bodies selected from among private and interested circles, which
are frequently found in the modern state and whose nucleus is not formed
of officials or of former officials. These collegiate bodies must also be
distinguished sociologically from the boards of control found in the
bureaucratic structures of the modern private economy (economic cor-
porations). This distinction must be made in spite of the fact that such
corporate bodies not infrequently complete themselves by drawing in
notables from among disinterested circles for the sake of their expert
knowledge or in order to exploit them for representation and advertis-
238 POWER
ing. Normally, such bodies do not unite holders of special expert knowl-
edge but rather the decisive representatives of paramount economic inter-
est groups, especially the bank creditors of the enterprise — and such
men by no means hold merely advisory positions. They have at least a
controlling voice, and very often they occupy an actually dominant posi-
tion. They are to be compared (not without some distortion) to the
assemblies of the great independent holders of feudal fiefs and offices
and other socially powerful interest groups of patrimonial or feudal
polities. Occasionally, however, these have been the precursors of the
'councilors' who have emerged in consequence of an increased intensity
of administration. And even more frequently they have been precursors
of corporations of legally privileged estates. ^_.,»_«.
With great regularity the bureaucratic collegiate principle' has been
. transferred from the central authority to the most varied lower authoji-
tie^. Within locally closed, and especially within urban units, collegiate
administration is the original form of the rule of notables, as was indi-
cated at the beginning of this discussion. Originally it worked through
elected, later on, usually, or at least in part, through co-opted 'coun-
cilors,' collegiate bodies of 'magistrates,' decuriones, and 'jurors.' Such
bodies are a normal element of organized 'self-government,' that is, the
management of administrative affairs by local interest groups under the
control of the bureaucratic authorities of the state. The above-mentioned
examples of the Venetian Council and even more so of the Roman Sen-
ate represent transfers of notable rule to great overseas empires. Normally
,such a rule of notables is rooted in local political associations. Within
if . . ....
/{the bureaucratic state, collegiate administration disappears as soon as
''I progress in the means of communication and the increasing technical
Jj demands of administration necessitate quick and unambiguous deci-
l| sions, and as soon as the dominant motives for full bureaucratization
iPand monocracy, which we discussed above, push to the fore. Collegiate
3 administration disappears when from the point of view of the ruler's
Jl interests a strictly unified administrative leadership appears to be more
important than thoroughness in the preparation of administrative deci-
sions. This is the case as soon as parliamentary institutions develop and
— usually at the same time — as criticism from the outside and publicity
increase.
Under these modern conditions the thoroughly rationalized system of
departmental ministers and prefects, as in France, offers significant oppor-
tunities for pushing the old forms into the background. Probably the
BUREAUCRACY 239
system is supplemented by the calling in of interest groups as advisory
bodies recruited from among the economically and socially most influen-
tial strata. ;Trhis practice, which I have mentioned above, is increasingly
frequent and gradually may well be ordered more formally.
This latter development seeks especially to put the concrete experience
of interest groups into the service of a rational administration of experdy
trained officials. It will certainly be important in the future and it further
increases the power of bureaucracy. It is known that Bismarck sought to
realize the plan of a 'national economic council' as a means of power
against parliament. Bismarck, who would never have given the Reichstag
the right of investigation in the sense of the British Parliament, re-
proached the majority, who rejected his proposal, by stating that in the
interest of parliamentary power the majority sought to protect officialdom
from becoming 'too prudent.' Discussion of the position of organized
interest groups within the administration, which may be in the offing,
does not belong in this context.
Only with the bureaucratization of the state and of law in general
can one see a definite possibility of separating sharply and conceptually
an 'objective' legal order from the 'subjective rights' of the individual I*
which it guarantees; of separating 'public' law from 'private' law. Public ''
law regulates the interrelationships of public authorities and their rela-
tionships with the 'subjects'; private law regulates the relationships of
the governed individuals among themselves. This conceptual separation
presupposes the conceptual separation of the 'state,' as an abstract bearer;
of sovereign prerogatives and the creator of 'legal norms,' from all per- ; !
sonal 'authorizations' of individuals. These conceptual forms are neces-
sarily remote from the nature of pre-bureaucratic, and especially from
patrimonial and feudal, structures of authority. This conceptual separa-
tion of private and public was first conceived and realized in urban
communities; for as soon as their officeholders were secured by periodic
elections, the individual power-holder, even if he was in the highest
position, was obviously no longer identical with the man who possessed
authority 'in his own right.' Yet it was left to the complete depersonaliza-
tion of administrative management by bureaucracy and the rational
systematization of law to realize the separation of public and private
fully and in principle.
240 ^ POWER
14: The 'Rationalization' of Education and TrainIi«ig
We cannot here analyze the far-reaching and general cultural effects
that the advance of the rational bureaucratic structure of domination, as
such, develops quite independently of the areas in which it takes hold.
Naturally, bureaucracy promotes a 'rationalist' way of life, but the con-
^rcept of rationalism allows for widely differing contents. Quite generally,
!cne can only say that the bureaucratization of all domination very
strongly furthers the development of 'rational matter-oF-factness' and
■ the personality type of the professional expert. This has far-reaching
ramifications, but only one important element of the "pfoce5]r"can"be
: briefly indicated here: its effect upon the nature of training and edu-
,; cation.
Educational institutions on the European continent, especially the
institutions of higher learning — the universities, as well as technical
academies, business colleges, gymnasiums, and other middle schools —
are dominated and influenced by the need for the kind of 'education'
that produces a system of special examinations and the trained expert-
ness that is increasingly indispensable for modern bureaucracy.
The 'special examination,' in the present sense, was and is found also
outside of bureaucratic structures proper; thus, today it is found in the
'free' professions of medicine and law and in the guild-organized trades.
Expert examinations are neither indispensable to nor concomitant
phenomena of bureaucratization. The French, English, and American
bureaucracies have for a long time foregone such examinations entirely
or to a large extent, for training and service in party organizations have
made up for them.
'Democracy' also takes an ambivalent stand in the face of specialized
examinations, as it does in the face of all the phenomena of bureaucracy
— although democracy itself promotes these developments. Special exam-
inations, on the one hand, mean or appear to mean a 'selection' of. those
who quahfy from all social strata rather than a rule by notables. On the
other hand, democracy fears that a merit system and educational certifi-
cates will result in a privileged 'caste.' Hence, democracy fights against
the special-examination system.
The special examination is found even in pre-bureaucratic or semi-
bureaucratic epochs. Indeed, the regular and earliest locus of special
examinations is among prebendally organized dominions. Expectancies
BUREAUCRACY 24I
of prebends, first of church prebends — as in the Islamite Orient and in
the Occidental Middle Ages — then, as was especially the case in China,
secular prebends, are the typical prizes for which people study and are
examined. These examinations, however, have in truth only a partially
specialized and expert character.
"^Thejnodern development ofjull bureaucratization brings the^steng
of rational, specialized, jnd expert examinations irresistibly to the fore. ,
The civil-service reform gradually imports expert training and special-
ized examinations into the United States. In all other countries this
system also advances, stemming from its main breeding place, Germany.
The increasing bureaucratization of administration enhances the im-
portance of the specialized examination in England. In China, the
attempt to replace the semi-patrimonial and ancient bureaucracy by a
modern bureaucracy brought the expert examination; it took the place
of a former and quite differently structured system of examinations. The
bureaucratization of capitalism, with its demand for expertly trained
technicians, clerks, et cetera, carries such examinations all over the world.
Above all, the development is greatly furthered by the social prestige of
the educational certificates acquired through such specialized examina-
tions. This is all the more the case as the educational patent is turned
to economic advantage. Today, the certificate of education becomes what
the test for ancestors has been in the past, at least where the nobility has
remained powerful: a prerequisite for equality of birth, a qualification
for a canonship, and for state office. Vs©dt» c>r5'»'«^**^*'*
■^The development of the diploma from universities, and busiaess and
engineering colleges, and the universal clamor for the creation of educa-
tional certificates in all fields make for the formation of a privileged
stratum in bureaus and in offices. Such certificates support their holders'
claims for intermarriages with notable families (in BiTsIhess offices people
naturally hope for preferment with regafd'to the chief's daughter),
claims to be admitted into the circles that adhere to 'codes of honor,'
claims for a 'respectable' remuneration rather than remuneration for
work done, claims for assured advancement and old-age insurance, and,
above all, claims to monopolize socially and economically advantageous
positions. When we hear from all sides the demand for an introduction
of regular curricula and special examinations, the reason behind It is, of
course, not a suddenly awakened 'thirst for education' but the desire for
restricting the supply for these positions and their monopolization by the
owners of educational certificates. Today, the 'examination' is the uni-
242 POWER
versal means of this monopolization, and therefore examinations irre-
sistibly advance. As the education prerequisite to the acquisition of the
educational certificate requires considerable expense and a period of
waiting for full remuneration,! this striving means a setback for talent
(charisma) in favor of property. For the 'intellectual' costs of educational
certificates are always low, and with the increasing volume of such
certificates, their intellectual costs do not increase, but rather decrease.
The requirement of a chivalrous style of life in the old qualification
for fiefs in Germany is replaced by the necessity of participating in its
present rudimental form as represented by the dueling corps of the
universities which also distribute the educational certificates. In Anglo-
Saxon countries, athletic and social clubs fulfil the same function. The
' -' bureaucracy, on the other hand, strives everywhere for a 'right to the
office' by the establishment of a regular disciplinary procedure and by
removal of the completely arbitrary disposition of the 'chief over the
subordinate official. The bureaucracy seeks to secure the official position,
the orderly advancement, and the provision for old age. ' In this, the
bureaucracy is supported by the 'democratic' sentiment of the governed,
which demands that domination be minimized. Those who hold this
attitude believe themselves able to discern a weakening of the master's
prerogatives in every weakening of the arbitrary disposition of the mas-
ter over the officials. To this extent, bureaucracy, both in business offices
and in public service, is a carriernof^^petifiL 'status' de^elopme_nt, as
have been the quite differently structured officeholders of the past. We
have already pointed out that these status characteristics are usually also
exploited, and that by their nature they contribute to the technical use-
fulness of the bureaucracy in fulfilling its specific tasks.
, 'Democracy' reacts precisely against the unavoidable 'status' character
! of bureaucracy. Democracy seeks to put the election of officials for short
I terms In the place of appointed officials; it seeks to substitute the removal
I of officials by election for a regulated procedure of discipline. Thus,
4 democracy seeks to replace the arbitrary disposition of the hierarchically
*" ^. superordinate 'master' by the equally arbitrary disposition of the gov-
1 erned and the party chiefs dominating them.
Social prestige based upon the advantage of special education and
training as such is by no means specific to bureaucracy. On the contrary!
But educational prestige in other structures of domination rests upon
substantially different foundations. . i
Expressed in slogan-like fashion, the 'cultivated man,' rather than
BUREAUCRACY 243
the 'specialist,' has been the end sought by education and has formed
the basis of social esteem in such various systems as the feudal, theo-
cratic, and patrimonial structures of dominion: in the English notable
administration, in the old Chinese patrimonial bureaucracy, as well as
under the rule of demagogues in the so-called Hellenic democracy.
^,The term 'cultivated man' is used here in a completely value-neutral
sense; it is understood to mean solely that the goal of education con-
sists in the quality of a man's bearing in life which was considered
'cultivated,' rather than in a specialized training for expertness. The
'cultivated' personality formed the educational ideal, which was stamped
by the structure of domination and by the social condition for member-
ship in the ruhng stratum. Such education aimed at a chivalrous or an
ascetic type; or, at a literary type, as in China; a gymnastic-humanist
type, as in Hellas; or it aimed at a conventional type, as in the case of
the Anglo-Saxon gentleman. The quaHfication of the ruling stratum as
such rested upon the possession of 'more' cultural quality (in the abso-
lutely changeable, value-neutral sense in which we use the term here),
rather than upon 'more' expert knowledge. Special military, theological,
and juridical abihty was of course intensely practiced; but the point of
gravity in Hellenic, in medieval, as well as in Chinese education, has
rested upon educational elements that were entirely different from what
was 'useful' in one's specialty.
Behind all the present discussions of the foundations of the educa-
tional system, the struggle of the 'specialist type of man' against the older
type of 'cultivated man' is hidden at some decisive point. This fight is
determined by the irresistibly expanding bureaucratization of all public
and private relations of authority and by the ever-increasing importance
of expert and specialized knowledge. This fight intrudes into all intimate
cultural questions.
During its advance, bureaucratic organization has had to overcome
those essentially negative obstacles that have stood in the way of the level-
ing process necessary for bureaucracy. In addition, administrative struc-
tures based on different principles intersect with bureaucratic organiza-
tions. Since these have been touched upon above, only some especially im-
portant structural fiinciples will be briefly discussed here in a very simpli-
fied schema. We would be led too far afield were we to discuss all the
actually existing types. We shall proceed by asking the following ques-
tions :
I. How far are administrative structures subject to economic determina-
244 POWER
tion? Or, how far are opportunities for development created by other
circumstances, for instance, the purely political? Or, finally, how far are
developments created by an 'autonomous' logic that is solely of the tech-
nical structure as such?
2. We shall ask whether or not these structural principles^ in turn, re-
lease specific economic effects, and if so, what effects. In doing this, one
of course from the beginning has to keep his eye on the fluidity and the
overlapping transitions of all these organizational principles. Their 'pure'
types, after all, are to be considered merely as border cases which are
especially valuable and indispensable for analysis. Historical realities,
which almost always appear in mixed forms, have moved and still move
between such pure types.
The bureaucratic structure is everywhere a late product of development.
The further back we trace our steps, the more typical is the absence of
bureaucracy and officialdom in the stru':ture of domination. Bureaucracy
has a 'rational' character : rules, means, ends, and matter-of-factness domi-
nate its bearing. Everywhere its origin and its diffusion have therefore
had 'revolutionary' results, in a special sense, which has still to be discussed.
This is the same influence which the advance of rationalism in general ,
has had. The march of bureaucracy has destroyed structures of domination ''
which had no rational character, in the special sense of the term. Hence,
we may ask : What were these structures ? *
* In chapters following the present one in Wirtschajt iind Gesellschaft, Weber discusses
Patriarchialism, Patrimonialism, Feudalism, and Charismatic Authority. Chapter ix of the
present volume presents a short discussion of charismatic authority. For comments on the
other concepts, see the end of Chapter xi. For the way in which Weber analyzes a '
specific bureaucracy in terms of intersecting structural principles, sec Chapter xvii.
iJL. Ine Oociology ol C^narisniatic Autnority
I : The General Character of Charisma
Bureaucratic and patriarchal structures are antagonistic in many ways,
yet theyjiave in common a most important peculiarity: permanience. In
this respect they are both institutions of daily routine.'Patriarchal power
especially is rooted in the provisioning of recurrent and normal needs of
the workaday life. Patriarchal authority thus has its original locus in the
economy, that is, in those branches of the economy that can be satisfied
by means of normal routine. The patriarch is the 'natural leader' of the
daily routine. And in this respect, the bureaucratic structure is only the
counter-image of patriarchalism transposed into rationality. As a per-
manent structure with a system of rational rules, bureaucracy is fashioned
to meet calculable and recurrent needs by means of a normal routine.
The provisioning of all demands that go beyond those of everyday
routine has had, in principle, an entirely heterogeneous, namely, a
charismatic, foundation; the further back we look in history, the more
we find this to be the case. This means that the 'natural' leaders — in
times of psychic, physical, economic, ethical, religious, political distress —
have been neither officeholders nor incumbents of an 'occupation' in the
present sense of the word, that is, men who have acquired expert knowl-
edge and who serve for remuneration. The natural leaders in distress
have been holders of specific gifts of the body and spirit; and these gifts
have been believed to be supernatural, not accessible to everybody. The
concept of 'charisma' is here used in a completely 'value-neutral' sense.
The capacity of the Irish culture hero, Cuchulain, or of the Homeric
Achilles for heroic frenzy is a manic seizure, just as is that of the
Arabian berserk who bites his shield like a mad dog — biting around until
he darts off in raving bloodthirstiness. For a long time it has been main-
tained that the seizure of the berserk is artificially produced through
Wirtschuft unci Gesellscliujt, part in, chap, g, pp. 753-7.
245
246 POWER
acute poisoning. In Byzantium, a number of 'blond beasts,' disposed to
such seizures, were kept about, just as war elephants were formerly kept.
Shamanist ecstasy is linked to constitutional epilepsy, the possession and
the testing of which represents a charismatic qualification. Hence neither
is 'edifying' to our minds. They are just as little edifying to us as is the
kind of 'revelation,' for instance, of the Sacred Book of the Mormons,
which, at least from an evaluative standpoint, perhaps would have to be
called a 'hoax.' But sociology is not concerned with such questions. In
the faith of their followers, the chief of the Mormons has proved himself
to be charismatically qualified, as have 'heroes' and 'sorcerers.' All of
them have practiced their arts and ruled by virtue of this gift (charisma)
and, where the idea of God has already been clearly conceived, by virtue
of the divine mission lying therein. This holds for doctors and prophets,
just as for judges and military leaders, or for leaders of big hunting
expeditions.
It is to his credit that Rudolf Sohm brought out the sociological pecu-
liarity of this category of domination-structure for a historically important
special case, namely, the historical development of the authority of the
early Christian church. Sohm performed this task with logical con-
sistency, and hence, by necessity, he was one-sided from a purely historical
point of view. In principle, however, the very same state of affairs recurs
universally, although often it is most clearly developed in the field of
religion.
In contrast to any kind of bureaucratic organization of offices, the
charismatic structure knows nothing of a form or oF an ordered pro-
cedure of appointment or dismissal. It knows no regulated 'career,' 'ad-
vancement,' 'salary,' or regulated and expert training of the holder of
charisma or of his aids. It knows no agency of control or appeal, no
local bailiwicks or exclusive functional jurisdictions; nor does it embrace
permanent institutions like our bureaucratic 'departments,' which are
independent of persons and of purely personal charisma.
"f Charisma^ knows only inner determination and inner restraint. The
holder, of charisma seizes the task that is adequate for him and demands
obedience and a following by virtue of his mission. His success deter-
mines whether he finds them. His charismatic claim breaks down if his
mission is not recognized by those to whom he feels he has been sent.
If they recognize him, he is their master — so long as he knows how to
maintain recognition through 'proving' himself.^^But he does not derive
his 'right' from their will, in the manner of an election. Rather, the
THE SOCIOLOGY OF CHARISMATIC AUTHORITY 247
reverse holds : it is the duty of those to whom he addresses his mission
tor^cognize him as their charismatically qualified leader. /^
In Chinese theory, the emperor's prerogatives are made dependent
upon the recognition of the people. But this does not mean recognition
of the sovereignty of the people any more than did the prophet's neces-
sity of getting recognition from the believers in the early Christian com-
munity. The Chinese theory, rather, characterizes the charismatic nature
of the monarch's position, which adheres to his personal qualification
and to his proved worth.
Charisma can be, and of course regularly is, qualitatively particular-
ized. This is an internal rather than an external affair, and results in the'
quahtative barrier of the charisma holder's mission and power. In mean-
ing and in content the mission may be addressed to a group of men who
are delimited locally, ethnically, socially, politically, occupationally, or in
some other way. If the mission is thus addressed to a hmited group of
men, as is the rule, it finds its limits within their circle.
In its economic sub-structure, as in everything else, charismatic dom-
ination is the very opposite of bureaucratic domination. If bureaucratic
domination depends upon regular income, and hence at least a potiori
on a money economy and money taxes, charisma lives in, though not off,
this world. This has to be properly understood. Frequently charisma
quite deliberately shuns the possession of money and of pecuniary income
per se, as did Saint Francis and many of his like; but this is of course
not the rule. Even a pirate genius may exercise a 'charismatic' domina-
tion, in the value-neutral sense intended here. Charismatic political heroes
seek booty and, above all, gold. But charisma, and this is decisive, always
rejects as undignified any pecuniary gain that is methodical and rational.
In general, charisma rejects all rational economic conduct.
The sharp contrast between charisma and any 'patriarchal' structure
that rests upon the ordered base of the 'household' lies in this rejection
of rational economic conduct. In its 'pure' form, charisma is never a
source of private gain for its holders in the sense of economic exploita-
tion by the making of a deal. Nor is it a source of income in the form of
pecuniary compensation, and just as little does it involve an orderly taxa-
tion for the material requirements of its mission. If the mission is one of
peace, individual patrons provide the necessary means for charismatic
structures; or those to whom the charisma is addressed provide honorific
gifts, donations, or other voluntary contributions. In the case of charis-
matic warrior heroes, booty represents one of the ends as well as the
/
248 POWER
material means of the mission. 'Pure' charisma is contrary to all patri-
archal domination (in the sense of the term used here). It is the opposite
of all ordered economy. It is the very force that disregards economy. This
also holds, indeed precisely, where the charismatic leader is after the
acquisition of goods, as is the case with the charismatic warrior hero.
Charisma can do this because by its very nature it is not an 'institutional'
and permanent structure, but rather, where its 'pure' type is at work, it
is^the very opposite of the institutionally permanent.
A In order to do justice to their mission, the holders of charisma, the
master as well as his disciples and followers, must stand outside the ties
of iRls world, outside of routine occupations, as well as outside the rou-
tine obligations of family life. Bf he statutes of the Jesuit order precTudeThe
acceptance of church offices; the members of orders are forbidden to
own property or, according to the original rule of St. Francis, the order
as such is forbidden to do so. The priest and the knight of an order have
to live in celibacy, and numerous holders of a prophetic or artistic char-
isma are actually single. All this is indicative of the unavoidable separa-
tion from this world of those who partake ('viiriQog') of charisma. In these
respects, the economic conditions of participation in charisma may have
an (apparently) antagonistic appearance, depending upon the type of
charisma — artistic or religious, for instance — and the way of life flowing
from its meaning. Modern charismatic movements of artistic origin rep-
resent 'independents without gainful eniployment' (in everyday language,
rentiers). Normally such persons are the best qualified to follow a charis-
matic leader. This is just as logically consistent as was the medieval friar's
vow of poverty, which demanded the very opposite.
2: Foundations and Instability of Charismatic Authority
By its very nature, the existence of charismatic authority is specifically
unstable. The holder may forego his charisma; he may feel 'forsaken by
his God,' as Jesus did on the cross; he may prove to his followers that
'virtue is gone out of him.' It is then that his mission is extinguished,
and hope waits and searches for a new holder of charisma. The charis-
matic holder is deserted by his following, however, (only) because pure
charisma does not know any 'legitimacy' other than that flowing from
personal strength, that is, one which is constantly being proved. The
charismatic hero does not deduce his authority from codes and statutes,
as is the case with the jurisdiction of office; nor does he~deduce~his
THE SOCIOLOGY OF CHARISMATIC AUTHORITY 249
authority from tradkional custom or feudal vows of faith, as is the
case with patrimonial power.
The^chansjiiaticjeader gains and maintains authority solely by proving
his strength in life. If he wants to be a prophet, lie must perform mira- ,1
cles; if he wants to be a war lord, he must perform heroic deeds. Above-
all, however, [his divine mission must 'prove' itself in that those who
faithfully surrender to him must fare well. If they do not fare well, he is
obviously not the master sent by the gods.
This very serious meaning of genuine charisma evidently stands in radi-
cal contrast to the convenient pretensions of present rulers to a 'divine
right of kings,' with its reference to the 'inscrutable' will of the Lord,
'to whom alone the monarch is responsible.' The genuinely charismatic
ruler is responsible p^^cisel^Mtojhose whom he rules. He is responsible,
for but one thing, that he personally and actually be the God-willed_
master.
During these last decades we have witnessed how the Chinese mon-
arch impeaches himself before all the people because of his sins and
insufficiencies if his administration does not succeed in warding off some
distress from the governed, whether it is inundations or unsuccessful
wars. Thus does a ruler whose power, even in vestiges and theoretically,
is genuinely charismatic deport himself. And if even this penitence does
not reconcile the deities, the charismatic emperor faces dispossession and
death, which often enough is consummated as a propitiatory sacrifice.
Meng-tse's (Mencius') thesis that the people's voice is 'God's voice'
(according to him the only way in which God speaks!) has a very specific
meaning: if the people cease to recognize the ruler, it is expressly stated
that he simply becomes a private citizen; and if he then wishes to be
more, he becomes a usurper deserving of punishment. The state of affairs
that corresponds to these phrases, which sound highly revolutionary,
recurs under primitive conditions without any such pathos. The charis-
matic character adheres to almost all primitive authorities with the excep-
tion of domestic power in the narrowest sense, and the chieftain is often
enough simply deserted if success does not remain faithful to him.
The subjects may extend a more active or passive 'recognition' to the
personal mission of the charismatic master. His power rests upon this
purely factual recognition and springs from faithful devotion. It is devo-
tion to the extraordinary and unheard-of, to what is strange to all rule
and tradition and which therefore is viewed as divine. It is a devotion
born of distress and enthusiasm.
250 POWER
Genuine charismatic domination therefore knows of no abstract legal
codes and statutes and of no 'formal' way of adjudication. Its 'objective'
law emanates concretely from the highly personal experience of heavenly
grace and from the god-like strength of the hero. Charismatic domination
means a rejection of all ties to any external order k\ favor of the exclustVe_
glorification of the genuine mentality of the prophet and hero. Hence, its
attitude is revolutionary and transvalues everything; it makes a sovereign
break with all traditional or rational norms: 'It is written, but T say iin.tP
you.'
The specifically charismatic form of settling disputes is by way of the
prophet's revelation, by way of the oracle, or by way of 'Solomonic' arbi-
tration by a charismatically qualified sage. This arbitration is determined
by means of strictly concrete and individual evaluations, which, however,
claim absolute validity. Here lies the proper locus of 'Kadi-justice' in the
proverbial — not the historical — sense of the phrase. In its actual historical
appearance the jurisdiction of the Islamic Kadi is, of course, bound to
sacred tradition and is often a highly formalistic interpretation.
Only where these intellectual tools fail does jurisdiction rise to an
unfettered individual act valuing the particular .case; but then it does
indeed. Genuinely charismatic justice always acts in this manner. In its
pure form it is the polar opposite of formal and traditional bonds, and
it is just as free in the face of the sanctity of tradition as it is in the face
of any rationalist deductions from abstract concepts.
This is not the place to discuss how the reference to the aegum et
bonum in the Roman administration of justice and the original meaning
of English 'equity' are related to charismatic justice in general and to the
theocratic Kadi-justice of Islamism in particular.^ Both the aegum et
bonum and 'equity' are partly the products of a strongly rationalized
administration of justice and partly the product of abstract conceptions
of natural Jaw. In any case the ex bona fide contains a reference to the
'mores' of business Ufe and thus retains just as little of a genuine irrational
justice as does, for instance, the German judge's 'free discretion.'
Any kind of ordeal as a means of evidence is, of course, a derivative of
charismatic justice. But the ordeal displaces the personal authority of the
holder of charisma by a mechanism of rules for formally ascertaining the
divine will. This falls in the sphere of the 'routinization' of charisma,
with which we shall deal below.
the sociology of charismatic authority 25i
3: Charismatic Kingship
In the evolution of political charisma, kingship represents a particularly
important case in the historical development of the charismatic legiti-
mization of institutions. The king is everywhere primarily a war lord, and
kingship evolves from charismatic heroism.
In the form it displays in the history of civilized peoples, kingship is
not the oldest evolutionary form of 'political' domination. By 'pofiTical"
domination is meant a power that reaches beyond and which is, in
principle, distinct from domestic authority» It is distinct because, in the
first place, it is not devoted to leading the peaceful struggle of man with
nature; it is, rather, devoted to leading in the violent conflict of one
human community with another.
The predecessors of kingship were the holders of all those charismatic
powers that guaranteed to remedy extraordinary external and internal
distress, or guaranteed the success of extraordinary ventures.y The chief-
tain of early history, the predecessor of kingship, is still a dual figure.
On the one hand, he is the patriarchal head of the family or sib, and on
the other, he is the charismatic leader of the hunt and war, the sorcerer,
the rainmaker, the medicine man — and thus the priest and the doctor —
and finally, the arbiter. Often, yet not always, such charismatic functions
are spht into as many special holders of charisma. Rather frequently the
chieftain of the hunt and of war stands beside the chieftain of peace, who
has essentially economic functions. In contrast to the latter, the chieftain
of war acquires his charisma by proving his heroism to a voluntary fol-
lowing in successful raids leading to victory and booty. Even the royal
Assyrian inscriptions enumerate booties of the hunt and cedars from
Lebanon — dragged along for building purposes — alongside figures on the
slain enemies and the size of the walls of conquered cities, which are
covered with skins peeled off the enemies.
The charismatic position j[a_mong primjtives)_ isjhus acquired^witJiDUt
regard to position in the sibs or domestic communities and without any
ruleT^hals^everV This duahsm of charisma and everyday routine is very
frequently found among the American Indians, for instance, among the
Confederacy of the Iroquois, as well as in Africa and elsewhere.
Where war and the big game hunt are absent^, the charismatic chieftain
— the 'war lord' as we wish to call him, in contrast to the chieftain of
peace — is absent as well. In peacetime, especially if elemental calamities.
252 POWER
particularly drought and diseases, are frequent, a charismatic sorcerer
may have an essentially similar power in his hands. He is a priestly lord.
The charisma of the war lord may or may not be unstable in nature
according to whether or not he proves himself and whether or not there
is any need for a war lord. He becomes a permanent figure when war-
fare becomes a chronic state of affairs. It is a mere terminological question
whether one wishes to let kingship, and with it the state, begin only
when strangers are affiliated with and integrated into the community as
subjects. For our purposes it will be expedient to continue delimiting the
term 'state' far more narrowly.
f The existence of the war lord as a regular figure certainly does not
/>/^ depend upon a tribal rule over subjects of other tribes or upon individual
'"" slaves. His existence depends solely upon a chronic state of war and upon
a comprehensive organization set for warfare. On the other hand, the
development of kingship into a regular royal administration does emerge
only at the stage when a following of royal professional warriors rules
over the working or paying masses; at least, that is often the case. The
forceful subjection of strange tribes, however, is not an absolutely indis-
pensable link in this development. Internal class stratification may bring
about the very same social differentiation: the charismatic following of
warriors develops into a ruling caste. But in every case, princely power
and those groups having interests vested in it — that is, the war lord's
following — strive for legitimacy as soon as the rule has become stable.
They crave for a characteristic which would define the charismatically
qualified ruler.^
JC. Ine M^eanin^ ol Discipli
iscipiine
t
It is the fate of charisma, whenever it comes into the permanent institu-
tions of a community, to give way to powers o£ tradition or of rational
sociaHzation. This waning 'of charisma generally indicates the dimin-
ishing importance of individual action. And of all those powers that
lessen the importance of individual action, the most irresistible is rational
discipline. '
The force of discipline not only eradicates personal charisma but also
stratification by status groups; at least one of its results is the rational
transformation of status stratification.
The content of discipline is nothing but the consistently rationalized,
methodically trained and exact execution of the received order, in
which all personal criticism is unconditionally suspended and the actor
is unswervingly and exclusively set for carrying out the command. In
addition, this conduct under orders is uniform. Its quality as the com-
munal action af a mass organization conditions the specific effects of such
uniformity. Those who obey are not necessarily a simultaneously obedient
or an especially large mass, nor are they necessarily united in a specific
locality. What is decisive for discipline is that the obedience of a plurality
of men is rationally uniform.
Discipline as such is certainly not hostile to charisma or to status group
honor. On the contrary, status groups that are attempting to rule over
large territories or large organizations — the Venetian aristocratic coun-
selors, the Spartans, the Jesuits in Paraguay, or a modern officer corps
with a prince at its head — can maintain their alertness and their superior-
ity over their subjects only by means of a very strict discipline. This dis-
cipline is enforced within their own group, for the blind obedience of
subjects can be secured only by training them exclusively for submission
under the disciplinary code. The cultivation of a stereotyped prestige and
style of life of a status group, only for reasons of discipline, will have a
'Legitimacy,' Wirtschajt und Gesellschaft, part in, chap. 5, pp. 642-9.
253
254 POWER
Strongly conscious and rationally intended character. This factor effects
all culture in any way influenced by these status communities; we shall
not discuss these effects here. A charismatic hero may make use of dis-
cipline in the same way; indeed, he must do so if he wishes to expand
his sphere of domination. Thus Napoleon created a strict disciplinary
organization for France, which is still effective today.
Discipline in general, like its most rational offspring, bureaucracy, is
impersonal. Unfailingly neutral, it places itself at the disposal of every
power that claims its service and knows how to promote it. This does not
prevent bureaucracy from being intrinsically alien and opposed to char-
isma, as well as to honor, especially of a feudal sort. The berserk with
maniac seizures of frenzy and the feudal knight who measures swords
with an equal adversary in order to gain personal honor are equally alien
to discipline. The berserk is alien to it because hi'' ^rUQV '" Irratinnal;
the knight Kpransp Klf. ■cnhjprfrivp -atUtuAo Inrlci m.'ittpr-rif-fartnpss. In
place of indiyidii?^] hern-ecstasy_Qr piety. Qf,spirited enthusiasm or devo-
tion to a leader as a persojL.^f the cujt of 'honor,' or the exercise of
personal ability asan^rt'— discipline-snbstiiutes habituation to routinized
skill. In so far as discipline appeals to firm motives of an 'ethical' char-
acter, it presupposes a 'sense of duty' and 'conscientiousness.' ('Men of
Conscience' versus 'Men of Honor,' in Cromwell's terms.)
The masses are uniformly conditioned and trained for discipline in
order that their optimum of physical and psychic power in attack may
be rationally calculated. Enthusiasm and unreserved devotion may, of
course, have a place in discipline; every modern conduct of war weighs,
frequently above everything else, precisely the 'moral' elements of a
troop's endurance. Military leadership uses emotional means of all sorts
— just as the most sophisticated techniques of religious discipline, the
exercitia spiritualia of Ignatius Loyola, do in their way. In combat, mili-
tary leadership seeks to influence followers through 'inspiration' and,
even more, to train them in 'emphatic understanding' of the leader's will.
The sociologically decisive points, however, are, first, that everything, and
especially these 'imponderable' and irrational emotional factors, are ration-
ally calculated — in principle, at least, in the same manner as one calculates
the yields of coal and iron deposits. Secondly, devotion, in its purpose-
fulness and according to its normal content, is of an objective character. It
is devotion to a common 'cause,' to a rationally intended 'success'; it does
not mean devotion to a person as such — however 'personally' tinged it
may be in the concrete instance of a fascinating leader.
THE MEANING OF DISCIPLINE 255
The case is diflferent only when the prerogatives of a slaveholder create
a situation of discipline— on a plantation or in a slave army of the ancient
Orient, on galleys manned by slaves or among prisoners in Antiquity and
the Middle Ages. Indeed, the individual cannot escape from such a
mechanized organization, for routinized training puts him in his place
and compels him to 'travel along.' Those w^ho are enlisted in the ranks
are forcibly integrated into the whole. This integration is a strong ele-
ment in the efficacy of all discipline, and especially in every war con-
ducted in a disciplined fashion. It is the only efficacious element and— as
caput mortuum — it always remains after the 'ethical' qualities of duty
and conscientiousness have failed.
I : The Origins of Discipline in War
The conflict between discipline and individual charisma has been full
of vicissitudes. It has its classic seat in the development of the structure
of warfare, in which sphere the conflict is, of course, to some extent deter-
mined by the technique of warfare. The kind of weapons — pike, sword,
bow — are not necessarily decisive; for all of them allow disciplined as well
as individual combat. At the beginning of the known history of the Near
East and of the Occident, however, the importation of the horse and prob-
ably, to some uncertain degree, the beginning of the predominance of
iron for tools have played parts which have been epoch-making in every
way.
The horse brought the war chariot and with it the hero driving into
combat and possibly fighting from his chariot. The hero has been dom-
inant in the warfare of the Oriental, Indian, and ancient Chinese kings,
as well as throughout Occidental societies, including the Celtic, In Ireland
'hero combat' prevailed until late times. Horseback riding came after the
war chariot, but persisted longer. From such horseback riding the 'knight'
emerged — the Persian, as well as the Thessalian, Athenian, Roman, Celtic,
and Germanic. The footman, who certainly played some part earlier in
the development of discipline, receded in importance for quite some time.
The substitution of iron side-arms for bronze javelins was probably
among the factors that again pushed development in the opposite direc-
tion, toward discipline. Yet, just as in the Middle Ages gun powder can
scarcely be said to have brought about the transition from undisciplined
to disciplined fighting, so iron, as such, did not bring about the change —
for long-range and knightly weapons were made of iron.
256 ^ POWER
'It was the discipline of the Hellenic and Roman Hoplites^ which
brought about the change. Even Homer, as an oft-quoted passage indi-
cates, knew of the beginnings of discipline with its prohibition of fighting
out of line. For Rome, the important turning-point is symbolized by the
legend of the execution of the consul's son, who, in accordance with the
ancient fashion of heroes, had slain the opposing war lord in individual
combat. At first, the well-trained army of the Spartan professional soldier,
the holy Lochos " of the Boeotians, the well-trained jam^a-equipped ^
phalanx of the Macedonians, and then the tactic of the highly trained,
more mobile maniple * of the Romans, gained supremacy over the Persian
knight, the militias of the Hellenic and Italic citizenry, and the people's
armies of the Barbarians. In the early period of the Hellenic Hophtes,
incipient attempts were made to exclude long range ^veapons by 'inter-
national law' as unchivalrous, just as during the Middle Ages there were
attempts to forbid the cross-bow.
The kind of weapon has been the result and not the cause of discipline.
Exclusive use of the infantry tactic of close combat during antiquity
brought about the decay of cavalry, and in Rome the 'census of knights'
became practically equivalent to exemption from military service.
At the close of the Middle Ages it was the massed force of the Swiss,
with its parallel and ensuing developments, which first broke the monop-
oly of knighthood to wage war. And even then, the Swiss still allowed
the Halberdiers ^ to break forth from the main force for hero combat,
after the main force had advanced in closed formation — the pike-men
occupying the outside positions. At first these massed forces of the Swiss
only succeeded in dispersing the knights. And in the battles of the six-
teenth and seventeenth centuries, cavalry, as such, increasingly disci-
plined, still played a completely decisive role. Without cavalry it was still
impossible to wage offensive wars and actually to overpower the enemy,
as the course of the English Civil War demonstrated.
It was discipline and not gun powder which initiated the transforma-
tion. The Dutch army under Maurice of the House of Orange was one
of the first modern disciplined armies. It was shorn of all status privi-
leges; and thus, for example, the previously effective refusal of the mer-
cenaries to do rampart work {opera servitid) became ineffective. Crom-
well's victories — despite the fierce bravery of the Cavaliers — were due to
sober and rational Puritan discipline. His 'Ironsides' — the 'men of con-
science'— trotted forward in firmly closed formation, at the same time
calmly firing, and then, thrusting, brought about a successful attack. The
THE MEANING OF DISCIPLINE 257
major contrast lies in the fact that after the attack they remained in
closed formation or immediately re-aligned themselves. It was this dis-
ciplined cavalry attack which was technically superior to the Cavaliers'
ardor. For it was the habit of the Cavaliers to gallop enthusiastically into
the attack and then, without discipline, to disperse, either to plunder the
camp of the enemy or prematurely and individually to pursue single
opponents in order to capture them for ransom. All successes were for-
feited by such habits, as was typically and often the case in Antiquity
and the Middle Ages (for example, at TagUacozzo). Gun powder and
all the war techniques associated with it became significant only with the
existence of discipline — and to the full extent only with the use of war
machinery, which presupposes discipline.
The economic bases upon which army organizations have been
founded are not the only agent determining the development of discipline,
yet they have been of considerable importance. -The discipline of well-
trained armies and the major or minor role they have played in warfare
reacted still more, and with more lasting effects, upon the political and
social order. This influence, however, has been ambiguous. Discipline, as
the basis of warfare, gave birth to pariarchal kingship among the Zulus,
where the monarch is constitutionally limited by the power of the army
leaders (like the Spartan Ephors) .^ Similarly, discipline gave birth to the
Hellenic polls with its gymnasiums.
When infantry drill is perfected to the point of virtuosity (Sparta), ,
the polls has an inevitably 'aristocratic' structure. When cities are based
upon naval discipHne, they have 'democratic' structures (Athens), Dis-
cipline gave rise to Swiss 'democracy,' which is quite different in nature.
It involved a dominance (in Hellenic terms) over metics as well as .
territorial helots, during the time when Swiss mercenaries enlisted in \
foreign armies. The rule of the Roman particiate, of the Egyptian,
Assyrian, and finally of the modern European bureaucratic state organi-
zations— all have their origin in discipline.
War disciphne may go hand in hand with totally different economic
conditions, as these examples show. However, discipline has always
affected the structure of the state, the economy, and possibly the family.
For in the past a fully disciplined army has necessarily been a professional
army, and therefore the basic problem has always been how to provide
for the sustenance of the warriors.
The primeval way of creating trained troops — ever ready to strike, and
allowing themselves to be disciplined — was warrior communism , which
258 POWER
we have already mentioned. It may take the form of the bachelor house
as a kind of barracks or casino of the professional warriors; in this form
it is spread over the largest part of the earth. Or, it may follow the pat-
tern of the communist community of the Ligurian pirates, or of the
Spartan syssitia organized according to the 'picnic' principle; or it may
follow Caliph Omar's organization, or the religious knight orders of the
Middle Ages. The warrior community may constitute, as we have noticed
above, either a completely autonomous society closed against the outside,
or, as is the rule, it may be incorporated into a political association whose
territory is fixed by boundaries. As a part of such a corporate group, the
warrior community may decisively determine its order. Thus, the re-
cruitment of the warrior community is linked to the order of the cor-
porate group. But this linkage is largely relative. Even the Spartans, for
example, did not insist upon a strict 'purity of blood.' Military education
was decisive for membership in its warrior community.
Under warrior communism, the existence of the warrior is the perfect
counterpart to the existence of the monk, ; whose garrisoned and com-
munist life in the monastery also serves the purpose of disciplining him
in the service of his master in the hereafter (and possibly also resulting
in service to a this-worldly master). The dissociation from the family
and from all private economic interests also occurs outside the celibate
knight orders, which were created in direct analogy to the monk orders.
When the institution of the bachelor house is fully developed, familial
relations are often completely excluded. The inmates of the house pur-
chase or capture girls, or they claim that the girls of the subject com-
munity be at their disposal so long as they have not been sold in mar-
riage. The children of the Ariloi — the ruling estate in Melanesia — ^are
killed. Men can join enduring sexual communities with a separate
economy only after having completed their 'service' in the bachelor
house — often only at an advanced age. Stratification according to age
groups, which with some peoples is also important for the regulation of
sexual relationship; the alleged survivals from primitive 'endogenous
sexual promiscuity'; the alleged survivals of a supposedly 'primeval right'
of all comrades to all girls not yet appropriated by an individual; as well
as 'marriage by capture' — allegedly the earliest form of marriage; and,
above all, the 'matriarchate' — all of these might be in most cases survivals
of such military organizations as we are discussing. These military organ-
izations split the life of the warrior from the household and family, and.
THE MEANING OF DISCIPLINE 259
under conditions of chronic warfare, such organizations have been widely
diffused.
Almost everywhere the communistic warrior community may be the
caput mortuum of the followers of charismatic war lords. Such a follow-
ing has usually been societahzed into a chronic institution and, once
existing in peacetime, has led to the decline of warrior chieftainship.
Yet under favorable conditions, the warrior chief may well rise to abso-
lute lordship over the disciplined warrior formations. Accordingly, the
oi}{os, as the basis of a military structure, offers an extreme contrast to
this communism of warriors who live on accumulated stores, as well as
contributions of the women, of those unfit to bear arms, and possibly of
serfs. The patrimonial army is sustained and equipped from the stores
of a commanding overlord. It was known especially in Egypt, but its
fragments are widely dispersed in military organizations of different
natures, and they form the bases of princely despotisms.
The reverse phenomenon, the emancipation of the warrior community
from the unlimited power of the overlord, as evidenced in Sparta through
the institution of the Ephors, has proceeded only so far as the interest
in discipline has permitted. In the polis, therefore, the weakening of the
king's power — which meant the weakening of discipline — prevailed only
in peace and in the homeland {domi in contrast to militiae, according
to the technical terms of Roman administrative law) . The Spartan king's
prerogatives approached the zero point only in peacetime. In the interests
of discipline, the king was omnipotent in the field.
An all-around weakening of discipline usually accompanies any kind
of decentralized military establishment — whether it is of prebendal or of
feudal type. This weakening of discipline may vary greatly in degree.
The well-trained Spartan army, the S'/drJQOi ^ of the other Hellenic and
Macedonian and of several Oriental military establishments, the Turkish
quasi-prebendal fiefs, and finally the feudal fiefs of the Japanese and
Occidental Middle Ages — all of these were phases of economic decen-
tralization, usually going hand in hand with the weakening of discipline
and the rising importance of individual heroism.
From the disciplinary aspect, just as from the economic, the feudal
lord and vassal represents an extreme contrast to the patrimonial or j
bureaucratic soldier. And the disciplinary aspect is a consequence of the ;
economic aspect. The feudal vassal and lord not only cares for his own
equipment and provisions, directs his own baggage-train, but he sum-
mons and leads sub-vassals who, in turn, also equip themselves.
26o POWER
Discipline has grown on the basis of an increased concentration of the
means of warfare in the hands of the war lord. This has been achieved
by having a condottiere recruit mercenary armies, in part or wholly, in
the manner of a private capitalist. Such an arrangement was dominant
in the late Middle Ages and the beginning of the modern era. It was
followed by the raising and equipping of standing armies by means of
political authority and a collective economy. We shall not describe here
in detail the increasing rationalization of procurement for the armies. It
began with Maurice of the House of Orange, proceeded to Wallenstein,
Gustav Adolf, Cromwell, the armies of the French, of Frederick the
Great, and of Maria Theresa; it passed through a transition from the
professional army to the people's army of the French Revolution, and
from the disciplining of the people's army by Napoleon into a partly pro-
fessional army. Finally universal conscription was introduced during
the nineteenth century. The whole development meant, in effect, the
clearly increasing importance of discipline and, just as clearly, the con-
sistent execution of the economic process through which a public and
collective economy was substituted for private capitalism as the basis for
military organization.
Whether the exclusive dominance of universal conscription will be
the last word in the age of machine warfare remains to be seen. The
shooting records of the British navy, for instance, seem to be affected by
ensembling gun crews of professional soldiers, which allows for their
continuation as a team through the years. The belief in the technical
superiority of the professional soldier for certain categories of troops is
almost sure to gain in influence, especially if the process of shortening
the term of service — stagnating in Europe at the moment — should con-
tinue. In several officers' circles, this view is already esoterically held.
The introduction of a three-year period of compulsory service by the
French army (1913) was motivated here and there by the slogan of
'professional army' — a somewhat inappropriate slogan, since all diflferen-
tiation of the troops into categories was absent. These still ambiguous
possibilities, and also their possible political consequences, are not to be
discussed here. In any case, none of them will alter the exclusive im-
r'portance of mass discipline. What has concerned us here has been ^ to
show that the separation of the \yarrior from the means of warf are,^ ^and
the concentration of the means of warfare in the hands of the war lord
f
have everywhere been one of the typical bases of mass discipline. And
I this has been the case whether the process of separation and of concen-
THE MEANING OF DISCIPLINE 261
tration was executed in the form of oikos, capitalist enterprise, or bureau-
cratic organizatiorn "^ ' --— ■"""*" "~
2: The Discipline of Large-Scale Economic Organizations
The discipline of the army gives birth to all discipline. The large-scale
economic organization is the second great agency which trains men for
discipline. No direct historical and transitional organizations link the
Pharaonic workshops and construction work (however httle detail about
their organization is known) with the Carthaginian Roman plantation,
the mines of the late Middle Ages, the slave plantation of colonial
economies, and finally the modern factory. However, all of these have
in common the one element of discipline.
The slaves of the ancient plantations slept in barracks, living without
family and without property. Only the managers — especially the villicus —
had individual domiciles, somewhat comparable to the lieutenant's domi-
cile or the residence of a manager of a modern, large-scale agricultural
enterprise. The villicus alone usually had quasi-property {peculium, i.e.
originally property in cattle) and quasi-marriage {contiibernium) . In
the morning the work-slaves lined up in 'squads' (in decuriae) and were
led to work by overseers (moniiores) ; their personal equipment (to use
a barrack term) was stored away and handed out according to need.
And hospitals and prison cells were not absent. The discipline of the
manor of the Middle Ages and the modern era was considerably less
strict because it was traditionally stereotyped, and therefore it somewhat
limited the lord's power.
No special proof is necessary to show that military discipline is the
ideal model for the modern capitalist factory, as it was for the ancient
plantation. In contrast to the plantation, organizational discipline in the
factory is founded upon a completely rational basis. With the help of
appropriate methods of measurement, the optimum profitability of the
individual worker is calculated like that of any material means of pro-
duction. On the basis of this calculation, the American system of 'scien-
tific management' enjoys the greatest triumphs in the rational condition-
ing and training of work performances. The final consequences are
drawn from the mechanization and discipline of the plant, and the
psycho-physical apparatus of man is completely adjusted to the demands
of the outer world, the tools, the machines — in short, to an individual
'function.' The individual is shorn of his natural rhythm as determined
262 POWER
by the structure of his organism; his psycho-physical apparatus is atuned
to a new rhythm through a methodical specialization o£ separately func-
tioning muscles, and an optimal economy of forces is established cor-
responding to the conditions of work. This whole process of rationaliza-
i tion, in the factory as elsewhere, and especially in the bureaucratic state
I machine, parallels the centralization of the material implements of
organization in the discretionary power of the overlord.
! The ever-widening grasp of discipline irresistibly proceeds with the
' rationalization of the supply of economic and political demands. This
universal phenomenon increasingly restricts the importance of charisma
l and of individually differentiated conduct.
3: Discipline and Charisma
Charisma, as a creative power, recedes in the face of domination,
I which hardens into lasting institutions, and becomes efficacious only in
J short-lived mass emotions of incalculable effects, as on elections and
j similar occasions. Nevertheless charisma remains a highly important
■ element of the social structure, although of course in a greatly changed
sense.
We must now return to the economic factors, already mentioned
above, which predominantly determine the routinization of charisma:
'• the need of social strata, privileged through existing political, social, and
\/ economic orders, to have their social and economic positions 'legitimized.'
They wish to see their positions transformed from purelyfactual power
relations into a cosmos of acquired rights, and to know that they are
thus sanctified. These interests comprise by far the strongest motive for
the conservation of charismatic elements of an objectified nature within
the structure of domination. Genuine charisma is absolutely opposed to
this objectified fornjc^lt does not appeal to an enacted or traditional order,
nor does it base its claims upon acquired rights. Genuine charisma rests
upon the legitimation of personal heroism or personal revelation. Yet
precisely this quality of charisma as an extraordinary, supernatural, divine
power transforms it, after its routinization, into a suitable source for the
legitimate acquisition of sovereign power by the successors of the charis-
matic hero. Routinized charisma thus continues to work in favor of all
those whose power and possession is guaranteed by that sovereign power,
and who thus depend upon the continued existence of such power.
The forms in which a ruler's charismatic legitimation may express
THE MEANING OF DISCIPLINE 263
itself vary according to the relation of the original charismatic power-
holder with the supernatural powers. If the ruler's legitimation cannot
be determined, according to unambiguous rules, through hereditary
charisma, he is in need of legitimation through some other charismatic
power. Normally, this can only be hierocratic power. This holds expressly
for the sovereign who represents a divine incarnation, and who thus
possesses the highest 'personal charisma.' Unless it is supported and
proved by personal deeds, his claim of charisma requires the acknowl-
edgment of professional experts in divinity. Incarnated monarchs are
indeed exposed to-the peculiar process of interment by close court officials
and priests, who are materially and ideally interested in legitimacy. This
seclusion may proceed to a permanent palace arrest and even to killing
upon maturity, lest the god have occasion to compromise divinity or to
free himself from tutelage* Yet generally, according to the genuine view
as well as in practice, the weight of responsibility which the charismatic
ruler must carry before his subjects works very definitely in the direction
of the need for his tutelage.
It is because of their high charismatic qualifications that such rulers
as the Oriental Caliph, Sultan, and Shah urgently need, even nowadays
(1913), a single personality to assume responsibility for governmental
actions, especially for failures and unpopular actions. This is the basis
for the traditional and specific position of the 'Grand Vizier' in all those
realms. The attempt to abolish and replace the office of the Grand Vizier
by bureaucratic departments under ministers with the Shah's personal
chairmanship failed in Persia during the last generation. This change
would have placed the Shah in the role of a leader of the administration,
personally responsible for all its abuses and for all the sufferings of the
people. This role not only would have continuously jeopardized him,
but would have shaken the belief in his very 'charismatic' legitimacy.
The office of Grand Vizier with its responsibilities had to be restored in
order to protect the Shah and his charisma.
The Grand Vizier is the Oriental counterpart of the position of the
responsible prime minister of the Occident, especially in parliamentary
states. The formula, le roi regne mats il ne gouverne pas, and the theory
that, in the interest of the dignity of his position, the king must not
'figure without ministerial decorations,' or, that he must abstain entirely
from intervening in the normal administration directed by bureaucratic
experts and specialists, or that he must abstain from administration in
favor of the political party leaders occupying ministerial positions — all
264 POWER
these theories correspond entirely to the enshrinement of the deified,
patrimonial sovereign by the experts in tradition and ceremony: priests,
court officers, and high dignitaries. In all these cases the sociological nature
of charisma plays just as great a part as that of court officials or party
leaders and their foUowings. Despite his lack of parliamentary power,
the constitutional monarch is preserved, and above all, his mere existence
and his charisma guarantee the legitimacy of the existing social and
property order, since decisions are carried out 'in his name.' Besides, all
those interested in the social order must fear for the belief in 'legality'
lest it be shaken by doubts of its legitimacy.
A president elected according to fixed rules can formally legitimize
the governmental actions of the respective victorious party as 'lawful,'
just as well as a parliamentary monarch. But the monarch, in addition
to such legitimation, can perform a function which an elected president
can not fulfil: a parliamentary monarch formally delimits the politicians'
quest for power, because the highest position in the state is occupied
once and for all. From a political point of view this essentially negative
function, associated with the mere existence of a king enthroned accord-
ing to fixed rules, is of the greatest practical importance. Formulated
positively it means, for the archetype of the species, that the king cannot
gain an actual share in political power by prerogative (kingdom of pre-
rogative). He can share power only by virtue of outstanding personal
ability or social influence (kingdom of influence). Yet he is in position to
exert this influence in spite of all parliamentary government, as events
and personaHties of recent times have shown.
'Parliamentary' kingship in England means a selective admission to
actual power for that monarch who qualifies as a statesman. But a mis-
step at home or in foreign affairs, or the raising of pretensions that do
not correspond with his personal abilities and prestige, may cost him
his crown. Thus English parliamentary kingship is formed in a more
genuinely charismatic fashion than kingships on the Continent. On the
Continent, mere birth-right equally endows the fool and the political
genius with the pretensions of a sovereign.
Part III
RELIGION
X.i. Ine oocial xsycnology ol tne VVorlo
Xveligions
By 'world religions,' we understand the five religions or religiously deter-
mined systems of life-regulation which have known how to gather
multitudes of confessors around them. The term is used here in a com-
pletely value-neutral sense. The Confucian, Hinduist, Buddhist, Chris-
tian, and Islamist religious ethics all belong to the category of world
religion. A sixth religion, Judaism, will also be dealt with. It is included
because it contains historical preconditions decisive for understanding
Christianity and Islamism, and because of its historic and autonomous
significance for the development of the modern economic ethic of the
Occident — a significance, partly real and partly alleged, which has been
discussed several times recently. References to other religions will be
made only when they are indispensable for historical connections.^
What is meant by the 'economic ethic' of a religion will become in-
creasingly clear during the course of our presentation. This term does
not bring into focus the ethical theories of theological compendia; for
however important such compendia may be under certain circumstances,
they merely serve as tools of knowledge. The term 'economic ethic'
points tojhe practical impulses for action which are founded in the
nsycho^ical and pragmatic contexts of religions. The following presen-
tation may be sketchy, but it will make obvious how complicated the
structures and how many-sided the conditions of a concrete economic
ethic usually are. Furthermore, it will show that externally similar forms
of economic organization may agree with very different economic ethics
'Die Wirtschaftsethik der Weltreligionen,' Gesammelte Attjsaetze zur Religionssoziologie
(Tubingen, 1922-3), vol. i, pp. 237-68. This is a translation o£ the Introduction to a
series of studies which Weber published as articles in the Archiv ftir Sozialforschting under
the title 'Die Wirtschaftsethik der Weltreligionen' (The Economic Ethic of the World
Religions). The Introduction and the first parts on Confucianism and Taoism were written
in 1 91 3. They were not published until September 1915, in the 41st volume of the
Archiv.
267
268 RELIGION
and, according to the unique character of their economic ethics, how
such forms of economic organization may produce very different his-
torical results. An economic ethic is not a simple 'function' of a form
of economic organization; and just as little does the reverse hold, namely,
that economic ethics unambiguously stamp the form of the economic
/, organization.
w/ Nq economic ethic has ever been determined solely by religion. In the
)^ face of man's attitudes to wards the~w6rld — as determined by religious or
»p other (in our sense) 'inner' factors — an economic ethic has, of course, a
high measure of autonomy. Given factors of economic geography and
histor,y_determine this measure of autonomy~in the highest degree. The
V'eligious determination of life-conduct, however, is also one — note this —
only one, of the determinants of the economic ethic^Of course, the reli-
giously determined way of life is itself profoundly influenced by economic
and political factors operating within given geographical, political, social,
and national boundaries. We should lose ourselves in these discussions
if we tried to demonstrate these dependencies in all their singularities.
Here we can only attempt to peel oflF the directive elements in the life-
conduct of those social strata which have most strongly influenced the
practical ethic of their respective religions. These elements have stamped
the most characteristic features upon practical ethics, the features that
distinguish one ethic from others; and, at the same time, they have been
important for the respective economic ethics.
By no means must we focus upon only one stratum. Those strata which
are decisive in stamping the characteristic features of an economic ethic
may change in the course of history. And the influence of a single
stratum is never an exclusive one. Nevertheless, as a rule one may deter-
mine the strata whose styles of life have been at least predominantly
decisive for certain religions. Here are some examples, if one may antici-
pate:
Confucianism was the status ethic of prebendaries, of men with literary
educations who were characterized by a secular rationalism. If one did
not belong to this cultured stratum he did not count. The religious (or
if one wishes, irreligious) status ethic of this stratum has determined
the Chinese way of life far beyond the stratum itself.
Earlier Hinduism was borne by a hereditary caste of cultured literati,
who, being remote from any office, functioned as a kind of ritualist and
spiritual advisers for individuals and communities. They formed a stable
center for the orientation of the status stratification, and they placed
• THE SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY OF THE WORLD RELIGIONS 269
their stamp upon ihe_social order. Only Brahmans, educated in the Veda,
formed, as bearers of tradition, the fully recognized religious status group.
An^ only later a non-Brahman status group of ascetics emerged by the
side of the Brahmans and competed with them. Still later, during the
Indian Middle Ages, Hinduism entered the plain. It represented the
ardent " sacramental religiosity of the savior, and was borne by the lower
strata with their plebeian mystagogues.
Buddhism was propagated by strictly contemplative, mendicant monks,
who] rejected the world and, having no homes, migrated. Only these
were full members of the religious community; all others remained
religious laymen of inferior value: objects, not subjects, of religiosity.
During its first period, Islamism was a religion of world-conquering
warriors, a knight order of disciplined crusaders. They lacked only the
sexual asceticism of their Christian copies of the age of the Crusades.
But during the Islamic Middle Ages, contemplative and mystical Sufism ^
attained at least an equal standing under the leadership of plebeian tech-
nicians of orgiastics. The bfotherhoods of the petty bourgeoisie grew out
of Sufism in a manner similar to the Christian Tertiarians, except they
were far more universally developed.
Since the Exile, Judaism has been the religion of a civic 'pariah people.'
We shall in time become acquainted with the precise meaning of the
term. During the Middle Ages Judaism fell under the leadership of a
stratum of intellectuals who were trained in literature and ritual, a
peculiarity of Judaism. This stratum has represented an increasingly
quasi-proletarian and rationalist petty-bourgeois intelligentsia.
Christianity, finally, began its course as a doctrine of itinerant artisan
journeymen. During all periods of its mighty external and internal de-
velopment it has been a quite specifically urban, and above all a civic,
j-digio-ci. This was true during Antiquity, during the Middle Ages, and
in Puritanism. The city of the Occident, unique among all other cities
of- the world — and citizenship, in the sense in which it has emerged only
in the Occident — has been the major theatre for Christianity. This holds
for the pneumatic piety of the ancient religious community, for the
mendicant monk orders of the high Middle Ages, and for the [Protest-
ant] sects of the reformation up to pietism and methodism.
It is not our thesis that the specific nature of a religion is a simple
'function' of the social situation of the stratum which appears as its
characteristic bearer, or that it represents the stratum's 'ideology,' or that
270 RELIGION
it is a 'reflection' of a stratum's material or ideal interest-situation. On
the contrary, a more basic misunderstanding of the standpoint of these
discussions would hardly be possible.
However incisive the social influences, economically and politically
, determined, may have been upon a religious ethic in a particular case,
it "deceives its stamp primarily from religious sources, and, first of all,
from the content of its annunciation and its promise. Frequently the very
next generation reinterprets these annunciations and promises in a funda-
mental fashion. Such reinterpretations adjust the revelations to the needs
of the religious community. If this occurs, then it is at least usual that
religious doctrines are adjusted to religious needs J^ Other spheres of in-
terest could have only a secondary influence; often, however, such influ-
ence is very obvious and sometimes it is decisive.
For every religion we shall find that a change in the socially decisive
strata Has usually been of profound importance. On the other hand, the
type of a religion, once stamped, has usually exerted a rather far-reaching
influence upon the life-conduct of very heterogeneous strata. In various
ways people have sought to interpret the connection between religious
ethics and interest-situations in such a way that the former appear as
mere 'functions' of the latter. Such interpretation occurs in so-called his-
torical materialism — which we shall not here discuss — as well as in a
purely psychological sense.
A quite general and abstract class-determination of religious ethics
might be deduced from the theory of 'resentment,' known since Friedrich
Nietzsche's brilliant essay and since then spiritedly treated by psycholo-
gists. As is known, this theory regards the moral glorification of mercy
and brotherliness as a 'slave revolt in morals' among those who are dis-
advantaged, either in their natural endowments or in their opportunities
as determined by life-fate. The ethic of 'duty' is thus considered a product
of 'repressed' sentiments for vengeance on the part of banausic men who
'displace' their sentiments because they are powerless, and condemned to
work and to money-making. They resent the way of life of the lordly
stratum who live free of duties. A very simple solution of the most
important problems in the typology of religious ethics would obviously
result if this were the case. However fortunate and fruitful the dis-
closure of the psychological significance of resentment as such has been,
great caution is necessary in estimating its bearing for social ethics.
Later we shall have to discuss the motives that have determined the
different forms of ethical 'rationalization' of life conduct, per se. In the
THE SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY OF THE WORLD RELIGIONS T]l
main, these have had HOthmg Whatsoever to do with resentment. But
that the evaluation »f suffering in reHgious ethics has been subject to a
typical change is beyOTwijdQiibtrlf properly understood, this change car-
ries a certain justification for the theory first worked out by Nietzsche.
The primeval attitude towards suffering has been thrown into relief
most drastically during the religious festivities of the community, espe-
cially in the treatment of those haunted by disease or other cases of ob-
stinate misfortune. Men, permanently suffering, mourning, diseased, or
otherwise unfortunate, were, according to the nature of their suffering,
believed either to be possessed by a demon or burdened with the wrath
of a god whom they had insulted. To tolerate such men in the midst of
the cultic community could result in disadvantages for it. In any case,
they were not allowed to participate in cultic feasts and sacrifices, for the
gods did not enjoy the sight of them and could be incited to wrath by
it. The sacrificial feasts were occasions for rejoicing — even in Jerusalem
during times of siege.
In treating suffering as a symptom of odiousness in the eyes of the
gods and as a sign of secret guilt, religion has psychologically met a
very_general need.. The fortunate is seldom satisfied with the fact of be-
ing fortunate. Beyond this, he needs to know that he has a right to his
good fortune. He wants to be convinced that he 'deserves' it, and above
all, that he deserves it in comparison with others. He wishes to be al-
lowed the belief that the less fortunate also merely experience his due.
Good fortune thus wants to be 'legitimate' fortune.
If the general term 'fortune' covers all the 'good' of honor, power,
possession, and pleasure, it is the most general formula for the service
of legitimation, which religion has had to accomplish for the external
and the inner interests of all ruling men, the propertied, the victorious,
and the healthy. In short, religion provides the theodicy of good fortune
for those who are fortunate. This theodicy is anchored in highly robust
Cpharisaical') needs of man and is therefore easily understood, even if
sufficient attention is often not paid to its effects.
In contrast, the way in which this negative evaluation of suffering has
led to its religious glorification is more complicated. Numerous forms
of chastisement and of abstinences from normal diet and sleep, as well
as from sexual intercourse, awaken, or at least facilitate, the charisma
of ecstatic, visionary, hysterical, in short, of all extraordinary states that
are evaluated as 'holy.' Their production therefore forms the object of
magical asceticism. The prestige of these chastisements has resulted from
272 RELIGION
the notion that certain kinds of suffering and abnormal states provoked
'through chastisement are avenues to the attainment of superhuman,
that is magical, powers. The ancient prescriptions of taboo and absti-
nences in the interest of cultic purity, which follow from a beHef in
demons, has worked in the same direction. The development of cults of
'redemption' has been added to these prescriptions, abstinences, and in-
terests. In principle, these cults have occupied an independent and new
position in the face of individual suffering. The primeval cult, and above
all, the cult of the political associations, have left all individual interests
out of consideration. The tribal and local god, the gods of the city and
of the empire, have taken care only of interests that have concerned the
collectivity as a whole. They have been concerned with rain and with
sunshine, with the booty of the hunt and with victory over enemies.
Thus, in the community cult, the collectivity as such turned to its god.
The individual, in order to avoid or remove evils that concerned him-
self— above all, sickness — has not turned to the cult of the community,
but as an individual he has approached the sorcerer as the oldest per-
sonal and 'spiritual adviser.' The prestige of particular magicians, and
of those spirits or divinities in whose names they have performed their
miracles, has brought them patronage, irrespective of local or of tribal
affiliation. Under favorable conditions this has led to the formation of a
religious 'community,' which has been independent of ethnic associations.
Some, though not all, 'mysteries' have taken this course. They have
promised the salvation of individuals qua individuals from sickness,
poverty, and from all sorts of distress and danger. Thus the magician
has transformed himself into the mystagogue; that is, hereditary
dynasties of mystagogues or organizations of trained personnel under a
head determined in accordance with some sort of rules have developed.
This head has either been recognized as the incarnation of a superhuman
being or merely as a prophet, that is, as the mouthpiece and agent of his
god. Collective religious arrangements for individual 'suffering' per se,
and for 'salvation' from it, have originated in this fashion.
The annunciation and the promise of religion have naturally been
addressed to the masses of those who were in need of salvation. They__
and their interests have moved into the center of the professional organi-
zation for the 'cure of the soul,' which, indeed, only therewith originated.
The typical service of magicians and priests becomes the determination
of the factors to be blamed for suffering, that is, the confession of 'sins.'
At first, these sins were offenses against ritual commandments. The
THE SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY OF THE WORLD RELIGIONS 273
magician and priest also give counsel for behavior fit to remove the
suffering. The material and ideal interests of magicians and priests could
thereby actually and increasingly enter the service of specifically plebeian
motives. A further step along this course was signified when, under the
pressure of typical and ever-recurrent distress, the religiosity of a 're-
deemer' evolved. This religiosity presupposed the myth of a savior, hence
(at least relatively) of a rational view of the world. Again, suffering
became the most important topic. The primitive mythology of nature
frequently offered a point of departure for this religiosity. The spirits (^ a _
who governed the coming and going of vegetation and the paths o£ ^--*^ '
celestial bodies important for the seasons of the year became the pre-
ferred carriers of the myths of the suffering, dying, and resurrecting god
to needful men. The resurrected god guaranteed the return of good
fortune in this world or the security of happiness in the world beyond.
Or, a popularized figure from heroic sagas — like Krishna in India — is
embellished with the myths of childhood, love, and struggle; and such
figures became the object of an ardent cult of the savior. Among people
under poHtical pressure, like the Israelites, the title of 'savior' (Moshuach
name) was originally attached to the saviors from political distress, as
transmitted by hero sagas (Gideon, Jephthah). The 'Messianic' promises
were determined by these sagas. With this people, and in this clear-cut
fashion only among them and under other very particular conditions, the
suffering of a people's community, rather than the suffering of an indi-
vidual, became the object of hope for religious salvation. The rule was
that the savior bore an individual and universal character at the same
time that he was ready to guarantee salvation for the individual and
to every individual who would turn to him.
The figure of the savior has been of varying stamp. In the late form
of Zoroastrianism with its numerous abstractions, a purely constructed
figure assumed the role of the mediator and savior in the economy of
salvation. The reverse has also occurred: a historical person, legitimized
through miracles and visionary reappearances, ascends to the rank of
savior. Purely historical factors have been decisive for the realization of
these very different possibilities. Almost always, however, some kind of
theodicy of suffering has originated from the hope for salvation.
The promises of the religions of salvation at first remained tied to
ritualTstj-ather than to ethical preconditions. Thus, for instance, both
the worldly and the other worldly advantages of the Eleusinian mysteries
were tied to ritual purity and to attendance at the Eleusinian mass. When
274 RELIGION
law gained in significance, these special deities played an increasing role,
and the task of protecting the traditional order, of punishing the unjust
and rewarding the righteous, was transferred to them as guardians of
juridical procedure.
Where religious development was decisively influenced by a prophecy,
naturally 'sin' was no longer a mere magical offense. Above all, it was a
f'sigiuii-disb.eliei in the prophet and in his commandments. Sin figured
as the basic cause of all sorts of misfortunes.
The propliet has not regularly been a ^descendant or a representative of
depressed classes. The reverse, as we shall see, has almost always been
the~Tule. Neither has the content of the prophet's doctrine been derived
preponderantly from the intellectual horizon of the depressed classes.
As 3 rule, however, the oppressed, or at least those threatened by distress,
were in need of a redeemer and prophet; the fortunate, the propertied,
the ruling strata were not in such need. Therefore, in the great majority
of cases, a prophetically announced religion of redemption has had its "
permanent locus among the less-favored social strata. Among these, such'
religiosity has either been a substitute for, or a rational supplement to,
'" magic.
Wherever the promises of the prophet or the redeemer have not suf-
ficiently met the needs of the socially less-favored strata, a secondary
salvation religion of the masses has regularly developed beneath the
official doctrine. The rational conception of the world is contained in
germ within the myth of the redeemer. A rational theodicy of misfortune
has, therefore, as a rule, been a development of this conception of the
wpxld. At the same time, this rational view of the world has often fur-
nished suffering as such with a 'plus' sign, which was originally quite
foreign to it.
Suffering, voluntarily created through mortification, changed its mean-
in^^Tth the development of ethical divinities who punish and reward.
Originally, the magical coercion of spirits by the formula of prayer was
increased through mortification as a source of charismatic states. Such
coercion was preserved in mortification by prayer as well as in cultic
prescriptions of abstinence. This has remained the case, even after the
magical formula for coercing spirits became a supplication to be heard
by a deity. Penances were added as a means of cooling the wrath of
deities by repentance, and of avoiding through self-punishment the sanc-
tions that have been incurred. The numerous abstinences were originally
attached to the mourning for the dead (with special clarity in China) in
THE SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY OF THE WORLD RELIGIONS 275
order to turn away their jealousy and wrath. These abstinences were
easily transferred to relations with the appropriate divinities; they made
self-mortification, and finally, unintentional deprivation as such, appear
more pleasing to the gods than the naive enjoyment of the goods of this
earth. Such enjoyment, indeed, made the pleasure-seeking man less acces-
sible to the influence of the prophet or the priest.
The force of all these individual factors was tremendously enhanced
under certain conditions.
Thg-aeed for an ethical interpretation of the 'meaning' of the distri-
bution of fortunes among men increased with the growing rationality
of conceptions of the world. As the religious and ethical reflections upon
the world were increasingly rationalized and primitive, and magical
notions were eliminated, the theodicy of suffering encountered increasing
difficulties. Individually 'undeserved' woe was all too frequent; not 'good'
but 'bad' men succeeded — even when 'good' and 'bad' were measured
by the yardstick of the master stratum and not by that of a 'slave
morality.'
One can explain suffering and injustice by referring to individual sin
committed in a former life (the migration of souls), to the guilt of
ancestors, which is avenged down to the third and fourth generation, or —
the most principled — to the wickedness of all creatures per se. As com-
pensatory promises, one can refer to liopes of the individual for a better
lifein the future in this world (transmigration of souls) or to hopes for
the successors (Messianic realm)^_^r^o a better life in the hereafter
(paradise).
The metaphysical conception of God and of the world, which the
ineradicable demand for a theodicy called forth, could produce only a l^J^^
few systems of ideas on the whole — as we shall see, only three. These /. jL
three_gave rationally satisfactory answers to the questioning for the basis
of the incongruity between destiny and merit: the Indian doctrine of ^
Kharma, Zoroastrian dualism, and the predestination decree of the deus
abscpndidus. These solutions are rationally closed; in pure form,^ they
ar£_iciund only as exceptions.
The rational need for a theodicy of suffering and of dying has had
extremely strong effects. As a matter of fact, this need has molded impor-
tant traits of such religions as Hinduism, Zoroastrism, and Judaism, and,
to a certain extent, Paulinian and later Christianity. Even as late as 1906,
a mere minority among a rather considerable number of proletarians
gave as reasons for their disbelief in Christianity conclusions derived
276 RELIGION
from modern theories of natural sciences. The majority, however, re-
ferred to the 'injustice' of the order of this world — to be sure, essentially
because they believed in a revolutionary compensation in this world.
The theodicy of suffering can be colored by resentment. But the need
of compensation for the insufficiency of one's fate in this world has not,
as a rule, had resentment as a basic and decisive color. Certainly, the
need for vengeance has had a special affinity with the belief that the
unjust are well oil in this world only because hell is reserved for them
later. Eternal bliss is reserved for the pious; occasional sins, which, after
all, the pious also commit, ought therefore to be expiated in this world.
Yet one can readily be convinced that even this way of thinking, which
occasionally appears, is not always determined by resentment, and that
it Ts by no means always the product of socially oppressed strata. We
shall see that there have been only a few examples of religion to which
resentment contributed essential features. Among these examples only one
is a fully developed case. All that can be said is that resentment could be,
and often and everywhere has been, significant as one factor, among
others, in influencing the religiously determined rationalism of socially
disadvantaged strata. It has gained such significance, in highly diverse
and often minute degrees, in accordance with the nature of the promises
held out by different religions.
In any case, it would be quite wrong to attempt to deduce 'asceticism'
in general from these sources. The distrust of wealth and power, which
as a rule exists in genuine religions of salvation, has had its natural basis
primarily in the experience of redeemers, prophets, and priests. They
understood that those strata which were 'satiated' and favored in this
world had only a small urge to be saved, regardless of the kind of salva-
tion offered. Hence, these master strata have been less 'devout' in the
sense of salvation religions. The development of a rational religious ethic
has had positive and primary roots in the inner conditions of those social
strata which were less socially valued.
Strata in solid possession of social honor and power usually tend to
fashion their status-legend in such a way as to claim a special and in-
trinsic quality of their own, usually a quality of blood; their sense of
dignity feeds on their actual or alleged being. The sense of dignity of
socially repressed strata or of strata whose status is negatively (or at least
not positively) valued is nourished most easily on the belief that a special
'mission' is entrusted to them; their worth is guaranteed or constituted
by an ethical imperative, or by their own functional achievement. Their
THE SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY OF THE WORLD RELIGIONS 277
value Is thus moved into something beyond themselves, into a 'task'
placed before them by God. One source of the ideal power of ethical
prophecies among socially disadvantaged strata lies in this fact. Resent- 1
rnent has not been required as a leverage; the rational interest in inaterial i
and ideal compensations as such has been perfectly sufficient. (
There can be no doubt that prophets and priests through intentional
or unintentional propaganda have taken the resentment of the masses
into their service. But this is by no means always the case. This essentially
negative force of resentment, so far as is known, has never been the
source of those essentially metaphysical conceptions which have lent
uniqueness to every salvation religion. Moreover, in general, the nature
of a religious promise has by no means necessarily or even predominantly
been the mere mouthpiece of a class interest, either of an external or
internal nature.
By themselves, the masses, as we shall see, have everywhere remained
engulfed in the massive and archaic growth of magic — unless a prophecy
that holds out specific promises has swept them into a religious move-
ment of an ethical character. For the rest, the specific nature of the great
religious and ethical systems has been determined by social conditions of
a far more particular nature than by the mere contrast of ruHng and ruled
strata.
In order to avoid repetition, some further comments about these rela-
tionships may be stated in advance. For the empirical student, the sacred
values, differing among themselves, are by no means only, nor even
preferably, to be interpreted as 'other-worldly.' This is so quite apart
from the fact that not every religion, nor every world religion, knows of
a 'beyond' as a locus of definite promises. At first the sacred values of
primitive as well as of cultured, prophetic or non-prophetic, religions
were quite solid goods of this world. With the only partial exception of
Christianity and a few other specifically ascetic creeds, they have con-
sisted of health, a long life, and wealth. These were offered by the
promises of the Chinese, Vedic, Zoroastrian, ancient Hebrew, and Islam-
ite religions; and in the same manner by the Phoenician, Egyptian,
Babylonian, and ancient Germanic religions, as well as by the promises
of Hinduism and Buddhism for the devout laymen. Only the religious
virtuoso, the ascetic, the monk, the Sufi, the Dervish "strove^ for sacred"
valueSj-wliich were 'other-worldly' as compared with such solid goods of
this world, as health, wealth, and long Hfe. And these other-worldly
sacred values were by no means only values of the beyond. This was not
278 RELIGION
the case even where it was understood to be so by the participants.
Psychologically considered, man in quest of salvation has been primarily
preoccupied by attitudes of the here and now. The puritan certitudo salutis,
the permanent state of grace that rests in the feeling of 'having proved
oneself,' was psychologically the only concrete object among the sacred
values of this ascetic religion. The Buddhist monk, certain to enter Nir-
vana, seeks the sentiment of a cosmic love; the devout Hindu seeks
either Bhakti (fervent love in the possession of God) or apathetic ecstasy.
The Chlyst with his radjeny, as well as the dancing Dervish, strives for
orgiastic ecstasy. Others seek to be possessed by God and to possess God,
to be a bridegroom of the Virgin Mary, or to be the bride of the Savior.
The Jesuit's cult of the heart of Jesus, quietistic edification, the pietists'
tender love for the child Jesus and its 'running sore,'* the sexual and
semi-sexual orgies at the wooing of Krishna, the sophisticated cultic
dinners of the Vallabhacharis, the gnostic onanist cult activities, the
various forms of the tinio mystica, and the contemplative submersion in
the All-one — ^these states undoubtedly have been sought, first of all, for
the sake of such emotional value as they directly offered the devout. In
this respect, they have in fact been absolutely equal to the religious and
alcoholic intoxication of the Dionysian or the soma cult; to totemic meat-
orgies, the cannibalistic feasts, the ancient and religiously consecrated
use of hashish, opium, and nicotine; and, in general, to all sorts of mag-
ical intoxication. They have been considered specifically consecrated and
divine because of their psychic extraordinariness and because of the
intrinsic value of the respective states conditioned by them. Even the
most primitive orgy has not entirely lacked a meaningful interpretation,
although only the rationalized religions have imputed a metaphysical
meaning into such specifically religious actions, in addition to the direct
appropriation of sacred values. Rationalized religions have thus subli-
mated the orgy into the 'sacrament?~The orgy, however, has had a pure
animist and magical character; it has contained only small or, indeed,
no beginnings of the universalist, cosmic pragmatism of the holy. And
such pragmatism is peculiar to all religious rationalism.
Yet even after such a sublimation of orgy into sacrament has occurred,
the fact remains, oT course, that for the devout the sacred value, first and
above all, has been a psychological state in the here and now. Primarily
this state consists in the emotional attitude fer se, which was directly
called forth by the specifically religious (or magical) act, by nietho3ical
asceticism, or by contemplation. — -^
THE SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY OF THE WORLD RELIGIONS 279
As extraordinary attitudes, religious states can be only transient in
character and in external appearance. Originally this, of course, was
everywhere the case. The only way of distinguishing between 'religious'
and 'profane' states is by referring to the extraordinary character of the
religious states. A special state, attained by religious means, can be striven
for as a 'holy state' which is meant to take possession of the entire man
and of his lasting fate. The transition from a passing to a permanent holy
state has been fluid,
Tljg. t>vo highest conceptions of sublimated religious doctrines of salva-
tion are 'rebirth' and 'redemption.' Rebirth, a primeval magical value, has
meant the acquisition of a new soul by means of an orgiastic act or
through methodically planned asceticism. Man transitorily acquired a
new soul in ecstasy; but by means of magical asceticism, he could seek
to gain it permanently. The youth who wished to enter the community
of warriors as a hero, or to participate in its magical dances or orgies, or
who wished to commune with the divinities in cultic feasts, had to have
a new soul. The heroic and magical asceticism, the initiation rites of
youths, and the sacramental customs of rebirth at important phases of
private and collective life are thus quite ancient. The means used in
these activities varied, as did their ends: that is, the answers to the ques-
tion, 'For what should I be reborn?'
The various religious or magical states that have given their psycho-
logical stamp to religions may be systematized according to very different
points of view. Here we shall not attempt such a systematization. In
connection with what we have said, we merely wish to indicate quite
generally the following.
The kind of empirical state of bliss or experience of rebirth that is
soughtafter as the supreme value by a religion has obviously and neces-
sarily^vaneT^rordlnglo^the^character ofThe stratum which was fore-
most^m' adopting it. Thr chivalrous warrior class, peasants, business
classes, and intellectuals with literary education have naturally pursued
different religious tendencies. As will become evident, these tendencies
hkVe not by themselves determined the psychological character of religion;
they have, however, exerted a very lasting influence upon it. The contrast
between warrior and peasant classes, and intellectual and business classes,
is of special importance. Of these groups, the intellectuals have always
been the exponents of a rationalism which in their case has been rela-
tively theoretical. The business classes (merchants and artisans) have been
at least possible exponents of rationalism of a more practical sort. Rational-
28o RELIGION
ism of either kind has borne very different stamps, but has always exerted
a great influence upon the religious attitude.
Above all, the peculiarity of the intellectual strata in this matter has
been in the past of the greatest importance for religion. At the present
time, it matters little in the development of a religion whether or not
modern intellectuals feel the need of enjoying a 'religious' state as an
'experience,' in addition to all sorts of other sensations, in order to deco-
rate their internal and stylish furnishings with paraphernalia guaranteed
to be genuine and old. A religious revival has never sprung from such a
source. In the past, it was the work of the intellectuals to sublimate the
possession of sacred values into a belief in 'redemption.' The conception
of the idea of redemption, as such, is very old, if one understands by it a
liberation from distress, hunger, drought, sickness, and ultimately from
suffering and death. Yet redemption attained a specific significance only
where it expressed a systematic and rationalized 'image of the world' and
represented a stand in the face of the world. For the meaning as well as
the intended and actual psychological quality of redemption has de-
pended upon such a world image and such a stand. Not ideas, 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. 'From what' and 'for what' one wished to
be redeemed and, let us not forget, 'could be' redeemed, depended upon
one's image of the world.
There have been very different possibilities in this connection: One could
wish to be saved from political and social servitude and lifted into a
Messianic realm in the future of this world; or one could wish to be saved
from being defiled by ritual impurity and hope for the pure beauty of
psychic and bodily existence. One could wish to escape being incarcerated
in an impure body and hope for a purely spiritual existence. One could wish
to~be saved from the eternal and senseless play of human passions and de-
sires and hope for the quietude of the pure beholding of the divine. One
could wish to be saved from radical evil and the servitude of sin and-hope
for the eternal and free benevolence in the lap of a fatherly god. One could
wish to be saved from peonage under the astrologically conceived determi-
nation of stellar constellations and long for the dignity of freedom and par-
taking of the substance of the hiddeii deity. One coiild" wish to be redeemed
from the barriers to the finite, which express themselves in suffering, misery
and death, and the threatening punishment of hell, and hope for an eternal
THE SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY OF THE WORLD RELIGIONS 28 1
bliss in an earthly or paradisical future existence. One could wish to be
saved from the cycle of rebirths with their inexorable compensations for 1
the deeds of the times past and hope for eternal rest. One could wish to
be saved from senseless brooding and events and long for the dreamless
sleep. Many more varieties of belief have, of course, existed. Behind them
always lies^ a stand towards something in the actual world which is
experienoed_as specifically 'senseless.' Thus, the demand has been implied:
that the world order in its totality is, could, and should somehow be a
meaningful 'cosmos.' This quest, ;the core of genuine religious rational- 0 \
ism,Jias_heen-bom€ precisely by strata of intellectuals.] The avenues, the \
results, and the efficacy of this metaphysical need for a meaningful cosmos \
have" varied widely. Nevertheless, some general comments may be made. /
The general result of the modern form of thoroughly rationalizing the
conception of the world and of the way of life, theoretically and prac-
tically, in a purposive manner, has been that religion has been shifted
into the realm of the irrational. This has been the more the case the fur-
ther the purposive type of rationalization has progressed, if one takes the
standpoint of an intellectual articulation of an image of the world. This
^*s;«hift of religion into the irrational realm has occurred for several reasons. ,1,
(IpnThe one hand, the calculation of consistent rationalism has not easily
come out even with nothing left over. In music, the Pythagorean 'comma'
resisted complete rationalization oriented to tonal physics. The various
great systems of music of all peoples and ages have differed in the man-
ner in which they have either covered up or bypassed this inescapable
irrationality or, on the other hand, put irrationality into the service of
the richness of tonalities. The same has seemed to happen to the theoret-
ical conception of the world, only far more so; and above all, it has
seemed to happen to the rationalization of practical life. The various
great ways of leading a rational and methodical life have been charac-
terized bjT Irrational presuppositions, which have been accepted simply
as 'given' and which have been incorporated into such ways of life. What
these presuppositions have been is historically and socially determined,
at least to a very large extent, through the peculiarity of those strata that
have been the carriers of the ways of life during its formative and de- •
cisive period. The interest situation of these strata, as determined socially
and psychologically, has made for their peculiarity, as we here under-
stand it.
/jpTLirthermore, the irrational elements in the rationalization of reality
nSvebeen the loci to which the irrepressible quest of intellectualism for
282 RELIGION
the possession of supernatural values has been compelled to retreat. That
is the more so the more denuded of irrationality the world appears to be.
The unity of the primitive image of the world, in which everything was
concrete magic, has tended to split into rational cognition and mastery
of nature, on the one hand, and into 'mystic' experiences, on the other.
The inexpressible contents of such experiences remain the only possible
'beyond,' added to the mechanism of a world robbed of gods. In fact, the
beyond remains an incorporeal and rrjetaphysical realm in which indi-
viduals intimately possess the holy. 'Where this conclusion has been
drawn without any residue, the individual can pursue his quest for sal-
vation only as an individuaU Tl^is phenomenon appears in some form,
with progressive intellectualist rationalism, wherever men have ventured
to rationalize the image of the world as being a cosmos governed by
impersonal rules. Naturally it has occurred most strongly among religions
and religious ethics which have been quite strongly determined by gen-
teel strata of intellectuals devoted to the purely cognitive comprehension
of the world and of its 'meaning.' This was the case with Asiatic and,
above all, Indian world religions. For all of them, contemplation became
the supreme and ultimate religious value accessible to man. Contempla-
"^ion offered them entrance into the profound and blissful tranquillity
and immobility of the All-one. All other forms of religious states, how-
ever, have been at best considered a relatively valuable Ersatz for con-
templation. This has had far-reaching consequences for the relation of
religion to life, including economic life, as we shall repeatedly see. Such
consequences flow from the general character of 'mystic' experiences, in
the contemplative sense, and from the psychological preconditions of the
search for them.
The situation in which strata decisive for the development of a religion
were active in practical life has been entirely different. Where they were
chivalrous warrior heroes, political officials, economically acquisitive
classes, or, finally, where an organized hierocracy dominated religion, the
results were difTerent than where genteel intellectuals were decisive.
The rationalism of hierocracy grew out of the professional preoccupa-
tion with cult and myth or — to a far higher degree — out of the cure of
souls, that is, the confession of sin and counsel to sinners. Everywhere
hierocracy has sought to monopolize the administration of religious
values. They have also sought to bring and _tg_temper the bestowal of
religious goods into the form of 'sacramental' or 'corporate grace,' which
could l)e rituallylleestowed only~by "the priesthood and could not be
THE SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY OF THE WORLD RELIGIONS 283
attained by the individual. Tlie individual's quest for salvation or the
quest of'free communities by means o£ contemplation, orgies, or asceti-
cism, has been considered highly suspect and has had to be regulated
ritually and, above all, controlled hierocratically. From the standpoint of
the interests of the priesthood in power, this is only natural.
Every body of political officials, on the other hand, has been suspicious
of all sorts of individual pursuits of salvation and of the free formation
of communities as sources of emancipation from domestication at the
hands of the institution of the state. Political officials have distrusted the
competing priestly corporation of grace and, above all, at bottom they
have despised the very quest for these impractical values lying beyond
utilitarian and worldly ends. For all political bureaucracies, religious
duties have ultimately been simply official or social obligations of the
citizenry and of status groups. Ritual has corresponded to rules and
regulations, and, therefore, wherever a bureaucracy has determined its
nature, religion has assumed a ritualist character.
It is also usual for a stratum of chivalrous warriors to pursue abso-
lutely worlHly interests and to be remote from all 'mysticism.' Such strata,
however, have lacked — and this is^cRaracteristic of heroism in general —
the desire as well as the capacity for a rational mastery of reality. The
irrationality of 'fate' and, under certain conditions, the idea of a vague
and deterrninistically conceived 'destiny' (the Homeric Moira) has stood
above and behind the divinities and demons who were conceived of as
passionate and strong heroes, measuring out assistance and hostility,
glory and booty, or death to the human heroes.
Peasants havej3een inclined towards magic. Their whole economic
existence^has-been specifically bound to nature and has made them de-
pendent upon elemental forces. They readily believe in a compelling
sorcery directed against spirits who rule over or through natural forces,
or they believe in simply buying divine benevolence. Only tremendous
transformations of life-orientation have succeeded in tearing them away
from this universal and primeval form of religiosity. Such transformations
have been derived either from other strata or from mighty prophets, who,
through the power of miracles, legitimize themselves as sorcerers. Orgias-
tic and ecstatic states of 'possession,' produced by means of toxics or by
the dance, are strange to the status honor of knights because they are
considered undignified. Among the peasants, however, such states have
taken the place that 'mysticism' holds among the intellectuals.
Finally, we may consider the strata that in the western European
284 •"-""TN religion
sense are calledT 'civic,' as well as those which elsewhere correspond to
them: artisans, tracers, enterprisers engaged in cottage industry, and
their derivatives existing only in the modern Occident. Apparently these
strata have been the most ambiguous with regard to the religious stands
open to them. And this is especially important to us.
^1 Among these 'civic' strata the following religious phenomena have had
especially strong roots: the institutional and sacramental grace of the
Roman church in the medfeval cities — the pillars of the popes; the_mys-
tagogic and"sacramental grace in the ancient cities and in India; the
orgiastic and contemj)lative Sufi, and Dervish religion of the Middle
Eastern Orient; the Taoist magic; the Buddhist contemplation; the
ritualist appropriation of grace under the direction of souls by mysta-
gogues in Asia; all the forms of love for a savior; the beliefs in redemp-
tion the world over, from the cult of Krishna to the cult of Christ; the
rational ritualism of the law and the sermon of the synagogue denuded
of all magic among Jewry; the pneumatic and ancient as well as the
ascetTcisr^medieval sects; the grace of predestination and the ethical
regeneration of the Puritan and the Methodist; as well as all sorts of
individual' pursuits of salvation. All of these have been more firmly
rooted among 'civic' strata than among any other.
Of course, the religions of all strata are certainly far from being un-
ambiguously dependent upon the character of the strata we have pre-
j , sented as having special affinities with them. Yet, at first sight, civic
I j strata appear, in this respect and on the whole, to lend themselves to a
j more varied determination. Yet it is precisely among these strata that
I elective affinities for special types of religion stand out. TJi£_tendency
towards a practical rationalism in conduct is common to all civic strata; it
'is'cohditioned by the nature of their way of life, which is greatly detached
frorn economic bonds to nature. Their whole existence has been based
upon technological or economic calculations and upon the mastery of
nature and of man, however primitive the means at their disposal. The
technique of living handed down among them may, of course, be frozen
in traditionalism, as has occurred repeatedly and everywhere. But pre-
cisely for these, there has always existed the possibility — even though in
greatly varying measure — of letting an ethical and rational regulation of
life arise. This may occur by the linkage of such an ethic to the tendency
of technological and economic rationalism. Such regulation has not
always been able to make headway against traditions which, in the main,
were magically stereotyped. But where prophecy has provided a religious
THE SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY OF THE WORLD RELIGIONS 285
basis, this basis could be one of two fundamental types of prophecy which
we shall repeatedly discuss: 'exemplary' prophecy, and 'emissary' prophecy.
Exemplary prophecy points out the path to salvation by exemplary
living^usually by a contemplative and apathetic-ecstatic life. The emis-
sary type of prophecy addresses its demands to the world in the name
of a god. Naturally these demands are ethical; and they are often of an
active ascetic character.
It is quite understandable that the more weighty the civic strata as such
have been, and the more they have been torn from bonds of taboo and
from divisions into sibs and castes, the more favorable has been the soil
for religions that call for action in this world. Under these conditions,
the preferred religious attitude could become the attitude of active asceti-
cism, of God-wiUed action nourished by the sentiment of being God's
'tool,' rather than the possession of the deity or the inward and contem-
plative surrender to God, which has appeared as the supreme value to
religions influenced by strata of genteel intellectuals. In the Occident the
attitude of active asceticism has repeatedly retained supremacy over con-
templative mysticism and orgiastic or apathetic ecstasy, even though these
latter types have been well known in the Occident. Active asceticism,
however, has not been confined to civic strata. Such an unambiguous
social determination has not in any way existed. The prophecy of
Zoroaster was directed at the nobility and the peasantry; the prophecy of
Islam was directed to warriors. These prophecies, like the Israelite and
the early Christian prophecy and preaching, have had an active character,
which stands in contrast with the propaganda of Buddhism, Taoism,
Neo-Pythagorism, Gnosticism, and Sufism. Certain specific conclusions
of emissary prophecies, however, have been drawn precisely on 'civic'
grounds.
In the missionary prophecy the devout have not experienced themselves
as vessels of the divine but rather as instruments of a god. This emissary
prophecy has had a profound elective affinity to a special conception of
God: the conception of a supra-mundane, personal, wrathful, forgiving,
loving, demanding, punishing Lord of Creation. Such a conception
stands in contrast to the supreme being of exemplary prophecy. As a
rule, though by no means without exception, the supreme being of an
exemplary prophecy is an impersonal being because, as a static state, he
is accessible only by means of contemplation. The conception of an, active
God, held by emissary prophecy, has dominated the Iranian and Mid-
Eastern religions and those Occidental religions which are derived from
286 RELIGION
theiru_The conception of a supreme and static being, held by exemplary
prophecy, has come to dominate Indian and Chinese religiosity.
These differences are not primitive in nature. On the contrary, they
have come into existence only by means of a far-reaching sublimation of
primitive conceptions of animist spirits and of heroic deities which are
everywhere similar in nature. Certainly the connection of conceptions of
God with religious states, which are evaluated and desired as sacred
values, have also been strongly influential in this process of sublimation.
These religious states have simply been interpreted in the direction of a
different conception of God, according to whether the holy states, eval-
uated as supreme, were contemplative mystic experiences or apathetic
ecstasy, or whether they were the orgiastic possession of god, or visionary
inspirations and 'commands.'
At the present time, it is widely held that one should consider emo-
tional content as primary, with thoughts being merely its secondary
expression. Of course, this point of view is to a great extent justified.
From such a standpoint one might be inclined to consider the primacy
of 'psychological' as over against 'rational' connections as the only de-
cisive causal nexus, hence to view these rational connections as mere
interpretations of the psychological ones. This, however, would be going
much too far, according to factual evidence. A whole series of purely
historical motives have determined the development toward the supra-
mundane or the immanent conception of God. These conceptions, in
turn, have decisively influenced the way in which experiences of salva-
tion have been articulated. This definitely holds for the conception of
the supra-mundane God, as we shall see again and again. If even Meister
Eckhart occasionally and expressly placed Martha above Mary, he did
so ultimately because he could not realize the pantheist experience of
God, which is peculiar to the mystic, without entirely sacrificing all the
decisive elements of Occidental belief in God and creation.
The rational elements of a religion, its 'doctrine,' also have an auton-
omy: for instance, the Indian doctrine of Kharma, the Calvinist belief in
predestination, the Lutheran justification through faith, and the Catholic
doctrine of sacrament. The rational religious pragmatism of salvation,
flowing from the nature of the images of God and of the world, have
under certain conditions had far-reaching results for the fashioning of a
practical way of life.
These comments presuppose that the nature of the desired sacred
values has been strongly influenced by the nature of the external interest-
THE SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY OF THE WORLD RELIGIONS 287
situation and the corresponding way of life of the ruHng strata and thus
by the social stratification itself. But the reverse also holds : wherever the
direction of the whole way of life has been methodically rationalized, it
has been profoundly determined by the ultimate values toward which
this rationalization has been directed. These values and positions were
thus religiously determined. Certainly they have not always, or exclu- ••,
sively, been decisive; however, they have been decisive in so far as an
ethical rationalization held sway, at least so far as its influence reached.
As a rule, these religious values have been also, and frequently absolutely,
decisive.
One factor has been very important in determining the nature of the
mutual inter-relations between external and internal interest-situations.
The 'supreme' sacred values, which are promised by religion and have
been discussed above, have not necessarily been the most universal ones.
Not everybody had entree to Nirvana, to the contemplative union with
the divine, the orgiastic or the ascetic possession of God. In a weakened
form, the transposition of persons into religious states of frenzy or into
the trance may become the object of a universal cult of the people. But
even in this form such psychic states have not been elements of everyday
life.
The empirical fact, important for us, that men are differently qualified
in a religious way stands at the beginning of the history of religion.
This fact had been dogmatized in the sharpest rationalist form in the
'particularism of grace,' embodied in the doctrine of predestination by
the Calvinists. The sacred values that have been most cherished, the
ecstatic and visionary capacities of shamans, sorcerers, ascetics, and pneu-
matics of all sorts, could not be attained by everyone. The possession of
such faculties is a 'charisma,' which, to be sure, might be awakened in ^
some but not in all. It follows from this that all intensive religiosity has a •
tendency toward a sort of status stratification, in accordance with differ-
ences in the charismatic qualifications. 'Heroic' or 'virtuoso' religiosity ^
is opposed to mass religiosity. By 'mass' we understand those who are
religiously 'unmusical'; we do not, of course, mean those who occupy
an inferior position in the secular status order. In this sense, the status
carriers of a virtuoso religion have been the leagues of sorcerers and
sacred dancers; the religious status group of the Indian Sramana and of
the early Christian 'ascetics,' who were expressly recognized in the con-
gregation as a special 'estate'; the Paulinian, and still more the Gnostic,
'pneumatics,' the pietist ecclesiola; all genuine 'sects' — that is, sociolog-
288 RELIGION
ically speaking, associations that accept oniy religiously qualified persons
in their midst; and finally, monk communities all over the world. ■
Now, every hierocratic and official authority of a 'church' — that is, a
community organized by officials into an institution which bestows gifts
of grace — fights principally against all virtuoso-religion and against its
autonomous development. For the church, being the holder of institu-
tionalized grace, seeks to organize the reHgiosity of the masses and to
put its own officially monopolized and mediated sacred values in the
place of the autonomous and religious status qualifications of the reli-
gious virtuosos. By its nature, that is, according to the interest-situation of
its officeholders, the church must be 'democratic' in the sense of making
the sacred values generally accessible. This means that the church stands
for a universalism of grace and for the ethical sufficiency of all those
who are enrolled under its institutional authority. Sociologically, the
process of leveling constitutes a complete parallel with the political
struggles of the bureaucracy against the political privileges of the aristo-
cratic estates. As with hierocracy, every full-grown political bureaucracy
is necessarily and in a quite similar sense 'democratic' — namely, in the
sense of leveling and of fighting against status privileges that compete
with its power.
The most varied compromises have resulted from this struggle be-
tween officialdoms and the virtuosos. These struggles have not always
been official but they have always existed at least covertly. Thus, the
religiosity of the Ulema '^ stood against the religiosity of the Dervishes;
the early Christian bishops against the pneumatics and heroist sectaries as
well as against the power of The Key of asceticist charisma; the Lutheran
preacher's office and the Anglican and priestly church stood against
asceticism in general; the Russian state church was opposed to the sects;
and the official management of the Confucian cult stood against
Buddhist, Taoist, and sectarian pursuits of salvation of all sorts. The
religious virtuosos saw themselves compelled to adjust their demands to
the possibilities of the religiosity of everyday life in order to gain and to
maintain ideal and material mass-patronage. The nature of their con-
cessions have naturally been of primary significance for the way in
which they have religiously influenced everyday life. In almost all
Oriental religions, the virtuosos allowed the masses to remain stuck in
magical tradition. Thus, the influence of religious virtuosos has been infi-
nitely smaller than was the case where religion has undertaken ethically
and generally to rationalize everyday life. This has been the case even
THE SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY OF THE WORLD RELIGIONS 289
when religion has aimed precisely at the masses and has cancelled how-
ever many of its ideal demands. Besides the relations between the relig-
iosity of the virtuosos and the religion of the masses, which finally re-
sulted from this struggle, the peculiar nature of the concrete religiosity
of the virtuosos has been of decisive importance for the development of
the way of life of the masses. This virtuoso religiosity has therefore also
been important for the economic ethic of the respective religion. The
religion of the virtuoso has been the genuinely 'exemplary' and practical
religion. According to the way of life his religion prescribed to the vir-
tuoso, there have been various possibilities of establishing a rational
ethic of everyday life. The relation of virtuoso religion to workaday life
in the locus of the economy has varied, especially according to the pe-
culiarity of the sacred values desired by such religions.
Wherever the sacred values and the redemptory means of a virtuoso
religion bore a contemplative or orgiastic-ecstatic character, there has
been no bridge between religion and the practical action of the workaday
world. In such cases, the economy and all other action in the world
has been considered religiously inferior, and no psychological motives
for worldly action could be derived from the attitude cherished as the
supreme value. In their innermost beings, contemplative and ecstatic
religions have been rather specifically hostile to economic life. Mystic,
orgiastic, and ecstatic experiences are extraordinary psychic states; they
lead away from everyday life and from all expedient conduct. Such ex-
periences are, therefore, deemed to be 'holy.' With such religions, a deep
abyss separates the way of life of the laymen from that of the com-
munity of virtuosos. The rule of the status groups of religious virtuosos
over the religious community readily shifts into a magical anthropolatry ;
the virtuoso is directly worshipped as a Saint, or at least laymen buy
his blessing and his magical powers as a means of promoting mun-
dane success or religious salvation. As the peasant was to the landlord,
so the layman was to the Buddhist and Jainist bhikshu:^ ultimately,
mere sources of tribute. Such tribute allowed the virtuosos to live entirely
for religious salvation without themselves performing profane work,
which always would endanger their salvation. Yet the conduct of the
layman could still undergo a certain ethical regulation, for the virtuoso
was the layman's spiritual adviser, his father confessor and directeur de
I'dme. Hence, the virtuoso frequently exercises a powerful influence over
the religiously 'unmusical' laymen; this influence might not be in the
direction of his (the virtuoso's) own religious way of life; it might be
290 RELIGION
an influence in merely ceremonious, ritualist, and conventional partic-
ulars. For action in this world remained in principle religiously insignifi-
cant; and compared with the desire for the religious end, action lay in
the very opposite direction.
In the end, the charisma of the pure 'mystic' serves only himself. The
charisma of the genuine magician serves others.
Things have been quite different where the religiously qualified vir-
tuosos have combined into an ascetic sect, striving to mould life in this
world according to the will of a god. To be sure, two things were neces-
sary before this could happen in a genuine way. First, the supreme and
sacred value must not be of a contemplative nature; it must not consist
of a union with a supra-mundane being who, in contrast to the world,
lasts forever; nor in a iinia mystica to be grasped orgiastically or apa-
thetic-ecstatically. For these ways always lie apart from everyday life and
beyond the real world and lead away from it. Second, such a religion
must, so far as possible, have given up the purely magical or sacra-
mental character of the means of grace. For these means always devalue
action in this world as, at best, merely relative in their religious signifi-
cance, and they link the decision about salvation to the success of proc-
esses which are not of a rational everyday nature.
When religious virtuosos have combined into an active asceticist sect,
two aims are completely attained: the disenchantment of the world and
the blockage of the path to salvation by a flight from the world. The
path to salvation is turned away from a contemplative 'flight from the
world' and towards an active ascetic 'work in this world.' If one disre-
gards the small rationalist sects, such as are found all over the world,
this has been attained only in the great church and sect organizations of
Occidental and asceticist Protestantism. The quite distinct and the
purely historically determined destinies of Occidental religions have
co-operated in this matter. Partly, the social environment exerted an
influence, above all, the environment of the stratum that was decisive
for the development of such religion. Partly, however — and just as
strongly — the intrinsic character of Christianity exerted an influence:
the supra-mundane God and the specificity of the means and paths of
salvation as determined historically, first by Israelite prophecy and the
thora doctrine.^
The religious virtuoso can be placed in the world as the instrument
of a God and cut off from all magical means of salvation. At the same
time, it is imperative for the virtuoso that he 'prove' himself before God,
THE SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY OF THE WORLD RELIGIONS 29I
as being called solely through the ethical quality of his conduct in this
world. This actually means that he 'prove' himself to himself as well.
No matter how much the 'world' as such is religiously devalued and
rejected as being creatural and a vessel of sin, yet psychologically the
world is all the more affirmed as the theatre of God-willed activity in
one's worldly 'calling.' For this inner-worldly asceticism rejects the
world in the sense that it despises and taboos the values of dignity and
beauty, of the beautiful frenzy and the dream, purely secular power,
and the purely worldly pride of the hero. Asceticism outlawed these
values as competitors of the kingdom of God. Yet precisely because of
this rejection, asceticism did not fly from the world, as did contempla-
tion. Instead, asceticism has wished to rationalize the world ethically in
accordance with God's commandments. It has therefore remained
oriented towards the world in a more specific and thoroughgoing sense
than did the naive 'affirmation of the world' of unbroken humanity, for
instance, in Antiquity and in lay-Catholicism. In inner-worldly asceti-
cism, the grace and the chosen state of the religiously qualified man
prove themselves in everyday life. To be sure, they do so not in the
everyday life as it is given, but in methodical and rationalized routine-
activities of workaday life in the service of the Lord. Rationally raised into
a vocation, everyday conduct becomes the locus for proving one's state of
grace. The Occidental sects of the religious virtuosos have fermented the
methodical rationalization of conduct, including economic conduct.
These sects have not constituted valves for the longing to escape from
the senselessness of work in this world, as did the Asiatic communities
of the ecstatics: contemplative, orgiastic, or apathetic.
The most varied transitions and combinations are found between the
polar opposites of 'exemplary' and 'emissary' prophecy. Neither reli-
gions nor men are open books. They have been historical rather than
logical or even psychological constructions without contradiction. Often
they have borne within themselves a series of motives, each of which, if
separately and consistently followed through, would have stood in the
way of the others or run against them head-on. In religious matters
'consistency' has been the exception and not the rule. The ways and
means of salvation are also psychologically ambiguous. The search for
God of the early Christian monk as well as of the Quaker contained
very strong contemplative elements. Yet the total content of their re-
ligions and, above all, their supra-mundane God of creation and their
way of making sure of their states of grace again and again directed
292 RELIGION
them to the course of action. On the other hand, the Buddhist monk was
also active, but his activities were withdrawn from any consistent ration-
ahzation in this world; his quest for salvation was ultimately oriented
to the flight from the 'wheel' of the rebirths. The sectarians and other
brotherhoods of the Occidental Middle Ages spearheaded the religious
penetration of everyday life. They found their counter-image in the
brotherhoods of Islam, which were even more widely developed. The
stratum typical of such brotherhoods in the Occident and in Islam were
identical: petty bourgeois and especially artisans. Yet the spirit of their
respective religions were very different. Viewed externally, numerous
Hinduist religious communities appear to be 'sects' just as do those of
the Occident. The sacred value, however, and the manner in which
values were mediated pointed in radically different directions.
We shall not accumulate more examples here, as we wish to consider
the great religions separately. In no r'^spect can one simply integrate
various world religions into a chain of types, each of them signifying a
new 'stage.' All the great religions are historical individualities of a
highly complex nature; taken all together, they exhaust only a few of
the possible combinations that could conceivably be formed from the
the very numerous individual factors to be considered in such historical
combinations.
Thus, the following presentations do not in any way constitute a
systematic 'typology' of religion. On the other hand, they do not consti-
tute a purely historical work. They are 'typological' in the sense that they
consider what is typically important in the historical realizations of the
religious ethics. This is important for the connection of religions with
the great contrasts of the economic mentalities. Other aspects will be
neglected; these presentations do not claim to offer a well-rounded pic-
ture of world religions. Those features peculiar to the individual re-
ligions, in contrast to other religions, but which at the same time are
important for our interest, must be brought out strongly. A presentation
that disregards these special accents of importance would often have to
tone down the special features in which we are interested. Such a bal-
anced presentation would almost always have to add other features and
occasionally would have to give greater emphasis to the fact that, of
course, all qualitative contrasts in reality, in the last resort, can somehow
be comprehended as purely quantitative differences in the combinations
of single factors. However, it would be extremely unfruitful to emphasize
and repeat here what goes without saying.
THE SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY OF THE WORLD RELIGIONS 293
The features of religions that are important for economic ethics shall
interest us primarily from a definite point of view: we shall be interested
in the way in which they are related to economic rationalism. More pre- j
cisely, we mean the economic rationalism of the type which, since the '
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, has come to dominate the Occident
as part of the particular rationalization of civic life, and which has
become familiar in this part of the world.
We have to remind ourselves in advance that 'rationalism' may mean
very different things. It means one thing if we think of the kind of
rationahzation the systematic thinker performs on the image of the
world: an increasing theoretical mastery of reality by means of increas-
ingly precise and abstract concepts. Rationalism means another thing if
we think of the methodical attainment of a definitely given and practical
end by means of an increasingly precise calculation of adequate means.
These types of rationaUsm are very different, in spite of the fact that
ultimately they belong inseparately together. Similar types may be dis-
tinguished even within the intellectual comprehension of reality; for
instance, the differences between English Physics and Continental Physics
has been traced back to such a type difference within the comprehension
of reality. The rationalization of life conduct with which we have to
deal here can assume unusually varied forms.
In the sense of the absence of all metaphysics and almost all residues
of religious anchorage, Confucianism is rationalist to such a far-going
extent that it stands at the extreme boundary of what one might possibly
call a 'religious' ethic. At the same time, Confucianism is more rational-
ist and sober, in the sense of the absence and the rejection of all non-
utilitarian yardsticks, than any other ethical system, with the possible
exception of J. Bentham's. Yet Confucianism, in spite of constantly actual
and apparent analogies, nevertheless differs extraordinarily from Ben-
tham's as well as from all other Occidental types of practical rationalism.
The supreme artistic ideal of the Renaissance was 'rational' in the sense
of a belief in a valid 'canon,' and the view of life of the Renaissance was
rational in the sense of rejecting traditionalist bonds and of having faith
in the power of the naturalis ratio. This type of rationalism prevailed in
spite of certain elements of Platonizing mysticism.
'Rational' may also mean a 'systematic arrangement.' ^ In this sense,
the following methods are rational: methods of mortificatory or of
magical asceticism, of contemplation in its most consistent forms — for
294 RELIGION
instance, in yoga — or in the manipulations of the prayer machines of
later Buddhism.
In general, all kinds of practical ethics that are systematically and
unambiguously oriented to fixed goals of salvation are 'rational,' partly
in the same sense as formal method is rational, and partly in the sense
that they distinguish between 'valid' norms and what is empirically
given. These types of rationalization processes are of interest to us in
the following presentations. It would be senseless to try to anticipate the
typologies of these presentations here, for they aim to make a contribu-
tion to such typology.
In order to make this attempt, the author must take the liberty of being
'unhistorical,' in the sense that the ethics of individual religions are pre-
sented systematically and essentially in greater unity than has ever been
the case in the flux of their actual development. Rich contrasts which
have been alive in individual religions, as well as incipient developments
and ramifications, must be left aside; and the features that to the author
are important must often be presented in greater logical consistency and
less historical development than was actually the case. If it were done
arbitrarily, this simplification would be a historical 'falsification.' This,
however, is not the case, at least not intentionally. The author has always
underscored those features in the total picture of a religion which have
been decisive for the fashioning of the practical way of life, as well as
those which distinguish one religion from another.^**
Finally, before going into the subject matter, some remarks by way of
explaining terminological pecuHarities which frequently recur in the
presentation may be advanced.^^
When fully developed, religious associations and communities belong
to a type of corporate authority. They represent 'hierocratic' associations,
that is, their power to rule is supported by their monopoly in the bestowal
or denial of sacred values.
All ruling powers, profane and religious, political and apolitical, may
be considered as variations of, or approximations to, certain pure types.
These types are constructed by searching for the basis of legitimacy,
which the ruling power claims. Our modern 'associations,' above all the
political ones, are of the type of 'legal' authority. That is, the legitimacy
of the power-holder to give commands rests upon rules that are rationally
established by enactment, by agreement, or by imposition. The legitima-
tion for establishing these rules rests, in turn, upon a rationally enacted
or interpreted 'constitution.' Orders are given in the name of the imper-
THE SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY OF THE WORLD RELIGIONS 295
sonal norm, rather than in the name of a personal authority; and even
the giving of a command constitutes obedience toward a norm rather
than an arbitrary freedom, favor, or privilege.
The 'official' is the holder of the power to command; he never exer-
cises this power in his own right; he holds it as a trustee of the imper-
sonal and 'compulsory institution.' ^- This institution is made up of the
specific patterns of life of a plurality of men, definite or indefinite, yet
specified according to rules. Their joint pattern of life is normatively gov-
erned by statutory regulations.
The 'area of jurisdiction' is a functionally delimited realm of possible
objects for command and thus delimits the sphere of the official's legiti-
mate power. A hierarchy of superiors, to which officials may appeal and
complain in an order of rank, stands opposite the citizen or member of
the association. Today this situation also holds for the hierocratic associa-
tion that is the church. The pastor or priest has his definitely limited
'jurisdiction,' which is fixed by rules. This also holds for the supreme
head of the church. The present concept of [papal] 'infallibility' is a
jurisdictional concept. Its inner meaning differs from that which pre-
ceded it, even up to the time of Innocent III.
The separation of the 'private sphere' from the 'official sphere' (in the
case of infallibility: the ex cathedra definition) is carried through in the
church in the same way as in political, or other, officialdoms. The legal
separation of the official from the means of administration (either in
natural or in pecuniary form) is carried through in the sphere of political
and hierocratic associations in the same way as is the separation of the
worker from the means of production in capitalist economy: it runs
fully parallel to them.
No matter how many beginnings may be found in the remote past, in
its full development all this is specifically modern. The past has known
other bases for authority, bases which, incidentally, extend as survivals
into the present. Here we wish merely to outline these bases of authority
in a terminological way.
A I. In the following discussions the term 'charisma^ shall be understood
to refer to an extraordinary quality of a person, regardless of whether this
quality is actual, alleged, or presumed. 'Charismatic authority,' hence,
shall refer to a rule over men, whether predominantly external or pre-
dominantly internal, to which the governed submit because of their
belief in the extraordinary quality of the specific person. The magical
296 RELIGION
sorcerer, the prophet, the leader of hunting and booty expeditions, the
warrior chieftain, the so-called 'Caesarist' ruler, and, under certain con-
ditions, the personal head of a party are such types of rulers for their
disciples, followings, enlisted troops, parties, et cetera. The legitimacy of
their rule rests on the belief in and the devotion to the extraordinary,
which is valued because it goes beyond the normal human qualities, and
which was originally valued as supernatural. The legitimacy of charis-
matic rule thus rests upon the belief in magical powers, revelations and
hero worship. The source of these beliefs is the 'proving' of the charismatic
quality through miracles, through victories and other successes, that is,
through the welfare of the governed. Such beliefs and the claimed au-
thority resting on them therefore disappear, or threaten to disappear, as
soon as proof is lacking and as soon as the charismatically qualified person
appears to be devoid of his magical power or forsaken by his god. Charis-
matic rule is not managed according to general norms, either traditional
or rational, but, in principle, according to concrete revelations and in-
spirations, and in this sense, charismatic authority is 'irrational.' It is
'revolutionary' in the sense of not being bound to the existing order:
'It is written — but I say unto you . . . !'
2. 'Traditionalism' in the following discussions shall refer to the psychic
attitude-set for the habitual workaday and to the belief in the everyday
routine as an inviolable norm of conduct. Domination that rests upon
this basis, that is, upon piety for what actually, allegedly, or presumably
has always existed, will be called 'traditionalist authority.'
Patriarchahsm is by far the most important type of domination the
legitimacy of which rests upon tradition. Patriarchalism means the au-
thority of the father, the husband, the senior of the house, the sib elder
over the members of the household and sib; the rule of the master and
patron over bondsmen, serfs, freed men; of the lord over the domestic
servants and household officials; of the prince over house- and court-
officials, nobles of office, cHents, vassals; of the patrimonial lord and
sovereign prince {Landesvater) over the 'subjects.'
It is characteristic of patriarchical and of patrimonial authority, which
represents a variety of the former, that the system of inviolable norms
is considered sacred; an infraction of them would result in magical or
religious evils. Side by side with this system there is a realm of free
arbitrariness and favor of the lord, who in principle judges only in terms
of 'personal,' not 'functional,' relations. In this sense, traditionalist au-
thority is irrational.
THE SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY OF THE WORLD RELIGIONS 297
3. Throughout early history, charismatic authority, which rests upon a
behef in the sanctity or the value of the extraordinary, and traditionalist
(patriarchical) domination, which rests upon a belief in the sanctity of
everyday routines, divided the most important authoritative relations
between them. The bearers of charisma, the oracles of prophets, or the
edicts of charismatic war lords alone could integrate 'new' laws into the
circle of what was upheld by tradition. Just as revelation and the sword
were the two extraordinary powers, so were they the two typical inno-
vators. In typical fashion, however, both succumbed to routinization as
soon as their work was done.
With the death of the prophet or the war lord the question of suc-
cessorship arises. This question can be solved by Kurung, which was
originally not an 'election' but a selection in terms of charismatic quali-
fication; or the question can be solved by the sacramental substantiation
of charisma, the successor being designated by consecration, as is the case
in hierocratic or apostolic succession; or the belief in the charismatic
qualification of the charismatic leader's sib can lead to a belief in heredi-
tary charisma, as represented by hereditary kingship and hereditary
hierocracy. With these routinizations, rules in some form always come
to govern. The prince or the hierocrat no longer rules by virtue of
purely personal qualities, but by virtue of acquired or inherited qualities,
or because he has been legitimized by an act of charismatic election. The
process of routinization, and thus traditionalization, has set in.
Perhaps it is even more important that when the organization of
authority becomes permanent, the staff supporting the charismatic ruler
becomes routinized. The ruler's disciples, apostles, and followers became
priests, feudal vassals and, above all, officials. The original charismatic
community lived communistically off donations, alms, and the booty of
war: they were thus specifically alienated from the economic order. The
community was transformed into a stratum of aids to the ruler and
depended upon him for maintenance through the usufruct of land, office
fees, income in kind, salaries, and hence, through prebends. The staff
derived its legitimate power in greatly varying stages of appropriation,
infeudation, conferment, and appointment. As a rule, this meant that
princely prerogatives became patrimonial in nature. Patrimonialism can
also develop from pure patriarchalism through the disintegration of the
patriarchical master's strict authority. By virtue of conferment, the preb-
endary or the vassal has as a rule had a personal right to the office be-
stowed upon him. Like the artisan who possessed the economic means of
V
298 RELIGION
production, the prebendary possessed the means of administration. He had
to bear the costs of administration out of his office fees or other income,
or he passed on to the lord only part of the taxes gathered from the
subjects, retaining the rest. In the extreme case he could bequeath and
alienate his office like other possession. We wish to speak of status patri-
monialism when the development by appropriation of prerogatory power
has reached this stage, without regard to whether it developed from
charismatic or patriarchical beginnings.
The development, however, has seldom stopped at this stage. We
always meet with a struggle between the political or hierocratic lord and
the owners or usurpers of prerogatives, which they have appropriated as
status groups. The ruler attempts to expropriate the estates, and the es-
tates attempt to expropriate the ruler. The more the ruler succeeds in
attaching to himself a staff of officials who depend solely on himi and
whose interests are linked to his, the more this struggle is decided in
favor of the ruler and the more the privilege-holding estates are grad-
ually expropriated. In this connection, the prince acquires administrative
means of his own and he keeps them firmly in his own hands. Thus we
find political rulers in the Occident, and progressively from Innocent III
to Johann XXII, also hierocratic rulers who have finances of their own,
as well as secular rulers who have magazines and arsenals of their own
for the provisioning of the army and the officials.
The character of the stratum of officials upon whose support the ruler
has relied in the struggle for the expropriation of status prerogatives has
varied greatly in history. In Asia and in the Occident during the early
Middle Ages they were typically clerics; during the Oriental Middle
Ages they were typically slaves and clients; for the Roman Principate,
freed slaves to a limited extent were typical; humanist literati were
typical for China; and finally, jurists have been typical for the modern
Occident, in ecclesiastical as well as in political associations.
The triumph of princely power and the expropriation of particular
prerogatives has everywhere signified at least the possibility, and often
the actual introduction, of a rational administration. As we shall see,
however, this rationalization has varied greatly in extent and meaning.
One must, above all, distinguish between the substantive rationaHzation
of administration and of judiciary by a patrimonial prince, and the formal
rationalization carried out by trained jurists. The former bestows utili-
tarian and social ethical blessings upon his subjects, in the manner of
the master of a large house upon the members of his household. The
THE SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY OF THE WORLD RELIGIONS 299
trained jurists have carried out the rule of general laws applying to all
'citizens of the state.' However fluid the difference has been— for instance,
in Babylon or Byzantium, in the Sicily of the Hohenstaufen, or the
England of the Stuarts, or the France of the Bourbons— in the final
analysis, the difference between substantive and formal rationality has
persisted. And, in the main, it has been the work of jurists to give birth
to the modern Occidental 'state' as well as to the Occidental 'churches.'
We shall not discuss at this point the source of their strength, the sub-
stantive ideas, and the technical means for this work.
With the triumph of formalist juristic rationalism, the legal type of
domination appeared in the Occident at the side of the transmitted types
of domination. Bureaucratic rule was not and is not the only variety of
legal authority, but it is the purest. The modern state and municipal
official, the modern Catholic priest and chaplain, the officials and em-
ployees of modern banks and of large capitalist enterprises represent, as
we have already mentioned, the most important types of this structure
of domination.
The following characteristic must be considered decisive for our ter-
minology: in legal authority, submission does not rest upon the belief
and devotion to charismatically gifted persons, like prophets and heroes,
or upon sacred tradition, or upon piety toward a personal lord and master
who is defined by an ordered tradition, or upon piety toward the possible
incumbents of office fiefs and office prebends who are legitimized in their
own right through privilege and conferment. Rather, submission under
legal authority is based upon an impersonal bond to the generally defined
and functional 'duty of office.' The official duty — like the corresponding
right to exercise authority: the 'jurisdictional competency' — is fixed by
rationally established norms, by enactments, decrees, and regulations, in
such a manner that the legitimacy of the authority becomes the legality
of the general rule, which is purposely thought out, enacted, and an-
nounced with formal correctness.
The differences between the types of authority we have sketched per-
tain to all particulars of their social structure and of their economic
significance. Only a systematic presentation could demonstrate how far
the distinctions and terminology chosen here are expedient. Here we
may emphasize merely that by approaching in this way, we do not claim
to use the only possible approach nor do we claim that all empirical
structures of domination must correspond to one of these 'pure' types.
On the contrary, the great majority of empirical cases represent a com-
300 RELIGION
bination or a state of transition among several such pure types. We
shall be compelled again and again to form expressions like 'patrimonial
bureaucracy' in order to make the point that the characteristic traits of
the respective phenomenon belong in part to the rational form of dom-
ination, whereas other traits belong to a traditionalist form of domination,
in this case to that of estates. We also recognize highly important forms
that have been universally diilused throughout history, such as the
feudal structure of domination. Important aspects of these structures,
however, cannot be classified smoothly under any one of the three forms
we have distinguished. They can be understood only as combinations
involving several concepts, in this case the concepts of 'status group'
and 'status honor.' There are also forms that have to be understood partly
in terms of principles other than those of 'domination,' partly in terms
of peculiar variations of the concept of charisma. Examples are: the func-
tionaries of pure democracy with rotations of honorific offices and similar
forms, on the one hand, and plebiscitarian domination, on the other
hand, or certain forms of notable rule that are special forms of traditional
domination. Such forms, however, have certainly belonged to the most
important ferments for the delivery of political rationalism. By the
terminology suggested here, we do not wish to force schematically the
infinite and multifarious historical life, but simply to create concepts
useful for special purposes and for orientation.
y The same qualifications hold for a final terminological distinction.
We understand by 'status' situation the probability of certain social
groups' receiving positive or negative social honor. The chances of attain-
ing social honor are primarily determined by differences in the styles of
life of these groups, hence chiefly by differences of education. Referring
to the preceding terminology of forms of authority, we may say that,
secondarily, social honor very frequently and typically is associated with
the respective stratum's legally guaranteed and monopolized claim to
sovereign rights or to income and profit opportunities of a certain kind.
Thus, if all these characteristics are found, which, of course, is not
always the case, a 'status group' is a group societalized through its special
styles of life, its conventional and specific notions of honor, and the
economic opportunities it legally monopolizes. A status group is always
somehow societalized, but it is not always organized into an association.
Commercium, in the sense of 'social intercourse,' and connubiuin among
groups are the typical characteristics of the mutual esteem among status
equals; their absence signifies status difTerences.
I
THE SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY OF THE WORLD RELIGIONS 3OI
By 'class situation,' in contrast, we shall understand the opportunities
to gain sustenance and income that are primarily determined by typical,
economically relevant, situations; property of a certain kind, or acquired
skill in the execution of services that are in demand, is decisive for
income opportunities. 'Class situation' also comprises the ensuing gen-
eral and typical living conditions, for instance, the necessity of complying
with the discipline of a capitalist proprietor's workshop.
A 'status situation' can be the cause as well as the result of a 'class
situation,' but it need be neither. Class situations, in turn, can be pri-
marily determined by markets, by the labor market and the commodity
market. The specific and typical cases of class situation today) are ones
determined by markets. But such is not necessarily the case: class situa-
tions of landlord and small peasant may depend upon market relations
only in a negligible way. In their differing situations, the various cate-
gories of 'rentiers' depend on the market in greatly varying senses and
extents, according to whether they derive their rents as landlords, slave-
holders, or as owners of bonds and effects.
One must therefore distinguish between 'propertied classes' and pri-
marily market-determined 'income classes.' Present-day society is pre-
dominantly stratified in classes, and to an especially high degree in
income classes. But in the special status prestige of the 'educated' strata,
our society contains a very tangible element of stratification by status.
Externally, this status factor is most obviously represented by economic
monopolies and the preferential social opportunities of the holders of
degrees.
In the past the significance of stratification by status was far more
decisive, above all, for the economic structure of the societies. For, on the
one hand, status stratification influences the economic structure by bar-
riers or regulations of consumption, and by status monopolies which
from the point of view of economic rationality are irrational, and on
the other hand, status stratification influences the economy very strongly
through the bearing of the status conventions of the respective ruling
strata who set the example. These conventions may be in the nature of
ritualist stereotyped forms, which to a large extent has been the case /
with the status stratification of Asia.
XII. Tne Protestant Sects and tne Opirit ol
(capitalism
For some time in the United States a principled 'separation of state and
church' has existed. This separation is carried through so strictly that
there is not even an official census o£ denominations, for it would be
considered against the law for the state even to ask the citizen for his
denomination. We shall not here discuss the practical importance of
this principle of the relation between religious organizations and the
state.* We are interested, rather, in the fact that scarcely two and a half
decades ago the number of 'persons without church affiliation' in the
U.S.A. was estimated to be only about 6 per cent; ^ and this despite the
absence of all those highly effective premiums which most of the Euro-
pean states then placed upon affiliation with certain privileged churches
and despite the immense immigration to the U.S.A.
It should be realized, in addition, that church affiliation in the U.S.A.
brings with it incomparably higher financial burdens, especially for the
poor, than anywhere in Germany. Published family budgets prove this,
and I have personally known of many burdened cases in a congrega-
tion in a city on Lake Erie, which was almost entirely composed of
German immigrant lumberjacks. Their regular contributions for religious
purposes amounted to almost |8o annually, being paid out of an average
annual income of about $i,ooo. Everyone knows that even a small frac-
tion of this financial burden in Germany would lead to a mass exodus
from the church. But quite apart from that, nobody who visited the
United States fifteen or twenty years ago, that is, before the recent
Europeanization of the country began, could overlook the very intense
church-mindedness which then prevailed in all regions not yet flooded
'Die Protestantischen Sekten und der Geist des Kapitalismus,' Gesammelte Aufsaetze zur
Religionssoziologie, vol. i, pp. 207-36.
* The principle is often only dieoretical; note the importance of the Catholic vote, as
well as subsidies to confessional schools.
302
THE PROTESTANT SECTS AND THE SPIRIT OF CAPITALISM 303
by European immigrants.* Every old travel book reveals that formerly
church-mindedness in America went unquestioned, as compared with
recent decades, and was even far stronger. Here we are especially inter-
ested in one aspect of this situation.
Hardly a generation ago when businessmen were establishing them-
selves and making new social contacts, they encountered the question:
'To what church do you belong?' This was asked unobtrusively and in
a manner that seemed to be apropos, but evidently it was never asked
accidentally. Even in Brooklyn, New York's twin city, this older tradi-
tion was retained to a strong degree, and the more so in communities
less exposed to the influence of immigration. This question reminds one
of the typical Scotch table d'hote, where a quarter of a century ago the
continental European on Sundays almost always had to face the situation
of a lady's asking, 'What service did you attend today?' Or, if the Con-
tinental, as the oldest guest, should happen to be seated at the head of
the table, the waiter when serving the soup would ask him: 'Sir, the
prayer, please.' In Portree (Skye) on one beautiful Sunday I faced this
typical question and did not know any better way out than to remark:
'I am a member of the Badische Landes\irche and could not find a
chapel of my church in Portree.' The ladies were pleased and satisfied
with the answer. 'Oh, he doesn't attend any service except that of his
own denomination!'
If one looked more closely at the matter in the United States, one
could easily see that the question of religious affiliation was almost
always posed in social life and in business life which depended on per-
manent and credit relations. However, as mentioned above, the Ameri-
can authorities never posed the question. Why?
First, a few personal observations [from 1904] may serve as illustra-
tions. On a long railroad journey through what was then Indian terri-
tory, the author, sitting next to a traveling salesman of 'undertaker's
hardware' (iron letters for tombstones), casually mentioned the still
impressively strong church-mindedness. Thereupon the salesman re-
marked, 'Sir, for my part everybody may believe or not believe as he
pleases; but if I saw a farmer or a businessman not belonging to any
church at all, I wouldn't trust him with fifty cents. Why pay me, if he
doesn't believe in anything?' Now that was a somewhat vague motiva-
tion.
* The opening by prayer of not only every session of the U. S. Supreme Court but
also of every Party Convention has been an annoying ceremonial for quite some time.
304 RELIGION
The matter became somewhat clearer from the story of a German-born
nose-and-throat specialist, who had established himself in a large city on
the Ohio River and who told me of the visit of his first patient. Upon
the doctor's request, he lay down upon the couch to be examined with
the [aid of a] nose reflector. The patient sat up once and remarked with
dignity and emphasis, 'Sir, I am a member of the Baptist Church in
Street.' Puzzled about what meaning this circumstance might have
for the disease of the nose and its treatment, the doctor discreetly in-
quired about the matter from an American colleague. The colleague
smihngly informed him that the patient's statement of his church mem-
bership was merely to say: 'Don't worry about the fees.' But why should
it mean precisely that? Perhaps this will become still clearer from a
third happening.
On a beautiful clear Sunday afternoon early in October I attended a
baptism ceremony of a Baptist congregation. I was in the company of
some relatives who were farmers in the backwoods some miles out of
M. [a county seat] in North Carohna. The baptism was to take place in
a pool fed by a brook which descended from the Blue Ridge Mountains,
visible in the distance. It was cold and it had been freezing during the
night. Masses of farmers' families were standing all around the slopes
of the hills; they had come, some from great distances, some from the
neighborhood, in their light two-wheeled buggies.
The preacher in a black suit stood waist deep in the pond. After prep-
arations of various sorts, about ten persons of both sexes in their Sunday-
best stepped into the pond, one after another. They avowed their faith
and then were immersed completely — the women in the preacher's arms.
They came up, shaking and shivering in their wet clothes, stepped out
of the pond, and everybody 'congratulated' them. They were quickly
wrapped in thick blankets and then they drove home. One of my rela-
tives commented that 'faith' provides unfailing protection against sneezes.
Another relative stood beside me and, being unchurchly in accordance
with German traditions, he looked on, spitting disdainfully over his
shoulder. He spoke to one of those baptised, 'Hello, Bill, wasn't the
water pretty cool?' and received the very earnest reply, ^]t^, I thought
of some pretty hot place (Hell!), and so I didn't mind the cool water.'
During the immersion of one of the young men, my relative was star-
tled.
'Look at him,' he said. 'I told you so!'
When I asked him after the ceremony, 'Why did you anticipate the
THE PROTESTANT SECTS AND THE SPIRIT OF CAPITALISM 305
baptism of that man?' he answered, 'Because he wants to open a bank
inM.'
'Are there so many Baptists around that he can make a Hving?'
'Not at all, but once being baptised he will get the patronage of the
whole region and he will outcompete everybody.'
Further questions of 'why' and 'by what means' led to the following
conclusion: Admission to the local Baptist congregation follows only
upon the most careful 'probation' and after closest inquiries into conduct
going back to early childhood (Disorderly conduct? Frequenting tav-
erns? Dance? Theatre? Card Playing? Untimely meeting of liability?
Other Frivolities?) The congregation still adhered strictly to the religious
tradition.
/ Admission to the congregation is recognized as an absolute guarantee
of the moral qualities of a gentleman, especially of those qualities re-
quired in business matters^' Baptism secures to the individual the deposits
of the whole region and unlimited credit without any competition. He
is a 'made man.' Further observation confirmed that these, or at least
very similar phenomena, recur in the most varied regions. In general,
only those men had success in business who belonged to Methodist or
Baptist or other sects or sectlike conventicles. When a sect member moved
to a different place, or if he was a traveling salesman, he carried the
certificate of his congregation with him; and thereby he found not only
easy contact with sect members but, above all, he found credit every-
where. If he got into economic straits through no fault of his own, the
sect arranged his affairs, gave guarantees to the creditors, and helped
him in every way, often according to the Biblical principle, mutuum
date nihil inde sperantes. (Luke vi:35)
The expectation of the creditors that his sect, for the sake of their
prestige, would not allow creditors to suffer losses on behalf of a sect
member was not, however, decisive for his opportunities. What was
decisive was the fact that a fairly reputable sect would only accept for
membership one whose 'conduct' made him appear to be morally quali-
fied beyond doubt.
It is crucial that sect membership meant a certificate of moral qualifi-
cation and especially of business morals for the individual. This stands
in contrast to membership in a 'church' into which one is 'born' and
which lets grace shine over the righteous and the unrighteous alike.
Indeed, a church is a corporation which organizes grace and administers
306 RELIGION
religious gifts of grace, like an endowed foundation. AfRliation with the
church is, in principle, obligatory and hence proves nothing with regard
to the member's qualities. A sect, however, is a voluntary association of
only those who, according to the principle, are religiously and morally
qualified. If one finds voluntary reception of his membership, by virtue
of religious probation, he joins the sect voluntarily.
It is, of course, an established fact that this selection has often been
very strongly counteracted, precisely in America, through the proselyting
of souls by competing sects, which, in part, was strongly determined by
the material interests of the preachers. Hence, cartels for the restriction
of proselyting have frequently existed among the competing denomina-
tions. Such cartels were formed, for instance, in order to exclude the
easy wedding of a person who had been divorced for reasons which,
from a religious point of view, were considered insufficient. Religious
organizations that facilitated remarriage had great attraction. Some Bap-
tist communities are said at times to have been lax in this respect, whereas
the Catholic as well as the Lutheran (Missouri) churches were praised
for their strict correctness. This correctness, however, allegedly reduced
the membership of both churches.
Expulsion from one's sect for moral offenses has meant, economically,
loss of credit and, socially, being declassed.
Numerous observations during the following months confirmed not
only that church-mindedness per se, although still (1904) rather im-
portant, was rapidly dying out; but the particularly important trait,
mentioned above, was definitely confirmed. In metropolitan areas I was
spontaneously told, in several cases, that a speculator in undeveloped
real estate would regularly erect a church building, often an extremely
modest one; then he would hire a candidate from one of the various
theological seminaries, pay him $500 to $600, and hold out to him a
splendid position as a preacher for life if he would gather a congregation
and thus preach the building terrain 'full.' Deteriorated churchlike
structures which marked failures were shown to me. For the most part,
however, the preachers were said to be successful. Neighborly contact,
Sunday School, and so on, were said to be indispensable to the new-
comer, but above all association with 'morally' reliable neighbors.
Competition among sects is strong, among other things, through the
kind of material and spiritual offerings at evening teas of the congrega-
tions. Among genteel churches also, musical presentations contribute to
THE PROTESTANT SECTS AND THE SPIRIT OF CAPITALISM 307
this competition. (A tenor in Trinity Church, Boston, who allegedly had
to sing on Sundays only, at that time received $8,000.) Despite this sharp
competition, the sects often maintained fairly good mutual relations.
For instance, in the service of the Methodist church which I attended,
the Baptist ceremony of the baptism, which I mentioned above, was
recommended as a spectacle to edify everybody. In the main, the congre-
gations refused entirely to listen to the preaching of 'dogma' and to con-
fessional distinctions. 'Ethics' alone could be offered. In those instances
where I Ustened to sermons for the middle classes, the typical bourgeois
morality, respectable and solid, to be sure, and of the most homely and
sober kind, was preached. But the sermons were delivered with obvious
inner conviction; the preacher was often moved.
Today the kind of denomination [to which one belongs] is rather
irrelevant. It does not matter whether one be Freemason,* Christian
Scientist, Adventist, Quaker, or what not. What is decisive is that one
be admitted to membership by 'ballot,' after an examination and an
ethical probation in the sense of the virtues which are at a premium for
the inner-worldly asceticism of protestantism and hence, for the ancient
puritan tradition. Then, the same effect could be observed.
Closer scrutiny revealed the steady progress of the characteristic proc-
ess of 'secularization,' to which in modern times all phenomena that
originated in religious conceptions succumb. Not only religious associa-
tions, hence sects, had this effect on American life. Sects exercised this
influence, rather, in a steadily decreasing proportion. If one paid some
attention it was striking to observe (even fifteen years ago) that sur-
prisingly many men among the American middle classes (always
outside of the quite modern metropolitan areas and the immigration
centers) were wearing a little badge (of varying color) in the button-
hole, which reminded one very closely of the rosette of the French
Legion of Honor.
When asked what it meant, people regularly mentioned an association
with a sometimes adventurous and fantastic name. And it became obvi-
ous that its significance and purpose consisted in the following: Almost
always the association functioned as a burial insurance, besides offering
* An assistant of Semitic languages in an eastern university told me that he regretted
not having become 'master of the chair,' for then he would go back into business. When
asked what good that would do the answer was: As a traveling salesman or seller he
could present himself in a role famous for respectability. He could beat any competition
and would be worth his weight in gold.
308 RELIGION
greatly varied services. But often, and especially in those areas least
touched by modern disintegration, the association oflered the member
the (ethical) claim for brotherly help on the part of every brother who
had the means. If he faced an economic emergency for which he himself
was not to be blamed, he could make this claim. And in several instances
that came to my notice at the time, this claim again followed the very
principle, mutuitm date nihil inde sperantes, or at least a very low
rate of interest prevailed. Apparently, such claims were willingly recog-
nized by the members of the brotherhood. Furthermore— and this is the
main point in this instance — membership was again acquired through
balloting after investigation and a determination of moral worth. And
hence the badge in the buttonhole meant, 'I am a gentleman patented
after investigation and probation and guaranteed by my membership.'
Again, this meant, in business life above all, tested credit worthiness.
One could observe that business opportunities were often decisively in-
fluenced by such legitimation.
AH these phenomena, which seemed to be rather rapidly disintegrating
— at least the religious organizations — were essentially confined to the
middle classes. Some cultured Americans often dismissed these facts
briefly and with a certain angry disdain as 'humbug' or backwardness,
or they even denied them; many of them actually did not know any-
thing about them, as was affirmed to me by William James. Yet these
survivals were still alive in many diflferent fields, and sometimes in forms
which appeared to be grotesque.
These associations were especially the typical vehicles of social ascent
into the circle of the entrepreneurial middle class. They served to diffuse
and to maintain the bourgeois capitalist business ethos among the broad
strata of the middle classes (the farmers included).
As is well known, not a few (one may well say the majority of the
older generation) of the American 'promoters,' 'captains of industry,'
of the multi-millionaires and trust magnates belonged formally to sects,
especiaUy to the Baptists. However, in the nature of the case, these
persons were often affiliated for merely conventional reasons, as in
Germany, and only in order to legitimate themselves in personal
and social life — not in order to legitimate themselves as businessmen;
during the age of the Puritans, such 'economic supermen' did not
require such a crutch, and their 'religiosity' was, of course, often of a
more than dubious sincerity. The middle classes, above all the strata
THE PROTESTANT SECTS AND THE SPIRIT OF CAPITALISM 309
ascending with and out of the middle classes, were the bearers of that
specific religious orientation which one must, indeed, beware viewing
among them as only opportunistically determined.* Yet one must never
overlook that without the universal diffusion of these qualities and prin-
ciples of a methodical way of life, qualities which were maintained
through these religious communities, capitalism today, even in America,
would not be what it is. In the history of any economic area on earth
there is no epoch, [except] those quite rigid in feudalism or patrimonial-
ism, in which capitalist figures of the kind of Pierpont Morgan, Rocke-
feller, Jay Gould, et al. were absent. Only the technical means which
they used for the acquisition of wealth have changed (of course!). They
stood and they stand 'beyond good and evil.' But, however high one
may otherwise evaluate their importance for economic transformation,
they have never been decisive in determining what economic mentality
was to dominate a given epoch and a given area. Above all, they were
not the creators and they were not to become the bearers of the specifi-
cally Occidental bourgeois mentality.
This is not the place to discuss in detail the political and social im-
portance of the religious sects and the numerous similarly exclusive
associations and clubs in America which are based upon recruitment by
ballot. The entire life of a typical Yankee of the last generation led
through a series of such exclusive associations, beginning with the Boys'
Club in school, proceeding to the Athletic Club or the Greek Letter
Society or to another student club of some nature, then onward to one of
the numerous notable clubs of businessmen and the bourgeoisie, or
finally to the clubs of the metropolitan plutocracy. To gain admission
was identical to a ticket of ascent, especially with a certificate before the
forum of one's self-feeling; to gain admission meant to have 'proved'
oneself. A student in college who was not admitted to any club (or
quasi-society) whatsoever was usually a sort of pariah. (Suicides be-
cause of failure to be admitted have come to my notice.) A businessman,
clerk, technician, or doctor who had the same fate usually was of ques-
tionable ability to serve. Today, numerous clubs of this sort are bearers
* 'Hypocrisy' and conventional opportunism in these matters were hardly stronger de-
veloped in America than in Germany where, after all, an officer or civil servant 'without
religious affiliation or preference' was also an impossibility. And a Berlin ('Aryan!') Lord
Mayor was not confirmed officially because he failed to have one of his children baptised.
Only the direction in which conventional 'hypocrisy' moved differed: official careers in
Germany, business opportunities in the United States.
310 RELIGION
of those tendencies leading toward aristocratic status groups which char-
acterize contemporary American development. These status groups de-
velop alongside of and, what has to be well noted, partly in contrast to
the naked plutocracy.
In America mere 'money' in itself also purchases power, but not social
honor. Of course, it is a means of acquiring social prestige. It is the same
in Germany and everywhere else; except in Germany the appropriate
avenue to social honor led from the purchase of a feudal estate to the
foundation of an entailed estate, and acquisition of titular nobility, which
in turn facilitated the reception of the grandchildren in aristocratic 'so-
ciety.' In America, the old tradition respected the self-made man more
than the heir, and the avenue to social honor consisted in affiliation with
a genteel fraternity in a distinguished college, formerly with a distin-
guished sect (for instance, Presbyterian, in whose churches in New York
one could find soft cushions and fans in the pews). At the present time,
affiliation with a distinguished club is essential above all else. In addition,
the kind of home is important (in 'the street' which in middle-sized
cities is almost never lacking) and the kind of dress and sport. Only
recently descent from the Pilgrim fathers, from Pocahontas and other
Indian ladies, et cetera has become important. This is not the place for
a more detailed treatment. There are masses of translating bureaus and
agencies of all sorts concerned with reconstructing the pedigrees of the
plutocracy. All these phenomena, often highly grotesque, belong in the
broad field of the Europeanization of American 'society.'
In the past and up to the very present, it has been a characteristic pre-
cisely of the specifically American democracy that it did not constitute
a formless sand heap of individuals, but rather a buzzing complex of
strictly exclusive, yet voluntary associations. Not so long ago these
associations still did not recognize the prestige of birth and inherited
wealth, of the office and educational diploma; at least they recognized
these things to such a low degree as has only very rarely been the case
in the rest of the world. Yet, even so, these associations were far from
accepting anybody with open arms as an equal. To be sure, fifteen years
ago an American farmer would not have led his guest past a plowing
farmhand (American born!) in the field without making his guest
'shake hands' with the worker after formally introducing them.
Formerly, in a typical American club nobody would remember that
the two members, for instance, who play billiards once stood in the
relation of boss and clerk. Here equality of gentlemen prevailed abso-
I
THE PROTESTANT SECTS AND THE SPIRIT OF CAPITALISM 3II
lutely.* To be sure, the American worker's wife accompanying the
trade unionist to lunch had completely accommodated herself in dress
and behavior, in a somewhat plainer and more awkward fashion, to the
bourgeois lady's model.
He who wished to be fully recognized in this democracy, in whatever
position, had not only to conform to the conventions of bourgeois so-
ciety, the very strict men's fashions included, but as a rule he had to be
able to show that he had succeeded in gaining admission by ballot to one
of the sects, clubs, or fraternal societies, no matter what kind, were it
only recognized as sufficiently legitimate. And he had to maintain him-
self in the society by proving himself to be a gentleman. The parallel in
Germany consists in the importance of the Couleur^ and the commis-
sion of an officer of the reserve for commercium and connubiurn, and
the great status significance of qualifying to give satisfaction by duel.
The thing is the same, but the direction and material consequence char-
acteristically differ.
He who did not succeed in joining was no gentleman; he who despised
doing so, as was usual among Germans, $ had to take the hard road,
and especially so in business life.
However, as mentioned above, we shall not here analyze the social
significance of these conditions, which are undergoing a profound trans-
formation. First, we are interested in the fact that the modern position
of the secular clubs and societies with recruitment by ballot is largely
the product of a process of secularization. Their position is derived from
the far more exclusive importance of the prototype of these voluntary
associations, to wit, the sects. They stem, indeed, from the sects in the
homeland of genuine Yankeedom, the North Atlantic states. Let us
recall, first, that the universal and equal franchise within American
democracy (of the Whites! for Negroes and all mixtures have, even
today, no de facto franchise) and Ukewise the 'separation of state and
church' are only achievements of the recent past, beginning essentially
with the nineteenth century. Let us remember that during the colonial
*This was not always the case in the German-American clubs. When asking young
German merchants in New York (with the best Hanseatic names) why they all strove
to be admitted to an American club instead of the very nicely furnished German one, they
answered that their (German- American) bosses would play billiards with them occasionally,
however not without making them realize that thev (the bosses) thought themselves to be
'very nice' in doing so.
t Student fraternity, comparable to a 'Greek letter society.'
t But note above. Enuy into an American club (in school or later) is always the decisive
moment for the loss of German nationality.
312 RELIGION
period in the central areas of New England, especially in Massachusetts,
full citizenship status in the church congregation was the precondition
for full citizenship in the state (besides some other prerequisites). The
religious congregation indeed determined admission or non-admission
to poHtical citizenship status.^
The decision was made according to whether or not the person had
proved his religious qualification through conduct, in the broadest mean-
ing of the word, as was the case among all Puritan sects. The Quakers in
Pennsylvania were not in any lesser way masters of that state until some
time before the War of Independence. This was actually the case, though
formally they were not the only full political citizens. They were political
masters only by virtue of extensive gerrymandering.
The tremendous social significance of admission to full enjoyment of
the rights of the sectarian congregation, especially the privilege of being
admitted to the Lord's Supper, worked among the sects in the direction
of breeding that ascetist professional ethic which was adequate to mod-
ern capitalism during the period of its origin. It can be demonstrated
that everywhere, including Europe, the religiosity of the ascetist sects
has for several centuries worked in the same way as has been illustrated
by the personal experiences mentioned above for [the case of] America.
When focusing on the religious background * of these Protestant sects,
we find in their literary documents, especially among those of the
Quakers and Baptists up to and throughout the seventeenth century,
again and again jubilation over the fact that the sinful 'children of the
world' distrust one another in business but that they have confidence in
the religiously determined righteousness of the pious.°
Hence, they give credit and deposit their money only with the pious,
and they make purchases in their stores because there, and there alone,
they are given honest and fixed prices. As is known, the Baptists have
always claimed to have first raised this price policy to a principle. In
addition to the Baptists, the Quakers raise the claim, as the following
quotation shows, to which Mr. Eduard Bernstein drew my attention at
the time:
But it was not^jmly in matters which related to the law of the land where
the primitive members held their words and engagements sacred. This trait
was remarked to be true of them in their concerns of trade. On their first
appearance as a society, they suffered as tradesmen because others, displeased
with the peculiarity of their manners, withdrew their custom from their shops.
But in a little time the great outcry against them was that they got the trade
THE PROTESTANT SECTS AND THE SPIRIT OF CAPITALISM 313
°|j^^_^°""^T into their hands. This outcry arose in part from a strict ex-
emption~of all commercial agreements between them and others and because
they never as\ed two prices for the commodities they sold.^
The view that the gods bless with riches the man who pleases them,
through sacrifice or through his kind of conduct, was indeed diffused
all over the world. However, the Protestant sects consciously brought
this idea into connection with this kjnd of religious conduct, according
to the principle of early capitaHsm: 'Honesty is the best policy.' This
connection is found, although not quite exclusively, among these Prot-
estant sects, but with characteristic continuity and consistency it is found
only among them.
The whole typically bourgeois ethic was from the beginning common
to all aceticist sects and conventicles and it is identical with the ethic
practiced by the sects in America up to the very present. The Methodists,
for example, held to be forbidden:
(i) to make words when buying and selling ('haggling')
(2) to trade with commodities before the custom. tariff has been paid
on them (,V7^S ( kW-^^^ ^ U^ ^ ^^^
(3) to charge rates of interest higher than the law of the country per-
mits
7(4) 'to gather treasures on earth' (meaning the transformation of in-
vestment capital into 'funded wealth'
(5) to borrow without being sure of one's ability to pay back the debt
(6) luxuries of all sorts
But it is not only this ethic, already discussed in detail,* which goes
back to the early beginnings of asceticist sects. Above all, the social
premiums, the means of discipline, and, in general, the whole organiza-
tional basis of Protestant sectarianism with all its ramifications reach
back to those beginnings. The survivals in contemporary America are
the derivatives of a religious regulation of life which once worked with
penetrating efficiency. Let us, in a brief survey, clarify the nature of these
sects and the mode and direction of their operation.
Within Protestantism the principle of the 'believer's church' first
emerged distinctly among the Baptists in Ziirich in 1523-4.' This princi-
ple restricted the congregation to 'true' Christians; hence, it meant a
voluntary association of really sanctified people segregated from the
* In The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism.
314 ' RELIGION
world. Thomas Miinzer had rejected infant baptism; but he did not
take the next step, which demanded repeated baptism of adults baptized
as children (anabaptism). Following Thomas Miinzer, the Ziirich Bap-
tists in 1525 introduced adult baptism (possibly including anabaptism).
Migrant journeymen-artisans were the main bearers of the Baptist move-
ment. After each suppression they carried it to new areas. Here we shall
not discuss in detail the individual forms of this voluntarist inner-worldly
asceticism of the Old Baptists, the Mennonites, the Baptists, the Quakers,
nor shall we again describe how every asceticist denomination, Calvin-
ism^ and Methodism included, were again and again constrained into
the same path.
This resulted either in the conventicle of the exemplary Christians
within the church (Pietism), or else the community of religious 'full
citizens,' legitimated as faultless, became masters over the church. The
rest of the members merely belonged as 1 passive status group, as minor
Christians subject to discipline (Independents).
In Protestantism the external and internal conflict of the two structural
principles — of the 'church' as a compulsory association for the adminis-
tration of grace, and of the 'sect' as a voluntary association of religiously
qualified persons — runs through the centuries from Zwingli to Kuyper
and Stocker. Here we merely wish to consider those consequences of the
voluntarist principle which are practically important in their influence
upon conduct. In addition, we recall merely that the decisive idea of
keeping the Lord's Supper pure, and therefore excluding unsanctified
persons, led also to a way of treating church discipline among those
denominations which failed to form sects. It was especially the predes-
tinarian Puritans who, in effect, approached the discipline of the sects.^
The central social significance of the Lord's Supper for the Christian
communities is evidenced in this. For the sects themselves, the idea of
the purity of the sacramental communion was decisive at the very time
of their origin.^" Immediately the first consistent voluntarist, Browne, in
his 'Treatise of Reformation without tarying for anie' (presumably 1582),
emphasized the compulsion to hold communion at the Lord's Supper
with 'wicked men' as the main reason for rejecting Episcopalianism and
Presbyterianism." The Presbyterian church struggled in vain to settle
the problem. Already under Elizabeth (Wandworth Conference) this
was the decisive point.*
*The English Presbyterians under Elizabeth wished to recognize the 39 articles of the
Church of England (with reservations concerning articles 34 to 36, which are here of no
interest).
THE PROTESTANT SECTS AND THE SPIRIT OF CAPITALISM 315
The question of who might exclude a person from the Lord's Supper
played an ever-recurrent role in the Parliament of the English Revolution.
At first (1645) ministers and elders, that is, laymen, were to decide these
matters freely. Parliament attempted to determine those cases in which
exclusion should be permissible. All other cases were to be made depend-
ent on the consent of Parliament. This meant 'Erastianism,' against which
the Westminster Assembly protested sharply.
The Independent party excelled in that it admitted only persons with
tickets to communion, besides the local residents recognized to be in good
standing. Members from outside congregations received tickets only upon
recommendation by qualified members. The certificates of qualification
(letters of recommendation), which were issued in case of removal to
another place or in case of travel, also occur in the seventeenth cen-
tury. ^^ Within the official church, Baxter's conventicles (associations),
which in 1657 were introduced in sixteen counties, were to be established
as a kind of voluntary censorship bureau. These would assist the minister
in determining the qualification and exclusion of scandalous persons
from the Lord's Supper.^^ The 'five dissenting brethren' of the Westmin-
ster Assembly — upper-class refugees who had lived in Holland — had
already aimed at similar ends when they proposed to permit voluntaristic
congregations to exist beside the parish and also to grant them the right
to vote for delegates to the synod. The entire church history of New
England is filled with struggles over such questions: who was to be ad-
mitted to the sacraments (or, for instance, as a godfather), v,^hether
the children of non-admitted persons could be baptized,* under what
clauses the latter could be admitted, and similar questions. The difficulty
was that not only was the worthy person allowed to receive the Lord's
Supper, but he had to receive it.^* Hence, if the believer doubted his own
worth and decided to stay away from the Lord's Supper, the decision did
not remove his sin.^^ The congregation, on the other hand, was jointly
responsible to the Lord for keeping unworthy and especially reprobated
persons ^^ away from communion, for purity's sake. Thus the congrega-
tion was jointly and especially responsible for the administration of the
sacrament by a worthy minister in a state of grace. Therewith, the pri-
mordial problems of church constitution were resurrected. In vain Bax-
ter's compromise proposal attempted to mediate by suggesting that at
least in case of an emergency the sacrament should be received from an
unworthy minister, thus from one whose conduct was questionable.^^
*Even the Brownist petition to King James o£ 1603 protested against this.
3l6 RELIGION
The ancient Donatist principle of personal charisma stood in hard and
unmitigated opposition to the principle of the church as an institution
administering grace/^ as in the time of early Christianity. The principle
of instituted grace was radically established in the Catholic Church
through the priest's character indelebilis, but it also dominated the official
churches of the Reformation. The uncompromising radicalism of the
Independentist world of ideas rested upon the religious responsibility of
the congregation as a whole. This held for the worthiness of the ministers
as well as for the brethren admitted to communion. And that is how
things still stand in principle.
As is known, the Kuyper schism in Holland during recent decades
had far-reaching political ramifications. It originated in the following
manner: Against the claims of the Synodal church government of the
Herformde Kerk der Nederlanden, the elders of a church in Am.sterdam,
hence laymen, with the later prime minister Kuyper (who was also a
plain lay elder) at the helm, refused to acknowledge the confirmation
certificates of preachers of outside congregations as sufficient for admis-
sion to communion if from their standpoint such outside preachers were
unworthy or unbelieving.^® In substance, this was precisely the antag-
onism between Presbyterians and Independents during the sixteenth
century; for consequences of the greatest importance emerged from the
joint responsibility of the congregation. Next to the voluntarist principle,
that is, free admission of the qualified, and of the qualified alone, as
members of the congregation, we find the principle of the sovereignty
of the local sacramental community. Only the local religious community,
by virtue of personal acquaintance and investigation, could judge whether
a member were qualified. But a church government of an inter-local
association could not do so, however freely elected such church govern-
ment might be. The local congregation could discriminate only if the
number of members were restricted. Hence, in principle, only relatively
small congregations were appropriate.""
Where the communities were too large for this, either conventicles
were formed, as in Pietism, or the members were organized in groups,
which, in turn, were the bearers of church discipline, as in Methodism."^
The extraordinarily strict moral discipline "^ of the self-governing con-
gregation constituted the third principle. This was unavoidable because
of the interest in the purity of the sacramental community (or, as among
the Quakers, the interest in the purity of the community of prayer) . The
discipHne of the asceticist sect was, in fact, far more rigorous than the
THE PROTESTANT SECTS AND THE SPIRIT OF CAPITALISM 317
discipline o£ any church. In this respect, the sect resembles the monastic
order. The sect discipline is also analogous to monastic discipline in that
it established the principle of the novitiate.* In contrast to the principles
of the official Protestant churches, persons expelled because of moral
offenses were often denied all intercourse with the members of the con-
gregation. The sect thus invoked an absolute boycott against them, which
included business Hfe. Occasionally the sect avoided any relation with
non-brethren except in cases of absolute necessity."^ And the sect placed
disciplinary power predominantly into the hands of laymen. No spiritual
authority could assume the community's joint responsibility before God.
The weight of the lay elders was very great even among the Presby-
terians. However, the Independents, and even more, the Baptists signified
a struggle against the domination of the congregation by theologians."*
In exact correspondence this struggle led naturally to the clericalization
of the lay members, who now took over the functions of moral control
through self-government, admonition, and possible excommunication.^^
The domination of laymen in the church found its expression, in part,
in the quest for freedom of the layman to preach (liberty of prophesy-
ing).^^ In legitimizing this demand, reference was made to the condi-
tions of the early Christian community. This demand was not only very
shocking to the Lutheran idea of the pastoral office but also to the Pres-
byterian idea of God's order. The domination of laymen, in part, found
its expression in an opposition to any professional theologian and
preacher. Only charisma, neither training nor office, should be recog-
nized, t
The Quakers have adhered to the principle that in the religious assem-
bly anyone could speak, but he alone should speak who was moved by
the spirit. Hence no professional minister exists at all. To be sure, today
this is, in all probability, nowhere radically effected. The official 'legend'
is that members who, in the experience of the congregation, are espe-
cially accessible to the spirit during service are seated upon a special
bench opposite the congregation. In profound silence the people wait for
the spirit to take possession of one of them (or of some other member
of the congregation). But during service in a Pennsylvania college, un-
fortunately and against my hopes, the spirit did not take hold of the
* In all probability among all sects there existed a period of probation. Among the
Methodists, for example, it lasted for six months.
t Already Smyth in Amsterdam demanded that when preaching the regenerate must not
even have the Bible in front of him.
3l8 RELIGION
plainly and beautifully costumed old lady who was seated on the bench
and whose charisma was so highly praised. Instead, undoubtedly by
agreement, the spirit took hold of a brave college librarian who gave a
very learned lecture on the concept of the 'saint,'
To be sure, other sects have not drawn such radical conclusions, or at
least not for good. However, either the minister is not active principally
as a 'hireling,' "^ holding only honorific position, or else he serves for
voluntary honorific donations.* Again his ministerial service may be a
secondary occupation and only for the refunding of his expenses; f or he
can be dismissed at any time; or a sort of missionary organization pre-
vails with itinerant preachers ^^ working only once in a while in the same
'circuit,' as is the case with Methodism.^^ Where the office (in the tra-
ditional sense) and hence the theological qualification were maintained,^"
such skill was considered as a mere technical and specialist prerequisite.
However, the really decisive quality was the charisma of the state of
grace, and the authorities were geared to discern it.
Authorities, like Cromwell's triers (local bodies for the handling of
certificates of religious qualification) and the ejectors (ministerial dis-
ciplinary office), t had to examine the fitness of the ministers to serve.
The charismatic character of authority is seen to have been preserved in
the same way in which the charismatic character of the membership in
the community itself was preserved. Just as Cromwell's army of Saints
allowed only religiously qualified persons to pass the Lord's Supper to
them, so Cromwell's soldiers refused to go into battle under an officer
who did not belong to his sacramental community of the religiously
qualified.^^
Internally, among the sect members, the spirit of early Christian
brotherliness prevailed, at least among the early Baptists and derived
denominations; or at least brotherliness was demanded.^" Among some
sects it was considered taboo to call on the law courts. § In case of need,
mutual aid was obligatory.^^ Naturally, business dealings with non-
*The latter was demanded for all preachers in the Agreement of the People of i May
1649.
tThus the local preachers of the Methodists.
JThus, in accordance with the proposal of 1652 and essentially also in accordance with
the church constitution of 1654.
§ The Methodists have often attempted to sanction the appeal to the secular judge by
expulsion. On the other hand, in several cases, they have established authorities upon
which one could call if debtors did not pay promptly.
THE PROTESTANT SECTS AND THE SPIRIT OF CAPITALISM 319
members were not interdicted (except occasionally among wholly radical
communities) .
Yet it was self-understood that one preferred the brethren.* From the
very beginning, one finds the system of certificates (concerning mem-
bership and conduct),^* which were given to members who moved to
another place. The charities of the Quakers were so highly developed
that in consequence of the burdens incurred their inclination to propa-
gandize was finally crippled. The cohesiveness of the congregations was
so great that, with good reason, it is said to be one of the factors deter-
mining New England settlements. In contrast to the South, New Eng-
land settlements were generally compact and, from the beginning,
strongly urban in character, f
It is obvious that in all these points the modern functions of American
sects and sectlike associations, as described in the beginning of this
essay, are revealed as straight derivatives, rudiments, and survivals of
those conditions which once prevailed in all asceticist sects and conven-
ticles. Today they are decaying. Testimony for the sectarian's immensely
exclusive 'pride in caste' has existed from the very beginning, t
Now, what part of this whole development was and is actually decisive
for our problem? Excommunication in the Middle Ages also had po-
litical and civic consequences. Formally this was even harsher than
where sect freedom existed. Moreover, in the Middle Ages only Chris-
tians could be full citizens. During the Middle Ages it was also possible
to proceed through the disciplinary powers of the church against a bishop
who would not pay his debts, and, as Aloys Schulte has beautifully
shown, this possibility gave the bishop a credit rating over and above a
secular prince. Likewise, the fact that a Prussian Lieutenant was subject
to discharge if he was incapable of paying off debts provided a higher
credit rating for him. And the same held for the German fraternity
student. Oral confession and the disciplinary power of the church during
the Middle Ages also provided the means to enforce church discipline
effectively. Finally, to secure a legal claim, the opportunity provided by
the oath was exploited to secure excommunication of the debtor.
* With the Methodists this is expressly prescribed.
t Doyle in his work which we have repeatedly cited ascribes the industrial character
of New England, in contrast to the agrarian colonies, to this factor.
t Cf., for example, Doyle's comments about the status conditions in New England, where
the families bearing old religious literary tradition, not the 'propertied classes,' formed the
aristocracy.
320 RELIGION
In all these cases, however, the forms of behavior that were favored
or tabooed through such conditions and means differed totally from
those which Protestant asceticism bred or suppressed. With the lieuten-
ant, for instance, or the fraternity student, and probably with the bishop
as well, the enhanced credit rating certainly did not rest upon the breed-
ing of personal qualities suitable for business; and following up this
remark direcdy: even though the effects in all three cases were intended
to have the same direction, they were worked out in quite different ways.
The medieval, like the Lutheran church discipline, first, was vested in
the hands of the ministerial officeholder; secondly, this discipline worked
—as far as it was effective at all— through authoritarian means; and,
thirdly, it punished and placed premiums upon concrete individual acts.
The church discipline of the Puritans and of the sects was vested, first,
at least in part and often wholly, in the hands of laymen. Secondly, it
worked through the necessity of one's having to hold one's own; and,
thirdly, it bred or, if one wishes, selected qualities. The last point is the
most important one.
The member of the sect (or conventicle) had to have qualities of a
certain kind in order to enter the community circle. Being endowed with
these qualities was important for the development of rational modern
capitalism, as has been shown in the first essay.* In order to hold his own
in this circle, the member had to prove repeatedly that he was endowed
with these qualities. They were constantly and continuously bred in
him. For, like his bliss in the beyond, his whole social existence in the
here and now depended upon his 'proving' himself. The Catholic con-
fession of sins was, to repeat, by comparison a means of relieving the
person from the tremendous internal pressure under which the sect mem-
ber in his conduct was constantly held. How certain orthodox and hetero-
dox religious communities of the Middle Ages have been forerunners
of the ascetic denominations of Protestantism shall not here and now
be discussed.
According to all experience there is no stronger means of breeding
traits than through the necessity of holding one's own in the circle of
one's associates. The continuous and unobtrusive ethical discipline of the
sects was, therefore, related to authoritarian church discipline as rational
breeding and selection are related to ordering and forbidding.
In this as in almost every other respect, the Puritan sects are the most
specific bearers of the inner-worldly form of asceticism. Moreover, they
* The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism.
THE PROTESTANT SECTS AND THE SPIRIT OF CAPITALISM 32I
are the most consistent and, in a certain sense, the only consistent antith-
esis to the universahst Cathohc Church — a compulsory organization
for the administration of grace. The Puritan sects put the most powerful
individual interest of social self-esteem in the service of this breeding of
traits. Hence individual motives and personal self-interests were also
placed in the service of maintaining and propagating the 'bourgeois'
Puritan ethic, with all its ramifications. This is absolutely decisive for its
penetrating and for its powerful effect.
To repeat, it is not the ethical doctrine of a religion, but that form of
ethical conduct upon which premiums are placed that matters.^'' Such
premiums operate through the form and the condition of the respective
goods of salvation. And such conduct constitutes 'one's' specific 'ethos' in
the sociological sense of the word. For Puritanism, that conduct was a
certain methodical, rational way of life which — given certain conditions —
paved the way for the 'spirit' of modern capitalism. The premiums were
placed upon 'proving' oneself before God in the sense of attaining salva-
tion— which is found in all Puritan denominations — and 'proving' one-
self before men in the sense of socially holding one's own within the
Puritan sects. Both aspects were mutually supplementary and operated
in the same direction: they helped to deliver the 'spirit' of modern cap-
italism, its specific ethos: the ethos of the modern bourgeois middle
classes.
The ascetic conventicles and sects formed one of the most important
historical foundations of modern 'individualism.' Their radical break
away from patriarchal and authoritarian bondage,^" as well as their way
of interpreting the statement that one owes more obedience to God than
to man, was especially important.
Finally, in order to understand the nature of these ethical effects, a
comparative remark is required. In the guilds of the Middle Ages there
was frequently a control of the general ethical standard of the members
similar to that exercised by the discipline of the ascetic Protestant sects.^^
But the unavoidable difference in the effects of guild and of sect upon
the economic conduct of the individual is obvious.
The guild united members of the same occupation; hence it united
competitors. It did so in order to hmit competition as well as the rational
striving for profit which operated through competition. The guild trained
for 'civic' virtues and, in a certain sense, was the bearer of bourgeois
'rationalism' (a point which will not be discussed here in detail). The
guild accomplished this through a 'subsistence policy' and through tra-
322 RELIGION
ditionalism. In so far as guild regulation of the economy gained effective-
ness, its practical results are well known.
The sects, on the other hand, united men through the selection and
the breeding of ethically qualified fellow believers. Their membership
was not based upon apprenticeship or upon the family relations of tech-
nically qualified members of an occupation. The sect controlled and
regulated the members' conduct exclusively in the sense of formal
righteousness and methodical asceticism. It was devoid of the purpose
of a material subsistence policy which handicapped an expansion of the
rational striving for profit. The capitalist success of a guild member
undermined the spirit of the guild — ^as happened in England and France
— and hence capitalist success was shunned. But the capitalist success of
a sect brother, if legally attained, was proof of his worth and of his state
of grace, and it raised the prestige and the propaganda chances of the
sect. Such success was therefore welcome, as the several statements quoted
above show. The organization of free labor in guilds, in their Occidental
medieval form, has certainly — very much against their intention — not
only been a handicap but also a precondition for the capitalist organiza-
tion of labor, which was, perhaps, indispensable.^^ But the guild, of
course, could not give birth to the modern bourgeois capitalist ethos.
Only the methodical way of life of the ascetic sects could legitimate and
put a halo around the economic 'individualist' impulses of the modern
capitalist ethos.
A.iii. Xveligious Jbvejections ol tlie VV orid ana
J.neir J-)irections
In strongest contrast to the case of China, Indian religiosity, which we
are about to consider, is the cradle of those religious ethics which have
abnegated the world, theoretically, practically, and to the greatest extent.
It is also in India that the 'technique' which corresponds to such abnega-
tion has been most highly developed. Monkhood, as well as the typical
ascetic and contemplative manipulations, were not only first but also
most consistently developed in India. And it was perhaps from India
that this rationalization set out on its historical way throughout the
world at large.
i: Motives for the REjEcrrioN of the World: the Meaning of Their
Rational Construction
Before turning to this religiosity it may be expedient to clarify briefly,
in a schematic and theoretical way, the motives from which religious f*
ethics of world abnegation have originated, and the directions they have '
taken. In this way we may clarify their possible 'meaning.'
The constructed scheme, of course, only serves the purpose of offering
an ideal typical means of orientation. It does not teach a philosophy of its
own. The theoretically constructed types of conflicting 'life orders' are
merely intended to show that at certain points such and such internal
conflicts are possible and 'adequate.' They are not intended to show that
there is no standpoint from which the conflicts could not be held to be
resolved in a higher synthesis. As will readily be seen, the individual
spheres of value are prepared with a rational consistency which is rarely
found in reality. But they can appear thus in reality and in historically
From 'Zwischenbetrachtung,' Gesammelte Aufsaetze zw Rdigionssoziologie, vol. i, pp.
436-73. This essay was published in November 1915 in the Aicliiv.
323
524 RELIGION
important ways, and they have. Such constructions make it possible to
determine the typological locus of a historical phenomenon. They en-
able us to see if, in particular traits or in their total character, the
phenomena approximate one of our constructions: to determine the
degree of approximation of the historical phenomenon to the theoret-
ically constructed type. To this extent, the construction is merely a tech-
nical aid which facilitates a more lucid arrangement and terminology.
Yet, under certain conditions, a construction might mean more. For the
rationality, in the sense of logical or teleological 'consistency,' of an
intellectual-theoretical or practical-ethical attitude has and always has had
power over man, however limited and unstable this power is and always
has been in the face of other forces of historical life.
Religious interpretations of the world and ethics of religions created
by intellectuals and meant to be rational have been strongly exposed to
the imperative of consistency. The effect of the ratio, especially of a
teleological deduction of practical postulates, is in some way, and often
very strongly, noticeable among all religious ethics. This holds however
little the religious interpretations of the world in the individual case
have complied with the demand for consistency, and however much
they might integrate points of view into their ethical postulates which
could not be rationally deduced. Thus, for substantive reasons, we may
hope to facilitate the presentation of an otherwise immensely multifarious
subject matter by expediently constructed rational types. To do this we
must prepare and emphasize the internally most 'consistent' forms of
practical conduct that can be deduced from fixed and given presuppo-
sitions.
Above all, such an essay in the sociology of religion necessarily aims
at contributing to the typology and sociology of rationalism. This essay
therefore proceeds from the most rational forms reality can assume; it
attempts to find out how far certain rational conclusions, which can be
established theoretically, have been drawn in reality. And perhaps we
will find out why not.
2: Typology of Asceticism and of Mysticism
The great importance of the conception of the supra-mundane God
and Creator for religious ethics has been touched upon.* This conception
has been especially important for the active and asceticist direction of the
Cf. chapter xi.
V i
RELIGIOUS REJECTIONS OF THE WORLD AND THEIR DIRECTIONS 325
quest for salvation. It has not been so important for the contemplative
and mystical quest, which has an internal affinity with the depersonali-
zation and immanence of the divine power. However, this intimate con-
nection, which E. Troeltsch has repeatedly and rightly stressed, between
the conception of a supra-mundane God and active asceticism is not
absolute; the supra-mundane God has not, as such, determined the direc-
tion of Occidental asceticism, as will be seen from the following reflec-
tions. The Christian Trinity, with its incarnate Savior and the saints,
represented a conception of God which fundamentally was rather less
supra-mundane than was the God of Jewry, especially of later Jewry, or
the Allah of Islamism.
Jewry developed mysticism, but it developed hardly any asceticism of
the Occidental type. And early Islamism directly repudiated asceticism.
The peculiarity of Dervish religiosity stemmed from quite different
sources than from the relation to a supra-mundane God and Creator.
It stemmed from mystic, ecstatic sources and in its inner essence it was
remote from Occidental asceticism. Important though it was, the con-
ception of a supra-mundane God, in spite of its affinity to emissary
prophecy and active asceticism, obviously did not operate alone but
always in conjunction with other circumstances. The nature of religious
promises and the paths of salvation which they determined were para-
mount among these circumstances. This matter has to be discussed in
connection with particular cases.
We have had repeatedly to use the terms 'asceticism' and 'mysticism'
as polar concepts. In order to elucidate this terminology we shall here
further differentiate these terms.
In our introductory comments * we contrasted, as abnegations of the
world, the active asceticism that is a God-willed action of the devout who
are God's tools, and, on the other hand, the contemplative possession of i
the holy, as found in mysticism. Mysticism intends a state of 'possession,'
not action, and the individual is not a tool but a 'vessel' of the divine.
Action in the world must thus appear as endangering the absolutely
irrational and other-worldly religious state. Active asceticism operates
within the world; rationally active asceticism, in mastering the world,
seeks to tame what is creatural and wicked through work in a worldly
'vocation' (inner- worldly asceticism). Such asceticism contrasts radically
with mysticism, if the latter draws the full conclusion of fleeing from the
world (contemplative flight from the world).
• C£. chapter xi.
326 RELIGION
The contrast is tempered, however, if active asceticism confines itselt
to keeping down and to overcoming creatural wickedness in the actor's
own nature. For then it enhances the concentration on the firmly estab-
lished God-willed and active redemptory accomplishments to the point
of avoiding any action in the orders of the world (asceticist flight from
the world). Thereby active asceticism in external bearing comes close to
contemplative flight from the world.
The contrast between asceticism and mysticism is also tempered if the
contemplative mystic does not draw the conclusion that he should flee
from the world, but, like the inner-worldly asceticist, remain in the orders
of the world (inner- worldly mysticism).
In both cases the contrast can actually disappear in practice and some
combination of both forms of the quest for salvation may occur. But
the contrast may continue to exist even under the veil of external simi-
larity. For the true mystic the principle continues to hold : the creature
must be silent so that God may speak. He 'is' in the world avA externally
'accommodates' to its orders, but only in order to gain a certainty of
his state of grace in opposition to the world by resisting the temptation
to take the ways of the world seriously. As we can see with Lao-tse, the
typical attitude of the mystic is one of a specifically broken humility, a
minimization of action, a sort of religious incognito existence in the
world. He proves himself against the world, against his action in the
world. Inner-worldly asceticism, on the contrary, proves itself through
action. To the inner-worldly asceticist the conduct of the mystic is an
indolent enjoyment of self; to the mystic the conduct of the (inner-
worldly active) asceticist is an entanglement in the godless ways of the
world combined with complacent self-righteousness. With that 'blissful
bigotry,' usually ascribed to the typical Puritan, inner-worldly asceticism
executes the positive and divine resolutions whose ultimate meaning re-
mains concealed. Asceticism executes these resolutions as given in the
God-ordained rational orders of the creatural. To the mystic, on the
contrary, what matters for his salvation is only the grasping of the ulti-
mate and completely irrational meaning through mystic experience. I'he
forms in which both ways of conduct flee from the world can be dis-
tinguished by similar confrontations. But we reserve the discussion of
these for monographic presentation.
religious rejections of the world and their directions 327
3: Directions of the Abnegation of the World
We shall now consider in detail the tensions existing between religion
and the world. We shall proceed from the reflections of the introduc-
tion,* but we shall now give them a somewhat different turn.
We have said that these modes of behavior, once developed into a
methodical way of life, formed the nucleus of asceticism as well as of
mysticism, and that they originally grew out of magical presuppositions.
Magical practices were engaged in, either for the sake of awakening
charismatic qualities or for the sake of preventing evil charms. The first
case has, of course, been more important for historical developments.
For even at the threshold of its appearance, asceticism showed its Janus-
face: on the one hand, abnegation of the world, and on the other, mas-
tery of the world by virtue of the magical powers obtained by abnegation.
The magician has been the historical precursor of the prophet, of the
exemplary as well as of the emissary prophet and savior. As a rule the
prophet and the savior have legitimized themselves through the posses-
sion of a magical charisma. With them, however, this has been merely
a means of securing recognition and followers, for the exemplary signifi-
cance, the mission, or the savior quality of their personalities. For the
substance of the prophecy or of the savior's commandment is to direct
a way of life to the pursuit of a sacred value. Thus understood, the
prophecy or commandment means, at least relatively, to systematize and
rationalize the way of life, either in particular points or totally. The
latter has been the rule with all true 'religions of salvation,' that is, with
all religions that hold out deliverance from suffering to their adherents.
This is more likely to be the case the more sublimated, the more inward,
and the more principled the essence of suffering is conceived. For then it
is important to put the follower into a permanent state which makes him
inwardly safe against suffering. Formulated abstractly, the rational aim
of redemption religion has been to secure for the saved a holy state, and
thereby a habitude that assures salvation. This takes the place of an
acute and extraordinary, and thus a holy, state which is transitorily at-
tained by means of orgies, asceticism, or contemplation.
Now if a religious community emerges in the wake of a prophecy or
of the propaganda of a savior, the control of regular conduct first falls
into the hands of the charismatically qualified successors, pupils, disci-
* Cf. chapter xi.
328 RELIGION
pies of the prophet or of the savior. Later, under certain very regularly
recurrent conditions, which we shall not deal with here, this task falls
into the hands of a priestly, hereditary, or official hierocracy. Yet, as a
rule, the prophet or the savior personally has stood in opposition to the
traditional hierocratic powers of magicians or of priests. He has set his
personal charisma against their dignity consecrated by tradition in order
to break their power or force them to his service.
In the aforementioned discussion, we have taken for granted and
presupposed that a large and, for the historical development, an especially
important fraction of all cases of prophetic and redemptory religions
have lived not only in an acute but in a permanent state of tension in
relation to the world and its orders. This goes without saying, according
to the terminology used here. The more the religions have been true
religions of salvation, the greater has this tension been. This follows from
the meaning of salvation and from the substance of the prophetic teach-
ings as soon as these develop into an ethic. The tension has also been
the greater, the more rational in principle the ethic has been, and the
more it has been oriented to inward sacred values as means of salvation.
In common language, this means that the tension has been the greater
the more religion has beefl sublimated from ritualism and towards 'reli-
gious absolutism.' Indeed, the further the rationalization and sublimation
of the external and internal possession of — in the widest sense — 'things
worldly' has progressed, the stronger has the tension on the part of
religion become. For the rationalization and the conscious sublimation
of man's relations to the various spheres of values, external and internal,
as well as religious and secular, have then pressed towards making con-
scious the internal and lawful autonomy of the individual spheres;
thereby letting them drift into those tensions which remain hidden to the
originally naive relation with the external world. This results quite gen-
erally from the development of inner- and other-worldly values towards
rationality, towards conscious endeavor, and towards sublimation by
\nowledge. This consequence is very important for the history of reli-
gion. In order to elucidate the typical phenomena which recur in con-
nection with greatly varying religious ethics, we shall consider a series
of these values.
Wherever prophecies of salvation have created religious communities,
the first power with which they have come into conflict has been the
1
RELIGIOUS REJECTIONS OF THE WORLD AND THEIR DIRECTIONS 329
natural sib. The sib has had to fear devaluation by the prophecy. Those
who cannot be hostile to members of the household, to father and to
mother, cannot be disciples of Jesus. 'I came not to send peace, but a
sword' (Matthew x, 34) was said in this connection, and, it should be
noted, solely in this connection. The preponderant majority of all reli-
gions have, of course, regulated the inner-worldly bonds of piety. Yet
the more comprehensive and the more inward the aim of salvation has
been, the more it has been taken for granted that the faithful should ulti-
mately stand closer to the savior, the prophet, the priest, the father con-
fessor, the brother in the faith than to natural relations and to the
matrimonial community.
Prophecy has created a new social community, particularly where it
became a soteriological religion of congregations. Thereby the relation-
ships of the sib and of matrimony have been, at least relatively, devalued.
The magical ties and exclusiveness of the sibs have been shattered, and
within the new community the prophetic religion has developed a re-
ligious ethic of brotherliness. This ethic has simply taken over the orig-
inal principles of social and ethical conduct which the 'association of
neighbors' had offered, whether it was the community of villagers, mem-
bers of the sib, the guild, or of partners in seafaring, hunting, and war-
ring expeditions. These communities have known two elemental princi-
ples: first, the dualism of in-group and out-group morality; second, for
in-group morality, simple reciprocity: 'As you do unto me I shall do
unto you.' From these principles the following have resulted for eco-
nomic life: For in-group morality the principled obligation to give
brotherly support in distress has existed. The wealthy and the noble
were obliged to loan, free of charge, goods for the use of the property-
less, to give credit free of interest, and to extend liberal hospitality and
support. 1 Men were obliged to render services upon the request of their
neighbors, and likewise, on the lord's estate, without compensation other
than mere sustenance. All this followed the principle: your want of today
may be mine of tomorrow. This principle was not, of course, rationally
weighed, but it played its part in sentiment. Accordingly, higgling in
exchange and loan situations, as well as permanent enslavement result-
ing, for instance, from debts, were confined to out-group morality and
applied only to outsiders.
The religiosity of the congregation transferred this ancient economic
ethic of neighborliness to the relations among brethren of the faith.
What had previously been the obligations of the noble and the wealthy
became the fundamental imperatives of all ethically rationalized religions
330 RELIGION
of the world: to aid widows and orphans in distress, to care for the sick
and impoverished brother of the faith, and to give alms. The giving of
alms was especially required of the rich, for the holy minstrels and
magicians as well as the ascetics were economically dependent upon the
rich.
The principle that constituted the communal relations among the
salvation prophecies was the suffering common to all believers. And this
was the case whether the suffering actually existed or was a constant
threat, whether it was external or internal. The more imperatives that
issued from the ethic of reciprocity among neighbors were raised, the
more rational the conception of salvation became, and the more it was
sublimated into an ethic of absolute ends. Externally, such commands
rose to a communism of loving brethren; internally they rose to the
attitude of caritas, love for the sufferer per se, for one's neighbor, for man,
and finally for the enemy. The barrier to the bond of faith and the
existence of hatred in the face of a world conceived to be the locus of
undeserved suffering seem to have resulted from the same imperfections
and depravities of empirical reality that originally caused the suffering.
Above all, the peculiar euphoria of all types of sublimated religious
ecstasy operated psychologically in the same general direction. From
being 'moved' and edified to feeling direct communion with God, ecsta-
sies have always inclined men towards the flowing out into an object-
less acosmism of love. In religions of salvation, the profound and quiet
bliss of all heroes of acosmic benevolence has always been fused with
a charitable realization of the natural imperfections of all human doings,
including one's own. The psychological tone as well as the rational,
ethical interpretation of this inner attitude can vary widely. But its
ethical demand has always lain in the direction of a universalist brother-
hood, which goes beyond all barriers of societal associations, often in-
cluding that of one's own faith.
The religion of brotherliness has always clashed with the orders and
values of this world, and the more consistently its demands have been
carried through, the sharper the clash has been. The split has usually
become wider the more the values of the world have been rationalized
and sublimated in terms of their own laws. And that is what matters
here.
religious rejections of the world and their directions 33i
4: The Economic Sphere
The tension between brotherly reHgion and the world has been most y
obvious in the economic sphere.
All the primeval magical or mystagogic ways of influencing spirits
and deities have pursued special interests. They have striven for wealth,
as well as long life, health, honor, progeny and, possibly, the improve-
ment of one's fate in the hereafter. The Eleusian mysteries promised all
this, just as did the Phoenician and Vedic religions, the Chinese folk-
religion, ancient Judaism, and ancient Islam; and it was the promise
held out to the pious Hindu and Buddhist laymen. The sublimated
religions of salvation, however, have been increasingly tense in their
relationships with rationalized economies.
A rational economy is a functional organization oriented to money-
prices which originate in the interest-struggles of men in the market.
Calculation is not possible without estimation in money prices and hence
without market struggles. Money is the most abstract and 'impersonal'
element that exists in human life. The more the world of the modern
capitalist economy follows its own immanent laws, the less accessible it
is to any imaginable relationship with a religious ethic of brotherliness.
The more rational, and thus impersonal, capitalism becomes, the more
is this the case. In the past it was possible to regulate ethically the per-
sonal relations between master and slave precisely because they were
personal relations. But it is not possible to regulate — at least not in the
same sense or with the same success — the relations between the shifting
holders of mortgages and the shifting debtors of the banks that issue
these mortgages: for in this case, no personal bonds of any sort exist.
If one nevertheless tried to do so, the results would be the same as those
we have come to know from China, namely, stifling formal rationality.
For in China, formal rationality and substantive rationality were in con-
flict.
As we have seen, the religions of salvation have had a tendency to
depersonalize and objectify love in the unique sense of acosmism. Yet
these same religions have watched with profound suspicion the deploy-
ment of economic forces which, in a different sense, have likewise been
impersonal, and because of this they have been specifically oppsed to
brotherliness.
The Catholic Deo placere non potest has always been the character-
332 RELIGION
istic attitude of salvation religions towards the profit economy; with all
rational methods of salvation the warnings against attachment to money
and goods have pushed to the height of tabooing goods and money. The
dependence of religious communities themselves, and of their propa-
ganda and maintenance, upon economic means, and their accommoda-
tion to cultural needs and the everyday interests of the masses, have
compelled them to enter compromises of which the history of the inter-
diction of interests is but one example. Yet, ultimately no genuine religion
of salvation has overcome the tension between their religiosity and a
rational economy.
Externally, the ethic of religious virtuosos has touched this tense rela-
tion in the most radical fashion: by rejecting the possession of economic
goods. The ascetic monk has fled from the world by denying himself
individual property; his existence has rested entirely upon his own work;
and, above all, his needs have been correspondingly restricted to what
was absolutely indispensable. The paradox of all rational asceticism,
which in an identical manner has made monks in all ages stumble, is
that rational asceticism itself has created the very wealth it rejected.
Temples and monasteries have everywhere become the very loci of
rational economies.
Contemplative seclusion as a principle has only been able to establish
the rule that the propertyless monk must enjoy only what nature and
men voluntarily offer: berries, roots, and free alms. Labor was some-
thing which distracted the monk from concentration upon the contem-
plated value of salvation. Yet even contemplative seclusion has made its
compromises by establishing districts for begging, as in India.
There have been only two consistent avenues for escaping the tension
between religion and the economic world in a principled and inward
manner: First, the paradox of the Puritan ethic of 'vocation.' As a re-
ligion of virtuosos, Puritanism renounced the universalism of love, and
rationally routinized all work in this world into serving God's will and
testing one's state of grace. God's will in its ultimate meaning was quite
incomprehensible, yet it was the only positive will that could be known.
In this respect, Puritanism accepted the routinization of the economic
cosmos, which, with the whole world, it devalued as creatural and de-
praved. This state of affairs appeared as God-willed, and as material
and given for fulfilling one's duty. In the last resort, this meant in
principle to renounce salvation as a goal attainable by man, that is, by
everybody. It meant to renounce salvation in favor of the groundless
RELIGIOUS REJECTIONS OF THE WORLD AND THEIR DIRECTIONS 333
and always only particularized grace. In truth, this standpoint of un-
brotherliness was no longer a genuine 'religion of salvation.' A genuine
religion of salvation can exaggerate brotherliness to the height of the
mystic's acosmism of love.
Mysticism is the other consistent avenue by which the tension be-
tween economics and religion has been escaped. This way is repre-
sented quite purely in the mystic's 'benevolence,' which does not at all
enquire into the man to whom and for whom it sacrifices. Ultimately,
mysticism is not interested in his person. Once and for all, the benevolent
mystic gives his shirt when he is asked for his coat, by anybody who
accidentally happens to come his way — and merely because he happens to
come his way. Mysticism is a unique escape from this world in the form
of an objectless devotion to anybody, not for man's sake but purely for
devotion's sake, or, in Baudelaire's words, for the sake of 'the soul's
sacred prostitution.'
5: The Political Sphere
The consistent brotherly ethic of salvation reUgions has come into an
equally sharp tension with the political orders of the world. This prob-
lem did not exist for magic religiosity or for the religion of functional
deities. The ancient god of war as well as the god who guaranteed the
legal order were functional deities who protected the undoubted values
of everyday routine. The gods of locality, tribe, and polity were only
concerned with the interests of their respective associations. They had
to fight other gods like themselves, just as their communities fought,
and they had to prove their divine powers in this very struggle.
The problem only arose when these barriers of locality, tribe, and
polity were shattered by universalist religions, by a religion with a
unified God of the entire world. And the problem arose in full strength
only when this God was a God of 'love.' The problem of tensions with
the political order emerged for redemption religions out of the basic
demand for brotherliness. And in politics, as in economics, the more
rational the political order became the sharper the problems of these
tensions became.
The bureaucratic state apparatus, and the rational homo politicus
integrated into the state, manage affairs, including the punishment of
evil, when they discharge business in the most ideal sense, according to
the rational rules of the state order. In this, the political man acts just
334 RELIGION
like the economic man, in a matter-of-fact manner 'without regard to
the person,' sine ira et studio, without hate and therefore without love.
By virtue of its depersonahzation, the bureaucratic state, in important
points, is less accessible to substantive moralization than were the patri-
archal orders of the past, however many appearances may point to the
contrary. The patriarchal orders of the past were based upon personal
obligations of piety, and the patriarchal rulers considered the merit of
the concrete, single case precisely with 'regard to the person.' In the
final analysis, in spite of all 'social welfare poHcies,' the whole course of
the state's inner political functions, of justice and administration, is
repeatedly and unavoidably regulated by the objective pragmatism of
'reasons of state.' The state's absolute end is to safeguard (or to change)
the external and internal distribution of power; ultimately, this end
must seem meaningless to any universalist religion of salvation. This
fact has held and still holds, even more :o, for foreign policy. It is abso-
lutely essential for every political association to appeal to the naked
violence of coercive means in the face of outsiders as well as in the face
of internal enemies. It is only this very appeal to violence that consti-
tutes a political association in our terminology. The state is an association
that claims the monopoly of the legitimate use of violence, and cannot
be defined in any other manner.
The Sermon on the Mount says 'resist no evil.' In opposition, the
state asserts: 'You shall help right to triumph by the use of force, other-
wise you too may be responsible for injustice.' Where this factor is absent,
the 'state' is also absent; the 'anarchism' of the pacifist will have then
come to life. According to the inescapable pragmatism of all action,
however, force and the threat of force unavoidably breed more force.
'Reasons of state' thus follow their own external and internal laws. The
very success of force, or of the threat of force, depends ultimately upon
power relations and not on ethical 'right,' even were one to believe it
possible to discover objective criteria for such 'right.'
In contrast to naive, primitive heroism, it is typical of the rational
state systems for groups or rulers to line up for violent conflict, all quite
sincerely believing themselves to be 'in the right.' To any consistent
religious rationalization, this must seem only an aping of ethics. More-
over, to draw the Lord's name into such violent political conflict must
be viewed as a taking of His name in vain. In the face of this, the
cleaner and only honest way may appear to be the complete elimination
of ethics from political reasoning. The more matter-of-fact and calcu-
RELIGIOUS REJECTIONS OF THE WORLD AND THEIR DIRECTIONS 335
lating politics is, and the freer of passionate feelings, of wrath, and of
love it becomes, the more it must appear to an ethic of brotherliness to
be estranged from brotherliness.
The mutual strangeness of religion and politics, when they are both
completely rationalized, is all the more the case because, in contrast to
economics, politics may come into direct competition with religious
ethics at decisive points. As the consummated threat of violence among
modern polities, war creates a pathos and a sentiment of community.
War thereby makes for an unconditionally devoted and sacrificial com-
munity among the combatants and releases an active mass compassion
and love for those who are in need. And, as a mass phenomenon, these
feelings break down all the naturally given barriers of association. In
general, religions can show comparable achievements only in heroic com-
munities professing an ethic of brotherliness.
Moreover, war does something to the warrior which, in its concrete
meaning, is unique: it makes him experience a consecrated meaning of
death which is characteristic only of death in war. The community of
the army standing in the field today feels itself — as in the times of the
war lords 'following' — to be a community unto death, and the great-
est of its kind. Death on the field of battle differs from death that is
only man's common lot. Since death is a fate that comes to everyone,
nobody can ever say why it comes precisely to him and why it comes
just when it does. As the values of culture increasingly unfold and are
sublimated to immeasurable heights, such ordinary death marks an
end where only a beginning seems to make sense. Death on the field of
battle differs from this merely unavoidable dying in that in war, and
in this massiveness only in war, the individual can believe that he knows
he is dying 'for' somediing. The why and the wherefore of his facing
death can, as a rule, be so indubitable to him that the problem of the
'meaning' of deadi does not even occur to him. At least there may be
no presuppositions for the emergence of the problem in its universal
significance, which is the form in which religions of salvation are im-
pelled to be concerned with the meaning of death. Only those who
perish 'in their callings' are in the same situation as the soldier who
faces death on the battlefield.
This location of death within a series of meaningful and consecrated
events ultimately lies at the base of all endeavors to support the autono-
mous dignity of the polity resting on force. Yet the way in which death
can be conceived as meaningful in such endeavors points in directions
336 RELIGION
that differ radically from the direction in which the theodicy of death
in a religion of brotherliness may point. The brotherliness of a group
of men bound together in war must appear devalued in such brotherly
religions. It must be seen as a mere reflection of the technically sophis-
ticated brutality of the struggle. And the inner-worldly consecration of
death in war must appear as a glorification of fratricide. The very ex-
traordinary quality of brotherliness of war, and of death in war, is
shared with sacred charisma and the experience of the communion with
God, and this fact raises the competition between the brotherliness of
religion and of the warrior community to its extreme height. As in
economics, the only two consistent solutions of this tension are those of
puritanism and of mysticism.
Puritanism, with its particularism of grace and vocational asceticism,
believes in the fixed and revealed commandments of a God who is
otherwise quite incomprehensible. It interprets God's will to mean that
these commandments should be imposed upon the creatural world by
the means of this world, namely, violence — for the world is subject to
violence and ethical barbarism. And this means at least barriers which
resist the obligation of brotherliness in the interest of God's 'cause.'
On the other hand, there is the solution of the mystic's radical anti-
political attitude, his quest for redemption with its acosmic benevolence
and brotherliness. With its 'resist no evil' and with its maxim 'then turn
the other cheek,' mysticism is necessarily vulgar and lacking in dignity in
the eyes of every self-assured worldly ethic of heroism. It withdraws from
the pragma of violence which no political action can escape.
All other solutions to the tensions of politics and religion are full of
compromises or of presuppositions which must necessarily appear dis-
honest or inacceptable to the genuine ethic of brotherliness. Some of
these solutions are nevertheless interesting in principle and as types.
Every organization of salvation by a compulsory and universaUst
institution of grace feels responsible before God for the souls of every-
one, or at least of all the men entrusted to it. Such an institution will
therefore feel entitled, and in duty bound, to oppose with ruthless force
any danger through misguidance in faith. It feels bound to promote the
diffusion of its saving means of grace.
When salvation aristocracies are charged by the command of their
God to tame the world of sin, for His glory, they give birth to the 'cru-
sader.' Such was the case in Calvinism and, in a different form, in
Islamism. At the same time, however, salvation aristocracies separate
RELIGIOUS REJECTIONS OF THE WORLD AND THEIR DIRECTIONS 337
'holy' or 'just' wars from other, purely secular, and therefore profoundly
devalued, wars. The just war is engaged in for the sake of executing
God's commandment, or for the sake of faith, which in some sense
always means a war of religion. Therefore, salvation aristocracies re-
ject the compulsion to participate in those wars of the political authori-
ties which are not clearly established as holy wars corresponding to
God's will, that is, wars not affirmed by one's own conscience. The vic-
torious army of Cromwell's Saints acted in this way when it took a
stand against compulsory military service. Salvation aristocracies prefer
mercenary armies to compulsory war service. In case men violate God's
will, especially on behalf of the faith, the faithful draw conclusions in
favor of an active religious revolution, by virtue of the sentence that
one should obey God rather than man.
Churchly Lutheranism, for instance, has taken the very opposite stand.
It has rejected the crusade and the right to active resistance against any
secular coercion in matters of faith; it has considered such coercion an
arbitrary wilfulness, which entangles salvation in the pragmatism of
violence. In this field Lutheranism has known only passive resistance. It
has, however, accepted obedience to secular authority as unobjectionable,
even when this authority has given the order for war, because the re-
sponsibility for war is on the secular authority and not on the individual
and because the ethical autonomy of the secular authority, in contrast to
the inwardly universalist (Catholic) institution of grace, was recognized.
The insertion of mystic religiosity peculiar to Luther's personal Christian-
ity stopped short of drawing the full conclusions in this matter.
The religious virtuosos' genuinely mystic and charismatic search for
salvation has naturally and everywhere been apolitical or anti-political
in nature. Such quests for salvation have readily recognized the auton-
omy of the temporal order, but they have done so only in order to infer
consistently its radically diabolic character, or at least to take that stand-
point of absolute indifference in the face of the world which has been
expressed in the sentence: 'Render unto Caesar the things which are
Caesar's' (for what is the relevance of these things for salvation?).
The widely varying empirical stands which historical religions have
taken in the face of political action have been determined by the entan-
glement of religious organizations in power interests and in struggles
for power, by the always unavoidable collapse of even the highest states
of tension with the world in favor of compromises and relativities, by
the usefulness and the use of religious organizations for the political
338 RELIGION
taming of the masses and, especially, by the need of the powers-that-be
for the religious consecration of their legitimacy. As we may see from
history, almost all the platforms of religious organizations have been
religiously relative so far as sacred values, ethical rationality, and lawful
autonomy are concerned. In practice, the most important type of these
relative forms has been the 'organic' social ethics. This type has been
diffused in many forms and its conception of vocational work has been,
in principle, the most important contrast to the idea of 'calling,' as foimd
in inner-worldly asceticism.
Organic social ethics, where religiously sub-structured, stands on the
soil of 'brotherUness,' but, in contrast to mystic and acosmic love, is
dominated by a cosmic, rational demand for brotherhness. Its point of
departure is the experience of the inequality of religious charisma. The
very fact that the holy should be accessible only to some and not to all
is unbearable to organic social ethics. It therefore attempts to synthesize
this inequality of charismatic qualifications with secular stratification by
status, into a cosmos of God-ordained services which are specialized in
function. Certain tasks are given to every individual and every group
according to their personal charisma and their social and economic posi-
tion as determined by fate. As a rule, these tasks stand in the service of
the realization of a condition which, in spite of its compromise nature,
is pleasing to God. This condition is interpreted as being at the same time
utilitarian, social, and providential. In the face of the wickedness of the
world, such a condition facilitates at least a relative taming of sin and of
suffering; the preservation and salvation of as many souls as possible for
the kingdom of God is thereby facilitated. We shall soon learn of a
theodicy of far greater pathos, which the Indian doctrine of Kharma has
imparted to the organic doctrine of society from the standpoint of re-
demptory pragmatism oriented solely to the interests of the individual.
Without this very special linkage, every organic social ethic unavoidably
represents an accommodation to the interests of the privileged strata of
this world. At least that is the view of the radical, mystical ethic of reli-
gious brotherhness. From the standpoint of inner-worldly asceticism, the
organic ethic lacks the inward drive for an ethical and thorough ration-
alization of individual life. In such matters, it has no premium for the
rational and mediodical patterning of personal life in the interest of the
individual's own salvation.
The organic pragmatism of salvation must consider the redemptory
aristocracy of inner-worldly asceticism, with its rational depersonalization
RELIGIOUS REJECTIONS OF THE WORLD AND THEIR DIRECTIONS 339
of life orders, as the hardest form of lovelessness and lack of brotherli-
ness. It must consider the redemptory pragmatism of mysticism as a
sublimated and, in truth, unbrotherly indulgence of the mystic's own
charisma. The mystic's unmethodical and planless acosmism of love is
viewed as a mere selfish means in the search for the mystic's own sal-
vation. Both inner-worldly asceticism and mysticism ultimately condemn
the social world to absolute meaninglessness, or at least they hold that
God's aims concerning the social world are utterly incomprehensible.
The rationalism of religious and organic doctrines of society cannot
stand up under this idea; for it seeks to comprehend the world as an at
least relatively rational cosmos in spite of all its wickedness; the world
is held to bear at least traces of the divine plan of salvation. For the
absolute charisma of virtuoso religiosity, this relativization is indeed ob-
jectionable and estranged from the holy.
As economic and rational political actions follow laws of their own,
so every other rational action within the world remains inescapably
bound to worldly conditions. These conditions are remote from brother-
liness and must serve as means or as ends of rational action. \Hence all
rational action somehow comes to stand in tension with the ethic of
brotherliness, and carries within itself a profound tension. For there
seems to exist no means of deciding even the very first question: Where,
in the individual case, can the ethical value of an act be determined?
In terms of success, or in terms of some intrinsic value of the act per se?
The question is whether and to what extent the responsibility of the
actor for the results sanctifies the means, or whether the value of the
actor's intention justifies him in rejecting the responsibility for the out-
come, whether to pass on the results of the act to God or to the wicked-
ness and foolishness of the world which are permitted by God. The
absolutist sublimation of religious ethic will incline men towards the
latter alternative: 'The Christian does right and leaves success to God.'
In this, however, the actor's own conduct when it is really consistent,
and not the lawful autonomy of the world, is condemned as irrational
in its effects.* In the face of this, a sublimated and thoroughgoing search
for salvation may lead to an acosmism increasing to the pint where it
rejects purposive-rational action per se, and hence, all action in terms
of means-ends relations, for it considers them tied to worldly things and
thus estranged from God. We shall see how this has occurred with
♦Theoretically this is most consistently carried through in the Bhagavad-Gita, as we
shall see.
^40 MLIGION
varying consistency, from the Biblical parable of the lilies in the field
to the more principled formulations, for instance, of Buddhism.
The organic ethic of society is everywhere an eminently conservative
power and hostile to revolution. Under certain conditions, however, revo-
lutionary consequences may follow from a genuine virtuoso religiosity.
Naturally, this occurs only when the pragmatism of force, calling forth
more force and leading merely to changes in personnel, or at best to
changes in methods of ruling by force, is not recognized as a permanent
quahty of the creaturely. According to the coloration of the virtuoso
religion, its revolutionary turn may in principle assume two forms. One
form springs from inner-worldly asceticism, wherever this asceticism is
capable of opposing an absolute and divine 'natural law' to the crea-
turally, wicked, and empirical orders of the world. It then becomes a
religious duty to realize this divine natural law, according to the sen-
tence that one must obey God rather t^han men, which in some sense
holds for all rational religions. The genuine Puritan revolutions, whose
counterparts can be found elsewhere, are typical. This attitude abso-
lutely corresponds to the obligation to crusade.
It is a different matter with the mystic. The psychological turn from
possession of God to possession by God is always possible and with the
mystic it is consummated. This is meaningful and possible when eschato-
logical expectations of an immediate beginning and of the millennium
of acosmic brotherliness are flaming up, hence, when the belief is dropped
that an everlasting tension exists between the world and the irrational
metaphysical realm of salvation. The mystic then turns into a savior and
prophet. The commands, however, which he enunciates have no rational
character. As products of his charisma, they are revelations of a concrete
sort and the radical rejection of the world easily turns into radical
anomism. The commands of the world do not hold for the man who is
assured in his obsession with God: 'jiavta |.ioi eHeativ.' AH chiliasm, up
to the revolution of the Anabaptists, rested somehow upon this sub-
structure. For him who 'possesses God' and is thereby saved, the manner
of action is without significance for salvation. We shall find that similar
states hold in the case of the Indian djivanmukhti.
6: The Esthetic Sphere
The religious ethic of brotherliness stands in dynamic tension with
any purposive-rational conduct that follows its own laws. In no less
RELIGIOUS REJECTIONS OF THE WORLD AND THEIR DIRECTIONS 34 1
degree, this tension occurs between the rehgious ethic and 'this-worldly'
Hfe-forces, whose character is essentially non-rational or basically anti-
rational. Above all, there is tension between the ethic of religious brother-
liness and the spheres of esthetic and erotic life.
Magical religiosity stands in a most intimate relation to the esthetic
sphere. Since its beginnings, religion has been an inexhaustible fountain
of opportunities for artistic creation, on the one hand, and of stylizing
through traditionalization, on the other. This is shown in a variety of
objects and processes: in idols, icons, and other religious artifacts; in the
stereotyping of magically proved forms, which is a first step in the over-
coming of naturahsm by a fixation of 'style'; in music as a means of
ecstasy, exorcism, or apotropaic magic; in sorcerers as holy singers and
dancers; in magically proved and therefore magically stereotyped tone
relations — the earliest preparatory stages in the development of tonal
systems; in the magically proved dance-step as one of the sources of
rhythm and as an ecstasy technique; in temples and churches as the
largest of all buildings, with the architectural task becoming stereotyped
(and thus style-forming) as a consequence of purposes which are estab-
lished once for all, and with the structural forms becoming stereotyped
through magical efficacy; in paraments and church implements of all
kinds which have served as objects of applied art. All these processes and
objects have been displayed in connection with the churches' and tem-
ples' wealth flowing from religious zeal.
For the religious ethic of brotherliness, just as for a priori ethical rigor-
ism,^ art as a carrier of magical effects is not only devalued but even
suspect. The sublimation of the religious ethic and the quest for salva-
tion, on the one hand, and the evolution of the inherent logic of art, on
the other, have tended to form an increasingly tense relation. All subli-
mated religions of salvation have focused upon the meaning alone, not
upon the form, of the things and actions relevant for salvation. Salvation
reUgions have devalued form as contingent, as something creaturely and
distracting from meaning. On the part of art, however, the naive relation
to the religious ethic of brotherliness can remain unbroken or can be
repeatedly restored as long and as often as the conscious interest of the
recipient of art is naively attached to the content and not to the form as
such. The relationship between a religious ethic and art will remain
harmonious as far as art is concerned for so long as the creative artist
experiences his work as resulting either from a charisma of 'ability'
(originally magic) or from spontaneous play.
342 RELIGION
The development of intellectualism and the rationaHzation of life
change this situation. For under these conditions, art becomes a cosmos
of more and more consciously grasped independent values which exist
in their own right. Art takes over the function of a this-worldly salvation,
no matter how this may be interpreted. It provides a salvation from the
routines of everyday life, and especially from the increasing pressures of
theoretical and practical rationalism.
With this claim to a redemptory function, art begins to compete di-
rectly with salvation religion. Every rational religious ethic must turn
against this inner-worldly, irrational salvation. For in religion's eyes, such
salvation is a realm of irresponsible indulgence and secret lovelessness.
As a matter of fact, the refusal of modern men to assume responsibility
for moral judgments tends to transform judgments of moral intent into
judgments of taste ('in poor taste' instead of 'reprehensible'). The in-
accessibility of appeal from esthetic judgments excludes discussion. This
shift from the moral to the esthetic evaluation of conduct is a common
characteristic of intellectualist epochs; it results partly from subjectivist
needs and partly from the fear of appearing narrow-minded in a tradi-
tionalist and Philistine way.
The ethical norm and its 'universal validity' create a community, at
least in so far as an individual might reject the act of another on moral
grounds and yet still face it and participate in the common life. Knowing
his own creaturely weakness, the individual places himself under the
common norm. In contrast with this ethical attitude, the escape from
the necessity of taking a stand on rational, ethical grounds by resorting
to esthetic evaluations may very well be regarded by salvation religion
as a very base form of unbrotherliness. To the creative artist, however, as
well as to the esthetically excited and receptive mind, the ethical norm
as such may easily appear as a coercion of their genuine creativeness and
innermost selves.
The most irrational form of religious behavior, the mystic experience,
is in its innermost being not only alien but hostile to all form. Form is
unfortunate and inexpressible to the mystic because he believes precisely
in the experience of exploding all forms, and hopes by this to be ab-
sorbed into the 'All-oneness' which lies beyond any kind of determina-
tion and form. For him the indubitable psychological affinity of pro-
foundly shaking experiences in art and religion can only be a symptom
of the diabolical nature of art. Especially music, the most 'inward' of all
the arts, can appear in its purest form of instrumental music as an irre-
(
RELIGIOUS REJECTIONS OF THE WORLD AND THEIR DIRECTIONS 343
sponsible Ersatz for primary religious experience. The internal logic of
instrumental music as a realm not living 'within' appears as a deceptive
pretension to religious experience. The well-known stand of the Council
of Trent may in part have stemmed from this sentiment. Art becomes
an 'idolatry,' a competing power, and a deceptive bedazzlement; and
the images and the allegory of religious subjects appear as blasphemy.
In empirical, historical reality, this psychological affinity between art
and religion has led to ever-renewed alliances, which have been quite
significant for the evolution of art. The great majority of religions have
in some manner entered such alliances. The more they wished to be
universalist mass religions and were thus directed to emotional propa-
ganda and mass appeals, the more systematic were their alliances with
art. But all genuine virtuoso religions have remained very coy when
confronting art, as a consequence of the inner structure of the contra-
diction between religion and art. This holds true for virtuoso religiosity
in its active asceticist bent as well as in its mystical turn. The more reli-
gion has emphasized either the supra-worldliness of its God or the other-
worldliness of salvation, the more harshly has art been refuted.
7: The Erotic Sphere
The brotherly ethic of salvation religion is in profound tension with
the greatest irrational force of life: sexual love. The more sublimated
sexuality is, and the more principled and relentlessly consistent the salva-
tion ethic of brotherhood is, the sharper is the tension between sex and
religion.
Originally the relation of sex and religion was very intimate. Sexual
intercourse was very frequently part of magic orgiasticism or was an
unintended result of orgiastic excitement. The foundation of the Skoptsy
(Castrators) sect in Russia evolved from an attempt to do away with the
sexual result of the orgiastic dance (radjeny) of the Chlyst, which was
evaluated as sinful. Sacred harlotry has had nothing whatsoever to do
with an alleged 'primitive promiscuity'; it has usually been a survival of
magical orgiasticism in which every ecstasy was considered 'holy.' And
profane heterosexual, as well as homosexual, prostitution is very ancient
and often rather sophisticated. (The training of tribades occurs among
so-called aborigines.)
The transition from such prostitution to legally constituted marriage
is full of all sorts of intermediary forms. Conceptions of marriage as an
344 RELIGION
economic arrangement for providing security for the wife and legal
inheritance for the child; as an institution which is important (because
of the death sacrifices of the descendants) for destiny in the beyond; and
as important for the begetting of children — these conceptions of mar-
riage are pre-prophetic and universal. They therefore have had nothing
to do with asceticism as such. And sexual life, per se, has had its ghosts
and gods as has every other function.
A certain tension between religion and sex came to the fore only with
the temporary cultic chastity of priests. This rather ancient chastity may
well have been determined by the fact that from the point of view of
the strictly stereotyped ritual of the regulated community cult, sexuaUty
was readily considered to be specifically dominated by demons. Further-
more, it was no accident that subsequently the prophetic religions, as
well as the priest-controlled life orders, have, almost without significant
exception, regulated sexual intercourse in favor of marriage. The con-
trast of all rational regulation of life with magical orgiasticism and all
sorts of irrational frenzies is expressed in this fact.
The tension of religion and sex has been augmented by evolutionary
factors on both sides. On the side of sexuality the tension has led through
sublimation into 'eroticism,' and therewith into a consciously cultivated,
and hence, a non-routinized sphere. Sex has been non-routinized not
solely or necessarily in the sense of being estranged from conventions,
for eroticism is a contrast to the sober naturalism of the peasant. And it
was precisely eroticism which the conventions of knighthood usually
made the object of regulation. These conventions, however, characteris-
tically regulated eroticism by veihng the natural and organic basis of
sexuality.
The extraordinary quality of eroticism has consisted precisely in a
gradual turning away from the naive naturalism of sex. The reason and
significance of this evolution, however, involve the universal rationaliza-
tion and intellectualization of culture. We wish to present, in a few
sketches, the phases of this development. We shall proceed with exam-
ples from the Occident.
The total being of man has now been alienated from the organic cycle
of peasant life; life has been increasingly enriched in cultural content,
whether this content is evaluated as intellectually or otherwise supra-
individual. All this has worked, through the estrangement of life-value
from that which is merely naturally given, toward a further enhance-
ment of the special position of eroticism. Eroticism was raised into the
RELIGIOUS REJECTIONS OF THE WORLD AND THEIR DIRECTIONS 345
sphere of conscious enjoyment (in the most sublime sense of the term).
Nevertheless, indeed because of diis elevation, eroticism appeared to be
like a gate into the most irrational and thereby real kernel of life, as
compared with the mechanisms of rationalization. The degree and the
manner in which a value-emphasis was thus placed upon eroticism as
such has varied enormously throughout history.
To the unrestrained feelings of a warriordom, the possession of and
the fight for women has ranked about equally with the fight for treas-
ure and the conquest of power. At the time of prc-classic Hellenism, in
the period of knighthood romance, an erotic disappointment could be
considered by Archilochos as a significant experience of lasting relevance,
and the capture of a woman could be considered the incomparable inci-
dent of a heroic war.
The tragedians knew sexual love as a genuine power of destiny, and
their lore incorporated lingering echoes of the myths. On the whole,
however, a woman, Sappho, remained unequalled by man in the capacity
for erotic feeling. The classic Hellenic period, the period of the Hoplite
army, conceived of erotic matters in a relatively and unusually sober
manner. As all their self-revelations prove, these men were even more
sober than the educated stratum of the Chinese. Yet it is not true that
this period did not know the deadly earnestness of sexual love. Rather,
the contrary was characteristic of Hellenic love. We should remind our-
selves— despite Aspasia — of Pericles' speech and finally of the well-known
statement of Demosthenes.
To the exclusively masculine character of this epoch of 'democracy,'
the treatment of erotic experience with women as 'life-fate' — to speak in
our vocabulary — would have appeared as almost sophomoric and senti-
mental. The 'comrade,' the boy, was the object demanded with all the
ceremony of love, and this fact stood precisely in the center of Hellenic
culture. Thus, with all its magnificence, Plato's eros is nevertheless a
strongly tempered feeling. The beauty of Bacchian passion as such was
not an official component of this relation.
The possibility of problems and of tragedy of a principled character
came about in the erotical sphere, at first, through certain demands for
responsibility, which, in the Occident, stem from Christianity. However,
the value-accentuation of the erotic sensation as such evolved primarily
and before all else under the cultural conditioning of feudal notions of
honor. This happened by a carrying over of the symbols of knightly
vassalship into the erotically sublimated sexual relation. Eroticism was
346 RELIGION
given a value-accent most frequently when, during the fusion of vassal-
ship and erotic relations, there occurred a combination with crypto-erotic
religiosity, or directly with asceticism as during the Middle Ages. The
troubadour love of the Christian Middle Ages is known to have been an
erotic service of vassals. It was not oriented towards girls, but exclusively
towards the wives of other men; it involved (in theory!) abstentious
love nights and a casuistic code of duties. Therewith began the 'proba-
tion' of the man, not before his equals but in the face of the erotic
interest of the 'lady.'
The conception of the 'lady' was constituted solely and precisely by
virtue of her judging function. The masculinity of Hellenism is in
strict contrast to this relation of the vassal to the 'lady.'
A further enhancement of the specifically sensational character of
eroticism developed with the transition from the conventions of the
Renaissance to the increasingly non-milirary intellectualism of salon cul-
ture. Despite the great differences between the conventions of Antiquity
and the Renaissance, the latter were essentially masculine and agonistic;
in this respect, they were closely related to antiquity. This was due to the
fact that by the time of the Cortegiano and of Shakespeare, the Renais-
sance conventions had cast oflf the asceticism of Christian knighthood.
Salon culture rested upon the conviction that inter-sexual conversation
is valuable as a creative power. The overt or latent erotic sensation and
the agonistic probation of the cavalier before the lady became an indis-
pensable means of stimulating this conversation. Since the Lettres Portu-
gaises, the actual love problems of women became a specific intellectual
market value, and feminine love correspondence became 'Hterature.'
The last accentuation of the erotical sphere occurred in terms of in-
tellectualist cultures. It occurred where this sphere collided with the
unavoidably ascetic trait of the vocational specialist type of man. Under
this tension between the erotic sphere and rational everyday life, specifi-
cally extramarital sexual life, which had been removed from everyday
affairs, could appear as the only tie which still linked man with the
natural fountain of all life. For man had now been completely emanci-
pated from the cycle of the old, simple, and organic existence of the
peasant.
A tremendous value emphasis on the specific sensation of an inner-
worldly salvation from rationalization thus resulted. A joyous triumph
over rationality corresponded in its radicaHsm with the unavoidable and
equally radical rejection by an ethics of any kind of other- or supra-
RELIGIOUS REJECTIONS OF THE WORLD AND THEIR DIRECTIONS 347
worldly salvation. For such ethics, the triumph of the spirit over the
body should find its cHmax precisely here, and sexual life could even
gain the character of the only and the ineradicable connection with
animality. But this tension between an inner-worldly and an other-
worldly salvation from rationality must be sharpest and most unavoid-
able precisely where the sexual sphere is systematically prepared for a
highly valued erotic sensation. This sensation reinterprets and glorifies
all the pure animality of the relation, whereas the religion of salvation
assumes the character of a religion of love, brotherhood, and neighborly
love.
Under these conditions, the erotic relation seems to offer the unsur-
passable peak of the fulfilment of the request for love in the direct fusion
of the souls of one to the other. This boundless giving of oneself is as
radical as possible in its opposition to all functionality, rationality, and
generality. It is displayed here as the unique meaning which one crea-
ture in his irrationality has for another, and only for this specific other.
However, from the point of view of eroticism, this meaning, and with
it the value-content of the relation itself, rests upon the possibility of a
communion which is felt as a complete unification, as a fading of the
'thou.' It is so overpowering that it is interpreted 'symbolically': as a
sacrament. The lover realizes himself to be rooted in the kernel of the
truly living, which is eternally inaccessible to any rational endeavor. He
knows himself to be freed from the cold skeleton hands of rational
orders, just as completely as from the banality of everyday routine. This
consciousness of the lover rests upon the ineflaceability and inexhaustible-
ness of his own experience. The experience is by no means communica-
ble and in this respect it is equivalent to the 'having' of the mystic. This
is not only due to the intensity of the lover's experience, but to the im-
mediacy of the possessed reality. Knowing 'life itself joined to him, the
lover stands opposite what is for him the objectless experiences of the
mystic, as if he were facing the fading light of an unreal sphere.
As the knowing love of the mature man stands to the passionate en-
thusiasm of the youth, so stands the deadly earnestness of this eroticism
of intellectuahsm to chivalrous love. In contrast to chivalrous love, this
mature love of intellectualism reaffirms the natural quality of the sexual
sphere, but it does so consciously, as an embodied creative power.
A principled ethic of religious brotherhood is radically and antagonisti-
cally opposed to all this. From the point of view of such an ethic, this
inner, earthly sensation of salvation by mature love competes in the
248 RELIGION
sharpest possible way with the devotion of a supra-mundane God, with
the devotion of an ethically rational order of God, or with the devotion
of a mystical bursting of individuation, which alone appear 'genuine' to
the ethic of brotherhood.
Certain psychological interrelations of both spheres sharpen the ten-
sion between religion and sex. The highest eroticism stands psychologi-
cally and physiologically in a mutually substitutive relation with certain
sublimated forms of heroic piety. In opposition to the rational, active
asceticism which rejects the sexual as irrational, and which is felt by
eroticism to be a powerful and deadly enemy, this substitutive relation-
ship is oriented especially to the mystic's union with God. From this
relation there follows the constant threat of a deadly sophisticated re-
venge of animality, or of an unmediated slipping from the mystic realm
of God into the realm of the All-Too-Human. This psychological affinity
naturally increases the antagonism of inner meanings between eroticism
and religion.
From the point of view of any religious ethic of brotherhood, the
erotic relation must remain attached, in a certain sophisticated measure,
to brutality. The more sublimated it is, the more brutal. Unavoidably,
it is considered to be a relation of conflict. This conflict is not only,
or even predominantly, jealousy and the will to possession, excluding
third ones. It is far more the most intimate coercion of the soul of the
less brutal partner. This coercion exists because it is never noticed by
the partners themselves. Pretending to be the most humane devotion, it
is a sophisticated enjoyment of oneself in the other. No consummated
erotic corrmiunion will know itself to be founded in any way other
than through a mysterious destination for one another: fate, in this
highest sense of the word. Thereby, it will know itself to be 'legitimized'
(in an entirely amoral sense).
But, for salvation religion, this 'fate' is nothing but the purely fortu-
itous flaming up of passion. The thus established pathological obsession,
idiosyncrasy, and shifting of perspectives and of every objective justice
must appear to salvation religion as the most complete denial of all
brotherly love and of bondage to God. The euphoria of the happy lover
is felt to be 'goodness'; it has a friendly urge to poeticize all the world
with happy features or to bewitch all the world in a naive enthusiasm
for the diffusion of happiness. And always it meets with the cool mockery
of the genuinely religiously founded and radical ethic of brotherhood.
The psychologically most thorough portions of Tolstoi's early work may
RELIGIOUS REJECTIONS OF THE WORLD AND THEIR DIRECTIONS 349
be cited in this connection.* In the eyes of this ethic, the most subUmated
eroticism is the counter-pole of all religiously oriented brotherliness, in
these aspects: it must necessarily be exclusive in its inner core; it must
be subjective in the highest imaginable sense; and it must be absolutely
incommunicable.
All this, of course, is quite apart from the fact that the passionate char-
acter of eroticism as such appears to the religion of brotherhood as an
undignified loss of self-control and as the loss of orientation towards
either the rationahty and wisdom of norms willed by God or the mystic
'having' of godliness. However, for eroticism, genuine 'passion' per se
constitutes the type of beauty, and its rejection is blasphemy.
For psychological reasons and in accordance with its meaning, the
erotic frenzy stands in unison only with the orgiastic and charismatic
form of religiosity. This form is, however, in a special sense, inner-
worldly. The acknowledgment of the act of marriage, of the copula car-
nalis, as a 'sacrament' of the Catholic Church is a concession to this
sentiment. Eroticism enters easily into an unconscious and unstable rela-
tion of surrogateship or fusion with other-worldly and extraordinary
mysticism. This occurs with very sharp inner tension between eroticism
and mysticism. It occurs because they are psychologically substitutive.
Out of this fusion the collapse into orgiasticism follows very readily.
Inner-worldly and rational asceticism (vocational asceticism) can ac-
cept only the rationally regulated marriage. This type of marriage is
accepted as one of the divine ordinations given to man as a creature who
is hopelessly wretched by virtue of his 'concupiscence.' Within this divine
order it is given to man to live according to the rational purposes laid
down by it and only according to them: to procreate and to rear chil-
dren, and mutually to further one another in the state of grace. This
inner-worldly rational asceticism must reject every sophistication of the
sexual into eroticism as idolatry of the worst kind. In its turn, this asceti-
cism gathers the primal, naturalist, and z/wsublimated sexuality of the
peasant into a rational order of man as creature. All elements of 'pas-
sion,' however, are then considered as residues of the Fall, According to
Luther, God, in order to prevent worse, peeks at and is lenient with
these elements of passion. The other-worldly rational asceticism (active
* Especially in War and Peace. The position of die religion of salvation is fixed fairly
clearly with Ascvagosha. Incidentally, Nietzsche's well-known analyses in the Will to
Power are in substance completely in unison with this, despite — indeed precisely because
of — the clearly recognized transvaluation of values.
350 RELIGION
asceticism of the monk) also rejects these passionate elements, and
with them all sexuality, as a diabolic power endangering salvation. The
ethic of the Quakers (as it is displayed in William Penn's letters to his
wife) may well have achieved a genuinely humane interpretation of the
inner and religious values of marriage. In this respect the Quaker ethic
went beyond the rather gross Lutheran interpretation of the meaning
of marriage.
From a purely inner-worldly point of view, only the Hnkage of mar-
riage with the thought of ethical responsibility for one another — whence a
category heterogeneous to the purely erotic sphere — can carry the senti-
ment that something unique and supreme might be embodied in mar-
riage; that it might be the transformation of the feeling of a love which
is conscious of responsibility throughout all the nuances of the organic
life process, 'up to the pianissimo of old age,' and a mutual granting of
oneself to another and the becoming indebted to each other (in Goethe's
sense). Rarely does life grant such value in pure form. He to whom it is
given may speak of fate's fortune and grace — not of his own 'merit.'
8: The Intellectual Sphere
The rejection of all naive surrender to the most intensive ways of
experiencing existence, artistic and erotical, is as such only a negative
attitude. But it is obvious that such rejection could increase the force with
which energies flow into rational achievement, both the ethical as well
as the purely intellectual. It must be noted, however, that the self-con-
scious tension of religion is greatest and most principled where religion
faces the sphere of intellectual knowledge.
There is a unity in the realm of magic and in the purely magical
image of the world, as we have noted in the case of Chinese thought.
A far-going and mutual recognition is also possible between religion
and purely metaphysical speculation, although as a rule this speculation
easily leads to skepticism. Religion, therefore, frequently considers purely
empirical research, including that of natural science, as more reconcilable
to religious interests than it does philosophy. This is the case above all
in ascetic Protestantism.
The tension between religion and intellectual knowledge definitely
comes to the fore wherever rational, empirical knowledge has consist-
ently worked through to the disenchantment of the world and its trans-
formation into a causal mechanism. For then science encounters the
RELIGIOUS REJECTIONS OF THE WORLD AND THEIR DIRECTIONS 35I
claims of the ethical postulate that the world is a God-ordained, and
hence somehow meaningfully and ethically oriented, cosmos. In princi-
ple, the empirical as well as the mathematically oriented view of the
world develops refutations of every intellectual approach which in any
way asks for a 'meaning' of iimer-worldly occurrences. Every increase of
rationalism in empirical science increasingly pushes religion from the
rational into the irrational realm; but only today does religion become
the irrational or anti-rational supra-human power. The extent of con-
sciousness or of consistency in the experience of this contrast, however,
varies widely. Athanasius won out with his formula — completely absurd
when viewed rationally — in his struggle against the majority of the
Hellenic philosophers of the time; it does not seem inconceivable, as
has been said, that among other reasons he really wanted to compel
them expressly to make the intellectual sacrifice and to fix a limit to
rational discussion. Soon afterwards, however, the Trinity itself was
rationally argued and discussed.
Because of this apparently irreconcilable tension, prophetic as well as
priestly religions have repeatedly stood in intimate relation with rational
intellectualism. The less magic or merely contemplative mysticism and
the more 'doctrine' a religion contains, the greater is its need of rational
apologetics. The sorcerers everywhere have been the typical keepers of
myths and heroic sagas, because they have participated in educating and
training young warriors in order to awaken them for heroic ecstasy and
heroic regeneration. From them the priesthood, as the only agents capa-
ble of conserving tradition, took over the training of youth in the law
and often also in purely administrative technologies, and, above all, in
writing and in calculus. The more religion became book-religion and
doctrine, the more literary it became and the more efficacious it was in
provoking rational lay-thinking, freed of priestly control. From the think-
ing laymen, however, emerged the prophets, who were hostile to priests;
as well as the mystics, who searched salvation independently of priests
and sectarians; and finally the skeptics and philosophers, who were hos-
tile to faith.
A rationalization of priestly apologetics reacted against all of these
developments. Anti-religious skepticism, per se, was represented in
China, in Egypt, in the Vedas, in post-exilic Jewish literature. In princi-
ple, it was just as it is today; almost no new arguments have been added.
Therefore, the central question of power for the priesthood became the
monopolization of the education of youth.
I
352 RELIGION
With the increasing rationaHzation of poHtical administration, the
power of the priesthood could increase. In the early times of Egypt and
Babylon, the priesthood alone procured the scribes for the state. It was
the same for the medieval prince when administration based on docu-
ments began. Of the great systems of pedagogy, only Confucianism and
that of Mediterranean Antiquity have known how to escape the power of
priesthood. The former succeeded by virtue of its powerful state bureauc-
racy the latter through the absolute lack of bureaucratic administration.
With the ehmination of priests from education, priestly religion itself
was eliminated in these cases. With these exceptions, however, the priest-
hoods have regularly furnished and controlled the personnel of schools.
It has not only been these genuinely priestly interests that have made
for ever-renewed connections between religion and intellectualism. It has
also been the inward compulsion of the rational character of religious
ethics and the specifically intellectualist quest for salvation. In effect,
every religion in its psychological and intellectual sub-structure and in
its practical conclusions has taken a different stand towards intellectual-
ism, without however allowing the ultimate inward tension to disappear.
For the tension rests on the unavoidable disparity among ultimate forms
of images of the world.
There is absolutely no 'unbroken' religion working as a vital force
which is not compelled at some point to demand the credo non quod,
sed quia absurdum — the 'sacrifice of the intellect.'
It is hardly necessary and it would be impossible to treat in detail the
stages of the tension between religion and intellectual knowledge. Re-
demptory religion defends itself against the attack of the self-sufficient
intellect. It does so, of course, in the most principled fashion, by raising
the claim that religious knowledge moves in a different sphere and that
the nature and meaning of religious knowledge is entirely different from
the accomplishments of the intellect. Religion claims to offer an ultimate
stand toward the world by virtue of a direct grasp of the world's 'mean-
ing.' It does not claim to offer intellectual knowledge concerning what
is or what should be. It claims to unlock the meaning of the world not
by means of the intellect but by virtue of a charisma of illumination.
This charisma is said to be imparted only to those who make use of
the respective technique and free themselves from the misleading and
deceptive surrogates which are given out as knowledge by the confused
impressions of the senses and the empty abstractions of the intellect.
Religion believes that these are in truth irrelevant for salvation. By free-
RELIGIOUS REJECTIONS OF THE WORLD AND THEIR DIRECTIONS 353
ing himself from them, a reHgious man is said to make himself ready
for the reception of the all-important grasp of the meaning of the world
and of his own existence. In all the endeavors of philosophy to make
this ultimate meaning, and the (practical) stand which follows from
grasping, demonstrable redemptory religion will see nothing but the
intellect's desire to escape its own lawful autonomy. The same view is
held of philosophical attempts to gain any intuitive knowledge, which,
although concerned with the 'being' of things, has a dignity which prin-
cipally differs from that of religious knowledge. Above all, religion sees
all this as a specific product of the very rationalism that intellectualism,
by these endeavors, would very much Hke to escape.
Salvation religion, however, viewed from its own position, is to be
blamed for equally inconsistent trespasses as soon as it surrenders the
unassailable incommunicability of mystic experiences. If it is consistent,
such religion can only have the means of bringing mystic experiences
about as events; it has no means of adequately communicating and dem-
onstrating them. Every attempt to influence the world must entice mysti-
cal religion to run this danger, as soon as the attempt assumes the char-
acter of propaganda. The same holds for every attempt to interpret the
meaning of the universe rationally, but nevertheless the attempt has
been made again and again.
Religious postulates can come into conflict with the 'world' from dif-
fering points of view, and the point of view involved is always of the
greatest importance for the direction and for the way in which salvation
will be striven for. At all times and in all places, the need for salvation—
consciously cultivated as the substance of religiosity — has resulted from
the endeavor of a systematic and practical rationalization of life's realities.
To be sure, this connection has been maintained with varying degrees
of transparency: on this level, all religions have demanded as a specific
presupposition that the course of the world be somehow meaningful, at
least in so far as it touches upon the interests of men. As we have seen,
this claim naturally emerged first as the customary problem of unjust
suffering, and hence as the postulate of a just compensation for the
unequal distribution of individual happiness in the world. From here,
the claim has tended to progress step by step towards an ever-increasing
devaluation of the world. For the more intensely rational thought has
seized upon the problem of a just and retributive compensation, the
less an entirely inner-worldly solution could seem possible, and the less
an other-worldly solution could appear probable or even meaningful.
354 RELIGION
In so far as appearances show, the actual course of the world has been
little concerned with this postulate of compensation. The ethically un-
motivated inequaUty in the distribution of happiness and misery, for
which a compensation has seemed conceivable, has remained irrational;
and so has the brute fact that suffering exists. For the universal diffusion
of suffering could only be replaced by another and still more irrational
problem, the question of the origin of sin, which, according to the teach-
ing of prophets and priests, is to explain suffering as a punishment or as
a means of discipline. A world created for the committing of sin must
appear still less ethically perfect than a world condemned to suffering.
In any case, the absolute imperfection of this world has been firmly
established as an ethical postulate. And the futility of worldly things has
seemed to be meaningful and justified only in terms of this imperfection.
Such justification, however, could appear suitable for devaluating the
world even further. For it was not only, or even primarily, the worthless
which proved to be transitory. The fact that death and ruin, with their
leveling effects, overtake good men and good works, as well as evil ones,
could appear to be a depreciation of precisely the supreme values of
this world — once the idea of a perpetual duration of time, of an eternal
God, and an eternal order had been conceived. In the face of this, values
— and precisely the most highly cherished values — have been hallowed as
being 'timelessly' valid. Hence, the significance of their realization in
'culture' has been stated to be independent of the temporal duration of
their concretion. Thereupon the ethical rejection of the empirical world
could be further intensified. For at this point onto the religious horizon
could enter a train of thoughts of far greater significance than were the
imperfection and futility of worldly things, because these ideas were fit
to indict precisely the 'cultural values' which usually rank highest.
These values have borne the stigma of a deadly sin, of an unavoidable
and specific burden of guilt. They have proved to be bound to the
charisma of the mind or of taste. Their cultivation has seemed inevitably
to presuppose modes of existence which run counter to the demand for
brotherliness and which could only be adapted to this demand by self-
deception. The barriers of education and of esthetic cultivation are the
most intimate and the most insuperable of all status differences. Religious
guilt could now appear not only as an occasional concomitant, but as an
integral part of all culture, of all conduct in a civilized world, and finally,
of all structured life in general. And thereby the ultimate values which
this world offered have seemed burdened with the greatest guilt.
RELIGIOUS REJECTIONS OF THE WORLD AND THEIR DIRECTIONS 355
Wherever the external order of the social community has turned into
the culture community of the state it obviously could be maintained
only by brutal force, which was concerned with justice only nominally
and occasionally and in any case only so far as reasons of state have
permitted. This force has inevitably bred new deeds of violence against
external and internal enemies; in addition, it has bred dishonest pre-
texts for such deeds. Hence it has signified an overt, or what must appear
worse, a pharisaically veiled, absence of love. The routinized economic
cosmos, and thus the rationally highest form of the provision of material
goods which is indispensable for all worldly culture, has been a struc-
ture to which the absence of love is attached from the very root. All
forms of activity in the structured world has appeared to be entangled
in the same guilt.
Veiled and sublimated brutality, idiosyncrasy hostile to brotherliness,
as well as illusionist shifts of a just sense of proportion have inevitably
accompanied sexual love. The more powerfully the forces of sexual love
are deployed the less they are noticed by the participants, and the more
veiled they are in a Pharisaic way. Ethical religiosity has appealed to
rational knowledge, which has followed its own autonomous and inner-
worldly norms. It has fashioned a cosmos of truths which no longer had
anything to do with the systematic postulates of a rational religious
ethic; with the result that the world as a cosmos must satisfy the de-
mands of a religious ethic or evince some 'meaning.' On the contrary,
rational knowledge has had to reject this claim in principle. The cosmos
of natural causality and the postulated cosmos of ethical, compensatory
causality have stood in irreconcilable opposition.
Science has created this cosmos of natural causality and has seemed
unable to answer with certainty the question of its own ultimate pre-
suppositions. Nevertheless science, in the name of 'intellectual integrity,'
has come forward with the claim of representing the only possible form
of a reasoned view of the world. The intellect, like all culture values, has
created an aristocracy based on the possession of rational culture and
independent of all personal ethical qualities of man. The aristocracy of
intellect is hence an unbrotherly aristocracy. Worldly man has regarded
this possession of culture as the highest good. In addition to the burden
of ethical guilt, however, something has adhered to this cultural value
which was bound to depreciate it with still greater finality, namely,
senselessness— if this cultural value is to be judged in terms of its own
standards.
356 RELIGION
The purely inner-worldly perfection of self of a man of culture, hence
the ultimate value to which 'culture' has seemed to be reducible, is
meaningless for religious thought. This follows for religious thought
from the obvious meaninglessness of death, meaningless precisely when
viewed from the inner-worldly standpoint. And under the very condi-
tions of 'culture,' senseless death has seemed only to put the decisive
stamp upon the senselessness of life itself.
The peasant, like Abraham, could die 'satiated with life.' The feudal
landlord and the warrior hero could do likewise. For both fulfilled a
cycle of their existence beyond which they did not reach. Each in his
way could attain an inner-worldly perfection as a result of the naive
unambiguity of the substance of his life. But the 'cultivated' man who
strives for self-perfection, in the sense of acquiring or creating 'cultural
values,' cannot do this. He can become 'weary of life' but he cannot
become 'satiated with life' in the sensf^ of completing a cycle. For the
perfectibility of the man of culture in principle progresses indefinitely,
as do the cultural values. And the segment which the individual and
passive recipient or the active co-builder can comprise in the course of a
finite life becomes the more trifling the more differentiated and multi-
plied the cultural values and the goals for self-perfection become. Hence
the harnessing of man into this external and internal cosmos of culture
can offer the less likelihood that an individual would absorb either
culture as a whole or what in any sense is 'essential' in culture. Moreover
there exists no definitive criterion for judging the latter. It thus becomes
less and less likely that 'culture' and the striving for culture can have
any inner-worldly meaning for the individual.
The 'culture' of the individual certainly does not consist of the quan-
tity of 'cultural values' which he amasses; it consists of an articulated
selection of culture values. But there is no guarantee that this selection
has reached an end that would be meaningful to him precisely at the
'accidental' time of his death. He might even turn his back to life with
an air of distinction: 'I have enough — life has offered (or denied) all
that made living worthwhile for me.' This proud attitude to the reHgion
of salvation must appear as a disdainful blasphemy of the God-ordained
ways of life and destinies. No redemption religion positively approves
of 'death by one's own hand,' that is, a death which has been hallowed
only by philosophies.
Viewed in this way, all 'culture' appears as man's emancipation from
the organically prescribed cycle of natural life. For this very reason
RELIGIOUS REJECTIONS OF THE WORLD AND THEIR DIRECTIONS 357
culture's every step forward seems condemned to lead to an ever more
devastating senselessness. The advancement of cultural values, however,
seems to become a senseless hustle in the service of worthless, moreover
self-contradictory, and mutually antagonistic ends. The advancement
of cultural values appears the more meaningless the more it is made a
holy task, a 'calling.'
Culture becomes ever more senseless as a locus of imperfection, of
injustice, of suffering, of sin, of futility. For it is necessarily burdened
with guilt, and its deployment and differentiation thus necessarily be-
come ever more meaningless. Viewed from a purely ethical point of
view, the world has to appear fragmentary and devalued in all those
instances when judged in the light of the religious postulate of a divine
'meaning' of existence. This devaluation results from the conflict be-
tween the rational claim and reality, between the rational ethic and
the partly rational, and partly irrational values. With every construction
of the specific nature of each special sphere existing in the world, this
conflict has seemed to come to the fore ever more sharply and more
insolubly. The need for 'salvation' responds to this devaluation by be-
coming more other-worldly, more alienated from all structured forms
of life, and, in exact parallel, by confining itself to the specific religious
essence. This reaction is the stronger the more systematic the thinking
about the 'meaning' of the universe becomes, the more the external or-
ganization of the world is rationalized, and the more the conscious experi-
ence of the world's irrational content is sublimated. And not only
theoretical thought, disenchanting the world, led to this course, but also
the very attempt of religious ethics practically and ethically to rational-
ize the world.
The specific intellectual and mystical attempts at salvation in the face
of these tensions succumb in the end to the world dominion of un-
brotherliness. On the one hand, their charisma is not accessible to every-
body. Hence, in intent, mystical salvation definitely means aristocracy;
it is an aristocratic religiosity of redemption. And, in the midst of a
culture that is rationally organized for a vocational workaday life, there
is hardly any room for the cultivation of acosmic brotherliness, unless
it is among strata who are economically carefree. Under the technical
and social conditions of rational culture, an imitation of the life of
Buddha, Jesus, or Francis seems condemned to failure for purely exter-
nal reasons.
358 religion
9: The Three Forms of Theodicy
The individual redemption ethics of the past which have rejected the
wrorld have appHed their rejection of the world at very different points
of this purely rationally constructed scale. This has depended upon
numerous concrete circumstances which cannot be ascertained by a
theoretical typology. Besides these circumstances, a rational element has
played its part, namely, the structure of a special theodicy. The meta-
physical need responded to the awareness of existing and unbridgeable
tensions, and through theodicy it tried to find a common meaning in
spite of all.
Among the three types of theodicy we have already * designated as
alone consistent, dualism could well serve this need. Dualism maintains
that always the powers of light and truth, purity and goodness coexist
and conflict with the powers of darkness and falsehood, impurity and
evil. In the last analysis this dualism is only a direct systematization of
the magical pluralism of the spirits with their division of good (useful)
and evil (harmful) spirits which represent the preliminary stages of the
antagonism between deities and demons.
Zoroastrism was the prophetic religiousness which realized this con-
ception most consistently. Here dualism set out with the magical con-
trast between 'clean' and 'unclean.' All virtues and vices were integrated
into this contrast. It involved renouncing the omnipotence of a god
whose power was indeed limited by the existence of a great antagonist.
The contemporary followers (the Parsees) have actually given up this
belief because they could not endure this limitation of divine power. In
the most consistent eschatology, the world of purity and the world of
impurity, from the mixture of which the fragmentary empirical world
emanated, separated again and again into two unrelated realms. The
more modern eschatological hope, however, makes the god of purity
and benevolence triumph, just as Christianity makes the Savior triumph
over the devil. This less consistent form of dualism is the popular, world-
wide conception of heaven and hell, which restores God's sovereignty
over the evil spirit who is His creature, and thereby believes that divine
omnipotence is saved. But, willy-nilly, it must then, overtly or covertly,
sacrifice some of the divine love. For if omniscience is maintained, the
creation of a power of radical evil and the admission of sin, especially
* Cf. chapter xi, pp. 275 flf. of this volume.
RELIGIOUS REJECTIONS OF THE WORLD AND THEIR DIRECTIONS 359
in communion with the enternity of hell's punishments for one of God's
own and finite creatures and for finite sins, simply does not correspond
to divine love. In that case, only a renunciation of benevolence is con-
sistent.
The belief in predestination realizes this renunciation, in fact and
with full consistency, Man's acknowledged incapacity to scrutinize the
ways of God means that he renounces in a loveless clarity man's ac-
cessibility to any meaning of the world. This renunciation brought all
problems of this sort to an end. Outside of the circle of eminent virtuosos
the belief in this consistency has not been permanently endured. This
was the case because the belief in predestination — in contrast to the
belief in the irrational power of 'fate' — demands the assumption of a
providential, and hence a somehow rational, destination of the con-
demned, not only to doom but to evil, while demanding the 'punish-
ment' of the condemned and therewith the application of an ethical
category.
We have dealt with the significance of the belief in predestination
[elsewhere]." We shall deal with Zoroastrian dualism later, and only
briefly — ^because the number of the believers is small. It might be omitted
entirely were it not for the influence of the Persian ideas of final judg-
ment, as well as of the doctrine of demons and angels, upon late Juda-
ism. Because of such influences, Zoroastrism is of considerable historical
significance.
The third form of theodicy which we are going to discuss was peculiar
to the religiosity of Indian intellectuals. It stands out by virtue of its
consistency as well as by its extraordinary metaphysical achievement: It
unites virtuoso-like self-redemption by man's own eflFort with universal
accessibility of salvation, the strictest rejection of the world with organic
social ethics, and contemplation as the paramount path to salvation with
an inner-worldly vocational ethic.
Part IV
50CIAL STRUCTURES
yCi V . Capitalism and Jxural Oociety in Germany
Of all communities, the social constitution of rural districts are the most
individual and the most closely connected with particular historical de-
velopments. It would not be reasonable to speak collectively of the
rural conditions of Russia, Ireland, Sicily, Hungary, and the Black Belt.
Even if I confine myself to districts with developed capitalistic cultures,
it is scarcely possible to treat the subject from one common point of
view. For a rural society, separate from the urban social community,
does not exist at the present time in a great part of the modern civilized
world. It no longer exists in England, except, perhaps, in the thoughts
of dreamers. The constant proprietor of the soil, the landlord, is not an
agriculturist but a lessor; and the temporary owner of the estate, the
tenant or lessee, is an entrepreneur, a capitalist like any other. The
laborers are partly seasonal and migrating; the rest are journeymen of
exactly the same class as other proletarians; they are joined together for
a certain time and then are scattered again. If there is a specific rural
social problem it is only this: Whether and how the rural community
or society, which no longer exists, can arise again so as to be strong and
enduring.
In the United States, at least in the vast cereal-producing areas, what
might be called 'rural society' does not now exist. The old New England
town, the Mexican village, and the old slave plantation do not determine
the physiognomy of the country any longer. The peculiar conditions of
the first settlements in the primeval forests and on the prairies have
disappeared. The American farmer is an entrepreneur like any other.
Certainly there are numerous farmers' problems, chiefly of a technical
character or pertaining to transportation, which have played their role
in politics and have been excellently discussed by American scholars.
Adapted from a translation by C. W. Seidenadel, 'The Relations of the Rural Commun-
ity to other Branches of Social Science,' Congress of Arts and Science, Unwersal Exposition.
Si. Louis (Boston and New York: Houghton-Mifflin, 1906), vol. vii, pp. 725-46.
363
364 SOCIAL STRUCTURES
But no specific rural social problem exists as yet in America, indeed no
such problem has existed since the abolition of slavery and the solution
o£ the question of settling and disposing of the immense area which was
in the hands of the Union. The present difficult social problems of the
South, in the rural districts also, are essentially ethnic and not economic.
One cannot establish a theory of rural community as a characteristic
social formation on the basis of questions concerning irrigation, railroad
tariff, homestead laws, et cetera, however important these matters may
be. This may change in the future. But if anything is characteristic of
the rural conditions of the great wheat-producing states of America, it
is — to speak in general terms-^the absolute economic individualism of
the farmer, the quality of the farmer as a mere businessman.\
Probably it will be fruitful to explain briefly in what respects and for
what reasons all this is different on the European Continent. The dif-
ference is caused by the specific effects of capitalism in old civilized^
countries with dense populations.
If a nation such as Germany supports its inhabitants, whose number
is only a little smaller than the white population of the United States,
in a space smaller in size than the state of Texas; if it has founded and
is determined to maintain its political position and the importance of its
culture for the world upon this narrow, limited basis — then the manner
in which the land is distributed becomes of determining importance for
the differentiation of the society and for all economic and political con-
ditions of the country. Because of the close congestion of the inhabitants
and the lower valuation of the raw labor force, the possibility of quickly
acquiring estates which have not been inherited is limited. Thus social
differentiation is necessarily fixed — a fate which the United States also
approaches. This fate increases the power of historical tradition, which
is naturally great in agricultural production.
The importance of technical revolutions in agricultural production is
diminished by the so-called 'law of decreasing productivity of the land,'
by the stronger natural Hmits and conditions of production, and by the
more constant limitation of the quality and quantity of the means of
production. In spite of technical progress, rural production can be revo-
lutionized least by a purely rational division and combination of labor,
by acceleration of the turnover of capital, and by substituting inorganic
raw materials and mechanical means of production for organic raw
materials and labor forces. The power of tradition inevitably predom-
inates in agriculture; it creates and maintains types of rural population
CAPITALISM AND RURAL SOCIETY IN GERMANY 365
on the European Continent which do not exist in a new country, such
as the United States; to these types belongs, first of all, the European
peasant.
The European peasant is totally different from the farmer of England
or of America. The English farmer today is sometimes quite a remark-
able entrepreneur and producer for the market; almost always he has
rented his estate. The American farmer is an agriculturist who has usually
acquired, by purchase or by being the first settler, the land as his own
property; but sometimes he rents it. In America the farmer produces
for the market. The market is older than the producer in America. The
European peasant of the old type was a man who, in most instances,
inherited the land and who produced primarily for his own wants. In
Europe the market is younger than the producer. Of course, for many
years the peasant sold his surplus products and, though he spun and
wove, he could not satisfy his needs by his own work. The past two
thousand years did not train the peasant to produce in order to gain
profit.
Until the time of the French Revolution, the European peasant was
only considered a means for supporting certain ruling classes. His first
duty was to provide, as cheaply as possible, the neighboring town with
food. As far as possible, the city prohibited rural trade and the exporta-
tion of cereals as long as its own citizens were not provided. Matters
remained in this condition until the end of the eighteenth century. The
artificial maintenance of the cities at the expense of the country was
also a principle followed by the princes, who wanted to have money in
their respective countries and large intakes of taxes. Moreover by his
services and by his payment of taxes, the peasant was doomed to support
the landlord, who possessed the higher ownership of the land and quite
often the right to the peasant's body as well. This remained the case
until the revolutions of 1789 and 1848. The peasant's duties included
the payment of taxes on his ^estate to the political lord. The knight was
exempt from this. The peasant also had to supply the armies with re-
cruits, from which the cities were exempt. These conditions remained in
force until tax-privileges were abolished and service in the army became
compulsory for everyone, in the nineteenth century. Finally, the peasant
was dependent upon the productive community into which the half-
communist settlement had placed him two thousand years ago. He could
not manage as he wanted, but as the primeval rotation of crops pre-
scribed, a condition which continued to exist until these half-communist
366 . SOCIAL STRUCTURES
bonds were dissolved.! Yet even after the abolition of all this legal de-
pendency, the peasant could not become a rationally producing small
agriculturist as, for instance, is the case with the American farmer.)
Numerous relics of the ancient communist conditions of forest, water,
pasture, and even arable land, which firmly united the peasants and
tied them to the inherited form of husbandry, survived their liberation.
The village, with the characteristic contrasts to the individual settlements
of American farmers, also survived. To these relics of the past, which
America has never known, certain factors are nowadays added. America
will one day also experience the effects of such factors — the effects of
modern capitalism under the conditions of completely settled old civilized
countries. In Europe limited territory causes a specific social estimation
of the ownership of land, and the tendency to retain it, by bequest,
in the family. The superabundance of the labor force diminishes the
desire to save labor by the use of machines. By virtue of migration into
cities and foreign countries, the labor force in Europe has become lim-
ited and dear. On the other hand, the high price of the land, caused by
continual purchases and hereditary divisions, diminishes the capital of the
buyer. It is not now possible to gain a possible fortune by agriculture in
Europe. And the time in which this will be possible in the United States
is approaching its limit. We must not forget that the boiling heat of
modern capitalistic culture is connected with heedless consumption of
natural resources, for which there are no substitutes. It is difficult to
determine how long the present supply of coal and ore will last. The
utilization of new farm lands will soon have reached an end in Amer-
ica; in Europe it no longer exists. The agriculturist can never hope to
gain more than a modest equivalent for his work as a husbandman.
He is, in Europe, and also to a great extent in this country, excluded
from participating in the great opportunities open to speculative business
talent.
The strong blast of modern capitalistic competition rushes against a
conservative opposing current in agriculture, and it is exactly rising
capitalism which increases this counter-current in old civilized countries.
The use of the land as a capital investment, and the sinking rate of in-
terest in connection with the traditional social evaluation of rural lands,
push up the price of land to such a height that it is always paid partly
au fonds perdu, that is to say, as entree, as an entrance fee into this
social stratum. Thus by increasing the capital required for agricultural
operations, capitalism causes an increase in the number of renters of
CAPITALISM AND RURAL SOCIETY IN GERMANY 367
land who are idle. In these ways, peculiar contrasting effects of capitalism
are produced, and these contrasting effects by themselves make the open
countryside of Europe appear to support a separate 'rural society.' Under
the conditions of old civilized countries, the differences caused by cap-
italism assume the character of a cultural contest. Two social tendencies
resting upon entirely heterogeneous bases thus wrestle with each other.
The old economic order asked: How can I give, on this piece of land,
work and sustenance to the greatest possible number of men ? Capitalism
asks: From this given piece of land how can I produce as many crops
as possible for the market with as few men as possible? From the tech-
nical economic point of view of capitalism, the old rural settlements of
the country are, therefore, considered overpopulated. Capitalism extracts
produce from the land, from the mines, foundries, and machine indus-
tries. The thousands of years of the past struggle against the invasion
of the capitalistic spirit.
This struggle assumes, at least in part, the form of a peaceful trans-
formation. In certain points of agricultural production, the small peasant,
if he knows how to free himself from the fetters of tradition, is able to
adapt to the conditions of the new husbandry. The rising rate of rent in
the vicinity of the cities, the rising prices for meat, dairy products, and
garden vegetables, as well as the intensive care of young cattle possible
for the self-employed small farmer, and the higher expenses involved
in hiring men — these factors usually afford very favorable opportunities
to the small farmer who works without hired help near wealthy centers
o£ industry. This is the case wherever the process of production is de-
veloped in the direction of increasing intensity of labor, rather than of
capital.
The former peasant is thus transformed into a laborer who owns his
means of production, as we may observe in France and in southwestern
Germany. He maintains his independence because of the intensity and
the high quality of his work, which is increased by his private interest
in it and his adaptability of it to the demands of the local market. These
factors give him an economic superiority, which continues, even where
agriculture on a large scale could technically predominate.
The great success of the formation of co-operatives among the small
farmers of the Continent must be ascribed to these peculiar advantages
which, in certain branches of production, the responsible small agricul-
turist possesses as over against the hired laborer of the large farmer.
These co-operatives have proved the most influential means of the peas-
368 SOCIAL STRUCTURES
ants' education for husbandry. Through them new communities of hus-
bandry are created, which bind the peasants together and direct their
way of economic thinking and feeHng away from the purely individ-
uahstic form which the economic struggle for existence in industry
assumes under the pressure of competition. This, again, is only possible
because of the great importance of the natural conditions of production
in agriculture — its being bound to place, time, and organic means of
work — and the social visibility of all farming operations which weaken
the effectiveness of competition among farmers.
Wherever the conditions of a specific economic superiority of small
farming do not exist, because the qualitative importance of self-responsi-
ble work is replaced by the importance of capital, there the old peasant
struggles for his existence as a hireling of capital. It is the high social
valuation of the landowner that makes him a subject of capital and ties
him psychologically to the clod. Given the stronger economic and social
differentiation of an old civilized country, the loss of his estate means
degradation for the peasant. The peasant's struggle for existence often
becomes an economic selection in favor of the most frugal, which means,
of those most lacking in culture. For the pressure of agricultural com-
petition is not felt by those who use their products for their own con-
sumption and not as articles of trade; they sell only a few of their prod-
ucts and hence they can buy only a few other products. Sometimes a
partial retrogression into subsistence farming occurs. Only with the
French 'system of two children' can the peasant maintain himself for
generations as a small proprietor of the inherited land. The obstacles that
the peasant who wants to become a modern agriculturist meets urge the
separation of ownership from management. The landlord may either
keep his capital in operation or withdraw it. In some areas the govern-
ment tries to create a balance between property and lease. But on account
of the high valuation of the land, the peasant can neither remain a
peasant nor become a capitalist landlord.
It is not yet possible to speak of a real 'contest' between capitalism and
the power of historical influence, in this case of a growing conflict be-
tween capital and ownership of the land. It is partly a process of selec-
tion, and partly one of depravation. Quite different conditions prevail
not only where an unorganized multitude of peasants are powerless in
the chains of the financial powers of the cities, but where there is an
aristocratic stratum above the peasants which struggles not only for its
economic existence but also for the social standing which for centuries
CAPITALISM AND RURAL SOCIETY IN GERMANY 369
has been granted it. This is the case especially where such an aristocracy
is not tied to the country by purely financial interests, as is the English
landlord, or only by the interests of recreation and sport, but where its
representatives are involved as agriculturists in the economic conflict
and are closely connected with the country. The dissolving effects of
capitaHsm are then increased. Because ownership of the land gives social
position, the prices of the large estates rise high above the value of their
productivity. Of the landlord, Byron asked: 'Why did God in his wrath
create him.?' The answer is: 'Rents! Rents! Rents!' And, in fact, rents
are the economic basis of all aristocracies which need a gentlemanly un-
earned income for their existence. But precisely because the Prussian
'Junker' despises the urban possession of money, capitalism makes a
debtor of him. A strong, growing tension between city and country
results from this. The conflict between capitalism and tradition is now
tinged politically, for, if economic and political power definitely passes
into the hands of the urban capitalist, the question arises whether the
small rural centers of political intelligence, with their pecuharly tinged
social culture, shall decay, and the cities, as the only carriers of political,
social, and esthetic culture, shall occupy the entire field of the combat.
This question is identical with the question whether people who have
been able to live for politics and the state, for example, the old, econom-
ically independent land aristocracy, shall be replaced by the exclusive
domination of professional politicians who must live off politics and the
state.
In the United States this question has been decided, at any rate for the
present, by one of the bloodiest wars of modern times, which ended
with the destruction of the aristocratic, social, and political centers of
the rural districts. Even in America, with its democratic traditions
handed down by Puritanism as an everlasting heirloom, the victory over
the planters' aristocracy was difficult and was gained with great political
and social sacrifices. But in countries with old civilizations, matters are
much more complicated. For there the struggle between the power of
historical notions and the pressure of capitalist interests summon certain
social forces to battle as adversaries of bourgeois capitalism. In the
United States such forces were partly unknown, or stood partly on the
side of the North. A few remarks concerning this may be made here.
In the countries of old civilization and limited possibilities for eco-
nomic expansion, money-making and its representatives necessarily play
a considerably smaller social role than in a country that is still new.
370 SOCIAL STRUCTURES
The importance of the stratum of state officials is and must be much
greater in Europe than in the United States. The much more comphcated
social organization makes a host of specially trained officials, employed
for life, indispensable in Europe. In the United States only a much
smaller number of them will exist, even after the movement of civil-
service reform shall have attained all its aims. The jurist and adminis-
trative official in Germany, in spite of his shorter and more intensive
education in preparation for the university, is about thirty-five years old
w^hen his time of preparation and his unsalaried activity is completed
and he obtains a salaried office. Therefore, he can come only from
wealthy circles; he is trained to unsalaried or low-salaried service and
can find his reward for service only in the high social standing of his
vocation. A character is thus stamped on him which is far from the
interests of money-makers and which places him on the side of the
adversaries of their dominion. If, in oM civilized countries such as Ger-
many, the necessity of a strong army arises in order to maintain inde-
pendence, this means, for poHtical institutions, the support of an hered-
itary dynasty.
The resolute follower of democratic institutions — as I am — cannot wish
to remove the dynasty where it has been preserved. For in military
states, if it is not the only historically indorsed form in which the
Caesarian domination of military parvenus can be averted, it is still the
best. France is continually menaced by such domination; dynasties are
personally interested in the preservation of rights and of a legal govern-
ment. Hereditary monarchy — one may judge about it theoretically as
one wishes — warrants to a state, which is forced to be a military state,
the greatest freedom of the citizens — as great as it can be in a monarchy —
and so long as the dynasty does not become degenerated, it will have
the political support of the majority of the nation. The English Parlia-
ment knew very well why it offered Cromwell the crown, and Crom-
well's army knew equally well why it prevented him from accepting it.
Such an hereditary, privileged dynasty has a natural affinity with the
holders of other social privileges.
The church belongs to the conservative forces in European countries;
first, the Roman Catholic Church, which, in Europe, even on account
of the multitude of its followers, is a power of quite different importance
and character than it possesses in Anglo-Saxon countries; but also the
Lutheran Church. Both of these churches support the peasant, with his
conservative way of life, against the dominion of urban rationalist cul-
CAPITALISM AND RURAL SOCIETY IN GERMANY 37I
ture. The rural co-operative movement stands, to a great extent, under the
guidance of clergymen, who are the only ones capable of leadership in
the rural districts. Ecclesiastic, political, and economic points of view
are here intermingled. In Belgium, the rural co-operatives are a means
of the clerical party in their conflict against the socialists; the latter are
supported by the consumers' unions and trade unions. In Italy, almost
nobody finds credit with certain co-operatives unless he presents his
confessional certificate. Likewise, a landed aristocracy finds strong back-
ing in the church, although the Catholic Church is, in social regards,
more democratic nowadays than formerly. The church is pleased with
patriarchal labor relations because contrary to the purely commercial
relations which capitalism creates, they are of a personal human char-
acter. The church holds the sentiment that the relation between a lord
and a serf, rather than the bare commercial conditions created by the
labor market, can be developed and penetrated ethically. Deep, his-
torically conditioned contrasts, which have always separated Catholicism
and Lutheranism from Calvinism, strengthen this anti-capitalistic atti-
tude of the European churches.
Finally, in an old civilized country, the 'aristocracy of education,' as
it likes to be called, is a definite stratum of the population without per-
sonal interests in economics; hence it views the triumphal procession of
capitalism more skeptically and criticizes more sharply than can natu-
rally and justly be the case in a country such as the United States.
As soon as intellectual and esthetic education has become a profession, ■
its representatives are bound by an inner affinity to all the carriers of i
ancient social culture, because for them, as for their prototypes, their I
profession cannot and must not be a source of heedless gain. They look ]
distrustfully upon the abolition of traditional conditions of the commu-
nity and upon the annihilation of ail the innumerable ethical and
esthetic values which cling to these traditions. They doubt if the domin-
ion of capital would give better, more lasting guaranties to personal
liberty and to the development of intellectual, esthetic, and social culture
which they represent than the aristocracy of the past has given. They
want to be ruled only by persons whose social culture they consider
equivalent to their own; therefore, they prefer the rule of the economi-
cally independent aristocracy to the rule of the professional politician.
Thus, it happens nowadays in the civilized countries— a peculiar and,
in more than one respect, a serious fact— that the representatives of
the highest interests of culture turn their eyes back, and, with deep
372 SOCIAL STRUCTURES
antipathy standing opposed to the inevitable development of capitalism,
refuse to co-operate in rearing the structure of the future. Moreover, the
disciplined masses of workingmen created by capitalism are naturally
inclined to unite in a class party, if new districts for settlement are no
longer available, and if the workingman is conscious of being forced
to remain inevitably a proletarian as long as he lives, which is bound to
come about sooner or later also in this country, or has already come
about. The progress of capitalism is not hemmed in by this; the working-
man's chances to gain political power are insignificant. Yet they weaken
the poHtical power of the bourgeois and strengthen the power of the
bourgeois' aristocratic adversaries. The downfall of German bourgeois
liberalism is based upon the joint effectiveness of these motives.
Thus, in old countries, where a rural community, aristocratically dif-
ferentiated, exists, a complex of social and political problems arises. An
American finds it difficult to understand the importance of agrarian
questions on the European continent, especially in Germany, even in
German politics. He will arrive at entirely wrong conclusions if he does
not keep before his eyes these great complexes. A peculiar combination
of motives is effective in these old countries and explains the deviation
of European from American conditions. Besides the necessity for strong
military preparedness, there are essentially two factors: First, something
which never existed in the greater part of America, which may be desig-
nated as 'backwardness,' that is, the influence of a gradually disappearing
older form of rural society. The second set of circumstances which have
not yet become effective in America, but to which this country — so
elated by every milHon of increased population and by every rise of
the valuation of the land — will unavoidably be exposed exactly as Europe
has been, is the density of population, the high value of the land, the
stronger differentiation of occupations, and the peculiar conditions re-
sulting therefrom. Under all these conditions, the rural commiunity of
old civilized countries faces capitalism which is joined with the influ-
ence of great political and social powers only known to old countries.
Even today under these circumstances, capitalism produces effects in
Europe which can be produced in America only in the future.
In consequence of all those influences, European capitalism, at least
on the Continent, has a peculiar authoritarian stamp, which contrasts
with the citizen's equality of rights and which is usually distinctly felt
by Americans. These authoritarian tendencies, and the anti-capitalist
sentiments of all those elements of continental society of which I have
CAPITALISM AND RURAL SOCIETY IN GERMANY 373
spoken, find their social backing in the conflict between the Linded
aristocracy and the urban citizenry. Under the influence of capitahsm,
the landed aristocracy undergoes a serious inner transformation, which
completely alters the character the aristocracy inherited from the past.
I should like to show how this has taken place in the past and how it
continues to be carried on in the present, using the example of Germany.
There are sharp contrasts in the rural social structure of Germany
that no one traveling in the country fails to observe: towards the west
and the south, the rural settlement grows denser, the small farmers pre-
dominate more, and the culture becomes more dispersed and various.
The farther towards the east, especially the northeast one goes, the more
extended are the fields of cereals, sugar beets, and potatoes, the more an
extensive cultivation prevails, and the more a large rural class of prop-
ertyless farm hands stands in opposition to the landowning aristocracy.
This diflference is of great importance.
The class of the rural landowners of Germany, consisting particularly
of noblemen residing in the region east of the Elbe, are the political
rulers of the leading German state. The Prussian House of Lords repre-
sents this class, and the right of election by classes also gives them a
determining position in the Prussian House of Representatives. These
Junkers imprint their character upon the officer corps, as well as upon
the Prussian officials and upon German diplomacy, which is almost ex-
clusively in the hands of noblemen. The German student adopts their
style of life in the fraternities in the universities. The civilian 'officer of
the reserve' — a growing part of all the more highly educated Germans
belong to this rank — also bears their imprint. Theii' political sympathies
and antipathies explain many of the most important presuppositions of
German foreign policies. Their obstructionism impedes the progress of
the laboring-class; the manufacturers alone would never be sufficiently
strong to oppose the workingmen under the democratic rights of elect-
ing representatives to the German Reichstag. The Junkers are the props
of a protectionism which industry alone would never have been able to
accomplish. They support orthodoxy in the state church. The foreigner
sees only the exterior side of Germany and has neither the time nor
opportunity to enter into the essence of German culture. Whatever sur-
vivals of authoritarian conditions surprise him, and cause the erroneous
opinions circulated in foreign countries concerning Germany, result di-
rectly or indirectly from the influence of these upper classes; and many
of the most important contrasts of our internal politics are based upon
374 SOCIAL STRUCTURES
this difference between the rural social structures of the east and the
west. Since this difference has not always existed, the question arises:
How can it be explained historically?
Five centuries ago landlordism dominated the social structure of the
rural districts. However various the conditions of the peasant's depend-
ency which arose from this might have been, and however complicated
the structure of rural society was, in one point harmony prevailed in
the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries: the usually extensive possessions
of the feudal lord were nowhere — not even in the east — connected with
extensive cultivation. Though the landlord cultivated a part of his estate,
the cultivated portion was only a little larger than the cultivated fields
of the peasants. By far the greater part of the lord's income depended
upon the taxes the peasants contributed. One of the most important
questions of German social history is how the present strong contrast has
arisen from this comparative uniformity.
Exclusive landlordship was dissolved at the beginning of the nineteenth
century, partly because of the French Revolution, or because of the ideas
disseminated by it, and partly because of the Revolution of 1848. The
division of rights of ownership of land between landlords and peasants
was abolished, the duties and taxes of the peasants were removed. The
brilliant investigations of Professor G. F. Knapp and his school have
shown how decisive, for the kind of agrarian constitution which orig-
inated then and still exists, was the question: How was the estate divided
between the former landlords and the peasants after the manorial com-
munity had been dissolved? In the west and south for the most part,
the land came into the hands of the peasants (or remained in their
hands). But in the east a very large part fell into the hands of the former
masters of the peasant, the feudal lords, who established extensive culti-
vation with free laborers. But this was only the consequence of the fact
that the uniformity of the agrarian society had disappeared before the
emancipation of the peasants. The difference between the west and the
east was confirmed but not created by this process. In its main points
the difference had existed since the sixteenth century, and meanwhile
had constantly grown. Landlordship had undergone internal changes
before the dissolution of the manor.
Everywhere, in the east and in the west, the endeavor of the land-
lords to increase their intakes was the motivating factor. This desire had
sprung up with the invasion of capitalism, the growing wealth of the
city dwellers, and the growing opportunity of selling agricultural prod-
CAPITALISM AND RURAL SOCIETY IN GERMANY 375
ucts. Some o£ the transformations effected in the west and south date
back to the thirteenth century, in the east to the fifteenth century. The
landlords pursued their aim in characteristic fashion. In the south and
west they remained landlords [Grundherren], that is, they increased the
rates of rent, interest, and the taxes of the peasants, but they did not
themselves engage in cultivating the land. In the east they became lords
[Gutsherren], who cultivated their lands; they appropriated parts of
the peasants' land (the enclosures) and thus procuring a large estate for
themselves, became agriculturists, using the peasants as serfs to till their
own soil. Extensive cultivation existed in the east — only to a smaller
extent, and with the labor of serfs — even before the emancipation of the
peasants; but not in the west. Now, what has caused this difference?
When this question is discussed, vast weight is laid upon the conduct
of political power; indeed, this power was greatly interested in the for-
mation of the agrarian society. Since the knight was exempted from
paying taxes, the peasant was the only one in the country who paid
them. When standing armies were established, the peasants furnished
the recruits. This, in connection with certain points of view of commer-
cialism, induced the rising territorial state to forbid the enclosures by
edicts, that is, the appropriation of the peasants' land by the lords, and
hence to protect the existing peasants' holdings. The stronger the ruler
of the country was, the better he succeeded; the mightier the noble was,
the less he succeeded. According to this the differences of the agrarian
structure in the east were based, to a great extent, upon these conditions
of power. But in the west and south we find that, in spite of the greatest
weakness of a good many states and of the indubitable possibility of
appropriating peasants' land, the landlords do not even attempt to do so.
They show no tendency at all to deprive the peasant, to establish
an extensive cultivation and become agriculturists themselves. Neither
could the important development of the peasants' rights to the soil have
been the decisive reason. In the east great numbers of peasants who
originally had very good titles to the land have disappeared; in the west
those with the least favorable titles have been preserved, because the
landlords did not want to remove them.
The devisive question is therefore: How did it happen that the land-
lord of the German south and west, although he had ample opportunity
to appropriate the peasants' land, did not do so, whereas the eastern
landlord deprived the peasants of their land in spite of the resistance of
the power of the state.? This question can be put in a different form.
376 SOCIAL STRUCTURES
When the western landlord renounced the appropriation of the peasants'
land, he did not renounce its utilization as a source of income. The dif-
ference between east and west in this connection is merely that the
western landlord used the peasants as taxpayers, while the eastern land-
lord, by becoming a cultivator, began to use the peasants as a laboring
force. Therefore, the question must be asked : Why one thing in the east,
and another in the west?
As with most historical developments, it is rather improbable that a
single reason can be assigned as the exclusive cause of this different
conduct of the landlords; for in this case we should chance upon it in
documentary sources. Therefore, a long series of single causative factors
have been adduced as explanation, especially by Professor von Below
in a classical investigation in his work, Territorium und Stadt. The
task can only be that of widening the points of view, especially by
economical considerations. Let us see m what points the conditions of
the eastern and the western landlord differed when they each endeavored
to extort from their peasants more than the traditional taxes.
The establishment of extensive operations was facilitated, for the
eastern landlords, by the fact that their landlordship as well as the patri-
monialization of the public authorities had grown gradually on the soil
of ancient liberty of the people. The east, on the other hand, was a
territory of colonization. The patriarchal Slavonic social structure was
invaded by German clergymen in consequence of their superior educa-
tion, by German merchants and artisans in consequence of their superior
technical and commercial skill, by German knights in consequence of
their superior military technique, and by German peasants in consequence
of their superior knowledge of agriculture. Moreover, at the time of the
conquest of the east, the social structure of Germany, with its political
forces, had been completely feudalized. The social structure of the east
was, from the very beginning, adapted to the social pre-eminence of the
knight, and the German invasion only altered this slightly. The German
peasant, even under the most favorable conditions of settling, had lost
the support given to him in the feudal period by firm traditions, the old
mutual protection, the jurisdiction of the community in the Weistiimer'^
in the west. The Slavonian peasantry, usually more numerous, did not
know anything of such traditions. Besides, in the west, the fields making
up the estates of the lords were usually intermingled, even in single vil-
lages, for they had gradually arisen upon originally free land. These fields
crossed the patrimonial rights of petty territorial lords everywhere and
CAPITALISM AND RURAL SOCIETY IN GERMANY 377
thus, by their variety and mutual conflicts, they secured his toilsome
existence for the peasant. Very frequently the peasant was politically,
personally, and economically subjected to quite different lords. In the
east the combination of landlordship and patrimonial rights over a whole
village was in the hands of one lord; the formation of a 'manor,' in the
English sense, was regularly facilitated because, much more frequently
than in the west, and from the very beginning, only one knight's court
had been founded in a village, or had already originated from the Sla-
vonic social structure. And finally there is an important factor, upon
which Professor von Below correctly lays special stress: the estates of the
knights in the east, though at first small in proportion to the entire terri-
tory of a village, were nevertheless usually much larger than was cus-
tomary in the west. Therefore, the enlargement of the cultivated area o£
his estate was, for the lord, much easier than in the west, and also much
less of a remote idea. Thus from the very beginning there existed, in the
method of the distribution of the land, the first inducement to differentia-
tion between east and west. But the cause of this difference in the size
of the original estate of the landlord was connected with differences be-
tween the economic conditions of the east and those of the west. Even in
the Middle Ages, considerably different conditions of life were created
for the ruling social class.
The west was more densely populated, and, what is decisive in our
opinion, local communication, the exchange of goods within and between
the smallest local communities, was undoubtedly more developed than
in the east. This was evidenced by the fact that the west was so much
more thickly settled with towns. It is based partly upon the simple his-
torical fact that the culture of the west was, in every respect, older, and
partly upon a less evident, but important geographical difference, the
far greater variety of the agricultural division of the west in comparison
with the east. Considered from a purely technical view, communication
on the extended plains of the German east must have met with fewer
impediments than in the much intersected and differentiated territory
of the west. Yet such technical possibilities of communication do not
determine the amount of exchange. On the contrary, in the west and
south the economic inducement to trade and to the development of a
relatively intensive communication was much stronger than on the large
plains of the east. This was due to the fact that in the west and south,
bottoms, river valleys, and plateaux, are intermingled— climatic and other
natural conditions of the production of goods are very noticeably dif-
378 SOCIAL STRUCTURES
ferentiated within narrow districts. In the east, however, the neighboring
towns have much more frequently nothing to exchange with each other
(even today), because, having the same geographical situation, all of
them produce the same goods. Historical and natural conditions of an
intensive local trade were (and still are), for these reasons, more favor-
able in the west.
It is Professor von Below's merit to have pointed to the fact that in
the Middle Ages the knighthood of the west was not exclusively or even
predominantly founded upon territorial possession. Taxes, river tolls,
rents, and imposts, which depend upon a certain amount of local traffic,
played a role. This was undoubtedly much less possible in those days
(as at present) in the east. Whoever wanted to live there as a knight had
to found his existence upon income from his own agricultural operations.
Large organizations for the production of goods and for foreign com-
merce, as those of the 'German Order,' are only a different phase of this
same fact. The homogeneity of eastern production directed transportation
into the more distant regions, and the local money economy remained
considerably inferior to that of the west, according to all evidence. If the
quite uncertain yet possible estimates are only approximately correct, the
living conditions of the peasant in the east and the west must have been
very different. It is scarcely probable that the lord would have taken up
agricultural operations with their toil, risk, and the hardly gentlemanly
contact with the mercantile world, if he could have lived as well in the
east as in the west on the peasants' taxes, tolls, tithes, and rents. But we
may ask why it was not equally possible in the east as in the west. To
make it possible, peasants have to be economically able to pay taxes of
considerable amount, sufficient for the wants of the landlord; it is by no
means evident that the peasants could afford to do this. This would pre-
suppose that the peasant's self-interest in the productivity of his land
had reached a certain degree, that he himself had attained a certain
amount of economic education. But nothing could and nothing can be
substituted for that educating influence which is exerted upon the peasant
by an intensive formation of urban communities, by well-developed local
communication, by opportunity and inducement to sell rural products
in the nearest possible local markets. This great difference may still be
seen by comparing the peasant of the plain of Badenia with the peasant
of the east.
It is not natural differences in the physical and chemical qualities of
the soil, or differences in the economic talent of the races, but the his-
CAPITALISM AND RURAL SOCIETY IN GERMANY 379
torically established economic milieu that is the determining factor in
the difference in the results of peasant agriculture.
A certain number of towns upon a given area was necessary to inspire
the mass of the peasants with at least such a degree of interest in pro-
duction that the lord was enabled to draw from them the means neces-
sary for his sustenance, of using them as 'funds for interest.' Where these
influences of culture, which cannot be replaced even by the best labor
and best will, were lacking, the peasant frequently lacked the possibility
and always the incentive to raise the yield of his land beyond the tradi-
tional measure of his own needs.
The cities in the east were much fewer in number, considering the size
of the respective areas, than in the west and south. And the development
of extensive agriculture in the east characteristically dates from an epoch
in which not the rise but the decline of the cities, and a quite noticeable
decline, can be observed. Because of its surplus of grain, the east was
thus directed in its development as an agricultural export territory, with
all the qualities of such territories. This direction reached its culmination
in our century, after the abolition of the English corn laws. On the other
hand, even at the end of the Middle Ages, several parts of the German
west needed large importations of foodstuffs, especially cattle. The entire
contrast between east and west is perhaps most evident in the difference
of the prices of almost all their agricultural products in favor of the
latter. This difference was only recently removed because of the hidden
premiums of grain exportation, which have now been granted for a
decade. Even the railroads had somewhat diminished this difference,
but left it, in the middle of the last century, still very great. The unre-
liable condition of German numismatical history, besides many other
technical difficulties, prevents us from obtaining a sufficient quantity of
reliable data for the Middle Ages, but it seems well-nigh impossible that
it has been different in general during that period, in spite of great fluc-
tuations in particular cases.
If, therefore, the landlord wanted to make a more intensive use of his
peasants in the east, much greater difficulties obstructed his plan to
exploit them as funds for interest, on account of the peasants' traditional
lack of development, the weakness of the local markets for rural products,
and the less intense communication. I should like to ascribe to this cir-
cumstance a much greater importance— of course only in the form of a
hypothesis yet to be proved by the sources— than has been done before.
So far as I know the landlord of the east has chosen to operate his own
380 SOCIAL STRUCTURES
agricultural estate, not because the gross operation was technically more
rational — for this would have been also true for the west — but because
it was, under the historically established conditions, the only possible
economic means of obtaining a higher income. He became an operating
landlord, and the peasant, bound more and more to the soil, became a
serf with the duty of giving his children to the lord as menials, of fur-
nishing his horses and wagons for husbandry, his own labor power for
all sorts of work during the entire year, while his own land was con-
sidered more and more a mere reward for his labor. In spite of the
opposition of the state, the lord constantly expanded the land which he
cultivated. When, later on, the emancipation of the peasants came, it
could not, as a Fourth of August in France, eliminate the landlords from
the agrarian setup of the German east. An impecuniary state with still
undeveloped industry could not easily renounce their gratuitous service
in the administration and in the army. Above all, the decree abrogating
feudal rights, where lord and peasants found themselves in a produc-
tion community, did not at all decide the most important point: the fate
of the land, which was considered to be the possession of the landlord,
not of the peasant. Simply to declare it to be the peasants' property — as
was done later in Russian Poland for poHtical purposes, in order to ruin
the Polish nobility — would have annihilated some twenty thousand large
estates in Prussia, the only ones which the country then possessed. It
would not have obliterated a mere class of rentiers, as it did in France.
Therefore, only a part of the peasants, the larger holdings, and only a
part of their lands were saved from being enclosed by the landlords; the
remainder were appropriated by them.
The east continued to be, and henceforth became more and more, the
seat of agrarian capitalism, whereas industrial capitalism took its seat
primarily in the west. This development was stopped at the Russian
frontier, which cut off the hinterland. A big industry, which might have
arisen in the east, now developed closely behind the Russian-Poland
frontier of Germany.
The Prussian landlord of the east, who originated under these condi-
tions, was a very different social product than the Enghsh landlord. The
English landlord is generally a lessor of land, not an agriculturist. His
tributaries are not peasants, as in the Middle Ages, but capitalistic enter-
prises for cultivation of the land. He is a monopolist of the land. The
estate in his possession is kept in the family by the artful juristic me-
chanics of 'entails,' which arose, like modern capitalist monopolies, in
CAPITALISM AND RURAL SOCIETY IN GERMANY 38 1
a constant struggle with legislation; it is withheld from communication,
obligation, and division by bequest. The landlord stands outside the
rural productive community. Occasionally he assists his lessee with loans
of capital, but he enjoys an intangible existence as a lessor. As a social
product, he is a genuine child of capitalism, arisen under the pressure of
the contrasting effects, mentioned above, which capitalism produces in
completely populated countries with an aristocratic social structure. The
landed aristocrat wishes to live as a gentleman of leisure. Normally he
strives for rents, not for profits. The technically sufficient size of the estate
and the size of the property necessary for his maintenance are by no
means in harmony with each other. In some areas of Germany more
intensive operation, for instance, demands the diminution of property;
whereas the rising luxury of the aristocratic class requires its enlarge-
ment, especially as the prices of products fall. Each purchase, each com-
pensation of co-heirs, burdens the estate with heavy debts, while the
operation of the estate becomes the more sensitive to price fluctuations
the larger and more intensive it is. Only in an agrarian social structure,
such as the English, is this development abolished. This, with the in-
creased density of population and rising land values, is what endangers
everywhere, nowadays, the existence of large rational agriculture, rather
than the state's land monopoly, which many reformers demand. Indeed,
the opposite extreme has been carried out — private monopoly of the
land. But the private monopoly of the land produces, in certain economic
respects, effects similar to those of the state's monopoly; it withdraws
the land from the market and separates management from ownership,
either of which may now go its own way. The interests of the capitalist
farmer, striving for entrepreneurial profits, and the landowner's interests
in rents and in the preservation of an inherited social position run side
by side without being tied to each other, as is the case with the agricul-
tural owner-operators. The practical significance of this is that the resil-
ience of husbandry in the face of agricultural crises is powerfully in-
creased. The shock falls upon two strong shoulders: the land monopoUst
and the capitalist landlord. The crisis results in lowering the rent, prob-
ably in a change of the lessee, in a gradual diminution of the cultivated
soil, but not in a sudden destruction of many agricultural estates or in
any sudden social degradation of many landowning families.
The conditions of the eastern Prussian Junker are quite different. He
is a rural employer, a man of a thoroughly capitalist type, esteemed
according to the size of his estate and income. He possesses scarcely more
382 SOCIAL STRUCTURES
than one and a half to two United States 'sections,' but by tradition he
is incumbered with a high Hfe and aristocratic pretensions. He is usually
the free owner of the soil he cultivates, which is sold and mortgaged,
estimated for bequests, and acquired by compensating the co-heirs; hence
it is always burdened with running interests. Therefore the owner alone
is exposed to the fluctuation of the market prices. The Junker is involved
in all economic and social conflicts, which directly menace his existence
at all times. As long as the exportation of grain to England flourished,
he was the strongest supporter of free trade, the fiercest opponent of the
young German industry of the west that needed protection; but when
the competition of younger and cheaper lands expelled him from the
world market and finally attacked him at his own home, he became the
most important ally of those manufacturers who, contrary to other im-
portant branches of German industry, demanded protection; he joined
with them in common struggle against the demands of labor. For mean-
while capitalism had also gnawed at the social character of the Junker
and his laborers. In the first half of the last century the Junker was a
rural patriarch. His farm hands, the farmer whose land he had appro-
priated, were by no means proletarians. In consequence of the Junker's
lack of funds, they did not receive wages, but a cottage, land, and the
right of pasturage for their cows; during harvesttime and for thresh-
ing, a certain portion of the grain was paid to them in wheat, et cetera.
Thus they were, on a small scale, agriculturists with a direct interest in
their lord's husbandry. But they were expropriated by the rising valuation
of the land; their lord withheld pasture and land, kept his grain, and
paid them wages instead. Thus, the old community of interest was dis-
solved, and the farm hands became proletarians. The operation of agri-
culture became a seasonal operation, restricted to a few months. The lord
hired migratory laborers, since the maintenance of idle hands throughout
the year would be too heavy a burden.
The more German industry grew in the west, to its present size, the
more the population underwent an enormous change; emigration reached
its culmination in the German east, where only lords and serfs existed
in far extended districts and from whence the farm laborers fled from
their isolation and patriarchal dependency either across the ocean to the
United States, or into the smoky and dusty but socially freer air of the
German factories. On the other hand, the landlords import whatever
laborers they can get to do their work: Slavs from beyond the frontier,
who, as 'cheaper hands,' drive out the Germans. Today the landlord acts
CAPITALISM AND RURAL SOCIETY IN GERMANY 383
as any businessman, and he must act thus, but his aristocratic traditions
contrast with such action. He would Hke to be a feudal lord, yet he must
become a commercial entrepreneur and a capitalist. Other powers, rather
than the Junker, endeavor to snatch the role of the landlord.
The industrial and commercial capitalists begin increasingly to absorb
the land. Manufacturers and merchants who have become rich buy the
knights' estates, tie their possession to their family by entailment, and
use their estate as a means of invading the aristocratic class. The fidei-
commissum of the parvenu is one of the characteristic products of capital-
ism in an old country with aristocratic traditions and a military mon-
archy. In the German east, the same thing takes place now which has
been going on in England for centuries, until the present conditions
were established there.
America will also experience this process in the future, though only
after all free land has been exhausted and the economic pulsation of the
country has slowed down. For while it is correct to say that the burden
of historical tradition does not overwhelm the United States, and that
the problems originating from the power of tradition do not exist here,
yet the effects of the power of capitalism are the stronger, and will, sooner
or later, further the development of land monopolies. When the land
has become costly enough to secure a certain rent; when the accumula-
tion of large fortunes has reached a still higher point than today; when,
at the same time, the possibility of gaining proportionate profits by con-
stant, new investments in trade and industry has been diminished so
that the 'captains of industry,' as has occurred everywhere in the world,
begin to strive for hereditary preservation of their possessions instead of
new investments bringing both profit and risk — then, indeed, the desire
of the capitalist families to form a 'nobility' will arise, probably not in
form though in fact. The representatives of capitalism will not content
themselves any longer with such harmless play as pedigree studies and
the numerous pranks of social exclusiveness which are so startling to the
foreigner. Only when capital has arrived at this course and begins to
monopolize the land to a great extent, will a great rural social question
arise in the United States, a question which cannot be cut with the
sword, as was the slave question. Industrial monopolies and trusts are
institutions of limited duration; the conditions of production undergo
changes, and the market does not know any everlasting valuation. Their
power also lacks the authoritative character and the political mark of
384 SOCIAL STRUCTURES
aristocracies. But monopolies of the land always create a political aris-
tocracy.
So far as Germany is concerned, in the east a certain approach to
English conditions has begun in consequence of certain tendencies;
whereas the German southwest shows similarity with France in its rural
social structure. But, in general, the intensive English stock-breeding is
not possible in the German east on account of the climate. Therefore
capital absorbs only the land most favorable for agriculture. But while
the inferior districts in England remain uncultivated, as pastures for
sheep, in the German east they are settled by small farmers. This process
has a peculiar feature, inasmuch as two nations, Germans and Slavs,
struggle with each other economically. The Polish peasants, who have
fewer wants than the Germans, seem to be gaining the upper hand.
Under the pressure of business cycles the frugal, Slavic small farmer
gains land from the German. The advance of culture toward the east
during the Middle Ages, based upon the superiority of the older and
higher culture, has been reversed under the capitalistic principle of the
'cheaper hand.' Whether the United States will also have to wrestle with
similar problems in the future, nobody can foretell. The diminution of
the agricultural operations in the wheat-producing states results at present
from the growing intensity of the operation and from division of labor.
Also the number of Negro farms is growing, as is the migration from
the country into the cities. If, thereby, the expansive power of the Anglo-
Saxon-German settlement of the rural districts, as well as the number of
children of the old, native-born population, are on the wane, and if, at
the same time, the enormous immigration of untutored elements from
eastern Europe grows, a rural population might soon arise here which
could not be assimilated by the historically transmitted culture of this
country. This population would decisively change the standard of the
United States and would gradually form a community of a quite differ-
ent type from the great creation of the Anglo-Saxon spirit.
For Germany, all fateful questions of economic and social politics and
of national interests are closely connected with this contrast between the
rural society of the east and that of the west and with its further develop-
ment. I should not consider it correct to discuss here, in a foreign coun-
try, the practical problems arising from this. Destiny, which has incum-
bered us with a history of thousands of years, which has placed us in a
country with a dense population and an intensive culture, which has
forced us to maintain the splendor of our old culture, so to speak, in an
I
CAPITALISM AND RURAL SOCIETY IN GERMANY 385
armed camp within a world bristling with arms, has placed before us
these problems. And we must meet them.
The United States does not yet know such problems. This nation will
probably never encounter some of them., It has no old aristocracy; hence
the tensions caused by the contrast between authoritarian tradition and
the purely commercial character of modern economic conditions do not
exist. Rightly it celebrates the purchase of this immense territory, in
whose center we are here," as the real historical seal imprinted upon its
democratic institutions; without this acquisition, with powerful and
warlike neighbors at its side, it would be forced to wear the coat of mail
like ourselves, who constantly keep in the drawer of our desks the march
order in case of war. But on the other hand, the greater part of the prob-
lems for whose solution we are now working will approach America
within only a few generations. The way in which they will be solved
will determine the character of the future culture of this continent. It
was perhaps never before in history made so easy for any nation to
become a great civilized power as for the American people. Yet, accord-
ing to human calculation, it is also the last time, as long as the history
of mankind shall last, that such conditions for a free and great develop-
ment will be given; the areas of free soil are now vanishing everywhere
in the world.
One of my colleagues has quoted the words of Carlyle: 'Thousands of
years have passed before thou couldst enter into hfe, and thousands of
years to come wait in silence that thou wilt do with this thy life.' I do
not know if, as Carlyle believed, a single man can or will place himself,
in his actions, upon the sounding-board of this sentiment. But a nation
must do so, if its existence in history is to be of lasting value.
JC V . -National Cnaracter and tne Junk
ers
As a carrier of political tradition, training, and balance in a polity, there
is no doubt that a stratum of landlords cannot be replaced. We speak of
such landlord strata as have existed in England and which, in a similar
way, formed the kernel of ancient Rome's senatorial nobility.
How many such aristocrats are to be found in Germany, and especially
in Prussia? Where is their political tradition? Politically, German aris-
tocrats, particularly in Prussia, amount to almost nothing. And it seems
obvious that today a state policy aimed at breeding such a stratum of
large rentiers of genuinely aristocratic character is out of the question.
Even if it were still possible to let a number of great aristocratic estates
emerge on woodland — land which alone qualifies socially and politically
for the formation of entailed estates — it would still be impossible to obtain
any significant results. This was precisely the abysmal dishonesty of the
bill concerning entailed estates considered in Prussia at the beginning of
1917. The bill was intended to extend a legal institution appropriate for
aristocratic holdings to the middle-class proprietors of the average East
Elbian estate. It tried to make an 'aristocracy' out of a type which simply
is not an aristocracy and never can be inflated into one.
The Junkers of the east are frequently (and often unjustly) vilified;
they are just as frequently (and as often unjustly) idolized. Anyone who
knows them personally will certainly enjoy their company at the hunt,
over a good glass, or at cards; and in their hospitable homes, everything
is genuine. But everything becomes spurious when one stylizes this
essentially 'bourgeois' stratum of entrepreneurs into an 'aristocracy.'
Economically, the Junkers are entirely dependent upon working as agri-
cultural entrepreneurs; they are engaged in the struggle of economic
'Wahlrecht und Demokratie in Deutschland,' Gesammelte Politische Schriften (Munich,
Dreimaskenverlag, 1921), pp. 277-322. This comprises a passage, pp. 307-18, from a
pamphlet which 'Die Hilfe' — die book pubHshing department of the little magazine which
Naumann edited — published in December 1917.
386
1
NATIONAL CHARACTER AND THE JUNKERS 387
interests. Their social and economic struggle is just as ruthless as that of
any manufacturer. Ten minutes in their circle shows one that they are
plebeians. Their very virtues are of a thoroughly robust and plebeian
nature. Minister von Miquel once stated (privately!) that 'Nowadays an
East German feudal estate cannot support an aristocratic household,'
and he was quite correct. If one tries to mold such a stratum into an
aristocracy, replete with feudal gestures and pretensions, a stratum now
dependent upon routine managerial work of a capitalistic nature, the
only result which can be irrevocably attained is the physiognomy of a
parvenu. Those traits of our political and general conduct in the world
which bear this stamp are determined, though not exclusively, by the
fact that we have fed aristocratic pretensions to strata which simply lack
the qualifications.
The Junkers are only one instance of this point. Among us the absence
of men of cosmopolitan education is, of course, not only due to the
physiognomy of the Junkers; it is also a result of the pervasive 'petty
bourgeois' ^ character of all those strata which have been the specific
bearers of the Prussian polity during the time of its poverized but glori-
ous ascendancy. The old officers' families, in their highly honorific way,
cultivate in their often extremely modest economic conditions the tradi-
tion of the old Prussian army. The civil-servant families are of the same
hue. It does not matter whether or not these families are of noble birth;
economically, socially, and according to their horizon, they constitute a
bourgeois middle-class group. In general, the social forms of the German
officer corps are absolutely appropriate to the nature of the stratum, and
in their decisive features they definitely resemble those of the officer
corps of the democracies (of France and also of Italy). But these traits
immediately become a caricature when non-military circles consider them
as a model for their conduct. This holds, above all, when they are blended
with social forms derived from the 'pennalism' of the schools for bureauc-
racy. Yet, such is the case with us.
It is well known that the student fraternities constitute the typical
social education of aspirants for non-military offices, sinecures, and the
liberal professions of high social standing. The 'academic freedom' of
dueling, drinking, and class cutting stems from a time when other kinds
of freedom did not exist in Germany and when only the stratum of
literati and candidates for office was privileged in such liberties. The in-
road, however, which these conventions have made upon the bearing of
the 'academically certified man' of Germany cannot be eliminated even
388 SOCIAL STRUCTURES
today. This type of man has always been important among us, and be-
comes increasingly so. Even if the mortgages on fraternity houses and
the necessity for the alumni to bear their interest did not take care of
the economic immortality of the student fraternities, this type would
hardly disappear. On the contrary, the fraternity system is steadily ex-
panding; for the social connections of the fraternities nowadays consti-
tute a specific way of selecting officials. And the officers' commission with
its prerequisite qualification for dueling, visibly guaranteed through the
colored fraternity ribbon, gives access to 'society.'
To be sure, the drinking compulsions and dueling techniques of the
fraternities are increasingly adjusted to the needs of the weaker constitu-
tions of aspirants to the fraternity ribbon, who for the sake of connec-
tions become more and more numerous. Allegedly, there are even tee-
totalers in some of these dueling corps. The intellectual inbreeding of
the fraternities, which has continuously increased during recent decades,
is a decisive factor. Fraternities have reading rooms of their own and
special fraternity papers, which the alumni provide exclusively with
well-meant 'patriotic' politics of an unspeakably petty-bourgeois charac-
ter. Social intercourse with classmates of a different social or intellectual
background is shunned or at least made very difficult. With all this,
fraternity connections are constantly expanding. A sales clerk who aspires
to qualify for an officer's commission as a prerequisite of marriage into
'society' (particularly with the boss's daughter) will enroll in one of the
business colleges which are frequented largely because of their fraternity
life.
The yardstick of the moralist is not the yardstick of the politician. How-
ever one may judge all these student associations per se, they certainly
do not provide an education for a cosmopolitan personality. On the con-
trary, their fagging system and pennalism are, after all, undeniably
banal; and their subaltern social forms constitute the very opposite of
such an education. The most stupid Anglo-Saxon club offers more of a
cosmopolitan education, however empty one may find the organized
sports in which the club often finds its fulfilment. The Anglo-Saxon
club with its often very strict selection of members always rests upon the
principle of the strict equality of gentlemen and not upon the principle
of 'pennalism,' which bureaucracy cherishes so highly as a preparation
for discipline in office. By cultivating such pennalism, the fraternities do
not fail to recommend themselves to 'higher ups.' " In any case, formal-
istic conventions and the pennalism of this so-called 'academic freedom'
NATIONAL CHARACTER AND THE JUNKERS 389
are imposed upon the aspirant to office in Germany. The more the can-
didates turn out to be parvenus, boastful of a full pocketbook — from the
parents — as is unavoidably the case wherever conditions allow for it,
the less effective are these conventions in training aristocratic men of the
world. Unless the young man who drifts into this conditioning is of an
unusually independent character, a free spirit, the fatal traits of a var-
nished plebeian will be developed. We notice such plebeians quite often
among dueling corps members, even among men who are otherwise
quite excellent; for the interests cultivated by these fraternities are thor-
oughly plebeian and far from all 'aristocratic' interests, no matter in what
sense one may interpret them. The salient point is simply that an essen-
tially plebeian student life may formerly have been harmless; it was
merely naive, youthful exuberance. But nowadays it pretends to be a
means of aristocratic education quahfying one for leadership in the state.
The simply incredible contradiction contained in this turns into a
boomerang in that a parvenu physiognomy is the result.
We must beware of thinking that these parvenu features of the Ger-
man countenance are politically irrelevant. Let us immediately consider
a case. To go out for 'moral conquests' among enemies, that is, among
opposed interest groups, is a vain enterprise, which Bismarck has rightly
ridiculed. But does this hold for present or future allies? We and our
Austrian alHes are constantly depending upon one another politically.
And this is known to them as well as to us. Unless great follies are com-
mitted, no danger of a break threatens. German achievement is acknowl-
edged by them without reserve and without jealousy — the more so the less
we brag about it. We do not always have a proper appreciation of diffi-
culties which the Austrians have and which Germany is spared. Hence,
we do not always appreciate Austrian achievement. But what everybody
all over the world knows must also openly be said here. What could not be
tolerated by the Austrians, or by any other nation with which we might
ever wish to be friendly, are the manners of the parvenu as again dis-
played recently in an unbearable way. Such a bearing will meet with a
silent and polite yet a determined rejection by any nation of good old
social breeding, for instance, the Austrians. Nobody wants to be ruled
by poorly educated parvenus. Any step beyond what is absolutely indis-
pensable in foreign affairs, that is, anything which might be possible on
the part of 'Central Europe' (in the inner meaning of the word), or
which might be desirable for future solidarity of interests with other
nations (no matter how one may feel about the idea of an economic
390 SOCIAL STRUCTURES
rapprochement), may fail politically because of the absolute determina-
tion of the partner not to have imposed upon him what recently, with a
boastful gesture, was proclaimed to be the 'Prussian spirit.' 'Democracy'
allegedly endangers this Prussian spirit, according to the verbal assembly
lines of the political phrasemongers. As is known, the same declamations
have been heard, without exception, at every stage of internal reform
for the last one hundred and ten years.
The genuine Prussian spirit belongs to the most beautiful blossoms of
German culture. Every line we have of Scharnhorst, Gneisenau, Boyen,
Moltke is inspired with this spirit, just as are the deeds and words of
the great Prussian reform officials (a good many of whom, however, are
of non-Prussian descent). We need not name them here. The same holds
of Bismarck's eminent intellectuality, which is now so badly caricatured
by the stupid and Philistine representatives of RealpolitiJ^. But occasion-
ally it seems as if this old Prussian spirit is now stronger among the
officialdom of other federal states than in BerUn. Abuse of the term
'Prussian spirit' by present conservative demagogues is only an abuse of
these great men.
To repeat, 'no aristocracy of sufficient weight and political tradition
exists in Germany; Such an aristocracy may at best have had a place in
the Freikpnservatiue party and in the Center party — although no longer
now — ^but it has had no place in the Conservative party.
It is equally important that there is no social form of German gen-
tility. For despite the occasional boasting of our literati, it is completely
untrue that individualism exists in Germany in the sense of freedom
from conventions, in contrast to the conventions o'f the Anglo-Saxon
gentleman or of the Latin salon type of man. Nowhere are there more
rigid and compelling conventions than those of the German 'fraternity
man.' These conventions directly and indirectly control just as large a
part of the progeny of our leading strata as do the conventions of any
other country. Wherever the forms of the officer corps do not hold, these
fraternity conventions constitute 'the German form'; for the effects of
the dueling corps conventions largely determine the forms and conven-
tions of the dominant strata of Germany: of the bureaucracy and of all
those who wish to be accepted in 'society,' where bureaucracy sets the
tone. And these forms are certainly not genteel.
From a political point of view, it is still more important that, in con-
trast to the conventions of Latin and Anglo-Saxon countries, these Ger-
man forms are simply not suited to serve as a model for the whole nation
<
NATIONAL CHARACTER AND THE JUNKERS 39I
down to the lowest strata. They are not suited to mold and unify the
nation in its gesture as a Herrenvolf^, self-assured in its overt conduct in
the way in which Latin and Anglo-Saxon conventions have succeeded.
It is a grave error to believe that 'race' is the decisive factor in the
striking lack of grace and dignity in the overt bearing of the German.
The German-Austrian's demeanor is formed by a genuine aristocracy.
He does not lack these qualities, in spite of identical race, whatever else
his weaknesses may be.
The forms that control the Latin type of personality, down to the
lowest strata, are determined by imitation of the cavalier as evolved since
the sixteenth century.
The Anglo-Saxon conventions also mold personalities down into the
lower strata. They stem from the social habits of the gentry stratum,
which has set the tone in England since the seventeenth century. The
gentry emerged during the later Middle Ages from a peculiar blend of
rural and urban notables, namely 'gentlemen,' who became the bearers
of 'self-government.'
In all these cases it has been of consequence that 'the decisive features
of the relevant conventions and gestures could be easily and universally
imitated and hence could be democratized. But the conventions of the
academically examined candidates for office in Germany, of those strata
which they influence, and, above all, the habits for which the dueling
corps conditions its men — these were and are obviously not suited for
imitation by any circles outside of the examined and certified strata. In
particular, they cannot be imitated by the broad masses of the people;
they cannot be democratized, although, or rather precisely because, in
essence these conventions are by no means cosmopoHtan or otherwise
aristocratic. They are thoroughly plebeian in nature.
The neo-Latin code of honor, as well as the quite different Anglo-
Saxon code, has been suitable for far-reaching democratization. The
specifically German concept of qualification for dueling, however, is not
suited for being democratized, as one can easily see. This concept is of
great political bearing, but the politically and socially important point is
not — as is frequently held — that a so-called 'code of honor' in the nar-
rower sense exists in the officer corps. It is absolutely in place there. The
fact that a Prussian Landrat^ must qualify himself for dueling, in the
sense of the pennalist duel corps, in order to maintain himself in his
post — that is what is politically relevant. This also holds for any other
administrative official who is easily removable. It is in contrast, for in-
392 SOCIAL STRUCTURES
Stance, to the Amtsrichter^ who, by virtue of the law, is 'independent,'
and who because of this independence is socially declasse as compared
to the Landrat. As with all other conventions and forms supported by
the structure of bureaucracy and decisively fashioned by the idea of
German student honor, from a formal point of view the concept of
dueling qualification constitutes a caste convention because of its pe-
culiar nature. None of these forms can be democratized. In substance,
however, they are not of an aristocratic but of an absolutely plebeian
character, because they lack all esthetic dignity and all genteel cultiva-
tion. It is this inner contradiction that invites ridicule and has such
unfavorable political effects.
Germany is a nation of plebeians. Or, if it sounds more agreeable, it is
a nation of commoners. Only on this basis could a specifically 'German
form' grow.
Socially, democratization brought about or promoted by the new polit-
ical order — and that is what should be discussed here — would not destroy
the value of aristocratic forms, since there are no such forms. Nor could
it deprive such values of their exclusiveness and then propagate them
throughout the nation, as was done with the forms of the Latin and
Anglo-Saxon aristocracies. The form values of the degree-hunter quali-
fying for duels are not sufficiently cosmopolitan to support personal poise
even in their own stratum. As every test shows, these forms do not
always suffice even to hide the actual insecurity before a foreigner who
is educated as a man of the world. The endeavor to hide such insecurity
often takes the form of 'pertness,' which, in the main, stems from awk-
wardness and appears as poor breeding.
We shall not discuss whether political 'democratization' would actually
result in social democratization. Unlimited political 'democracy' in
America, for instance, does not prevent the growth of a raw plutocracy
or even an 'aristocratic' prestige group, which is slowly emerging. The
growth of this 'aristocracy' is culturally and historically as important as
that of plutocracy, even though it usually goes unnoticed.
The development of a truly cultured 'German form,' which is at the
same time suitable for the character of the socially dominant stratum of
commoners, lies in the future. The incipient development of such civil
conventions in the Hanseatic cities has not been continued under the
impact of political and economic changes since 1870. And the present
war [World War I] has blessed us with a great many parvenus, whose
sons will ardently acquire the usual duel corps conventions at the univer-
NATIONAL CHARACTER AND THE JUNKERS 393
sities. These conventions do not raise any demands for a cultured tradi-
tion; they serve as a convenient way of taming men for qualifying as an
applicant for officer commissions. Hence, for the time being there is no
hope for a change. In any case, this much holds: if 'democratization'
should result in eliminating the social prestige of the academically certi-
fied man — which is by no means certain and which cannot be discussed
here-H:then no politically valuable social forms would be abolished in
Germany. Since they do not exist, they cannot be eliminated. Democracy
could perhaps then free the road for the development of valuable forms
suitable to our civic, social, and economic structure, which therefore
would be 'genuine' and cultured values. One cannot invent such values,
just as one cannot invent a style. Only this much (in an essentially nega-
tive and formal way) can be said, and it holds for all values of this
nature: such forms can never be developed on any other basis than upon
an attitude of personal distance and reserve. In Germany this prerequisite
of all personal dignity has frequently been lacking among both high and
low. The latest literati, with their urge to brag about and to print their
personal 'experiences' — erotical, religious, or what not — are the enemies
of all dignity, no matter of what sort. 'Distance,' however, can by no
means be gained exclusively on the 'cothurnus' of snobbishly setting one's
self off from the 'far too many,' as is maintained by the various and
misconceived 'prophecies' which go back to Nietzsche. On the contrary,
when today it is in need of this inner support, distance is always spurious.
Perhaps the necessity of maintaining one's inner dignity in the midst
of a democratic world can serve as a test of the genuineness of dignity.
What we have said above shows that in this, as in so many other
respects, the German fatherland is not and must not be the land of its
fathers but rather the land of its children, as Alexander Herzen has so
beautifully said of Russia. And this holds particularly for political prob-
lems.
The 'German spirit' for solving political problems cannot be distilled
from the intellectual work of our past, however valuable it may be. Let
us pay deference to the great shadows of our spiritual ancestors and
let us make use of their intellectual work for all formal training of the
mind. Our literati, in their conceit, claim from the past the title to gov-
ern the working out of our political future, like schoolmasters with a
rod, simply because it is their profession to interpret the past to the
nation. Should they try to lay down the law, then let us throw the old
books into the nearest corner! Nothing can be learned about the future
394 SCX^IAL STRUCTURES
from them. The German classics, among other things, can teach us that
we could be a leading cultured nation in a period of material poverty
and political helplessness and even foreign domination. Even where they
concern poHtics and economics their ideas stem from this unpolitical
epoch. The ideas of the German classics, inspired by discussion of the
French Revolution, were projections into a political and economic situa-
tion that lacked popular passion. But in so far as any political passion
inspired them, besides wrathful rebellion against foreign domination, it
was the ideal enthusiasm for moral imperatives. What lies beyond that
remain philosophical ideas, which we may utilize as stimulating means
of defining our own stand according to our political reality and accord-
ing to the requirements of our own day, but not as guides. The modern
problems of parliamentary government and democracy, and the essential
nature of our modern state in general, are entirely beyond the horizon
of the German classics.
There are those who reproach universal suffrage as the victory of dull
mass instincts incapable of reason, in contradistinction to judicious polit-
ical conviction; they hold it to be a victory of emotional over rational
politics. With reference to the latter — and this must be said+-Germany's
foreign policy is proof of the fact that a monarchy ruling by a system of
class suffrage holds the record for purely personal emotion and an irra-
tional mood influencing leadership.) Prussia holds the hegemony and is
always the decisive factor in German politics. To prove this we need
only compare the zigzag path of this noisy policy, unsuccessful for dec-
ades, with the calm purposiveness, for instance, of English foreign policy.
And as for irrational crowd instincts, they rule politics only where the
masses are tightly compressed and exert pressure: in the modern metrop-
olis, particularly under the conditions of neo-Latin urban forms of life.
There the civilization of the cafe, as well as climatic conditions, permit
the policy of the 'street' — as it has fittingly been called— to lord it over the
country from the capital. On the other hand, the role of the English
'man of the street' is linked with very specific characteristics of the struc-
ture of the urban masses, which are totally lacking in Germany. The
Russian metropolitan street policy is connected with the underground
organizations which exist there. All these preconditions are absent in
Germany, and the moderation of German life makes it quite improbable
that Germany should fall into this occasional danger — for it is an occa-
sional one in contrast to what in Imperial Germany has influenced for-
eign policy as a chronic danger. Not labor tied to workshops, but the
NATIONAL CHARACTER AND THE JUNKERS 395
loafers and the cafe intellectuals in Rome and Paris have fabricated the
war-mongering policy of the street — by the way, exclusively in the service
of the government and only to the extent to which the government
intended or allowed it.
In France and Italy the balance of the industrial proletariat was lack-
ing. When it acts with solidarity, the industrial proletariat is certainly
an immense power in dominating the street. In comparison, however,
with entirely irresponsible elements, it is a force at least capable of order
and of orderly leadership through its functionaries and hence through
rationally thinking politicians. From the point of view of state policy,
all that matters is to increase the power of these leaders, in Germany of
trade-union leaders, over the passions of the moment. Beyond this, what
matters is to increase the importance of the responsible leaders, the im-
portance of political leadership per se. It is one of the strongest argu-
ments for the creation of an orderly and responsible guidance of policy
by a parliamentarian leadership that thereby the efficacy of purely emo-
tional motives from 'above' and from 'below' is weakened as far as,
possibk The 'rule of the street' has nothing to do with equal suffrage;!
Rome and Paris have been dominated by the street even when in Italy
the most plutocratic sufferance in the world and in Paris Napoleon III
ruled with a fake parliament. Only the orderly guidance of the masses
by responsible politicians can break the irregular rule of the street and
the leadership of demagogues of the moment.
X- V i. India: Ine Jjranman and tne V^astes
The position of the Brahman, in classic Hinduism as well as today, can
be understood only in connection with caste, without an understanding
of which it is quite impossible to understand Hinduism. Perhaps the
most important gap in the ancient Veda is its lack of any reference to
caste. The Veda refers to the four later caste names in only one place,
which is considered a very late passage; nowhere does it refer to the
substantive content of the caste order in the meaning which it later
assumed and which is characteristic only of Hinduism.^
Caste, that is, the ritual rights and duties it gives and imposes and
the position of the Brahmans, is the fundamental institution of Hindu-
ism. Before everything else, without caste there is no Hindu. But the
position of the Hindu with regard to the authority of the Brahman may
vary extraordinarily, from unconditional submission to the contesting of
his authority. Some castes do contest the authority of the Brahman, but,
practically, this means merely that the Brahman is disdainfully rejected
as a priest, that his judgment in controversial questions of ritual is not
recognized as authoritative, and that his advice Is never sought. Upon
first sight, this seems to contradict the fact that 'castes' and 'Brahmans'
belong together in Hinduism. But as a matter of fact, if the caste is abso-
lutely essential for each Hindu, the reverse, at least nowadays, does not
hold, namely, that every caste be a Hindu caste. There are also castes
among the Mohammedans of India, taken over from the Hindus. And
castes are also found among the Buddhists. Even the Indian Christians
have not quite been able to withhold themselves from practical recog-
nition of the castes. These non-Hindu castes have lacked the tremendous
emphasis that the specific Hinduist doctrine of salvation placed upon the
caste, as we shall see later, and they have lacked a further characteristic,
From Gesammelte Atifsaetze ztir Religionssoziologie, vol. ii, pp. 32-48, 109-13. The
study from which this selection is drawn was originally printed in the Archiv, April and
December 1916, and May 191 7.
396
INDIA: THE BRAHMAN AND THE CASTES 397
namely, the determination of the social rank of the castes by the social
distance from other Hinduist castes, and therewith, ultimately, from the
Brahman. For this is decisive for the connection between Hindu castes
and the Brahman; however intensely a Hindu caste may reject him as a
priest, as a doctrinal and ritual authority, and in every other respect, the
objective situation remains inescapable: in the last analysis, a rank posi-
tion is determined by the nature of its positive or negative relation to the
Brahman.
'Caste' is, and remains essentially, social rank, and the central posi-
tion of the Brahmans in Hinduism rests more upon the fact that social
rank is determined with reference to them than upon anything else. In
order to understand this, we shall turn to the present condition of the
Hindu castes, as described in the partly excellent scientific Census Re-
ports. We shall also briefly consider the classical theories of caste con-
tained in the ancient books of law and other sources.
Today the Hinduist caste order is profoundly shaken. Especially in
the district of Calcutta, old Europe's major gateway, many norms
have practically lost their force. The railroads, the taverns, the changing
occupational stratification, the concentration of labor through imported
industry, colleges, et cetera, have all contributed their part. The 'com-
muters to London,' that is, those who studied in Europe and who freely
maintained social intercourse with Europeans, used to become outcasts
up to the last generation; but more and more this pattern is disappearing.
And it has been impossible to introduce caste coaches on the railroads in
the fashion of the American railroad cars or waiting rooms which segre-
gate 'White' from 'Black' in the Southern States. All caste relations have
been shaken, and the stratum of intellectuals bred by the English are
here, as elsewhere, bearers of a specific nationalism. They \yill greatly
strengthen this slow and irresistible process. For the time being, how-
ever, the caste structure still stands quite firmly.
First we have to ask: with what concepts shall we define a 'caste'? *
Let us ask it in the negative: what is not a caste? Or, what traits of other
associations, really or apparently related to caste, are lacking in caste?
What, for instance, is the difference between caste and a tribe?
* The term is of Portuguese derivation. The ancient Indian name is vama, 'color.'
398 SOCIAL STRUCTURES
i: Caste and Tribe
As long as a tribe has not become wholly a guest or a pariah people,
it usually has a fixed tribal territory. A genuine caste never has a fixed
territory. To a very considerable extent, the caste members live in the
country, segregated in villages. Usually in each village there is, or
was, only one caste with full title to the soil. But dependent village
artisans and laborers also live with this caste. In any case, the caste does
not form a local, territorial, corporate body, for this would contradict its
nature. A tribe is, or at least originally it was, linked together by obliga-
tory blood revenge, mediated directly or indirectly through the sib. A
caste never has anything to do with such blood revenge.
Originally, a tribe normally comprised many, often almost all, of the
possible pursuits necessary for the gaining of subsistence. A caste may
comprise people who follow very different pursuits; at least this is the
case today, and for certain upper castes this has been the case since very
early times. Yet so long as the caste has not lost its character, the kinds of
pursuits admissible without loss of caste are always, in some way, quite
strictly limited. Even today very often 'caste' and 'way of earning a living'
are so firmly linked that a change of occupation is co-related with a divi-
sion of caste. This is not the case for a 'tribe.'
Normally a tribe comprises people of every social rank. A caste may
well be divided into sub-castes with extraordinarily different social ranks.
Today this is almost unexceptionally the case; one caste frequently con-
tains several hundred sub-castes. In such cases, these sub-castes may be
related to one another exactly, or almost exactly, as are different castes.
If this is the case, the sub-castes in reality are castes; the caste name
common to all of them has a merely — or at least almost merely — his-,
torical significance and serves to support the social pretensions of de-
graded sub-castes towards third castes. Hence, by its very nature, caste
is inseparably bound up with social ranks within a larger community.
It is decisive for a tribe that it is originally and normally a political asso-
ciation. The tribe either forms an independent association, as is originally
always the case, or the association is part of a tribal league; or, it may
constitute a phyle, that is, part of a political association commissioned
with certain political tasks and having certain rights: franchise, holding
quotas of the poHtical offices, and the right of assuming its share or turn
of political, fiscal, and liturgical obligations. A caste is never a political
I
India: the brahman and the castes 399
association, even if political associations in individual cases have bur-
dened castes with liturgies, as may have happened repeatedly during the
Indian Middle Ages (Bengal). In this case, castes are in the same position
as merchant and craft guilds, sibs, and all sorts of associations. By its
very nature the caste is always a purely social and possibly occupational
association, which forms part of and stands within a social community.
But the caste is not necessarily, and by no means regularly, an association
forming part of only one political association ; rather it may reach beyond,
or it may fall short of, the boundaries of any one political association.
There are castes diffused over all of India.^ Yet today, each of the sub-
castes and also most of the small castes exist only in their respective
small district. Political division has often strongly influenced the caste
order of individual areas, but precisely the most important castes have
remained interstate in scope.
With regard to the substance of their social norms, a tribe usually
differs from a caste in that the exogamy of the totem or of the villages
coexist with the exogamy of the sibs. Endogamy has existed only under
certain conditions, but by no means always, for the tribe as a whole.
Rules of endogamy, however, always form the essential basis of a caste.
Dietary rules and rules of commensality are always characteristic of the
caste but are by no means characteristic for the tribe.
We have already observed that when a tribe loses its foothold in its
territory it becomes a guest or a pariah people. It may then approximate
caste to the point of being actually indistinguishable from it.^ The differ-
ences that remain will be discussed when we determine the positive char-
acteristics of caste. But first, the following question arises: In contrast to
'tribe,' caste is usually intimately related to special ways of earning a
living, on the one hand, and, on the other, to social rank. Now, how is
caste related to the occupational associations (merchant and craft guilds)
and how is it related to 'status groups'? Let us begin with the former.
2: Caste and Guild
'Guilds' of merchants, and of traders figuring as merchants by selling
their own produce, as well as 'craft-guilds,' existed in India during the
period of the development of cities and especially during the period in
which the great salvation religions originated. As we shall see, the salva-
tion religions and the guilds were related. The guilds usually emerged
within the cities, but occasionally they emerged outside of the cities,
400 SOCIAL STRUCTURES
survivals of these being still in existence. During the period of the flower-
ing of the cities, the position of the guilds was quite comparable to the
position guilds occupied in the cities of the medieval Occident. The guild
association (the mahajan, literally, the same as popolo grasso) faced on
the one hand the prince, and on the other the economically dependent
artisans. These relations were about the same as those faced by the great
guilds of literati and of merchants with the lower craft-guilds {popolo
minuto) of the Occident. In the same way, associations of lower craft
guilds existed in India (the panch). Moreover, the liturgical guild of
Egyptian and late Roman character was perhaps not entirely lacking in
the emerging patrimonial states of India. The uniqueness of the develop-
ment of India lay in the fact that these beginnings of guild organization
in the cities led neither to the city autonomy of the Occidental type nor,
after the development of the great patrimonial states, to a social and
economic organization of the territories corresponding to the 'territorial
economy'^ of the Occident. Rather, the Hinduist caste system, whose
beginnings certainly preceded these organizations, became paramount.
In part, this caste system entirely displaced the other organizations; and
in part, it crippled them; it prevented them from attaining any consid-
erable importance. The 'spirit' of this caste system, however, was totally
different from that of the merchant and craft guilds.
The merchant and craft guilds of the Occident cultivated religious
interests as did the castes. In connection with these interests, questions of
social rank also played a considerable role among guilds. Which rank
order the guilds should follow, for instance, during processions, was a
question occasionally fought over more stubbornly than questions of
economic interest. Furthermore, in a 'closed' guild, that is, one with a
numerically fixed quota of income opportunities, the position of the
master was hereditary. There were also quasi-guild associations and
associations derived from guilds in which the right to membership was
acquired in hereditary succession. In late Antiquity, membership in the
liturgical guilds was even a compulsory and hereditary obligation in the
way of a glebae adscriptio, which bound the peasant to the soil. Finally,
there were also in the medieval Occident 'opprobrious' trades, which were
religiously declasse; these correspond to the 'unclean' castes of India.
The fundamental difference, however, between occupational associations
and castes is not affected by all these circumstances.
First, that which is partly an exception and partly an occasional conse-
quence for the occupational association is truly fundamental for the
India: the brahman and the castes 401
caste: the magical distance between castes in their mutuai relationships.
In 1901 in the 'United Provinces' roughly 10 million people (out of a
total of about 40 million) belonged to castes with which physical contact
is ritually polluting. In the 'Madras Presidency,' roughly 13 million
people (out of about 52 milHon) could infect others even without direct
contact if they approached within a certain, though varying, distance.
The merchant and craft guilds of the Middle Ages acknowledged no
ritual barriers whatsoever between the individual guilds and artisans,
apart from the aforementioned small stratum of people engaged in
opprobrious trades. Pariah peoples and pariah workers (for example, the
knacker and hangman), by virtue of their special positions, come socio-
logically close to the unclean castes of India. And there were factual bar-
riers restricting the connubium between differently esteemed occupa-
tions, but there were no ritual barriers, such as are absolutely essential
for caste. Within the circle of the 'honorable' people, ritual barriers of
commensalism were completely absent; but such barriers belong to the
basis of caste dififerences.
Furthermore, caste is essentially hereditary. This hereditary character
was not, and is not, merely the result of monopolizing and restricting
the earning opportunities to a definite maximum quota, as was the case
among the absolutely closed guilds of the Occident, which at no time
were numerically predominant. Such quota restriction existed, and still
exists in part, among the occupational castes of India; but restriction is
strongest not in the cities but in the villages, where a quota restriction
of opportunities, in so far as it has existed, has had no connection with
a 'guild' organization and has had no need for it. As we shall see, the
typical Indian village artisans have been the hereditary 'tied cottagers' of
the village.
The most important castes, although not all castes, have guaranteed
the individual member a certain subsistence, as was the case among our
master craftsmen. But not all castes have monopolized a whole trade, as
the guild at least strove to do. The guild of the Occident, at least during
the Middle Ages, was regularly based upon the apprentice's free choice
of a master and thus it made possible the transition of the children to
occupations other than those of their parents, a circumstance which never
occurs in the caste system. This difference is fundamental. Whereas the
closure of the guilds toward the outside became stricter with diminish-
ing income opportunities, among the castes the reverse was often ob-
served, namely, they maintain their ritually required way of life, and
402 SOCIAL STRUCTURES
hence their inherited trade, most easily when income opportunities are
plentiful.
Another difference between guild and caste is of even greater impor-
tance. The occupational associations of the medieval Occident were often
engaged in violent struggles among themselves, but at the same time
they evidenced a tendency towards fraternization. The mercanzia and
the popolo in Italy, and the 'citizenry' in the north, were regularly asso-
ciations of occupational associations. The capitano del popolo in the south
and frequently, though not always, the Burgermeister in the north were
heads of oath-bound organizations of the occupational associations, at
least according to their original and specific meaning. Such organizations
grabbed political power, either legally or illegally. Irrespective of their
legal forms, the late medieval city in fact rested upon the fraternization
of its productive citizenry. This was at least the case where the political
form of the medieval city contained its most important sociological
characteristics.
As a rule the fraternization of the citizenry was carried through by
the fraternization of the guilds, just as the ancient polls in its innermost
being rested upon the fraternization of military associations and sibs.
Note that the base was 'fraternization.' It was not of secondary im-
portance that every foundation of the Occidental city, during Antiquity
and the Middle Ages, went hand in hand with the establishment of a
cultic community of the citizens. Furthermore, it is of significance that
the common meal of the prytanes, the drinking rooms of the merchant
and craft guilds, and their common processions to the church played
such a great role in the official documents of the Occidental cities, and
that the medieval citizens had, at least in the Lord's Supper, commen-
salism with one another in the most festive form. Fraternization at all
times presupposes commensalism; it does not have to be actually practiced
in everyday life, but it must be ritually possible. The caste order pre-
cluded this.
Complete ^ 'fraternization' of castes has been and is impossible because
it is one of the constitutive principles of the castes that there should be
at least ritually irremediable barriers against complete commensalism
among different castes.^ If the member of a low caste merely looks at
the meal of a Brahman, it ritually defiles the Brahman. When the last
great famine ^ caused the British administration, to open public soup
kitchens accessible to everyone, the tally of patrons showed that im-
poverished people of all castes had in their need visited the kitchens,
I
INDIA: THE BRAHMAN AND THE CASTES 403
although it was of course strictly and ritually taboo to eal in this manner
in the sight of people not belonging to one's caste. At that time the strict
castes were not satisfied with the possibility of cleansing magical defile-
ment by ritual penance. Yet under threat of excommunicating the par-
ticipants, they did succeed in seeing to it that high-caste cooks were
employed; the hands of these cooks were considered ritually clean by all
the castes concerned. Furthermore, they saw to it that often a sort of
symbolic chambrc separee was created for each caste by means of chalk
lines drawn around the tables and similar devices. Apart from the fact
that in the face of starvation even strong magical powers fail to carry
weight, every strictly ritualist religion, such as the Indian, Hebrew, and
Roman, is able to open ritualist back doors for extreme situations. Yet,
from this situation to a possible commensalism and fraternization as they
are known in the Occident is a very long way. To be sure, during the
rise of the kingdoms, we find that the king invited the various castes,
the Sudra included, to his table. They were seated, however, at least
according to the classic conception, in separate rooms; and the fact that
a caste that claimed to belong to the Vaisya was seated among the Sudra
in the Vellala Charita occasioned a (semi-legendary) famous conflict,
which we shall have to discuss later.
Let us now consider the Occident. In his letter to the Galatians (11:12,
13 ff.) Paul reproaches Peter for having eaten in Antioch with the Gen-
tiles and for having withdrawn and separated himself afterwards, under
the influence of the Jerusalemites. 'And the other Jews dissembled like-
wise with him.' That the reproach of dissimulation made to this very
apostle has not been effaced shows perhaps just as clearly as does the
occurrence itself the tremendous importance this event had for the early
Christians. Indeed, this shattering of the ritual barriers against com-
mensalism meant a shattering of the voluntary Ghetto, which in its
effects is far more incisive than any compulsory Ghetto. It meant to
shatter the situation of Jewry as a pariah people, a situation that was
ritually imposed upon this people. For the Christians it meant the origin
of Christian 'freedom,' which Paul again and again celebrated trium-
phantly; for this freedom meant the universalism of Paul's mission,
which cut across nations and status groups. The elimination of all ritual
barriers of birth for the community of the eucharists, as realized in
Antioch, was, in connection with the religious preconditions, the hour
of conception for the Occidental 'citizenry.' This is the case even though
its birth occurred more than a thousand years later in the revolutionary
404 SOCIAL STRUCTURES
conjurationes of the medieval cities. For without commensaUsm — in
Christian terms, without the Lord's Supper in common — no oath-bound
fraternity and no medieval urban citizenry would have been possible.
India's caste order formed an obstacle against this, which was unsur-
mountable, at least by its own forces. For the castes are not governed
only by this eternal ritual division.® Even if there are no antagonisms of
economic interests, a profound estrangement usually exists between the
castes, and often deadly jealousy and hostility as well, precisely because
the castes are completely oriented towards 'social rank.' This orientation
stands in contrast to the occupational associations of the Occident. What-
ever part questions of etiquette and rank have played among these
associations, and often it has been quite considerable, such questions
could never have gained the religiously anchored significance which
they have had for the Hindu.
The consequences of this difference have been of considerable po-
litical importance. By its soHdarity, the association of Indian guilds,
the mahajan, was a force which the princes had to take very much into
account. It was said: 'The prince must recognize what the guilds do to
the people, whether it is merciful or cruel.' The guilds acquired privi-
leges from the princes for loans of money, which are reminiscent of our
medieval conditions. The shreshti (elders) of the guilds belonged to the
mightiest notables and ranked equally with the warrior and the priest
nobility of their time. In the areas and during the periods when these
conditions prevailed, the power of the castes was undeveloped and partly
hindered and shaken by the religions of salvation, which were hostile to
the Brahmans. The later turn in favor of the monopoly rule of the caste
system not only increased the power of the Brahmans but also that of the
princes, and it broke the power of the guilds. For the castes excluded
every solidarity and every politically powerful fraternization of the citi-
zenry and of the trades. If the prince observed the ritual traditions and
the social pretensions based upon them, which existed among those
castes most important for him, he could not only play the castes off
against one another — which he did — but he had nothing whatever to
fear from them, especially if the Brahmans stood by his side. Accord-
ingly, it is not difficult even at this point to guess the political interests
which had a hand in the game during the transformation to monopoly
rule of the caste system. This shift steered India's social structure — which
for a time apparently stood close to the threshold of European urban
development — into a course that led far away from any possibility of such
INDIA: THE BRAHMAN AND THE CASTES 405
development. In these world-historical differences the fundamentally im-
portant contrast between 'caste' and 'guild,' or any other 'occupational
association,' is strikingly revealed.
If the caste differs fundamentally froin the 'guild' and from any
other kind of merely occupational association, and if the core of the caste
system is connected with social rank, how then is the caste related
to the 'status group,' which finds its genuine expression in social rank?
3: Caste and Status Group
What is a 'status group'? 'Classes' are groups of people who, from
the standpoint of specific interests, have the same economic position.
Ownership or non-ownership of material goods or of definite skills con-
stitute the 'class-situation.' 'Status' is a quality of social honor or a lack
of it, and is in the main conditioned as well as expressed through a
specific style of life. Social honor can stick directly to a class-situation,
and it is also, indeed most of the time, determined by the average class-
situation of the status-group members. This, however, is not necessarily
the case. Status membership, in turn, influences the class-situation in that
the style of life required by status groups makes them prefer special
kinds of property or gainful pursuits and reject others. A status group
can be closed ('status by descent') or it can be open.*
Now, a caste is doubtlessly a closed status group. For all the obliga-
tions and barriers that membership in a status group entails also exist
in a caste, in which they are intensified to the utmost degree. The Occi-
dent has known legally closed 'estates,' in the sense that intermarriage
with non-members of the group was lacking. But, as a rule, this bar
against connubium held only to the extent that marriages contracted in
spite of the rule constituted niesalliances, with the consequence that
children of the 'left-handed' marriage would follow the status of the
lower partner.
Europe still acknowledges such status barriers for the high nobility.
America acknowledges them between Whites and Blacks (including all
mixed bloods) in the Southern States of the Union. But in America
these barriers imply that marriage is absolutely and legally inadmissible,
* It is incorrect to think of the 'occupational status group' as an alternative. The 'style
of life,' not the 'occupation,' is always decisive. This style may require a certain pro-
fession (for instance, military service), but the nature of the occupational service resulting
from the claims of a style of life always remains decisive (for instance, military service
as a knight rather than as a mercenary).
406 SOCIAL STRUCTURES
quite apart from the fact that such intermarriage would result in social
boycott.
Among the Hindu castes at the present time, not only intermar-
riage between castes but even intermarriage between sub-castes is
usually absolutely shunned. Already in the 'Books of Law' mixed bloods
from different castes belong to a lower caste than either of the parents,
and in no case do they belong to the three higher ('twice-born') castes.
A different state of affairs, however, prevailed in earlier days and still
exists today for the most important castes. Today one occasionally meets
with full connubium among sub-castes of the same caste, as well as
among castes of equal social standing.^ In the earlier times this was
undoubtedly more often the case. Above all, originally connubium was
obviously not absolutely excluded, but rather hypergamy was the rule.^°
Intermarriage between a girl of higher caste to a lower-caste man was
considered an offense against the status honor on the part of the girl's fam-
ily. However, to own a wife of lower caste was not considered an offense,
and her children were not considered degraded, or at least only partially
so. According to the law of inheritance, which is certainly the product
of a later period, the children had to take second place in inheritance
(just as in Israel the sentence that the 'children of the servant' — and of
the foreign woman — 'should not inherit in Israel' has been the law of a
later period, as is the case everywhere else).
The interest of upper-class men in the legality of polygamy, which
they could economically afford, continued to exist, even after the acute
shortage of women among the invading warriors was terminated. Such
shortages have everywhere compelled conquerors to marry girls of sub-
ject populations. The result in India was, however, that the lower-caste
girls had a large marriage market, and the lower the caste stood the
larger was their marriage market; whereas the marriage market for girls
of the highest castes was restricted to their own caste. Moreover, by vir-
tue of the competition of the lower-caste girls, this restricted marriage
market was by no means monopolistically guaranteed to upper-caste girls.
And this caused the women in the lower castes, by virtue of the general
demand for women, to bring high prices as brides. It was in consequence
of this dearth of women, in part, that polyandry originated. The for-
mation of marriage cartels among villages or among special associations,
Golis, as frequently found, for instance, among the Vania (merchant)
castes in Gujarat and also among peasant castes, is a counter-measure
against the hypergamy of the wealthy and the city people, which raised
INDIA: THE BRAHMAN AND THE CASTES 407
the price of brides for the middle classes and for the rural population."
Among the upper castes, however, the sale of girls to a bridegroom of
rank was difficult, and the more difficult it became, the more was failure
to marry considered a disgrace for both the girl and her parents. The
bridegroom had to be bought by the parents with incredibly high
dowries, and his enlistment (through professional matchmakers) became
the parents' most important worry. Even during the infancy of the girl
it was a sorrow for the parents. Finally it was considered an outright
'sin' for a girl to reach puberty without being married. This has led to
grotesque results: for example, the marriage practice of the Kulin
Brahmans, which enjoys a certain fame. The Kulin Brahmans are highly
demanded as bridegrooms; they have made a business of contractually
marrying girls in absentia upon request and for money, girls who thus
escape the ignominy of maidenhood. The girls, however, remain with
their families and happen to see the bridegroom only if business or
other reasons accidentally bring him to a place where he has one (or
several) such 'wives' in residence. Then he shows his marriage contract
to the father-in-law and uses the father's house as a 'cheap hotel.' In
addition, without any costs, he has the enjoyment of the girl, for she
is considered his 'legitimate' wife.
Elsewhere infanticide is usually a result of restricted opportunities for
subsistence among poor populations. But in India female infanticide was
instituted precisely by the upper castes,^^ and existed alongside of child
marriage. Child marriage has determined, first, the fact that in India
some girls in the age groups of 5 to 10 years are already widowed and
that they remain widowed for life. This is cormected with widow celi-
bacy, an institution which, in India as elsewhere, was added to widow
suicide. Widow suicide was derived from the custom of chivalry: the
burial of his personal belongings, especially his women, with the dead
lord. Secondly, marriages of immature girls has brought about a high
mortality rate in childbed.
All of this makes it clear that in the field of connubium, caste increases
'status' principles in an extreme manner. Today hypergamy exists as a
general caste rule only within the same caste, and even there it is a
specialty of the Rajput caste and of some others that stand close to the
Rajput socially, or to their ancient tribal territory. This is the case, for
instance, with such castes as the Bhat, Khatri, Karwar, Gujar, and Jat.
However, the rule is strict endogamy of the caste and of the sub-caste;
408 SOCIAL STRUCTURES
in the case of the latter, this rule is, in the main, broken only by mar-
riage cartels.
The norms of commensalism are similar to those of connubium: a
status group has no social intercourse with social inferiors. In the South-
ern States of America, all social intercourse between a White and a Negro
would result in the boycott of the former. As a 'status group,' 'caste'
enhances and transposes this social closure into the sphere of religion,
or rather of magic. The ancient concepts of 'taboo' and their social ap-
plications were indeed widely diflused in India's geographical environs
and may well have contributed materials to this process. To these taboos
were added borrowed totemist ritualisms and, finally, notions of the
magical impurity of certain activities, such as have existed everywhere
with widely varying content and intensity.
The Hinduist dietary rules are not exactly simple in nature and by no
means do they concern merely the questions (i) what may be eaten,
and (2) who may eat together at the same table. These two points are
covered by strict rules, which are chiefly restricted to members of the
same caste. The dietary rules concern above all the further questions:
(3) Out of whose hand may one take food of a certain kind? For gen-
teel houses this means above all: Whom may one use for a cook? And
a further question is: (4) Whose mere glance upon the food is to be
excluded? With (3) there is a difference to be noted between foods and
drinks, according to whether water and food cooked in water {\achcha),
is concerned, or whether food cooked is melted butter (paf(^a) is con-
cerned. Kachcha is far more exclusive. The question with whom one
may smoke is closely connected with norms of commensality in the nar-
rower sense. Originally, one smoked out of the same pipe, which was
passed around; therefore, smoking together was dependent upon the
degree of ritual purity of the partner. All these rules, however, belong in
one and the same category of a far broader set of norms, all of which
are 'status' characteristics of ritual caste rank.
The social rank positions of all castes depend upon the question of
from whom the highest castes accept \achcha and pahXa and with whom
they dine and smoke. Among the Hindu castes the Brahmans are always
at the top in such connections. But the following questions are equal in
importance to these, and closely connected with them: Does a Brahman
undertake the religious services of the members of a caste? And possibly:
to which of the very differently evaluated sub-castes does the Brahman
belong? Just as the Brahman is the last though not the only authority
INDIA: THE BRAHMAN AND THE CASTES 409
in determining, by his behavior in questions of commensaHsm, the rank
of a caste, so Hkewise does he determine questions of services. The barber
of a ritually clean caste unconditionally serves only certain castes. He
may shave and care for the 'manicure' of others, but not for their 'pedi-
cure.' And he does not serve some castes at all. Other wage workers,
especially laundrymen, behave in a similar manner. Usually, although
with some exceptions, commensality is attached to the caste; connubium
is almost always attached to the sub-caste; whereas usually, although
with exceptions, the services by priests and wageworkers are attached
to commensality.
The discussion above may suffice to demonstrate the extraordinary
complexity of the rank relations of the caste system. It may also show
the factors by which the caste differs from an ordinary status order.
The caste order is oriented religiously and ritually, to a degree not even
approximately attained elsewhere. If the expression 'church' was not
inapplicable to Hinduism, one could perhaps speak of a rank order of
church-estates.
4: The Social Rank Order of the Castes in General
When the Census of India (1901) attempted to order by rank con-
temporary Hindu castes in the presidencies — two to three thousand or
even more, according to the method of counting used — certain groups of
castes were established which are distinguishable from one another
according to the following criteria:
First come the Brahmans, and following them, a series of castes which,
rightly or wrongly, claim to belong to the two other 'twice-born' castes
of classical theory: the Kshatriya and the Vaisya. In order to signify
this, they claim the right to wear the 'holy belt.' This is a right which
some of them have only recently rediscovered and which, in the view of
the Brahman castes, who are seniors in rank, would certainly belong
only to some members of the 'twice-born' castes. But as soon as the right
of a caste to wear the holy belt is acknowledged, this caste is uncondi-
tionally recognized as being absolutely ritually 'clean.' From such a
caste the high-caste Brahmans accept food of every kind. Throughout
the system, a third group of castes follows. They are counted among
the Satsudra, the 'clean Sudra' of classical doctrine. In Northern and
Central India they are the Jalacharaniya, that is, castes who may give
water to a Brahman and from whose lota (water kettle) the Brahman
410 SOCIAL STRUCTURES
accepts water. Close to them are castes, in Northern and Central India,
whose water a Brahman would either not always accept (that is, ac-
ceptance or non-acceptance would possibly depend on the Brahman's
rank) or whose water he would never accept (Jalabyabaharya). The
high-caste barber does not serve them unconditionally (no pedicure),
and the laundryman does not wash their laundry. But they are not
considered absolutely 'unclean' ritually. They are the Sudra in the usual
sense in which the classical teachings refer to them. Finally, there are
castes who are considered unclean. All temples are closed to them, and
no Brahman and no barber will serve them. They must live outside the
village district, and they infect either by touch or, in Southern India,
even by their presence at a distance (up to sixty-four feet with the
Paraiyans). All these restrictions are related to those castes which, ac-
cording to the classical doctrine, originated from ritually forbidden sexual
intercourse between members of different castes.
Even though this grouping of castes is not equally true throughout
India (indeed there are striking exceptions), nevertheless on the whole
it can be quite well sustained. Within these groupings one could proceed
with further gradations of caste rank, but such gradations would present
extremely varied characteristics: among the upper castes the criterion
would be the correctness of life practices with regard to sib organization,
endogamy, child marriage, widow celibacy, cremation of the dead, an-
cestral sacrifice, foods and drinks, and social intercourse with unclean
castes. Among the lower caste one would have to differentiate according
to the rank of the Brahmans who are still ready to serve them or who
will no longer do so, and according to whether or not castes other than
Brahmans accept water from them. In all these cases, it is by no means
rare that castes of lower rank raise stricter demands than castes who
otherwise are considered to have a higher standmg. The extraordinary
variety of such rules of rank order forbids here any closer treatment.
The acceptance or avoidance of meat, at least of beef, is decisive for caste
rank, and is therefore a symptom of it, but an uncertain one. The kinds
of occupation and income, which entail the most far-reaching conse-
quences for connubium, commensalism, and ritual rank, are decisive in
the case of all castes. We shall speak of this later.
In addition to all these criteria, we find a mass of individual traits.^^
Yet even if we took them all into account, we could not establish a list
of castes according to rank. This is the case simply because rank differs
absolutely from place to place, because only some of the castes are univer-
I
I
INDIA: THE BRAHMAN AND THE CASTES 4II
sally diflused, and because a great many castes, being only locally repre-
sented, have no inter-local rank order which could be determined.
Furthermore, great rank differences appear between sub-castes of a
single caste, especially among the upper castes, but also among some of
the middle castes. One would often have to place individual sub-castes
far behind another caste, which otherwise would be evaluated as lower.
In general, the problem arose (for the census workers) : Which unit
should really be considered a 'caste'.'' Within one and the same 'caste,'
that is, a group considered to be a caste in Hindu tradition, there is
neither necessarily connubium nor always full commensalism. Connu-
bium is the case with only a few castes, and even with them there are
reservations. The 'sub-caste' is the predominantly endogamous unit, and
in some castes there are several hundred sub-castes. The sub-castes are
either purely local castes (diffused over districts of varying size), and/or
they constitute associations which are delimited and especially desig-
nated according to actual or alleged descent, former or present kind of
occupational pursuit, or other differences in style of life. They consider
themselves as parts of the caste and in addition to their own names carry
the name of the caste; they may be legitimated in this by a division of
the caste, or by reception into the caste, or simply by usurpation of rank.
Only the sub-castes actually live a life of unified regulation, and they
alone are organized — in so far as a caste organization exists. Caste itself
often designates merely a social claim raised by these closed associations.
Often, but not always, the caste is the womb of the sub-caste; and on
rare occasions the caste is characterized by certain organizations common
to all sub-castes. More frequently, the caste has certain characteristics of
life-conduct traditionally common to all sub-castes. Nevertheless, as a
rule the unity of caste exists side by side with the unity of sub-castes.
There are sanctions against marriage and commensalism outside the
caste which are stronger than those imposed upon members of different
sub-castes within the same caste. Also, just as new sub-castes form them-
selves easily, the barriers between them may be more unstable; whereas
the barriers between communities once recognized as castes are main-
tained with extraordinary perseverance. . .
5: Castes and Traditionalism
K. Marx has characterized the pecuhar position of the artisan in the
Indian village — his dependence upon fixed payment in kind instead o£
412 SOCIAL STRUCTURES
upon production for the market — as the reason for the specific 'stabiHty
of the Asiatic peoples.' In this, Marx was correct.
In addition to the ancient village artisan, however, there was the mer-
chant and also the urban artisan; and the latter either worked for the
market or was economically dependent upon merchant guilds, as in the
Occident. India has always been predominantly a country of villages.
Yet the beginnings of cities were also modest in the Occident, especially
inland, and the position of the urban market in India was regulated by
the princes in many ways 'mercantilistically' — in a similar sense as in the
territorial states at the beginnings of modern times. In any case, in so far
as social stratification is concerned, not only the position of the village
artisan but also the caste order as a whole must be viewed as the bearer
of stability. One must not think of this effect too directly. One might
believe, for instance, that the ritual caste antagonisms had made impos-
sible the development of 'large-scale enterprises' with a division of labor
in the same workshop, and might consider this to be decisive. But such
is not the case.
The law of caste has proved just as elastic in the face of the necessities
of the concentration of labor in workshops as it did in the face of a need
for concentration of labor and service in the noble household. All do-
mestic servants required by the upper castes were ritually clean, as we
have seen. The principle, 'the artisan's hand is always clean in his occu-
pation,' ^* is a similar concession to the necessity of being allowed to
have fixtures made or repair work done, personal services, or other work
accomplished by wage workers not belonging to the household or by
other itinerants. Likewise, the workshop ^^ {ergasteriiim) was recog-
nized as 'clean.' Hence no ritual factor would have been in the way of
jointly using different castes in the same large workroom, just as little
as the ban upon interest during the Middle Ages, as such, hindered the
development of industrial capital, which did not even emerge in the
form of investment for fixed interest. The core of the obstacle did not
lie in such particular difficulties, which every one of the great religious
systems in its way has placed, or has seemed to place, in the way of the
modern economy. The core of the obstruction was rather imbedded in
the 'spirit' of the whole system. In modern times it has not always been
easy, but eventually it has been possible to employ Indian caste labor in
modern factories. And even earlier it was possible to exploit the labor
of Indian artisans capitaUstically in the forms usual elsewhere in colonial
areas, after the finished mechanism of modern capitalism once could be
INDIA: THE BRAHMAN AND THE CASTES 413
imported from Europe. Even if all this has come about, it must still be
considered extremely unlikely that the modern organization of indus-
trial capitalism would ever have originated on the basis of the caste
system. A ritual law in which every change of occupation, every change
in work technique, could result in ritual degradation is certainly not
capable of giving birth to economic and technical revolutions from
within itself, or even of facilitating the first germination of capitalism
in its midst.
The artisan's traditionalism, great in itself, was necessarily heightened
to the extreme by the caste order. Commercial capital, in its attempts to
organize industrial labor on the basis of the putting-out system, had to
face an essentially stronger resistance in India than in the Occident. The
traders themselves in their ritual seclusion remained in the shackles of
the typical Oriental merchant class, which by itself has never created a
modern capitalist organization of labor. The situation is as if none but
dififerent guest peoples, like the Jews, ritually exclusive toward one an-
other and toward third parties, were to follow their trades in one eco-
nomic area. Some of the great Hinduist merchant castes, particularly,
for instance, the Vania, have been called the 'Jews of India,' and, in this
negative sense, rightly so. They were, in part, virtuosos in unscrupulous
profiteering.
Nowadays a considerable tempo in the accumulation of wealth is sin-
gularly evident among castes which were formerly considered socially
degraded or unclean and which therefore were especially little burdened
with (in our sense) 'ethical' expectations addressed to themselves. In the
accumulation of wealth, such castes compete with others which formerly
monopolized the positions of scribes, officials, or collectors of farmed-out
taxes, as well as similar opportunities for politically determined earnings
typical of patrimonial states. Some of the capitalist entrepreneurs also
derive from the merchant castes. But in capitalist enterprise they could
keep up with the castes of literati only to the extent to which they ac-
quired the 'education' nowadays necessary — as has been occasionally
noticed above.^*' The training for trade is among them in part so intense
— as far as the reports allow for insight — that their specific 'gift' for
trading must by no means rest upon any 'natural disposition.' ^^ But we
have no indication that by themselves they could have created the rational
enterprise of modern capitalism.
Finally, modern capitalism undoubtedly would never have originated
from the circles of the completely traditionalist Indian trades. The Hin-
414 SOCIAL STRUCTURES
duist artisan is, nevertheless, notorious for his extreme industry; he is
considered to be essentially more industrious than is the Indian artisan,
who is of Islamic faith. And, on the whole, the Hinduist caste organiza-
tion has often developed a very great intensity of work and of property
accumulation within the ancient occupational castes. The intensity of
work holds more for handicraft and for individual ancient agricultural
castes. By the way, the Kunbis (for instance those in South India) achieve
a considerable accumulation of wealth, and nowadays, as a matter of
fact, it is in modern forms.
Modern industrial capitalism, in particular the factory, made its entry
into India under the British administration and with direct and strong
incentives. But comparatively speaking, how small is the scale and how
great the difficulties! After several hundred years of Elnglish domination
there are today only about 980,000 factory workers, that is, about one-
third of one per cent of the population.^ ^ In addition, the recruitment of
labor is difficult, even in those manufacturing industries with the highest
wages. (In Calcutta, labor often has to be recruited from the outside. In
one near-by village, hardly one-ninth of the people speak the native lan-
guage of Bengal.) Only the most recent acts for the protection of labor
have made factory work somewhat more popular. Female labor is found
only here and there, and then it is recruited from among the most
despised castes, although there are textile industries where women can
accomplish twice as much as men.
Indian factory labor shows exactly those traditionalist traits which also
characterized labor in Europe during the early period of capitalism. The
workers want to earn some money quickly in order to establish them-
selves independently. An increase in wage rate does not mean for them
an incentive for more work or for a higher standard of living, but the
reverse. They then take longer holidays because they can afford to do
so, or their wives decorate themselves with ornaments. To stay away
from work as one pleases is recognized as a matter of course, and the
worker retires with his meager savings to his home town as soon as
possible.^® He is simply a mere casual laborer. 'Discipline' in the Euro-
pean sense is an unknown idea to him. Hence, despite a fourfold cheaper
wage, competition with Europe is maintained easily only in the textile
industry, as two-and-a-half times as many workers and far more super-
vision are required. One advantage for the entrepreneurs is that the
caste division of the workers has so far made any trade union organiza-
tion and any real 'strike' impossible. As we have noticed, the work in
INDIA: THE BRAHMAN AND THE CASTES 415
the workshop is 'clean' and is performed joindy. (Only separate drinking
cups at the well are necessary, at least one for the Hindus and one for
the Islamites, and in sleeping quarters only men of the same caste sleep
together.) A fraternization of labor, however has (so far) been as little
possible as has been a coniuratio of the citizens.'"
JCVii. Ine C^ninese J^iterati
For twelve centuries social rank in China has been determined more by
quaUfication for office than by wealth. This qualification, in turn, has
been determined by education, and especially by examinations. China
has made literary education the yardstick of social prestige in the most
exclusive fashion, far more exclusively than did Europe during the
period of the humanists, or as Germany has done. Even during the
period of the Warring States, the stratum of aspirants for office who
were educated in literature — and originally this only meant that they
had a scriptural knowledge — extended through all the individual states.
Literati have been the bearers of progress toward a rational administra-
tion and of all 'intelligence.'
As with Brahmanism in India, in China the literati have been the
(decisive exponents of the unity of culture. Territories (as well as en-
claves) not administered by officials educated in literature, according to
the model of the orthodox state idea, were considered heterodox and
barbarian, in the same way as were the tribal territories that were within
the territory of Hinduism but not regulated by the Brahmans, as well
as landscapes not organized as polis by the Greeks. The increasingly
bureaucratic structure of Chinese polities and of their carriers has given
to the whole literary tradition of China its characteristic stamp. For more
than two thousand years the literati have definitely been the ruHng
stratum in China and they still are. Their dominance has been inter-
rupted; often it has been hotly contested; but always it has been renewed
and expanded. According to the Annals, the Emperor addressed the
literati, and them alone, as 'My lords' ^ for the first time in 1496.
It has been of immeasurable importance for the way in which Chinese
culture has developed that this leading stratum of intellectuals has never
From 'Konfuzianismus und Taoismus,' chap. 5, Der Literatcnstand, in Gesammelte
Aujsaetze ztir Religionssoziologie, vol. i, pp. 395-430. This chapter was originally included
in the Archiv series, 'Die Wirtschaftsethik der Weltreligionen' — see note to chap. ii.
416
THE CHINESE LITERATI 417
had the character of the clerics of Christianity or of Islam, or of Jewish
rabbis, or Indian Brahmans, or Ancient Egyptian priests, or Egyptian
or Indian scribes. It is significant that the stratum of literati in China,
although developed from ritual training, grew out of an education for
genteel laymen. The 'literati' of the feudal period, then officially called
puo che, that is, 'living libraries,' were first of all proficient in ritualism.
They did not, however, stem from the sibs of a priestly nobility, as did
the Rishi sibs of the Rig-Veda, or from a guild of sorcerers, as did in all
likelihood the Brahmans of the Atharva-Veda.
In China, the literati go back, at least in the main, to the descendants,
probably the younger sons, of feudal families who had acquired a literary
education, especially the knowledge of writing, and whose social posi-
tion rested upon this knowledge of writing and of literature. A plebeian
could also acquire a knowledge of writing, although, considering the
Chinese system of writing, it was difficult. But if the plebeian succeeded,
he shared the prestige of any other scholar. Even in the feudal period,
the stratum of literati was not hereditary or exclusive — another contrast
with the Brahmans.
Until late historical times, Vedic education rested upon oral transmis-
sion; it abhorred the fixing of tradition in writing, an abhorrence which
all guilds of organized professional magicians are apt to share. In con-
trast to this, in China the writing of the ritual books, of the calendar,
and of the Annals go back to prehistoric times." Even in the oldest tra-
dition the ancient scriptures were considered magical objects,^ and the
men conversant with them were considered holders of a magical char-
isma. As we shall see, these have been persistent facts in China. The
prestige of the literati has not consisted in a charisma of magical powers
of sorcery, but rather in a knowledge of writing and of literature as
such; perhaps their prestige originally rested in addition upon a knowl-
edge of astrology. But it has not been their task to aid private persons
through sorcery, to heal the sick, for instance, as the magician does. For
such purposes there were special professions, which we shall discuss
later. Certainly the significance of magic in China, as everywhere, was
a self-understood presupposition. Yet, so far as the interests of the com-
munity were concerned, it was up to its representatives to influence the
spirits.
The emperor as the supreme pontifex, as well as the princes, functioned
for the political community. And for the family, the head of the sib and
the housefather influenced the spirits. The fate of the community, aboye
41 8 SOCIAL STRUCTURES
all o£ the harvest, has been influenced since olden times by rational
means, that is, by water regulation; and therefore the correct 'order' of
administration has always been the basic means of influencing the world
of the spirits.
Apart from knowledge of scriptures as a means of discerning tradi-
tion, a knowledge of the calendar and of the stars was required for
discerning the heavenly will and, above all, for knowing the dies fasti
and nefasti, and it seems that the position of the literati has also evolved
from the dignified role of the court astrologer.* The scribes, and they
alone, could recognize this important order ritually (and originally prob-
ably also by means of horoscopes) and accordingly advise the appropriate
political authorities. An anecdote of the Annals ^ shows the results in a
striking manner.
In the feudal state of the Wei, a proved general — U KI, the alleged
author of the textbook in ritually correct strategy which was authoritative
until our time — and a literary man competed for the position of first
minister. A violent dispute arose between the two after the literary man
had been appointed to the post. He readily admitted that he could
neither conduct wars nor master similar political tasks in the manner
of the general. But when the general thereupon declared himself to be
the better man, the literary man remarked that a revolution threatened
the dynasty, whereupon the general admitted without any hesitation
that the Hterary man was the better man to prevent it.
Only the adept of scriptures and of tradition has been considered
competent for correctly ordering the internal administration and the
charismatically correct life conduct of the prince, ritually and politically.
In sharpest contrast to the Jewish prophets, who were essentially inter-
ested in foreign policy, the Chinese literati-politicians, trained in ritual,
were primarily oriented toward problems of internal administration,
even if these problems involved absolute power politics, and even though
while in charge of the prince's correspondence and of the chancellery
they might personally be deeply involved in the guidance of diplom_acy.
This constant orientation toward problems of the 'correct' adminis-
tration of the state determined a far-reaching, practical, and political
rationalism among the intellectual stratum of the feudal period. In con-
trast to the strict traditionalism of the later period, the Annals occasion-
ally reveal the literati to be audacious political innovators.® Their pride
in education knew no limit,'' and the princes — at least according to the
lay-out of the Annals — paid them great deference.^ Their intimate rela-
THE CHINESE LITERATI 419
tions to the service of patrimonial princes existed from ancient times
and has been decisive for the peculiar character of the literati.
The origin of the literati is veiled from us in darkness. Apparently
they were the Chinese augurs. The pontifical Cesaro-papist character of
imperial power has been decisive for their position, and the character of
Chinese literature has also been determined by it. There were official
Annals, magically proved hymns of war and sacrifice, calendars, as well
as books of ritual and ceremony. With their knowledge the literati sup-
ported the character of the state, which was in the nature of an ecclesias-
tic and compulsory institution; they took the state for granted as an
axiomatic presupposition.
In their literature, the literati created the concept of 'office,' above all,
the ethos of 'official duty' and of the 'public weal.' ^ If one may trust the_
Annals, the literati, being adherents of the bureaucratic organization of
the state as a compulsory institution, were opponents of feudalism from
the very beginning. This is quite understandable because, from the stand- -^
point of their interests, the administrators should be only men who were
personally qualified by a literary education.^" On the other hand, they
claimed for themselves to have shown the princes the way toward
autonomous administration, toward government manufacture of arms
and construction of fortifications, ways and means by which the princes
became 'masters of their lands.' ^^
This close relation of the literati to princely service came about during
the struggle of the prince with the feudal powers. It distinguishes the
Chinese literati from the educated laymen of Hellas, as well as from
those of Ancient India {Kshatriya). It makes them similar to the Brah-
mans, from whom, however, they differ greatly in their ritualist subor-
dination under a Cesaro-papist pontifex. In addition, no caste order has
existed in China, a fact intimately connected with the literary education
and the subordination under a pontifex.
The relation of the literati to the office has changed its nature [in the
course of time]. During the Period of the Feudal States, the various
courts competed for the services of the Hterati, who were seeking oppor-
tunities for power and, we must not forget, for the best chan-ces for
income.^^ A whole stratum of vagrant 'sophists' {che-she) emerged,
comparable to the wayfaring knights and scholars of the Occidental
Middle Ages. As we shall later see, there were also Chinese literati who,
in principle, remained unattached to any office. This free and mobile
stratum of literati were carriers of philosophical schools and antagonisms.
420 SOCIAL STRUCTURES
a situation comparable to those of India, of Hellenic Antiquity, and of
the Middle Ages with its monks and scholars. Yet, the literati as such
felt themselves to be a unitary status group. They claimed common
status honors ^^ and were united in the feeling of being the sole bearers
of the homogeneous culture of China.
The relation of the Chinese literati to princely service as the normal
source of income differentiated them as a status group from the philos-
ophers of Antiquity and from at least the educated laymen of India,
who, in the main, were socially anchored in fields remote from any
office. As a rule, the Chinese literati strove for princely service both as
/ a source of income and as a normal field of activity. Confucius, like
Lao-tse, was an official before he lived as a teacher and writer without
attachment to office. We shall see that this relation to state-office (or
office in a 'church state') was of fundamental importance for the nature
of the mentality of this stratum. For this orientation became increasingly
important and exclusive. The opportunities of the princes to compete
for the literati ceased to exist in the unified empire. The literati and
their disciples then came to compete for the existing offices, and this
development could not fail to result in a unified orthodox doctrine ad-
justed to the situation. This doctrine was to be Confucianism.
As Chinese prebendalism grew, the originally free mental mobility of
the literati came to a halt. This development was fully underway even
at the time when the Annals and most of the systematic writings of the
literati originated and when the sacred books, which Shi-Hwang-Ti had
destroyed, were 'rediscovered.' ^* They were 'rediscovered' in order that
they might be revised, retouched, and interpreted by the literati and there-
with gain canonical value.
It is evident from the Annals that this whole development came about
with the pacification of the empire, or rather that it was pushed to its
conclusions during this period. Everywhere war has been the business
of youth, and the sentence sexagenarios de ponte has been a slogan of
warriors directed against the 'senate.' The Chinese literati, however, v/ere
the 'old men,' or they represented the old men. The Annals, as a para-
digmatic public confession of the prince Mu kong (of Tsin), transmitted
the idea that the prince had sinned by having listened to 'youth' (the
warriors) and not to the 'elders,' who, although having no strength, did
have experience." In fact, this was the decisive point in the turn toward
pacifism and therewith toward traditionalism. Tradition displaced char-
\ isma.
THE CHINESE LITERATI 421
I : Confucius
Even the oldest sections of the classic writings connected with the
name of Kung Tse, that is, with Confucius as editor, permit us to recog-
nize the conditions of charismatic warrior kings. (Confucius died in the
}'ear 478 B.C.) The heroic songs of the hymnbook (Sln-l{ing) tell of
kings fighting from war chariots, as do the Hellenic and Indian epics.
But considering their character as a whole, even these songs are no
longer heralds of individual, and in general, purely human heroism, as
are the Homeric and Germanic epics. Even when the Shi-f{ing was edited,
the king's army had nothing of the romance of the warrior followings
or the Homeric adventures. The army already had the character of a
disciplined bureaucracy, and above all it had 'officers.' The kings, even
in the Shi-kjng no longer win simply because they are the greater heroes.
And that is decisive for the spirit of the army. They win because before
the Spirit of Heaven they are morally right and because their charismatic
virtues are superior, whereas their enemies are godless criminals who,
by oppression and trespass upon the ancient customs, have wronged
their subjects' weal and thus have forgone their charisma. Victory is the
occasion for moralizing reflections rather than heroic joy. In contrast to
the sacred scriptures of almost all other ethics, one is struck at once by
the lack of any 'shocking' expression, of any even conceivably 'indecent'
image. Obviously, a very systematic expurgation has taken place here,
and this may well have been the specific contribution of Confucius.
The pragmatic transformation of the ancient tradition in the Annals,
produced by official historiography and by the literati, obviously went
beyond the priestly paradigms performed in the Old Testament, for
example, in the Book of Judges. The chronicle expressly ascribed to
Confucius' authorship contains the driest and most sober enumeration
of military campaigns and punitive expeditions against rebels; in this
respect it is comparable to the hieroglyphic protocols of Assyria. If Con-
fucius really expressed the opinion that his character could be recog-
nized with special clarity from this work — as tradition maintains — then
one would have to endorse the view of those (Chinese and European)
scholars who interpret this to mean that his characteristic achievement
was this systematic and pragmatic correction of facts from the point of
view of 'propriety.' His work must have appeared in this light to his
422 SOCIAL STRUCTURES
contemporaries, but for us its pragmatic meaning, in the main, has
become opaque.^®
The princes and ministers of the classics act and speak hke paradigms
of rulers whose ethical conduct is rewarded by Heaven. Officialdom and
the promotion of officials according to merit are topics for glorification.
The princely realms are still ruled hereditarily; some of the local offices
are hereditary fiefs; but the classics view this system skeptically, at least
the hereditary offices. Ultimately they consider this system to be merely
provisional. In theory, this pertains even to the hereditary nature of
the dignity of the emperor. The ideal and legendary emperors (Yao
and Shun) designate their successors (Shun and Yii) without regard to
birth, from the circle of their ministers and over the heads of their own
sons, solely according to their personal charisma as certified by the high-
est court officials. The emperors designate their ministers in the same
way, and only the third Emperor, Yii, does not name his first minister
(Y) but his son (Ki) to become his successor.
/^ In contrast with the old and genuine documents and monuments, one
i looks in vain for genuinely heroic minds in most of the classic writings.
/The traditional view held by Confucius is that caution is the better part
\ii valor and that it ill behooves the wise man to risk his own life in-
appropriately. The profound pacification of the country, especially after
the rule of the Mongols, greatly enhanced this mood. The empire became
an empire of peace. According to Mencius, there were no 'just' wars
within the frontiers of the empire, as it was considered as one unit.
Compared to the size of the empire, the army had finally become very
tiny. After having separated the training of the literati from that of the
knights, the Emperors retained sport and literary contests and gave
military certificates ^'^ in addition to the state examinations of the literati.
Yet for a long time the attainment of such military certificates had hardly
any connection with an actual career in the army.^^ And the fact re-
mained that the military were just as despised in China as they were in
England for two hundred years, and that a cultivated literary man
would not engage in social intercourse on an equal footing with army
officers.^''
2: The Development of the Examination System
During the period of the central monarchy, the mandarins became a
\status group of certified claimants to office prebends. All categories of
THE CHINESE LITERATI 423
Chinese civil servants were recruited from their midst, and their quaU-
fication for office and rank depended upon the number of examinations
they had successfully passed.
These examinations consisted of three major degrees,^" which were
considerably augmented by intermediary, repetitive, and preliminary
examinations as well as by numerous special conditions. For the first
degree alone there were ten types of examinations. The question usually
put to a stranger of unknown rank was how many examinations he had
passed. Thus, in spite of the ancestor cult, how many ancestors one had
was not decisive for social rank. The very reverse held: it depended upon
one's official rank whether one was allowed to have an ancestral temple
(or a mere table of ancestors, which was the case with illiterates). How
many ancestors one was permitted to mention was determined by official
rank.^^ Even the rank of a city god in the Pantheon depended upon the
rank of the city's mandarin.
In the Confucian period (sixth to fifth century B.C.), the possibility of
ascent into official positions as well as the system of examinations was
still unknown. It appears that as a rule, at least in the feudal states, the
'great families' were in the possession of power. It was not until the
Han dynasty — which was established by a parvenu — that the bestowal
of offices according to merit was raised to the level of a principle. And
not until the Tang dynasty, in .4^690, were regulations set up for the
highest degree. As we have already mentioned, it is highly probable that
literary education, perhaps with a few exceptions, was at first actually,
and perhaps also legally, monopolized by the 'great families,' just as the
Vedic education in India was monopolized. Vestiges of this continued to
the end. Members of the imperial sib, although not freed from all exam-
inations, were freed from the examination for the first degree. And the
trustees, whom every candidate for examinations, until recently, had to
name, had to testify to the candidate's 'good family background.' During
modern times this testimony has only meant the exclusion of descendants
of barbers, bailiiTs, musicians, janitors, carriers, and others. Yet alongside
this exclusion there was the institution of 'candidates for the manda-
rinate,' that is, the descendants of mandarins enjoyed a special and pre-
ferred position in fixing the maximum quota of examination candidates
from each province. The promotion lists used the official formula 'from
a mandarin family and from the people.' The sons of well-deserved offi-
cials held the lowest degree as a title of honor. All of which represent
residues of ancient conditions.
424 SOCIAL STRUCTURES
The examination system has been fully carried through since the end
i of the seventh century. This system was one of the means the patrimonial
ruler used in preventing the formation of a closed estate, which, in the
manner of feudal vassals and office nobles, would have monopolized the
rights to the office prebends. The first traces of the examination system
seem to emerge about the time of Confucius (and Huang K'an) in the
sub-state of Chin, a locality which later became autocratic. The selection
of candidates was determined essentially by military merit. Yet, even the
Li Chi and the Chou hi" demand, in a quite rationalist way, that the
district chiefs examine their lower officials periodically with regard to
their morals, and then propose to the emperor which of them should be
promoted. In the unified state of the Han emperors, pacifism began to
direct the selection of officials. The power of the literati was tremendously
consolidated after they had succeeded in elevating the correct Kuang wu
to the throne in a.d. 21 and in maintaining him against the popular
'usurper' Wang Mang. During the struggle for prebends, which raged
during the following period and which we shall deal with later, the
literati developed into a unified status group.
Even today the Tang dynasty irradiates the glory of having been the
actual creator of China's greatness and culture. The Tang dynasty, for
the first time, regulated the literati's position and established colleges for
their education (in the seventh century). It also created the Han lin yuan,
the so-called 'academy,' which first edited the Annals in order to gain
precedents, and then controlled the emperor's correct deportment.
Finally, after the Mongol storms, the national Ming dynasty in the
fourteenth century decreed statutes which, in essence, were definitive.^^
Schools were to be set up in every village, one for every twenty-five
families. As the schools were not subsidized, the decree remained a dead
letter — or rather we have already seen which powers gained control over
the schools. Officials selected the best pupils and enrolled a certain num-
ber in the colleges. In the main, these colleges have decayed, although in
part they have been newly founded. In 1382, prebends in the form of
rice rents were set aside for the 'students.' In 1393, the number of students
was fixed. After 1370, only examined men had claims to offices.
At once a fight set in between the various regions, especially between
the North and the South. The South even then supplied candidates for
examinations who were more cultured, having experienced a more
comprehensive environment. But the North was the military foundation
^ stone of the empire. Hence, the emperor intervened and punished (!)
I
THE CHINESE LITERATI 425
the examiners who had given the 'first place' to a Southerner. Separate
lists for the North and the South were set up, and moreover, a struggle
for the patronage of offices began immediately. Even in 1387 special
examinations were given to officers' sons. The officers and officials, how-
ever, went further, and demanded the right to designate their successors,
which meant a demand for re-feudalization. In 1393 this was conceded,
but in the end only in a modified form. The candidates presented were
preferentially enrolled in the colleges, and prebends were to be reserved
for them: in 1465 for three sons, in 1482 for one son. In 1453 we meet
with the purchase of college places, and in 1454 with the purchase of
offices. During the fifteenth century, as is always the case, these develop-
ments arose from the need for military funds. In 1492 these measures
were abolished, but in 1529 they were reintroduced.
The departments also fought against one another. The Board of Rites
was in charge of the examinations after 736, but the Board of Civil
Office appointed the officials. The examined candidates were not infre-
quently boycotted by the latter department, the former answering by
going on strike during the examinations. Formally, the minister of rites,
actually, the minister of offices (the major-domo) were in the end the
most powerful men in China. Then merchants, who were expected to
be less 'stingy,' came into office."* Of course, this hope was quite unjus-
tified. The Manchus favored the old traditions and thus the literati and,
as far as possible, 'purity' in the distribution of offices. But now, as before,
three routes to office existed side by side: (i) imperial favors for the sons
of the 'princely' families (examination privileges) ; (2) easy examinations
(officially every three to six years) for the lower officials by the higher
officials who controlled patronage; this inevitably led each time to adr
vancement also to higher positions; (3) the only legal way: to qualify
effectively and purely by examination.
In the main, the system of examinations has actually fulfilled the
functions as conceived by the emperor. Occasionally (in 1372), it was
suggested to the emperor — one can imagine by whom — that he draw
the conclusion from the orthodox charisma of virtues by abolishing the
examinations, since virtue alone legitimizes and qualifies. This conclusion
was soon dropped, which is quite understandable. For after all, both
parties, emperor and graduates, had a stake in the examination system,
or at least they thought they had. From the emperor's standpoint, the
examination system corresponded entirely to the role which the mjestnit-
shestvo, a technically heterogeneous means, of Russian despotism played
426 SOCIAL STRUCTURES
for the Russian nobility. The system facilitated a competitive struggle
for prebends and offices among the candidates, which stopped them from
joining together into a feudal office nobility. Admittance to the ranks of
aspirants was open to everybody who was proved to be educationally
qualified. The examination system thus fulfilled its purpose.
3: The Typological Position of Confucian Education
We shall now discuss the position of this educational system among
the great types of education. To be sure, we cannot here, in passing,
give a sociological typology of pedagogical ends and means, but perhaps
some comments may be in place.
Historically, the two polar opposites in the field of educational ends
are: to awaken charisma, that is, heroic qualities or magical gifts; and,
to impart specialized expert training. The first type corresponds to the
charismatic structure of domination; the latter type corresponds to the
rational and bureaucratic (modern) structure of domination. The two
types do not stand opposed, with no connections or transitions between
them. The warrior hero or the magician also needs special training, and
the expert official is generally not trained exclusively for knowledge.
However, they are polar opposites of types of education and they form
the most radical contrasts. Between them are found all those types which
aim at cultivating the pupil for a conduct of life, whether it is of a mun-
dane or of a religious character. In either case, the life conduct is the
conduct of a status group.
The charismatic procedure of ancient magical asceticism and the
hero trials, which sorcerers and warrior heroes have applied to boys,
tried to aid the novice to acquire a 'new soul,' in the animist sense, and
hence, to be reborn. Expressed in our language, this means that they
merely wished to awaken and to test a capacity which was considered
a purely personal gift of grace. For one can neither teach nor train for
charisma. Either it exists in mice, or it is infiltrated through a miracle of
magical rebirth — otherwise it cannot be attained.
Speciahzed and expert schooling attempts to train the pupil for prac-
tical usefulness for administrative purposes — in the organization of pub-
lic authorities, business offices, workshops, scientific or industrial labora-
tories, disciplined armies. In principle, this can be accomplished with
anybody, though to varying extent.
The pedagogy of cultivation, finally, attempts to educate a cultivated
THE CHINESE LITERATI 427
type of man, whose nature depends on the decisive stratum's respective
ideal of cultivation. And this means to educate a man for a certain
internal and external deportment in life. In principle this can be done
w^ith everybody, only the goal dififers. If a separate stratum of warriors
form the decisive status group — as in Japan — education will aim at mak-
ing the pupil a stylized knight and courtier, who despises the pen-pushers
as the Japanese Samurai have despised them. In particular cases, the
stratum may display great variations of type. If a priestly stratum is
decisive, it will aim at making the disciple a scribe, or at least an intel-
lectual, likewise of greatly varying character. In reality, none of these
types ever occurs in pure form. The numerous combinations and inter-
mediary links cannot be discussed in this context. What is important
here is to define the position of Chinese education in terms of these
forms.
The holdovers of the primeval charismatic training for regeneration,
the milk name, the previously discussed initiation rites of youth, the
bridegroom's change of name, and so on, have for a long time in China
been a formula (in the manner of the Protestant confirmation) standing
beside the testing of educational qualifications. Such tests have been
monopoHzed by the political authorities. The educational qualification,
however, in view of the educational means employed, has been a 'cul-
tural' qualification, in the sense of a general education. It was of a
similar, yet of a more specific nature than, for instance, the humanist
educational qualification of the Occident.
In Germany, such an education, until recently and almost exclusively,
was a prerequisite for the official career leading to positions of command
in civil and military administration. At the same time this humanist
education has stamped the pupils who were to be prepared for such
careers as belonging socially to the cultured status group. In Germany,
however — and this is a very important difference between China and
the Occident — rational and specialized expert training has been added
to, and in part has displaced, this educational status qualification.
The Chinese examinations did not test any special skills, as do our 1
modern rational and bureaucratic examination regulations for jurists, i
medical doctors, or technicians. Nor did the Chinese examinations test J
the possession of charisma, as do the typical 'trials' of magicians and \
bachelor leagues. To be sure, we shall presently see the qualifications^^
which this statement requires. Yet it holds at least for the technique of
the examinations.
428 SOCIAL STRUCTURES
The examinations of China tested whether or not the candidate's mind
was thoroughly steeped in hterature and whether or not he possessed the
ways of thought suitable to a cultured man and resulting from cultivation
in hterature. These qualifications held far more specifically with China
than with the German humanist gymnasium. Today one is used to jus-
tifying the gymnasium by pointing to the practical value of formal
education through the study of Antiquity. As far as one may judge from
the assignments "^ given to the pupils of the lower grades in China, they
were rather similar to the essay topics assigned to the top grades of a
German gymnasium, or perhaps better still, to the select class of a Ger-
man girls' college. All the grades were intended as tests in penmanship,
style, mastery of classic writings,"'^ and finally — similar to our lessons in
religion, history, and German — in conformity with the prescribed mental
outlook."^ In our context it is decisive that this education was on the one
hand purely secular in nature, but, on the other, was bound to the fixed
norm of the orthodox interpretation of the classic authors. It was a highly
exclusive and bookish literary education.
The literary character of education in India, Judaism, Christianity,
and Islam resulted from the fact that it was completely in the hands of
Brahmans and Rabbis trained in literature, or of clerics and monks of
book religions who were professionally trained in literature. As long as
education was Hellenic and not 'Hellenist,' the Hellenic man of culture
was and remained primarily ephebe and hoplite. The effect of this was
nowhere thrown into relief more clearly than in the conversation of the
Symposium, where it is said of Plato's Socrates that he had never
'flinched' in the field, to use a student term. For Plato to state this is
obviously at least of equal importance with everything else he makes
Alcibiades say.
During the Middle Ages, the military education of the knight, and
later the genteel education of the Renaissance salon, provided a corre-
sponding though socially different supplement to the education trans-
mitted by books, priests, and monks. In Judaism and in China, such a
counterbalance was, in part altogether, and in part as good as altogether,
absent. In India, as in China, the literary means of education consisted
substantially of hymns, epic tales, and casuistry in ritual and ceremony.
In India, however, this was underpinned by cosmogonic as well as reli-
gious and philosophical speculations. Such speculations were not entirely
absent from the classics and from the transmitted commentaries in China,
but obviously they have always played only a very minor role there. The
THE CHINESE LITERATI 429
Chinese authors developed rational systems of social ethics. The educated
stratum of China simply has never been an autonomous status group of
scholars, as were the Brahmans, but rather a stratum of officials and
aspirants to office.
Higher education in China has not always had the character it has
today. The public educational institutions {Pan hting) of the feudal
princes taught the arts of the dance and of arms in addition to the knowl-
edge of rites and literature. Only the pacification of the empire into a
patrimonial and unified state, and finally, the pure system of examina-
tions for office, transformed this older education, which was far closer to
early Hellenic education, into what has existed into the twentieth century.
Medieval education, as represented in the authoritative and orthodox
Siao-Hio, that is 'schoolbook,' still placed considerable weight upon
dance and music. To be sure, the old war dance seems to have existed
only in rudimentary form, but for the rest, the children, according to age
groups, learned certain dances. The purpose of this was stated to be the
taming of evil passions. If a child did not do well during his instruction,
one should let him dance and sing. Music improves man, and rites and
music form the basis of self-control."^ The magical significance of music
was a primary aspect of all this. 'Correct music' — that is, music used
according to the old rules and strictly following the old measures — ^'keeps
the spirits in their fetters.' "^ As late as the Middle Ages, archery and
charioteering were still considered general educational subjects for gen-
teel children.^" But this was essentially mere theory. Going through the
schoolbook one finds that from the seventh year of life, domestic educa-
tion was strictly separated according to sex; it consisted essentially of
instilling a ceremonial, which went far beyond all Occidental ideas, a
ceremonial especially of piety and awe toward parents and all superiors
and older persons in general. For the rest, the schoolbook consisted almost
exclusively of rules for self-control.
This domestic education was supplemented by school instruction.
There was supposed to be a grade school in every Hsien. Higher educa-
tion presupposed the passing of the first entrance examination. Thus two
things were peculiar to Chinese higher education. First, it was entirely
non-military and purely literary, as all education established by priest-
hoods has been. Second, its literary character, that is, its written charac-
ter, was pushed to extremes. In part, this appears to have been a result
of the peculiarity of the Chinese script and of the literary art which grew
out of it.^^
430 SOCIAL STRUCTURES
As the script retained its pictorial character and was not rationahzed
into an alphabetical form, such as the trading peoples of the Mediter-
ranean created, the literary product was addressed at once to both the
eyes and the ears, and essentially more to the former. Any 'reading aloud'
of the classic books was in itself a translation from the pictorial script
into the (unwritten) word. The visual character, especially of the old
script, was by its very nature remote from the spoken word. The mono-
syllabic language requires sound perception as well as the perception of
pitched tone. With its sober brevity and its compulsion of syntactical
logic, it stands in extreme contrast to the purely visual character of script.
But in spite of this, or rather — as Grube has shown in an ingenious way
\ — in part because of the very rational qualities of its structure, the Chinese
tongue has been unable to offer its services to poetry or to systematic
(thinking. Nor could it serve the development of the oratorical arts as
have the structures of the Hellenic, Latin, French, German, and Russian
languages, each in its own way. The stock of written symbols remained
far richer than the stock of monosyllabic words, which was inevitably
quite delimited. Hence, all phantasy and ardor fled from the poor and
formalistic intellectualism of the spoken word and into the quiet beauty
of the written symbols. The usual poetic speech was held fundamentally
subordinate to the script. Not speaking but writing and reading were
valued artistically and considered as worthy of a gentleman, for they
were receptive of the artful products of script. Speech remained truly an
affair of the plebs. This contrasts sharply with Hellenism, to which
conversation meant everything and a translation into the style of the
dialogue was the adequate form of all experience and contemplation. In
China the very finest blossoms of literary culture lingered, so to speak,
deaf and mute in their silken splendor. They were valued far higher
than was the art of drama, which, characteristically, flowered during the
period of the Mongols.
Among the renowned social philosophers, Meng Tse (Mencius) made
systematic use of the dialogue form. That is precisely why he readily
appears to us as the one representative of Confucianism who matured to
full 'lucidity.' The very strong impact upon us of the 'Confucian Ana-
lects' (as Legge called them) also rests upon the fact that in China (as
occasionally elsewhere) the doctrine is clothed in the form of (in part,
probably authentic) sententious responses of the master to questions
from the disciples. Hence, to us, it is transposed into the form of speech.
For the rest, the epic literature contains the addresses of the early war-
THE CHINESE LITERATI 43I
rior kings to the army; in their lapidar forcefulness, they are highly
impressive. Part of the didactic Analects consists of speeches, the charac-
ter of which rather corresponds to pontifical 'allocutions.' Otherwise
speech plays no part in the official literature. Its lack of development, as
we shall see presently, has been determined by both social and political
reasons.
In spite of the logical qualities of the language, Chinese thought has "~^)
remained rather stuck in the pictorial and the descriptive. The power of^
logos, of defining and reasoning, has not been accessible to the Chinese, j
Yet, on the other hand, this purely scriptural education detached thought
from gesture and expressive movement still more than is usual with the
literary nature of any education. For two years before he was introduced
to their meaning, the pupil learned merely to paint about 2,000 characters.
Furthermore, the examiners focused attention upon style, the art of
versification, a firm grounding in the classics, and finally, upon the ex-
pressed mentality of the candidate.
The lack of all training in calculation, even in grade schools, is a very^
striking feature of Chinese education. The idea of positional numbers, J
however, was developed ^^ during the sixth century before Christ, that
is, during the period of warring states. A calculative attitude in commer-
cial intercourse had permeated all strata of the population, and the final
calculations of the administrative offices were as detailed as they were
difficult to survey, for reasons mentioned above. The medieval school-
book {Siao-Hio i, 29) enumerates calculation among the six 'arts.' And
at the time of the warring states, there existed a mathematics which
allegedly included trigonometries as well as the rule of three and com-
mercial calculation. Presumably this literature, apart from fragments, was
lost during Shi-Hwang-Ti's burning of the books.^^ In any case, calcula-
tion is not even mentioned in later pedagogy. And in the course of his-
tory, calculation receded more and more into the background of the
education of the genteel mandarins, finally to disappear altogether. The
educated merchants learned calculation in their business offices. Since the
empire had been unified and the tendency toward a rational administra-
tion of the state had weakened, the mandarin became a genteel literary
man, who was not one to occupy himself with the 'a/oXri' of calculation.
The mundane character of this education contrasts with other educa-
tional systems, which are nevertheless related to it by their literary stamp.
The literary examinations in China were purely political affairs. Instruc-
432 SOCIAL STRUCTURES
tion was given partly by individual and private tutors and partly by the
teaching staffs of college foundations. But no priest took part in them.
The Christian universities of the Middle Ages originated from the
practical and ideal need for a rational, mundane, and ecclesiastic legal
doctrine and a rational (dialectical) theology. The universities of Islam,
following the model of the late Roman law schools and of Christian
theology, practiced sacred case law and the doctrine of faith; the Rabbis
practiced interpretation of the law; the philosophers' schools of the
Brahmans engaged in speculative philosophy, in ritual, as well as in
sacred law. Always ecclesiastic dignitaries or theologians have formed
either the sole teaching staff or at least its basic corps. To this corps were
attached mundane teachers, in whose hands the other branches of study
rested. In Christianity, Islam, and Hinduism, prebends were the goals,
and for the sake of them educational certificates were striven after. In
addition, of course, the aspirant wished to qualify for ritual activity and
the curing of souls. With the ancient Jewish teachers (precursors of the
Rabbis), who worked 'gratis,' the goal was solely to qualify for instruct-
ing the laymen in the law, for this instruction was religiously indispen-
sable. But in all this, education was always bound by sacred or cultic
scriptures. Only the Hellenic philosophers' schools engaged in an educa-
tion solely of laymen and freed from all ties to scriptures, freed from all
direct interests in prebends, and solely devoted to the education of
Hellenic 'gentlemen' {Caloicagathoi) .
Chinese education served the interest in prebends and was tied to a
script, but at the same time it was purely lay education, partly of a
ritualist and ceremonial character and partly of a traditionalist and ethical
character. The schools were concerned with neither mathematics nor
I natural sciences, with neither geography nor grammar. Chinese
philosophy itself did not have a speculative, systematic character, as
Hellenic philosophy had and as, in part and in a different sense, Indian
and Occidental theological schooling had. Chinese philosophy did not
have a rational-formalist character, as Occidental jurisprudence has. And
it was not of an empirical casuist character, as Rabbinic, Islamite, and,
partly, Indian philosophy. Chinese philosophy did not give birth to
scholasticism because it was not professionally engaged in logic, as were
the philosophies of the Occident and the Middle East, both of them
being based on Hellenist thought. The very concept of logic remained
absolutely alien to Chinese philosophy, which was bound to script, was
I
I
THE CHINESE LITERATI 433
not dialectical, and remained oriented to purely practical problems as
well as to the status interests of the patrimonial bureaucracy.
This means that the problems that have been basic to all Occidental 1
philosophy have remained unknown to Chinese philosophy, a fact which
comes to the fore in the Chinese philosophers' manner of categorical
thought, and above all in Confucius. With the greatest practical matter-
of-factness, the intellectual tools remained in the form of parables, re- 1
minding us of the means of expression of Indian chieftains rather than \
of rational argimientation. This holds precisely for some of the truly ^
ingenious statements ascribed to Confucius. The absence of speech is
palpable, that is, speech as a rational means for attaining political and
forensic effects, speech as it was first cultivated in the Hellenic polis.
Such speech could not be developed in a bureaucratic patrimonial state
which had no formalized justice. Chinese justice remained, in part, a
summary Star Chamber procedure (of the high officials), and, in part, it
relied solely on documents. No oral pleading of cases existed, only the
written petitions and oral hearings of the parties concerned. The Chinese
bureaucracy was interested in conventional propriety, and these bonds
prevailed and worked in the same direction of obstructing forensic
speech. The bureaucracy rejected the argument of 'ultimate' speculative
problems as practically sterile. The bureaucracy considered such argu-
ments improper and rejected them as too delicate for one's own position
because of the danger of innovations.
If the technique and the substance of the examinations were purely
mundane in nature and represented a sort of 'cultural examination
for the literati,' the popular view of them was very different : it gave them
a magical-charismatic meaning. In the eyes of the Chinese masses, a~l
successfully examined candidate and official was by no means a mere;
applicant for office qualified by knowledge. He was a proved holder of,
magical qualities, which, as we shall see, were attached to the certified |
mandarin just as much as to an examined and ordained priest of anJ
ecclesiastic institution of grace, or to a magician tried and proved by his
guild.^*
The position of the successfully examined candidate and official cor-
responded in important points, for example, to that of a Catholic chap-
lain. For the pupil to complete his period of instruction and his exam-
inations did not mean the end of his immaturity. Having passed the
'baccalaureate,' the candidate came under the discipline of the school
director and the examiners. In case of bad conduct his name was dropped
434 SOCIAL STRUCTURES
from the lists. Under certain conditions his hands were caned. In the
locaUties' secluded cells for examinations, candidates not infrequently
fell seriously ill and suicides occurred. According to the charismatic inter-
pretation of the examination as a magical 'trial,' such happenings were
considered proof of the wicked conduct of the person in question. After
the applicant for office had luckily passed the examinations for the higher
degrees with their strict seclusion, and after, at long last, he had moved
into an office corresponding to the number and rank of examinations
passed and depending on his patronage, he still remained throughout his
life under the control of the school. And in addition to being under the
authority of his superiors, he was under the constant surveillance and
criticism of the censors. Their criticism extended even to the ritualist
correctness of the very Son of Heaven. The impeachment of the offi-
-cials^^ was prescribed from olden times and was valued as meritorious
/ in the way of the Catholic confession of sins. Periodically, as a rule every
' three years, his record of conduct, that is, a list of his merits and faults
as determined by official investigations of the censors and his superiors,
'\ was to be published in the Imperial Gazette^^ According to his published
/grades, he was allowed to retain his post, was promoted, or was de-
V moted.^^ As a rule, not only objective factors determined the outcome of
i these records of conduct. What mattered was the 'spirit,' and this spirit
Y was that of a life-long pennalism by office authority.
4: The Status-Honor of the Literati
As a status group, the literati were privileged, even those who had only
/been examined but were not employed. Soon after their position had
/ been strengthened, the literati enjoyed status privileges. The most im-
portant of these were: first, freedom from the sordida munera, the
corvee; second, freedom from corporal punishment; third, prebends
(stipends). For a long time this third privilege has been rather severely
reduced in its bearing, through the financial position of the state. The
Seng (baccalaureate) still got stipends of $10.00 yearly, with the condition
that they had to submit every three to six years to the Chu jen or Master's
examination. But this, of course, did not mean anything decisive. The ™
burden of the education and of the periods of nominal pay actually fell ^
upon the sib, as we have seen. The sib hoped to recover their expenses
by seeing their member finally enter the harbor of an office. The first two
privileges were of importance to the very end; for the corvee still existed,
THE CHINESE LITERATI 435
although to a decreasing extent. The rod, however, remained the national
means of punishment. Caning stemmed from the terrible pedagogy of
corporal punishment in the elementary schools of China. Its unique char-
acter is said to have consisted in the following traits, which remind one
of our Middle Ages but were obviously developed to even greater ex-
tremes.^® The fathers of the sibs or of the villages compiled the 'red
cards,' that is, the list of pupils (Kuan-tan). Then for a certain period
they engaged a schoolmaster from among the over-supply of literati
without office, which always existed. The ancestral temple (or other
unused rooms) was the preferred schoolroom. From early until late the
howling in unison of the written 'lines' was to be heard. All day long
the pupil was in a condition of mental daze, which is denoted by a
Chinese character, the component parts of which signify a pig in the
weeds (meng). The student and graduate received slaps on the palm of
his hand, no longer on what, in the terminology of German mothers of
the old hue, was called 'the God-ordained spot.'
The graduates of high rank were entirely free from such punishment
so long as they were not demoted. And in the Middle Ages freedom
from the corvee was firmly established. Nevertheless, in spite and also
because of these privileges, the development of feudal ideas of honor was
impossible on their basis. Moreover, as has been observed, these privi-
leges were precarious because they were immediately voided in the case
of demotion, which frequently occurred. Feudal honor could not be
developed on the bases of examination certificates as a qualification for
status, possible degradation, corporal punishment during youth, and the
not quite infrequent case of degradation even in old age. But once, in
the past, such feudal notions of honor had dominated Chinese life with
great intensity.
The old Annals praise 'frankness' and 'loyalty' as cardinal virtues.^^ y
'To die with honor' was the old watchword. 'To be unfortunate and not '
to know how to die is cowardly.' This appHed particularly to an officer
who did not fight 'unto the death.' *° Suicide was a death which a gen-
eral, having lost a battle, valued as a privilege. To permit him to commit
suicide meant to forego the right to punish him and therefore was con-
sidered with hesitation."*^ The meaning of feudal concepts was changed
by the patriarchal idea of hiao. Hiao meant that one should suffer
calumny and even meet death as its consequence if it served the honor
of the master. One could, and in general should, compensate for all the
mistakes of the lord by loyal service. The \otow before the father, the
436 SOCIAL STRUCTURES
older brother, the creditor, the official, and the emperor was certainly
not a symptom of feudal honor. For the correct Chinese to kneel before
his love, on the other hand, would have been entirely taboo. All this was
the reverse of what held for the knights and the cortegiani of the Occi-
dent.
To a great extent, the official's honor retained an element of student
honor regulated by examination achievements and public censures by
superiors. This was the case even if he had passed the highest exam-
inations. In a certain sense, it is true of every bureaucracy (at least on its
lower levels; and in Wiirttemberg, with its famous 'Grade A, Fischer,'
even in the highest positions of office); but it held to quite a different
extent in China.
5: The Gentleman Ideal
The peculiar spirit of the scholars, bred by the system of examinations,
was intimately connected with the basic presuppositions from which the
orthodox and also, by the way, nearly all heterodox, Chinese theories
proceeded. The dualism of the shen and \wei, of good and evil spirits,
of heavenly yang substance as over against earthly yin substance, also
within the soul of the individual, necessarily made the sole task of edu-
cation, including self-education, to appear to be the unfolding of the
yang substance in the soul of man.*" For the man in whom the yang
substance has completely gained the upper hand over the demonic \wei
powers resting within him also has power over the spirits; that is, ac-
cording to the ancient notion, he has magical power. The good spirits,
however, are those who protect order and beauty and harmony in the
world. To perfect oneself and thus to mirror this harmony is the supreme
and the only means by which one may attain such power. During the
time of the literati, the Kiun-tse, the 'princely man,' and once the 'hero,'
was the man who had attained all-around self-perfection, who had be-
come a 'work of art' in the sense of a classical, eternally valid, canon of
psychical beauty, which literary tradition implemented in the souls of
disciples. On the other hand, since the Han period at the latest,*^ it
was a firmly established belief among the literati that the spirits rev/ard
'beneficence,' in the sense of social and ethical excellence. Benevolence
tempered by classical (canonical) beauty was therefore the goal of self-
perfection.
Canonically perfect and beautiful achievements were the highest aspira-
tion of every scholar as well as the ultimate yardstick of the highest
THE CHINESE LITERATI 437
qualification certified by examination. Li Hung Chang's youthful ambi-
tion was to become a perfect Uterary man/* that is, a 'crowned poet,' by
attainment of the highest degrees. He was, and he remained, proud of
being a calligrapher of great craftsmanship and of being able to recite
the classics by heart, especially Confucius' 'Spring and Autumn.' This
ability occasioned his uncle, after having tested it, to pardon the imper-
fections of his youth and to procure him an office. To Li Hung Chang
all other branches of knowledge (algebra, astronomy) were only the
indispensable means of 'becoming a great poet.' The classical perfection
of the poem he conceived in the name of the Empress-Dowager, as a
prayer in the temple of the tutelary goddess of silk-culture, brought him
the Empress' favor.
Puns, euphemisms, allusions to classical quotations, and a refined and
purely literary intellectuality were considered the conversational ideal of
the genteel man. All politics of the day were excluded from such conver-
sation.*^ It may appear strange to us that this sublimated 'salon' cultiva-
tion, tied to the classics, should enable man to administer large territories.
And in fact, one did not manage the administration with mere poetry
even in China. But the Chinese prebendary official proved his status
quality, that is, his charisma, through the canonical correctness of his
literary forms. Therefore, considerable weight was placed on these forms
in official communications. Numerous important declarations of the Em-
perors, the high priests of literary art, were in the form of didactic poems.
On the other hand, the official had to prove his charisma by the 'har-
monious' course of his administration; that is, there must be no disturb-
ances caused by the restless spirits of nature or of men. The actual
administrative 'work' could rest on the shoulders of subordinate officials.
We have noticed that above the official stood the imperial pontifex, his
academy of literati, and his collegiate body of censors. They publicly
rewarded, punished, scolded, exhorted, encouraged, or lauded the officials.
Because of the publication of the 'personal files' and all the reports,
petitions, and memorials, the whole administration and the fateful careers
of the officials, with their (alleged) causes, took place before the broadest
public, far more so than is the case with any of our administrations
under parliamentary control, an administration which puts the greatest
weight upon the keeping of 'official secrets.' At least according to the
official fiction, the official Gazette in China was a sort of running account
of the Emperor before Heaven and before his subjects. This Gazette was
the classic expression for the kind of responsibility which followed from
438 SOCIAL STRUCTURES
the emperor's charismatic quaHfication. However dubious in reahty the
official argumentation and the completeness of pubUcation may have been
— that, after all, also holds for the communications of our bureaucracy to
lour parliaments — the Chinese procedure at least tended to open a rather
strong and often a quite effective safety-valve for the pressure of public
opinion with regard to the official's administrative activities.
6: The Prestige of Officialdom
The hatred and the distrust of the subjects, which is common to all
patrimonialism, in China as everywhere turned above all against the
lower levels of the hierarchy, who came into the closest practical contact
with the population. The subjects' apolitical avoidance of all contact with
'the state' which was not absolutely necessary was typical for China as
for all other patrimonial systems. But this apolitical attitude did not
detract from the significance of the official education for the character
formation of the Chinese people.
The strong demands of the training period were due partly to the
peculiarity of Chinese script and partly to the peculiarity of the subject
matter. These demands, as well as the waiting periods which were often
quite long, forced those who were unable to live on a fortune of their
own, on loans, or on family savings of the sort discussed above, to take
up practical occupations of all sorts, from merchant to miracle doctor,
before completing their educational careers. Then they did not reach the
classics themselves, but only the study of the last (the sixth) textbook,
the 'schoolbook' (Siao Hioh),^'^ which was hallowed by age and con-
tained mainly excerpts from the classic authors. Only this difference in
the level of education and not differences in the ]{ind of education set
these circles off from the bureaucracy. For only classic education existed.
The percentage of candidates who failed the examinations was extraor-
dinarily high. In consequence of the fixed quotas,^^ the fraction of grad-
uates of the higher examinations was proportionately small, yet they
always outnumbered many times the available office prebends. They com-
peted for the prebends by personal patronage,*^ by purchase money of
their own, or by loans. The sale of prebends functioned here as in
Europe; it was a means of raising capital for the purposes of state, and
very frequently it replaced merit ratings.'*'' The protests of the reformers
against the sale- of offices persisted until the last days of the old system,
as is shown by the numerous petitions of this sort in the Pekin"^ Gazette.
i
THE CHINESE LITERATI 439
The officials' short terms of office (three years), corresponding to
similar Islamic institutions, allowed for intensive and rational influencing
of the economy through the administration as such only in an inter-
mittent and jerky way. This was the case in spite of the administration's
theoretical omnipotence. It is astonishing how few permanent officials
the administration believed to be sufficient. The figures alone make it
perfectly obvious that as a rule things must have been permitted to take
their own course, as long as the interests of the state power and of the
treasury remained untouched and as long as the forces of tradition, the
sibs, villages, guilds, and other occupational associations remained the
normal carriers of order.
Yet in spite of the apolitical attitude of the masses, which we have just
mentioned, the views of the stratum of applicants for office exerted a
very considerable influence upon the way of Hfe of the middle classes.
This resulted, first and above all, from the popular magical-charismatic
conception of the qualification for office as tested by examination. By
passing the examination, the graduate proved that he was to an eminent
degree a holder of shen. High mandarins were considered magically
quahfied. They could always become objects of a cult, after their death
as well as during their lifetime, provided that their charisma was 'proved.'
The primeval magical significance of written work and of documents
lent apotropaic and therapeutic significance to their seals and to their
handwriting, and this could extend to the examination paraphernalia of
the candidate. A province considered it an honor and an advantage to
have one of its own sons selected by the emperor as the best graduate of
the highest degree,^" and all whose names were publicly posted after
having passed their examinations had 'a name in the village.' All guilds
and other clubs of any significance had to have a literary man as a secre-
tary, and these and similar positions were open to those graduates for
whom office prebends were not available. The officeholders and the
examined candidates for office, by virtue of their magical charisma and
of their patronage relations — especially when they stemmed from petty
bourgeois circles — were the natural 'father confessors' and advisers in all
important affairs of their sibs. In this they corresponded to the Brahmans
{Gurus) who performed the same function in India.
Alongside the purveyor to the state and the great trader, the office-
holder, as we have seen, was the personage with the most opportunities
for accumulating possessions. Economically and personally, therefore, the
influence on the population of this stratum, outside as well as inside their
440 SOCIAL STRUCTURES
own sibs, was approximately as great as was the combined influence of
the scribes and priests in Egypt. Within the sib, however, the authority
of old age was a strong counterweight, as we have already emphasized.
Quite independent of the 'worthiness' of the individual officials, who
were often ridiculed in popular dramas, the prestige of this literary
education as such was firmly grounded in the population until it came
to be undermined by modern Western-trained members of the mandarin
strata.
7: Views on Economic Policy
The social character of the educated stratum determined its stand
toward economic policy. According to its own legend, for millennia, the
polity had the character of a religious and utilitarian welfare-state, a
character which is in line with so many other typical traits of patrimonial
bureaucratic structures bearing theocratic stamps.
Since olden times, to be sure, actual state policy, for reasons discussed
above, had again and again let economic life alone, at least so far as
production and the profit economy were concerned. This happened in
China just as in the ancient Orient — unless new settlements, melioration
through irrigation, and fiscal or military interests entered the picture.
But military interests and interests in military finance had always called
forth liturgical interventions in economic life. These interventions were
monopolistically or financially determined, and often they were quite
incisive. They were partly mercantilist regulations and partly in the
nature of regulations of status stratification. Toward the end of national
militarism, such planned 'economic policy' eventually fell into abeyance.
The government, conscious of the weakness of its administrative appara-
tus, confined itself to the care of the tide and the maintenance of the
water routes, which were indispensable for provisioning the leading
provinces with rice; for the rest, to the typically patrimonial policy of
dearth and consumption. It had no 'commercial policy' in the modern
sense.^^ The tolls the mandarins had established along the waterways
were, so far as is known, merely fiscal in nature and never served any
economic policy. The government on the whole pursued only fiscal and
mercantilist interests, if one disregards emergency situations which, con-
sidering the charismatic nature of authority, were always politically
dangerous. So far as is known, the most grandiose attempts to estabUsh
a unified economic organization were planned by Wang An Shi, who
during the eleventh century tried to establish a state trading monopoly
THE CHINESE LITERATI 4^1
for the entire harvest. In addition to fiscal gains, the plan was intended
to serve the equalization of prices and was connected with a reform in
land taxes. The attempt failed. .
As the economy was left to itself to a large extent, the aversion against^
'state intervention' in economic matters became a lasting and basic senti- I
ment. It was directed particularly against monopolistic privileges,^^ \
which, as fiscal measures, are habitual to patrimonialism everywhere.
This sentiment, however, was only one among the quite different atti-
tudes which resulted from the conviction that the welfare of the subjects
was dependent upon the charisma of the ruler. These ideas often stood
in unmediated fashion beside the basic aversion to state intervention, and
continually, or at least occasionally, made for bureaucratic meddling in
everything, which again is typical of patrimonialism. Moreover, the
administration of course reserved the right to regulate consumption in
times of dearth — a policy which is also part of the theory of Confucian-
ism [as reflected] in numerous special norms concerning all sorts of
expenditures. Above all, there was the typical aversion against too sharp
a social differentiation as determined in a purely economic manner by
free exchange in markets. This aversion, of course, goes without saying
in every bureaucracy. The increasing stability of the economic situation
under conditions of the economically self-sufficient and the socially
homogeneously composed world-empire did not allow for the emergence
of such economic problems as were discussed in the English literature
of the seventeenth century. There was no self-conscious bourgeois stratum
which could not be politically ignored by the government and to whose
interests the 'pamphleteers' of the time in England primarily addressed
themselves. As always under patrimonial bureaucratic conditions, the
administration had to take serious notice of the attitude of the merchants'
guilds only in a 'static' way and when the maintenance of tradition and
of the guilds' special privileges were at stake. Dynamically, however,
the merchant guilds did not enter into the balance, because there were
no expansive capitalist interests {no longer!) of sufficient strength, as in
England, to be capable of forcing the state administration into their
service.
442 SOCIAL STRUCTURES
8: SULTANISM AND THE EuNUCHS AS POLITICAL OPPONENTS
OF THE Literati
The total political situation of tiie literati can be understood only when
one realizes the forces against which they had to fight. We may disre-
gard the heterodoxies here, for they will be dealt with below.
In early times the main adversaries of the literati were the 'great fam-
ilies' of the feudal period who did not want to be pushed out of their
office monopolies. Having to accommodate themselves to the needs of
patrimonialism and to the superiority of the knowledge of script, they
found ways and means of paving the way for their sons by imperial
favor.
Then there were the capitalist purchasers of office: a natural result of
the leveling of status groups and of the fiscal money economy. Here the
struggle could not lead to constant and absolute success, but only to
relative success, because every demand of war pushed the impecunious
central administration towards the jobbery of office-prebends as the sole
means of war finance. This held until recent times.
The literati also had to fight the administration's rationalist interests
in an expert officialdom. Specialist, expert officials came to the fore as
early as 6oi under Wen ti. During the distress of the defensive wars in
1068 under Wang An Shi, they enjoyed a short-lived and full triumph.
But again tradition won out and this time for good.
There remained only one major and permanent enemy of the literati:
sultanism and the eunuch-system which supported it.^^ The influence
of the harem was therefore viewed with profound suspicion by the Con-
fucians. Without insight into this struggle, Chinese history is most diffi-
cult to understand.
The constant struggle of the literati and sultanism, which lasted for
two millennia, began under Shi-Hwang-Ti. It continued under all the
dynasties, for of course energetic rulers continually sought to shake ofl
their bonds to the cultured status group of the literati with the aid of
eunuchs and plebeian parvenus. Numerous literati who took a stand
against this form of absolutism had to give their lives in order to main-
tain their status group in power. But in the long run and again and
again the literati won out.'** Every drought, inundation, eclipse of the
sun, defeat in arms, and every generally threatening event at once placed
power in the hands of the literati. For such events were considered the
THE CHINESE LITERATI 443
result of a breach of tradition and a desertion of the classic way of life,
which the literati guarded and which was represented by the censors and
the 'Hanlin Academy.' In all such cases 'free discussion' was granted, the
advice of the throne was asked, and the result was always the cessation
of the unclassical form of government, execution or banishment of the
eunuchs, a retraction of conduct to the classical schemata, in short,
adjustments to the demands of the literati.
The harem system was of considerable danger because of the way in
which successorship to the throne was ordered. The emperors who were
not of age were under the tutelage of women; at times, this petticoat-
government had come to be the very rule. The last Empress-Dowager,
Tsu hsi, tried to rule with the aid of eunuchs.^^ We will not discuss at
this point the roles which Taoists and Buddhists have played in these
struggles, which run through all of Chinese history — why and how far
they have been natural coalitionists, specifically of the eunuchs, and how
far they have been coalitionists by constellation.
Let us mention in passing that, at least by modern Confucianism,
astrology has been considered an unclassical superstition.^® It has been
thought to compete with the exclusive significance of the Emperor's Tao
charisma for the course of government. Originally this had not been the
case. The departmental competition of the Hanlin Academy against the
collegiate body of astrologers may have played a decisive part; ^^ perhaps
also the Jesuit origin of the astronomic measures had a hand in it.
In the conviction of the Confucians, the trust in magic which the
eunuchs cultivated brought about all misfortune. Tao Mo in his Memo-
rial of the year 190 1 reproached the Empress that in the year 1875 the
true heir to the throne had been eliminated through her fault and in
spite of the censors' protest, for the censor Wu Ko Tu had acknowledged
this by his suicide. Tao Mo's posthumous memorial to the Empress and
his letter to his son were distinguished by their manly beauty.^^ There
cannot be the slightest doubt of his sincere and profound conviction.
Also the belief of the Empress and of numerous princes in the magical
charisma of the Boxers, a belief which alone explains her whole policy,
was certainly to be ascribed to the influence of eunuchs.^^ On her death
bed this impressive woman left as her counsel: (i) never again to let a
woman rule in China, and (2) to abolish the eunuch system forever.*'"
This counsel was fulfilled in a different way than she had undoubtedly
intended — if the report is accurate. But one may not doubt that for the
genuine Confucian everything that has happened since, above all the
444 SOCIAL STRUCTURES
'revolution' and the downfall of the dynasty, only confirms the correct-
ness of the belief in the significance of the charisma of the dynasty's
classic virtue. In the improbable but possible event of a Confucian restora-
tion, the belief would be exploited in this sense. The Confucianists, who
are ultimately pacifist literati oriented to inner political welfare, naturally
faced military powers with aversion or with lack of understanding. We
have already spoken of their relationship to the officers, and we have
seen that the whole Annals are paradigmatically filled with it. There
are protests to be found in the Annals against making 'praetorians' into
censors (and officials).*'^ As the eunuchs were especially popular as
favorites and generals in the way of Narses, the enmity against the
purely sultanist patrimonial army suggested itself. The literati took pride
in having overthrown the popular military usurper Wang Mang. The
danger of ruling with plebeians has simply always been great with dicta-
tors, yet only this one attempt is known in China. The literati, however,
have submitted to de facto established power even when it was created
purely by usurpation, as was the power of the Han, or by conquest, as
was the power of the Mongol Manchus. They submitted even though
they had to make sacrifices — the Manchus took over 50 per cent of the
offices without having the educational qualifications. The literati have
submitted to the ruler // the ruler in turn submitted to their ritualist
and ceremonial demands; only then, in modern language, have they
accommodated themselves and taken a 'realistic' stand.
'Constitutionally' — and this was the theory of the Confucians — the
emperor could rule only by using certified literati as officials; 'classically'
he could rule only by using orthodox Confucian officials. Every deviation
from this rule was thought capable of bringing disaster and, in case of
obstinacy, the downfall of the emperor and the ruin of the dynasty.
^
N
otes
I. A BIOGRAPHICAL VIEW
1. Marianne Weber, Max Weber: ein Lebetisbild (Tubingen, 1926), pp. 57-8. This
beautiful and thorough biography by Max Weber's widow is our major source for
the facts as well as for several of the interpretations in this sketch of Weber's life.
A second primary source of great value is Weber's Jttgendbrieje (Tiibingen, n.d.).
2. Ibid. p. 61.
3. Ibid. p. 72.
4. Ibid. p. 75.
5. Ibid. pp. 75 f.
6. Ibid. p. 77.
7. Max Weber, Jugendbriefe, pp. 191-2.
8. See this volume, pp. 117-28 and pp. 333-7.
9. Jugendbriefe, p. 221.
10. Marianne Weber, op.cit. p. 102.
11. Ibid. p. 393.
12. Ibid. p. 249.
13. Ibid. p. 254.
14. Ibid. p. 255.
15. Ibid. p. 261.
16. See this volume, 'Religious Rejections of the World,' p. 356.
17. See chap, xiv, 'Capitalism in Rural Society in Germany,' this volume.
18. The Autobiographies of Edward Gibbon, edited by John Murray (London,
1896), p. 270.
19. Marianne Weber, op.cit. p. 296.
20. Ibid. p. 300.
21. Ibid. p. 315.
22. The observations on American sects, pp. 303-5 of this volume, incorporate,
almost literally, passages originally contained in letters Weber wrote to his mother
during his travels in America.
23. Charles Sealsfield, Lebensbilder aus beiden Hemisphaeren (Zurich, 1835),
Zweiter Teil, pp. 54, 236.
24. Gesammelte Politische Schriften (Miinchen, 1921), p. 483.
25. Marianne Weber, op.cit. p. 359.
26. Ibid. pp. 361-2.
27. Ibid. p. 379.
28. Ibid. p. 610.
29. Ibid. p. 527.
445
446 NOTES
30. Gesammelte Atifsaetze zur Religionssoziologie (Tubingen, 1922-3), vol. 11,
p. 174.
31. Marianne Weber, op.cit. p. 360 (28 February 1906).
32. See, for example, Gesammelte Aujsaetze zur Religionssoziologie , vol. in, pp.
295, 319-20.
33. Marianne Weber, op.cit. p. 403 (1907).
34. 'La famille est done, si Ton veut, le premier modele des societes politiques:
le chef est I'image du pere, le peuple est I'image des enfants; et tous, etant nes
egaux et libres, n'alienent leur liberte que pour leur urilite. Toute la difference
est que, dans la famille, I'amour du pere pour ses enfants le paye des soins qu'il
leur rend; et que, dans I'Etat, le plaisir de commander supplee a cet amour que
le chef n'a pas pour ses peuples.' Contrat Social, chap. 2, par. 3.
II. POLITICAL CONCERNS
1. Marianne Weber, Max Weber: ein Lebensbild, pp. 124-5.
2. Ibid. p. 126. Written in the late 'eighties.
3. Ibid. pp. 129, 130.
4. Ibid. pp. 137-8.
5. Gesammelte Politische Schriften (Miinchen, 1921), chap. i.
6. Ibid. pp. 24-5.
7. On these points cf. Eckart Kehr, 'Englandhass und Weltpolitik,' in Zeitschrift
fiir Politil^, edited by Richard Schmidt and Adolf Grabowsky (1928), vol. vii,
pp. 500-26, and his more comprehensive analysis of the period in 'Schlachtflot-
tenbau und Parteipolitik, 1894-1901' (1930). From a different point of view,
Johannes Haller reaches identical conclusions. Cf. his Die Aera Bidow (Stuttgart
und Berlin, 1922).
8. Weber's essay, 'The Protestant Sects and the Spirit of Capitalism' (chap, xii),
began as a newspaper article in the Fraiil^fttrter Zeitung; later it was enlarged and
reprinted in Christliche Welt. Cf. chap, xii, note i.
9. 'We wish Social Democracy to become national. If they do not fulfil this wish
it is their business. It is our business to uphold National Socialism.' Pastor Nau-
mann, cited in Eugen Richter, Politisches ABC Buck (Berlin, 1903), p. 145. It is
not without interest that this little party received just over 27,000 votes in 1898.
More than one fourth of the total was cast in the province of Schleswig-Holstein,
the one province where Hitler's National Socialists succeeded in winning the
absolute majority in the last 'free' elections in 1932.
10. Marianne Weber, op.cit. p. 238.
11. Ibid. p. 413.
12. Ibid. p. 416.
13. Ibid. pp. 544, 562, 563.
14. Ibid. p. 567.
15. Ibid. p. 571. Cf. Politische Schriften, pp. 64-72.
16. Marianne Weber, op.cit. p. 591.
17. Ibid. pp. 664-5.
18. Carl Jentsch, "Parlamente und Parteien in Deutschen Reiche,' Die Netie
Rmidschau (April 1906), pp. 385-412.
19. Politische Schriften, pp. 469 f.
I
i
NOTES 447
20. Ernst Troeltsch, 'Das logische Problem der Geschichtsphilosophie,' Der His-
torismus und seine Probleme (Tubingen, 1922), Erstes Buch, p. 754.
21, John Stuart Mill, Principles of Political Economy (Boston, 1848), vol. i,
P- 3>79-
III. INTELLECTUAL ORIENTATIONS
1. August Bebel, Aus meinem Leben (Stuttgart, 1911), Zweiter Tcil, p. 419.
2. Ludwig Bamberger, Erinnerungen (Berlin, 1899), p. 46.
3. Max Weber, 'Der Sozialismus,' in Gesammelte Aujsaetze ziir Soziologie und
Sozialpolitik^ (Tubingen, 1924), p. 508.
4. 'Agrargeschichte des Altertums,' Handworterbuch des Staatswissenschajten
(Jena, 1895-7), vol. i, p. 182.
5. Cf. Wirtschaft und Gesellschajt, p. 768.
6. Cf. Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft, pp. 758 f.
7. W. E. H. Lecky, History of Rationalism (New York, 1867), vol. 1, p. 310.
8. Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft, vol. i, p. 148.
9. Cf. Gesammelte Aufsaetze zur Wissenschaftslehre (Tubingen, 1922), pp. 132,
142.
10. Gesammelte Aufsaetze zur Wissenschaftslehre, p. 415; cf. also Wirtschaft und
Gesellschaft, part i, p. i.
11. A. Comte, Philosophic Positive, vol. iv, p. 132.
12. Cf. Aroon, R., La Sociologie Allemande (Paris, 1935), p. 146.
13. Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft, vol. i, p. 800.
14. Religionssoziologie , vol. i, p. 265.
15. Ibid. vol. I, p. 128, footnote 3.
16. Beyond Good and Evil (Newr York, 1937), chap. 4, aphorism 69.
17. Religionssoziologie, vol. in, pp. 321-2.
18. Religionssoziologie, vol. i, p. 252. Cf. chap, xi, p. 280 of this volume.
19. Leon Trotsky, Germany, What Next? (New York, 1932), p. 183.
20. For a fully documented history of this controversy, see Ephraim Fischoff,
'The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism,' Social Research (vol. xi, no. i,
February 1944, pp. 53-77). The attempt of this author to dispute Weber's interest
in the Protestant Ethic as an indispensable causal factor seems to point in the wrong
direction. Weber indeed 'recognized that capitalism would have arisen without
Protestantism, in fact, that it had done so in many culture complexes' (p. 67). But
this refers only to political capitalism: To assert that Weber did not intend to make
'an effort to trace the causal influence of the Protestant ethic upon the emergence
of capitalism' (p. 76) is to underrate Weber's interest in causal explanation in
favor of a mere 'exposition of the rich congruency of such diverse aspects of a
culture as religion and economics.' On the contrary, Weber held that purely eco-
nomic factors were indispensable, but by themselves insufficient. He was convinced
that a 'subjective factor' was also necessary for a causally sufficient explanation.
That is the reason for his ceaseless inquiry into the role of ideas in the historical
process. Ideas place premiums *upon special psychic traits; through these premiums,
and through habitual (and hence socially controlled) conduct, a special personality
type is produced. Once fixed, sustained, and selected by organizations (sects), this
personality type acts out conduct patterns. These patterns are religiously oriented
but they lead to unforeseen economic results, namely, methodical workaday capital-
ism with its constant reinvestment of profits in productive enterprises. Cf. chap.
XII of this book.
448 NOTES
21. Moeller van den Bruck, Das Dritte Reich (Hamburg, 1931; 3rd edition),
P- 189.
22. Archiv ftir Socialwissenschaft und Sozialpolitil^, vol. xii, no. i, pp. 347 ff.
23. Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft, p. 817.
IV. POLITICS AS A VOCATION
1. Trachtet nacli seinem Wer/(^.
2. A high ministerial official in charge of a special division concerning which
he had to give regular reports.
3. Head of an administrative division in a ministry.
4. Geist.
5. The 'local agents' of the part}\
6. Weber alludes to the evasion of rationing and priority rules and the develop-
ments of 'black markets' during the wartime administration of Germany, 1914 to
1918.
7. Federal Council.
8. Landwirtschafts}{ammer.
9. Handwerl{s}{ammer.
VI. STRUCTURES OF POWER
1. Written before 1914. (German editor's note.)
2. The custom union of the central German states since the 1830's.
3. Written before 1914. (German editor's note.)
4. Around 590 b.c.
5. Organ of Prussian Junkers.
6. The text breaks off here. Notes on the manuscript indicate that Weber in-
tended to deal with the idea and development of the national state throughout
history. The following sentence is to be found on the margin: 'There is a close
connection between the prestige of culture and the prestige of power.' Every vic-
torious war enhances the prestige of culture (Germany [1871], Japan [1905], etc.).
The question of whether war contributes to the 'development of culture' cannot
be answered in a 'value neutral' way. Certainly there is no unambiguous answer
(Germany after 1870!), not even when we consider empirical evidence, for char-
acteristically German art and literature did not originate in the political center of
Germany. (Note of German editors.)
The supplementary passage that follows is from Max Weber's comment on a
paper by Karl Barth; Gesammelte Aufsaetze zur Soziologie und Sozialpoliti\
(Tubingen, 1924), pp. 484-6. [G. & M.]
7. A war scare during the early nineteen hundreds.
VII. CLASS, STATUS, PARTY
One cross-reference footnote to a passage in Wirtschajt und Gesellschaft, p. 277,
has been omitted, and one footnote has been placed in the text. A brief unfinished
draft of a classification of status groups is appended to the German text; it has
been omitted here.
NOTES 449
VIII. BUREAUCRACY
1. Frederick ii of Prussia.
2. Cf. Wirtschajt tmd Gesellschaft, pp. 73 ff. and part 11. (German Editor.)
3. 'Ministerialen.'
4. Written before 1914. (German editor's note.)
5. We read 'Technische Leistung' for Technische Leitung.' Cf. below no. 6,
pp. 214 ff.
6. Erwerbende Schichten.
7. We read 'Verbreitung der Einflusssphare' instead of 'Vertreibung der Ein-
flusssphare.'
8. When in 1899 the German Reichstag discussed a bill for the construction of
the Mittelland Kanal the conservative Junker parry fought the project. Among the
conservative members of the parliamentary party were a number of administrative
Junker officials who stood up to the Kaiser who had ordered them to vote for the
bill. The disobedient officials were dubbed Kanalrebellen and they were tempo-
rarily suspended from office. Cf. Bernard Fiirst von Biilow, Denl{wurdigkeiten
(Berlin, 1930), vol. i, pp. 293 ff.
9. German territorial princes, since the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries,
occasionally called on feudal and ecclesiastic notables for their advice. As these
counselors were only visiting at court, they were called Rate von Haiis atis, or
jamiliares domestici, consiliarii, et cetera; cf. Georg Ludwig von Maurer, Geschichte
der Fronhofe, der Bauernhofe, und der Hofverjassung in Deutschland (Erlangen,
1862), vol. II, pp. 237, 240 ff., 312 f.
IX. THE SOCIOLOGY OF CHARISMATIC AUTHORITY
1. Cf. Wirtschajt und Gesellschaft, sections 2 and 5 of part 11.
2. The manuscript breaks off here. (German Editor.)
X. THE MEANING OF DISCIPLINE
1. Heavily armed footsoldier.
2. A military unit, a company.
3. The sarissa is the Macedonian pike, some 14 feet long, of further reach than
the ordinary Greek spear.
4. A subdivision of a Roman legion, numbering either 120 or 60 men.
5. Men equipped with the halberd, a long-handled weapon.
6. Five Spartan magistrates.
7. Military colonies of the city states.
XI. THE SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY OF THE WORLD RELIGIONS
1. At this point Weber refers the reader to The Protestaiit Ethic and the Spirit
of Capitalism. Cf. also the essay, 'The Protestant Sects and the Spirit of Capi-
talism,' chap. 12 of the present book.
2. Inbriinstige.
3. A Mohammedan mysticism originating in Persia during the eighth century.
It developed an elaborate symbolism, much used by poets.
450 NOTES
4. Wundbruehe.
5. In these contexts every evaluative aspect must be removed from the concept
of 'virtuosity,' which adheres to it nowadays. I prefer the term 'heroic' religiosity
because of the loaded character of 'virtuoso,' but 'heroic' is entirely too inadequate
for some of the phenomena belonging here. [M. W.]
6. The Ulema represent a body of scholars trained in Moslem religion and law.
They are the guardians of sacred tradition. Opposed to them are religious leaders
who claim visionary knowledge of a mystic rather than intellectual interpretation
of tradition.
7. A mendicant friar.
8. In part this has been presented in the essays on Protestantism; it will be more
closely discussed at a later time. [M. W.]
9. Planmassig\eit.
10. The sequence of the reflections — to mention this also — is geographical.
Merely by accident it proceeds from East to West. In truth, not the external
spatial distribution but internal reasons of the presentation have been decisive, as
will perhaps become evident on closer attention. [M. W.]
11. For a closer discussion Weber refers to the pertinent sections in Wirtscliaft
und Gesellschaft.
12. Atistalt.
XII. PROTESTANT SECTS AND THE SPIRIT OF CAPITALISM
Note: Certain footnotes in this chapter have been placed in the text.
1. This is a new and greatly enlarged draft of an article published in the Frank-
furter Zeitung, Eastern 1906, then somewhat enlarged in the Christliche Welt,
1906, pp. 558 ff., 577 ff., under the title, 'Churches and Sects.' I have repeatedly
referred to this article as supplementing The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of
Capitalism. The present rewriting is motivated by the fact that the concept of sect
as worked out by myself (as a contrasting conception to 'church') has, in the
meanwhile and to my joy, been taken over and treated thoroughly by Troeltsch in
his Soztallehren der christlichen Kirchen [The Social Teachings of the Christian
Churches, trans, by O. Wyon, 2 vols., London, 1931]. Hence, conceptual discus-
sions can the more easily be omitted as what is necessary has been said already in
The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, pp. 254 f., note 173. This essay
contains only the barest data supplementing that essay.
2. Details are of no interest here. Reference should be made to the respective
volumes of the 'American Church History Series,' which is, to be sure, of very
uneven value.
3. The organization of the religious congregation during the immigration to
New England often preceded the political societalization (in the fashion of the
well-known pact of the Pilgrim Fathers). Thus, the Dorchester Immigrants of
1619 first bound themselves together by organizing a church congregation before
emigrating, and they elected a parson and a teacher. In the colony of Massa-
chusetts the church was formally a completely autonomous corporation, which
admitted, however, only citizens for membership, and affiliation with which, on
the other hand, was a prerequisite of cidzenship. Likewise, at first, church mem-
bership and good conduct (meaning admission to the Lord's Supper) were pre-
requisites of citizenship in New Haven (before it was incorporated in Connecticut
despite resistance against incorporation). In Connecticut, however (in 1650), the
NOTES 451
township was obliged to maintain the church (a defection from the strict prin-
ciples of Independentism to Presbyterianism).
This at once meant a somewhat laxer practice, for after the incorporation of
New Haven the church there was restricted to giving out certificates stating that
the respective person was religiously inoffensive and of sufficient means. Even dur-
ing the seventeenth century, on the occasion of the incorporation of Maine and
New Hampshire, Massachusetts had to depart from the full strictness of the re-
ligious qualification of political rights. On the question of church membership
compromises had also to be made, the most famous of which is the Half-way
Covenant of 1657. In addition, those who could not prove themselves to be
regenerate were nevertheless admitted to membership. But, until the beginning
of the eighteenth century, they were not admitted to communion.
4. Some references from the older literature which is not very well known in
Germany may be listed. A sketch of Baptist history is present in: Vedder, A Short
History of the Baptists (Second ed. London, 1897). Concerning Hanserd Knollys:
Culross, Hanserd Knollys, vol. 11 of the Baptist Manuals edited by P, Gould (Lon-
don, I 891).
For the history of Anabaptism: E. B. Bax, Rise and Fall of the Anabaptists
(New York, 1902). Concerning Smyth: Henry M. Dexter, The True Story of
John Smyth, the Se-Baptist, as told by himself and his contemporaries (Boston,
1881). The important publications of the Hanserd Knollys Society (printed for
the Society by J. Hadden, Castle Street, Finsbury, 1846-54) have been cited already.
Further official documents in The Baptist Church Manual by J. Newton Brown,
D.D. (Philadelphia, American Baptist Publishing Society, 30 S. Arch Street). Con-
cerning the Quakers, besides the cited work of Sharpless: A. C. Applegarth, The
Ottal^ers in Pennsylvania, ser. x, vol. viii, ix of the Johns Hopkins University
Studies in History and Political Science. G. Lorimer, Baptists in History (New
York, 1902), J. A. Seiss, Baptist System Examined (Lutheran Publication Society,
1902).
Concerning New England (besides Doyle) : The Massachusetts Historical Col-
lections; furthermore, Weeden, Economic and Social History of New England,
1620-1789, 2 vols. Daniel W. Howe, The Puritan Republic (Indianapolis, Bobbs-
Merrill Co.).
Concerning the development of the 'Covenant' idea in older Presbyterianism,
its church discipline, and its relation to the official church, on the one hand, and
to Congregationalists and sectarians on the other hand, see: Burrage, The Church
Covenant Idea (1904), and The Early English Dissenters (1912). Furthermore,
W. M. Macphail, The Presbyterian Church (191 8). J. Brown, The English Puri-
tans (1910). Important documents in Usher, The Presbyterian Movement, 1584-89
(Com. Soc, 1905). We give here only an extremely provisional list of what is
relevant for us.
5. During the seventeenth century this was so much taken for granted that
Bunyan, as mentioned previously, makes 'Mr. Money-Love' argue that one may
even become pious in order to get rich, especially in order to add to one's pa-
tronage; for it should be irrelevant for what reason one had become pious. {Pil-
grims' Progress, Tauchnitz ed., p. 114.)
6. Thomas Clarkson, Portraiture of the Christian Profession and Practice of the
Society of Friends. Third edition (London, 1867), p. 276. (The first edition
appeared around 1830.)
7. Sources are Zwingli's statements, Fiissli i, p. 228, cf. also pp. 243, 253, 263, and
452 NOTES
his 'Elenchus contra catabaptistas,' Werke in, pp. 357, 362. In his own congregation,
Zwingh characteristically had much trouble with Antipedobaptists [opposed to
infant baptism] . The Antipedobaptists, in turn, viewed the Baptist 'separation,'
hence voluntarism, as objectionable according to the Scriptures. A Brownist peti-
tion of 1603 to King James I demanded the exclusion of all 'wicked liars' from
the church and only the admission of the 'faithful' and their children. But the
(Presbyterian) Directory of Church Government of (probably) 1584 (published
from the original for the first time in the Heidelberg Ph.D. thesis of A. F. Scott
Pearson, 191 2) demanded in article 37 that only people who had submitted to the
disciplinary code, or litems testitnoniales idoneas aliunde attuleriut [had furnished
testimonial letters from elsewhere] be admitted to communion.
8. The problematic nature of the sectarian voluntarist principle follows logically
from the demand for the ecclesia pura by the reformed (Calvinist) church. This
dogmatic principle, as opposed to the sect principle, is strikingly evident in modern
times in A. Kuyper (the well-known later Premier minister). The dogmatic posi-
tion in his final programmatic essay is especially obvious: Separatie en doleantte
(Amsterdam, 1890). He sees the problem as due to the absence of the infallible
doctrinal office among non-Catholic Christianity. This doctrine asserts that the
Corpus of the visible church cannot be the Corpus Chnsti of the old Reformed
Church, but that it must rather remain divided in time and space, and the short-
comings of human nature must remain peculiar to it. A visible church originates
solely through an act of will on the part of the believers and by virtue of the
authority given them by Christ. Hence the potestas ecclesiastica may be vested
neither in Christ himself, nor in the ministri, but only in the believing congre-
gation. (In this Kuyper follows Voet.) The greater community originates through
the legal and voluntary association of the congregations. This association, how-
ever, must be a religious obligation. The Roman principle, according to which a
church member is eo ipso a member of the parish of his local community, is to
be rejected. Baptism makes him a mere passive membrum incompletum and
grants no rights. Not baptism, but only belijdenis en stipulatie (confession of faith
and profession of good will) gives membership in the congregation, in the legal
sense. Membership alone is identical with subordination to the disciplina ecclesiae
(again following Voet). Church law is believed to deal with the man-made rules
of the visible church, which, though bound to God's order, do not represent God's
order itself. (Cf. Voet Pol. Eccles. vol. i, pp. i and 11.) All these ideas are Inde-
pendentist variants of the genuine constitutional law of the reformed churches
and imply an active participation of the congregation, hence of the laity, in the
admission of new members. (Von Rieker has described this law especially well.)
The co-operative participation of the whole congregation also constituted the pro-
gram of the Brownist Independents in New England. They adhered to it in con-
stant struggle against the successfully advancing 'Johnsonist' faction which advo-
cated church government by the 'ruling elders.' It goes without saying that only
'Regenerates' were to be admitted (according to Baillie 'only one out of forty').
During the nineteenth century, the church theory of the Scotch Independents
similarly demanded that admission be granted only by special resolution (Sack,
loc. cit.). However, Kuyper's church theory per se is, of course, not 'congrega-
tionalist' in character.
According to Kuyper, individual congregations are religiously obliged to affiliate
with and to belong to the church as a whole. There can be only one legitimate
church in one place. This obligation to affiliate is only dropped, and the obligation
of separatie emerges only when doleantie has failed; that is, an attempt must have
NOTES 453
been made to improve the wicked church as a whole through active protest and
passive obstruction {doleeren, meaning to protest, occurs as a technical term in
the seventeenth century). And finally, if all means have been exhausted and if
the attempt has proved to be in vain, and force has prevailed, then separation is
obligatory. In that case, of course, an independent constitution is obligatory, since
there are no 'subjects' in the church and since the believers per se hold a God-
given office. Revolution can be a duty to God. (Kuyper, De conflict gckomen,
pp. 30-31). Kuyper (like Voet) takes the old independent view that only those
who participate in the communion of the Lord's Supper by admission are full
members of the church. And only the latter are able to assume the trusteeship of
their children during baptism. A believer, in the theological sense, is one who is
inwardly converted; in the legal sense a believer is only one who is admitted to
the Lord's Supper.
9. The fundamental prerequisite for Kuyper is that it is a sin not to purge the
sacramental communion of non-believers. {Dreigend Conflict, 1886, p. 41; reference
is made to Cor. i, 11, 26, 27, 29; Tim. i, 5, 22; Apoc. 18, 4.) Yet according to him
the church never has judged the state of grace 'before God' — in contrast to the
'Labadists' (radical Pietists). But for admission to the Lx)rd's Supper 072/y belief
and conduct are decisive. The transactions of the Nelherland Synods of the six-
teenth and seventeenth centuries are filled with discussions of the prerequisites
of admission to the Lord's Supper. For example, the Southern Dutch Synod of
1574 agreed that the Lord's Supper should not be given if no organized congre-
gation existed. The elders and deacons were to be careful that no unworthy person
be admitted. The Synod of Rotterdam of 1575 resolved that all those who led an
obviously offensive life should not be admitted. (The elders of the congregation,
not the preachers alone, decided admissions, and it is almost always the congre-
gation which raises such objections — often against the more lax policy of the
preachers. Cf. for instance, the case cited by Reitsma [vol. 11, p. 231].) The ques-
tion of admission to the Lord's Supper included the following cases: whether the
husband of an Anabaptist wife could be admitted to the Lord's Supper was decided
at the Synod at Leyden in 16 19, article 114; whether a Lombard's servant should
be admitted. Provincial Synod at Deventer, 1595, article 24; whether men who
declared their bankruptcy, Synod of Alkmaar, 1599, article 11, similarly of 1605,
article 28, and men who had settled an accord, Northern Holland Synod of
Enkhuizen of 1618, Grav. Class. Amstel. No. 16, should be admitted. The latter
quesdon is answered in the affirmative in case the consistorium finds the list of
properties sufficient and judges the reservations for food and clothing made therein
adequate for the debtor and his family. But the decision is especially affirmadve
when the creditors state themselves to be sadsfied by the accord and when the
failing debtor makes a confession of guilt. Concerning non-admission of Lom-
bards, see above. Exclusion of spouses in case of quarrelsomeness, Reitsma iii, p. 91.
The reconciliadon of parties to a legal dispute is a prerequisite for admission. For
the duration of the dispute they must stay away from communion. There is con-
ditional admission of a person who has lost a libel suit and has appealed the case.
Ibid. Ill, p. 176.
Calvin may well have been the first to have forced through in the Strassborg
congregation of French emigrants the exclusion of the person from the Lord's
Supper whose outcome in the examination of worthiness was unsatisfactory. (But
then the minister, not the congregation, made the decision.) According to Calvin's
genuine doctrine (Inst. Chr. Rel. iv, chap. 12, p. 4) excommunications should
legitimately apply only to reprobates. (At the quoted place excommunication is
454 NOTES
called the promulgation of the divine sentence.) But in the same place (cf. p. 5)
it is also treated as a means of 'improvement.'
In America, nowadays, among the Baptists formal excommunication, at least in
metropolitan areas, is very rare. In practice it is replaced by 'dropping,' in which
case the name of the person is simply and discreetly stricken from the record.
Among the sects and Independents, laymen have always been the typical bearers
of discipline; whereas the original Calvinist-Presbyterian church discipline expressly
and systematically strove for domination over state and church. However, even
the 'Directory' of the English Presbyterians of 1584 (p. 14, note 2) summoned an
equal number of lay elders and ministers to the classes and to the higher offices
of the church government.
The mutual relation of the elders and the congregation has been occasionally
ordered in different ways. Just as the (Presbyterian) Long Parliament placed the
decision of exclusion from the Lord's Supper into the hands of the (lay) elders,
so the 'Cambridge Platform' did likewise about 1647 in New England. Up to the
middle of the nineteenth century the Scotch Independents, however, used to trans-
mit notice of misconduct to a commission. After the commission's report the
whole congregation decided about the exclusion, in correspondence with the stricter
view of the joint responsibility of all individuals. This absolutely corresponded
with the Brownist confession quoted above, which was submitted to King James I
in 1603 (Dexter, loc. cit. p. 303) whereas the 'Johnsonists' considered the sover-
eignty of the (elected) elders to be Biblical. The elders should be able to excom-
municate even against the decision of the congregation (occasion for Ainsworth's
secession). Concerning the corresponding conditions among the early English
Presbyterians, see the literature quoted in note 4, above, and the Ph.D. thesis of
Pearson quoted in note 7, above.
10. The Dutch Piedsts, by the way, believed in the same principle. Lodensteijn,
for instance, held to the point of view that one must not commune with non-
regenerates; and the latter are for him expressly those who do not bear the signs
of regeneration. He even went so far as to advise against saying the Lord's Prayer
with children since they had not as yet become 'children of the Lord.' In the
Netherlands, Kohler still occasionally found the view that the regenerate does not
sin at all. Calvinist orthodoxy and an astonishing knowledge of the Bible was
found precisely among the petty bourgeois masses. Also here it was the very
orthodox who, distrusting theological education and faced with the church regu-
lation of 1852, complained of the insufficient representation of laymen in the Synod
(besides the lack of a sufficiently strict 'censura morum'). Certainly no orthodox
Lutheran church party in Germany would have thought of that at the time.
11. Quoted in Dexter, Congregationalism of the Last Three Hundred Years as
Seeft in its Literature (New York, 1880), p. 97.
12. During the seventeenth century, letters of recommendation from non-resi-
dent Baptists of the local congregations were a prerequisite for admission to the
Lord's Supper. Non-Baptists could only be admitted after having been examined
and approved by the congregation. (Appendix to the edition of the Hanserd Knollys
Confession of 1689, West Church, Pa., 181 7.) Participation in the Lord's Supper
was compulsory for the qualified member. Failure to affiliate with the legitimately
constituted congregation of one's place of residence was viewed as schism. With
regard to the obligatory community with other congregations, the Baptist point of
view resembled that of Kuyper (cf. above, note 8). However all jurisdictional
authority higher than that of the individual church was rejected. Concerning the
i
NOTES 455
litterae testimoniales [testimonial letters] among the Covenanters and early English
Presbyterians, see note 7 and the literature quoted in note 4.
13. Shaw, Church History under the Commonwealth, vol. 11, pp. 152-65; Gar-
diner, Commonwealth, vol. iii, p. 231.
14. This principle was expressed, for instance, in resolutions like the one of the
Synod of Edam, 1585 (in the Collection of Reitsma, p. 139).
15. Baxter, Eccles. Dir., vol. 11, p. 108, discusses in detail the shying away of
doubtful members from the Lord's Supper of the congregation (because of article
25 of the Church of England).
16. The doctrine of Predestination also represents here the purest type. Its rele-
vance and great practical importance is evidenced in nothing so clearly as the
bitter struggle over the question whether children of reprobates should be admitted
to baptism after having proved themselves to be worthy. The practical significance
of the doctrine of Predestination has been, however, again and again unjustly
doubted. Three of the four Amsterdam Refugee congregations were in favor of
admitting the children (at the beginning of the seventeenth century); but in
New England only the 'Half-way Covenant' of 1657 brought a relaxation of this
point. For Holland see also note 9.
17. Loc. cit. vol. II, p. no.
18. Already at the beginning of the seventeenth century the prohibition of the
conventicles {Slijl{geuzen) caused a general Kulturkampj in Holland. Elizabeth
proceeded against the conventicles with frightful harshness (in 1593 with threat
of capital punishment). The reason behind this was the anti-authoritarian char-
acter of ascericist religiosity or, better in this case, the competitive relationship be-
tween the religious and the secular authority (Cartwright had expressly demanded
that excommunication of princes also be permitted). As a matter of fact the
example of Scotland, the classic soil of Presbyterian church discipline and clerical
domination against the king, had to have a deterrent effect.
19. In order to escape the religious pressure of orthodox preachers, liberal Am-
sterdam citizens had sent their children to neighboring congregations for their
confirmation lessons. The Kerkraad [church council] of the Amsterdam congre-
gation refused (in 1886) to acknowledge certificates of the moral conduct of the
communicants made out by such ministers. The communicants were excluded
from the Lord's Supper because the communion had to remain pure and because
the Lord, rather than man, must be obeyed. When the synodal commission ap-
proved of the objection against this deviation, the church council refused to obey
and adopted new rules. In accordance with the latter, suspension of the church
council gave the council exclusive disposition over the church. It rejected commu-
nity with the synod and the now suspended (lay) elders, T. Rutgers and Kuyper,
seized by ruse the Nieuwe Kerk [New Church] in spite of the watchmen who
had been hired. (Cf. Hogerfeil, De }{erkelijl{e strijd te Amsterdam, 1886, and
Kuyper's publications mentioned above.) During the 1820's the predesdnarian move-
ment had already begun under the leadership of Bilderdijk and his disciples,
Isaac da Costa and Abraham Capadose (two baptized Jews). {Because of the doc-
trine of predestination it rejected, for example, the abolition of Negro slavery as
'an interference with Providence' just as it rejected vaccination!) They zealously
fought the laxity of church discipline and the imparting of sacraments to unworthy
persons. The movement led to separadons. The synod of the 'Afgeschiedenen
gereformeerten Gemeente' [Separated reformed congregation] of Amsterdam in 1840
accepted the Dordrecht Canouns and rejected any kind of domination (gezag)
'within or above the church.* Groen van Prinsterer was one of Bilderdijk's disciples.
45^ NOTES
20. Classical formulations are found in the 'Amsterdam Confession' of 1611
(Publ. of the Hanserd KnoUys Society, vol. x). Thus, article 16 states: 'That the
members of every church and congregation ought to \now one another . . .
therefore a church ought not to consist of such a multitude as cannot have prac-
tical knowledge one of another.' Hence any synodal rule and any establishment of
central church authorities were considered in the last instance as principled apos-
tasy. This happened in Massachusetts and likewise in England under Cromwell.
The rules, at that time, established by Parliament in 1641, allowed every congre-
gation to provide itself with an orthodox minister and to organize lectures. This
measure was the signal for the influx of Baptists and radical Independents. The
early Presbyterian Dedham Protocols, published by Usher, also presuppose the
individual congregation (actually, at that time, in all probability, the individual
minister) to be the bearer of church discipline. Admission by ballot, as evidenced
by the protocol of 22 October 1582, states: 'That none be brought in as one of
this company without the general consent of the whole.' But as early as 1586 these
Puritans declared their opposition to the Brownists, who went in the direction of
Congregationalism.
21. The 'classes' of the Methodists, as the foundation of the co-operative cure of
soul, were the very backbone of the whole organization. Every twelve persons were
to be organized into a 'class.' The leader of the class was to visit each member
weekly, either at home or at the class meeting, during which there was usually a
general confession of sins. The leader was to keep a record of the member's con-
duct. Among other things, this book-keeping was the basis for the writing of
certificates for members who went away from the local community. By now, and
for a long time, this organization has been disintegrating everywhere, including
the U.S.A. The manner in which church discipline functioned in early Puritanism
may be judged from the above-quoted Dedham Protocol, according to which
'admonition' was to be given in the conventicle 'if any things have been observed
or espied by the brethren.'
22. In the Lutheran territories, especially those of Germany, either church disci-
pline was notoriously undeveloped or else church discipline completely decayed
at an early date. Church discipline was also of little influence in the reformed
churches of Germany, except in Jiilich-'Cleve and other Rhenish areas. This was
due to the influence of the Lutheran surroundings and to the jealousy between the
state power and the competing and autonomous hierocratic forces. This jealousy
had existed everywhere, but the state had remained overpowering in Germany.
(Traces of church discipline are nevertheless found up to the nineteenth century.
The last excommunication in the palatinate took place in 1855. However, the
church rules of 1563 were there handled in an actually Erastian way from an
early date.) Only the Mennonites, and later the Pietists, created effective means
of discipline and disciplinary organizations. (For Menno a 'visible church' existed
only where church discipline existed. And excommunication because of misconduct
or mixed marriage was a self-understood element of such discipline. The Rynsburg
Collegiants had no dogmas whatever and recognized 'conduct' alone.) Among the
Huguenots, church discipline per se was very strict, but again and again it was
relaxed through unavoidable considerations of the nobility which were politically
indispensable. The adherents of Puritan church discipline in England were found
especially among the bourgeois capitalist middle class, thus, for instance, in the
City of London. The city was not afraid of the domination of the clergy, but
intended to use church discipline as a means of mass domestication. The strata of
artisan craftsmen also adhered firmly to church discipline. The political authorities
NOTES 457
were the opponents to church discipline. Hence, in England the opponents in-
cluded Parliament. Not 'class interests' but, as every glimpse into the documents
shows, primarily religious, and, in addition, political interests and convictions
played their part in these questions. The harshness not only of New England but
also of the genuinely Puritan church disipline in Europe is known. Among Crom-
well's major-generals and commissioners, his agents for enforcing church discipline,
the proposal to exile all 'idle, debauched, and profane persons,' emerges repeatedly.
Among the Mediodists die dropping of novices during the periods of probation
was permissible without further ado. Full members were to be dropped after an
investigation by a commission. The church discipline of the Huguenots (who for
a long time actually existed as a 'sect') is evidenced in synodal protocols. These
indicate, among other things, censure of adulteration of commodities and of dis-
honesty in business. Sixth Synod (Avert. Gen. xiv). Thus sumptuary laws are
frequently found, and slave ownership and slave trading are permitted, Twenty-
Seventh Synod; a rather lax practice toward fiscal demands prevails (the fiscus is
a tyrant). Sixth Synod, cas de cone, dec, xiv; usury, ibid, xv (cf. Second Synod,
Gen. 17; Eleventh Synod, Gen. 42). Toward the end of the sixteenth century, the
English Presbyterians were designated as 'disciplinarians' in official correspondence
(Quotations to be found in Pearson, loc. cit.).
23. In the 'Apologetical Narration' of the five (Independent) 'dissenting breth-
ren' of the Westminster Synod the separation from the 'casual 1 and formall Chris-
tians' is placed in the foreground. This means, at first, only voluntaristic sepa-
ratism, not renunciation of commercium. But Robinson, a strict Calvinist and
advocate of the Dordrecht Synod (about him cf. Dexter, Congregationalism, p. 402)
had originally held the opinion which he later softened, that the independent
separatists must not have social intercourse with the others, even should they be
electi, which was considered conceivable. However, most sects have avoided com-
mitting themselves overriy to this principle, and some have expressly rejected it,
at least as a principle. Baxter, Christian Directory, vol. 11, p. 100 (at the bottom of
column 2), opines that, should not oneself but the housefather and parson, assume
the responsibility, then one might acquiesce to praying together with an ungodly
person. However, this is un-Puritan. The mijdinge [middle things] played a very
important part in the radical Baptist sects in Holland during the seventeenth
century.
24. This became strikingly obvious even in the discussions and struggles within
the Amsterdam Refugee congregation at the beginning of the seventeenth cen-
tury. Likewise in Lancashire the rejection of a ministerial church discipline, the
demand for a lay rule in the church and for a church discipline enforced by
laymen were decisive for the attitudes in the internal church struggles of Crom-
well's times.
25. The appointment of the elders was the object of prolonged controversies in
the Independent and Baptist communities, which will not concern us here.
26. The ordinance of the Long Parliament of 31 December 1646 was directed
against this. It was intended as a stroke against the Independents. On the other
hand, the principle of the liberty of prophesying had also been vindicated in liter-
ary form by Robinson. From the Episcopalian standpoint Jeremy Taylor, The Lib-
erty of Prophesying (1647), made concessions to it. Cromwell's 'tryers' requested
that permission to prophesy depend on the certificate of six admitted members of
the congregation, among whom were four laymen. Dtiring the early period of the
English Reformation the 'exercises' and 'prophesyings' had not only been fre-
quendy tolerated by ardent Anglican bishops, but had been encouraged by them.
458 NOTES
In Scotland these were (in 1560) constituent elements of church activities; in 1571
they were introduced in Northampton. Other places were soon to follow. But
Elizabeth persisted in suppressing them as a result of her proclamation of 1573
against Cartwright.
27. The charismatic revolutions of the sectarians (of the type of Fox and similar
leaders) in the congregations always began with the fight against the office-holding
prebendaries as 'hirelings' and with the fight for the apostolic principle of free
preaching without remuneration for the speaker who is moved by the spirit.
Heated disputes in Parliament took place between Goodwin, the congregationalist,
and Prynne, who reproached him that, against his alleged principle, he had ac-
cepted a 'living,' whereas Goodwin declared acceptance only of what was given
voluntarily. The principle that only voluntary contributions for the maintenance
of ministers should be permissible is expressed in the petition of the Brownists to
James I, in 1603 (point 71: hence the protest against 'Popish livings' and 'Jewish
tithes').
28. In 1793 Methodism abolished differences between ordained and non-ordained
preachers. Therewith, the non-ordained traveling preachers, and hence, the mis-
sionaries, who were the characteristic bearers of Methodism, were placed on an
equal fooung with the preachers still ordained by the Anglican church. But at the
same time the monopoly of preaching in the whole circuit and of administering
sacraments was reserved to the traveling preachers alone. (The autonomous adminis-
tration of sacraments was then principally carried through, but still at hours different
from those of the official church to which membership was still pretended now as
before.) As, ever since 1768, preachers were forbidden to engage in ordinary civic
occupations, a new 'clergy' emerged. Since 1836 formal ordination has taken place.
Opposite the circuit preachers were the lay-recruited local preachers who took up
preaching as a minor vocation. They had no right to administer sacraments and
they had only local jurisdiction. None among these two categories of preachers
donned an official garb.
29. Actually, in England at least, most of the 'circuits' have become little par-
ishes and the travel of tiie preacher has become a fiction. Nevertheless, up to the
very present, it has been upheld that the same minister must not serve the same
circuit for more than three years. They were professional preachers. The 'local
preachers,' from among whom the traveling preachers were recruited, were, how-
ever, people with a civic occupation and with a license to preach, which (origi-
nally) was given for one year at a time. Their existence was necessary because of
the abundance of services and of chapels. But above all, they were the backbone
of the 'class'-organization and its curing of souls. Hence, they were actually the
central organ of church discipline.
30. Among other things Cromwell's opposition to the 'Parliament of the Saints'
became acute on the question of the universities (which with the radical elimina-
tion of all tithes and prebends would have collapsed). Cromwell could not decide
to destroy these cultural institutions, which, however, then were meant especially
to be institutions for the education of theologians.
31. An example is given by Gardiner, Fall of the Monarchy, vol. i, p. 380.
32. The Westminster Confession also (xxvi, i) establishes the principle of inner
and external obligation to help one another. The respective rules are numerous
among all sects.
33. Every case of failure to pay in early Methodism was investigated by a com-
mission of brethren. To incur debts without the certain prospect of being able to
pay them back was cause for exclusion — hence, the credit rating. Cf. the resolution
NOTES 459
of the Dutch synods quoted in note 9. The obHgation to help one's brother in
emergencies is determined, for example, in the Baptist Hanserd Knollys confes-
sion (c. 28) with the characteristic reservation that this should not prejudice the
sanctity of property. Occasionally, and with great harshness (as in the Cambridge
platform of 1647, edition of 1653, 7, no. vi) the elders are reminded of their duty
to proceed against members who live 'without a calling' or conduct themselves
'idly in their calling.'
34. Among the Methodists these certificates of conduct originally had to be
renewed every three months. The old Independents, as noted above, gave the
Lord's Supper only to holders of tickets. Among the Baptists a newcomer to the
community could be admitted to the congregation only upon a letter of recom-
mendation from his former congregation: cf. tlie appendix to the edition of the
Hanserd Knollys Confession of 1689 (West Chester, Pa., 1827). Even the three
Amsterdam Baptist Communities at the beginning of the sixteenth century had
the same system, which since then recurs everywhere. In Massachusetts since 1669,
a certificate from the preacher and the select men concerning orthodoxy and con-
duct has been the attestation that the holder is qualified for acquiring political
citizenship. This certificate replaced the admission to the Lord's Supper, which
had originally been required.
35. Again we should like to stress emphatically this absolutely decisive point of
the first of these two essays. {The Protestant Ethics and the Spirit of Capitalism.)
It has been the fundamental mistake of my critics not to have taken notice of this
very fact. In the discussion of the Ancient Hebrew Ethics in relation to the doc-
trines of Egyptian, Phoenician, Babylonian ethical systems we shall hit upon a
very similar state of affairs.
36. Cf. among others the statement p. 166 in the Protestant Ethic and the Spirit
of Capitalism, The formation of congregations among ancient Jewry, just as among
early Christians, worked, each in its own way, in the same direction (among
Jewry the decline of the social significance of the sib, as we shall see, is conditioned
thereby, and Christianity during the early Middle Ages has had similar effects).
37. Cf. The Lii^re des Metiers of the Prevot Etienne de Boileau of 1268 (ed.
Lespinasse & Bonnardot in the Histoire generate de Paris) pp. 211, section 8; 215,
section 4. These examples may stand for many others.
38. Here, in passing, we cannot analyze this rather involved causal relationship.
XIII. RELIGOUS REJECTIONS OF THE WORLD AND
THEIR DIRECTIONS
1. 'A priori ethical rigorism' as used here refers to a belief in moral principles
based on 'natural law,' or categorical imperatives deduced from reason. The ethic
of the Stoics, or the cult of reason during the French Revolution, or Kantianism
are examples.
2. The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (New York, 1930).
XIV. CAPITALISM AND RURAL SOCIETY IN GERMANY
1. Judicial sentences serving as precedents in the old Germanic law.
2. St. Louis.
460 NOTES
XV. NATIONAL CHARACTER AND THE JUNKERS
1. Biirgerlichen.
2. In the German Korpszeitiing, No. 428, quoted here from Professor
A. Messer's article in the Weserzeitung of 2 June 191 7, we find the following re-
marks criticizing 'modern' proposals of reform: 'The proposals do not at all take
into account the changing material of freshmen and active members of fraternities.
To select only one item: The compulsion to drink should be abolished! There
should be no compulsion to empty the glass! There should be no pumping full!
Often enough I have experienced among various fraternities that kind of Kneipen
[ceremonious drinking parties of student fraternities] without such reforms, some-
times for semesters. And later on I have spent evenings with the same fraternities
when everybody was reeling drunk. Then they were simply different men who
believed in drinking plenty. Quite often they even held it to be necessary. And it is
necessary to provide an opportunity for drinking plenty and for making them
drink a great deal. If we cancel the command for drinking "rests," any freshman
who is a good drinker can at any time drink his fraternity seniors under the table,
and authority is gone. Or if we abolish the obligation to honor each toast we
thereby abolish the basis of KneipgemuetlichJ{^eit [tavern jollification]. If we forbid
the pumping full of a member, we do away with a means of education! I beg that
these words not be quoted out of their context. After all, our fraternity life shall
constitute a chain of educational measures; and every member of a dueling corps
will confirm that later in life he never again was told the truth so unvarnished,
so incredibly bluntly as sometimes in the dueling corps. How did it happen that he
took it.'' However ridiculous it may sound, it was due to the Kneipe. To us the
Kneipe is what the often abused barrack drill and the goose step are to the soldier.
Just as the command "knees bent!" repeated hundreds of times on the drill ground
makes the man overcome laziness, callousness, stubbornness, rage, sluggishness, and
weariness, and just as this command makes discipline emerge from the sentim.ent
of being utterly helpless and completely devoid of initiative in the face of a superior
— in the same way with us the command "drink the rest!" always gives the senior
the opportunity to show the junior his absolute superiority. He may punish, he
may keep a distance, and maintain the atmosphere which is absolutely required for
the educational endeavor of the dueling corps — lest they become clubs! Naturally
the command "drink the rest!" is not always and not with everybody advisable, but
it must be an imminent threat to the Kneipe as the "knees bent!" is on the drill
ground. Nevertheless, in both situations men may have a jolly good time.' [M. W.]
3. County executive.
4. Judge of a lower court. 4'
i
XVI. INDIA: THE BRAHMAN AND THE CASTES
1. The specialists see in the Purusha Stil^ta of the Rig-Veda the 'Magna Charta of
the caste system.' It is the latest product of the Vedic period. We shall discuss the
Atharva-Veda later.
2. Of the present Hindu castes (the chief ones), one may say that 25 are diffused
throughout most of the regions of India. These castes comprise about 88 million
Hindus out of the total of 217 million. Among them we find the ancient priest,
warrior, and merchant castes: the Brahmans (14.60 million); Rajputs (9.43 mil-
NOTES 461
lion); Baniya (3.00 or only 1.12 million — according to whether or not one in-
cludes the split sub-castes); Cayasts (ancient caste of official scribes) (2.17 mil-
lion); as well as ancient tribal castes like the Ahirs (9.50 million); Jats (6.98 mil-
lion) ; or the great unclean occupational castes like the Chamar (leather workers)
(11.50 million); the Sudra caste of the Teli (oil pressers) (4.27 million); the
genteel trade caste of the goldsmiths, the Sonar (1.26 million); the ancient castes
of village ardsans, the Kumhar (potters) (3.42 million) and Lobar (Blacksmiths)
(2.07 million) ; the lower peasant caste of the Koli (cooli, derived from Kul, clan,
meaning something like 'kin' — Gevatter) (3.17 million); and other individual castes
of varying origin. The great differences in caste names as well as several distinc-
tions of social rank which, in the individual provinces, derive from castes obviously
equal in descent, make direct comparisons extremely difficult.
3. The Banjaras, for instance, are partly organized as 'castes' in the Central
Provinces. In Mysore, however, they are organized as an ('animist') 'tribe.' In
both cases they make their living in the same way. Similar cases frequently
occur.
4. 'Territorial economy' designates a stage in economic development. The term
was coined by Gustav Schmoller, who distinguished between 'village economy' — •
'city economy' — 'territorial economy' — 'national economy.' [Editors.]
5. As with all sociological phenomena, the contrast here is not an absolute one,
nor are transitions lacking, yet it is a contrast in 'essential' features which has
been historically decisive.
6. Commensalisms existing between castes really only confirm the rule. They
concern, for instance, commensalism between certain Rajput and Brahman sub-
castes, which rests upon the fact that the latter have of yore been the family priests
of the former.
7. A separate lower caste (the Kallars) has arisen in Bengal from among people
who during the famine of 1866 had infracted the ritual and dietary laws and in
consequence had been excommunicated. Within this caste, in turn, the minority
separate themselves as a sub-caste from the majority. The former had become
guilty of the outrage only at a price of six seers for the Rupee, whereas the latter
had trespassed even at a price of ten seers for the Rupee. [M. W.]
8. A nabob of Bankura, upon the request of a Chandala, wished to compel the
Karnakar (metal workers) caste to eat with the Chandala. According to the legend
of the origin of the Mahmudpurias, this request occasioned part of this caste to
escape to Mahmudpura and to constitute itself as a separate sub-caste with higher
social claims.
9. According to Gait's general report for 191 1 {Census of India, Report, vol. i,
p. 378), this was the case for the equally genteel castes of the Baidya and Kayastha
in Bengal, the Kanet and the Khas in the Punjab, and, sporadically, among the
Brahmans and Rajputs, and the Sonars, Nais, and the Kanets [women]. Enriched
Maratha peasants may avail themselves of Moratha women for a sufficient dowry.
10. Among the Rajputs in Punjab, hypergamy often still exists to such an extent
that even Chamar girls are purchased.
11. If in India {Census Report, 1901, xiii, i, p. 193) the whole village — the un-
clean castes included — consider themselves to be 'interrelated,' that is, if the new
marriage partner is addressed by all as 'son-in-law' and the older generation is
addressed by all as 'uncle,' it is evident that this has nothing whatsoever to do with
derivation from a 'primitive group marriage'; this is indeed as little true in India
as elsewhere.
462 NOTES
12. Especially by the Rajputs. Despite the severe English laws of 1829, as late as
1869, in 22 villages of Rajputana there were 23 girls and 284 boys. In an 1836
count, in some Rajput areas, not one single live girl of over one year of age was
found in a population of 10,000 souls!
13. Thus, for instance, the Makishya Kaibarthas (in Bengal) increasingly reject
community with the Chasi Kaibarthas because the latter personally sell their
(agricultural) products in the market, which the Makishya do not do. Other
castes are considered declasse because their women participate in selling in the
stores; generally, the co-operation of women in economic pursuits is considered
specifically plebeian. The social and work set-up of agriculture is very strongly
determined by the fact that several performances are considered as absolutely
degrading. Often caste rank determines whether or not someone uses oxen and
horses or other draft and pack animals in gainful work; it determines which
animals and how many of them he uses (for example, the number of oxen em-
ployed by the oil pressers is thus determined).
14. Baudhayana's Sacred Boo\s of the East, i, 5, 9, i. Also all commodides pub-
licly offered for sale.
15. Baudhayana i, 5, 9, 3. Mines and all workshops except distilleries of alcohol
are ritually clean.
16. The relations of the Indian sects and salvation religions to the banking and
commercial circles of India will be discussed later.
17. Cf. Census Report for Bengal (1911) concerning the training for commerce
among the Baniyas. That ancient castes with strong occupational mobility often
drift into occupations whose demands of 'natural disposition' form the greatest
psychological contrast imaginable to the previous mode of activity, but which
stand close to one another through the common usefulness of certain forms of
knowledge and aptitudes, acquired through training, speaks against imputations
to 'natural disposition.' Thus, the frequent shift, mentioned above, from the ancient
caste of surveyors — whose members naturally knew the roads particularly well —
to the occupation of chauffeur may be referred to among many similar examples.
18. These figures are from the 191 1 census.
19. V. Delden, Die Indische Jute-Industrie, 1915, p. 96.
20. V. Delden, ibid. pp. 114-25.
XVII. THE CHINESE LITERATI
1. Yu tsiuan tung kian kang mu, Geschichte der Ming-Dynastie des Kaisers Kian
Lung, trans, by Delamarre (Paris, 1865), p. 417.
2. As eminent an authority as von Rosthorn disputes this point in his 'The Burn-
ing of the Books,' Journal of the Pelting Oriental Society, vol. iv, Peking, 1898,
pp. I ff. He believes that the sacred texts were orally transmitted until the Han
period, and hence that they are in the same tradition that prevailed exclusively in
early India. The outsider is not entitled to pass judgment, but perhaps the fol-
lowing may be said. The annalistic scriptures at least cannot rest on oral tradition
and, as the calculation of the eclipses of the sun shows, they go back into the
second millennium. Very much of what elsewhere is (according to the usual assump-
tion, reliably) reported of the archives of the princes and the importance of script
and the written communication of the literati could just as little be reconciled with
the above, /'/ one were to extend the view of the eminent expert beyond the ritual
literature (that is, literature which has been brought into poetic form). Here, of
NOTES 463
course, only expert sinologists have the last word, and a 'criticism' on the part of
a non-expert would be presumptuous. The principle of strictly oral tradition has
almost everywhere applied only to charismatic revelations and to charismatic com-
mentaries of these, and not to poetry and didactics. The great age of script as such
comes out in its pictorial form and also in its arrangement of the pictorial charac-
ters: at a late period the vertical columns divided by lines still referred back to the
origin from scored disks of bamboo sticks which were placed side by side. The
oldest 'contracts' were bamboo scores or knotted cords. The fact that all contracts
and documents were made out in duplicate form is probably rightly considered a
survival of this technique (Conrady).
3. This explains also the stereotyping of script in such an extraordinarily early
stage of development, and hence it produces an after-effect even today.
4. E. de Chavannes, Journal of the Peking Oriental Society, vol. in, i, 1890, p. iv,
translates Tai che ling by 'grand astrologer,' instead of 'court annalist,' as it is
usually rendered. Yet, the later, and especially the modern period knows the rep-
resentatives of literary education to be sharp opponents of the astrologers. Cf. below.
5. P. A. Tschepe (S.J.), 'Histoire du Royaume de Han,' Varietes Sinologiques,
31 (Shanghai, 1910), p. 48.
6. During the fourth century the representatives of the feudal order, foremost
among them the interested princely sibs, argued against the intended bureaucrati-
zation of the state of Tsin by pointing out 'that the forbears had improved the
people by education, not by administrative changes' (this harmonizes fully with
the later theories of Confucian orthodoxy). Thereupon the new minister Yang,
belonging to the literad, comments in highly un^onfucian manner: 'the ordinary
person lives according to tradition; the higher minds, however, create tradition,
and for extraordinary things the rites give no precepts. The weal of the people is
the highest law,' and the prince accedes to his opinion. (Cf. the passages in
Tschepe's 'Histoire du Royaume de Tsin,' Varietes Sinologiques, 27, p. 118.) It is
quite probable that when Confucian orthodoxy articulated and purified the Annals
it very strongly erased and retouched these features in favor of the traditionalism
which was later considered correct. On the other hand, one must beware of simply
taking at face value all the reports referred to below which testify to the astonish-
ing deference paid to the early literati!
7. Although the princely heir of Wei alights from the chariot he receives no
response to his repeated salutations from the king's courtier and literary man,
who is a parvenu. To the question 'whether the rich or the poor may be proud'
the literatus replies 'the poor,' and he motivates this by saying that he might find
employment any day at another court. (Tschepe, 'Histoire du Royaume de Han,'
op. cit. p. 43.) One of the literati is seized by a great rage about a brother of the
prince being preferred over him for the post of a minister. (Cf. ibid.)
8. The prince of Wei listens only in standing to the report of the court literatits,
a disciple of Confucius (loc. cit.; cf. preceding note).
9. Cf. the statements of Tschepe, 'Histoire du Royaimie de Tsin,' p. 77.
10. The hereditary transmission of the ministerial position is considered ritually
objectionable by the literati (Tschepe, loc. cit.). When the prince of Chao orders
his minister to scrutinize and find some land suitable as fiefs for several worthy
literati the minister thrice declares after having thrice been warned, that he has
as yet not found any land worthy of them. Thereupon the prince finally under-
stands and makes them officials. (Tschepe, 'Histoire du Royaume de Han,' pp. 54-5.)
11. Cf. the passage concerning the respective question by the King of U in
Tschepe, 'Histoire du Royaume de U,' Varietes Sinologiques 10, Shanghai, 1891.
464 NOTES
12. That also income was an end sought goes without saying, as the Annals
show.
13. Qnce when a prince's concubine laughed at one of the literati, all the prince's
literati went on strike until she was executed (Tschepe, Histoire du Royaume dc
Han, loc. cit. p. 128).
14. The event reminds one of the 'finding' of the sacred law under Josiah with
the Jews. The contemporary great annalist, Se ma tsien, does not mention the find.
15. Tschepe, 'Histoire du Royaume de Tsin,' loc. cit. p. 53.
16. Individual concealments are confirmed (for instance, the attack of the state
U upon its own state Lu). For the rest, in view of the scantiness of the m.aterial,
one may seriously raise the question as to whether one should not rather consider
the great, strongly moralizing commentary to the Annals as his work.
17. In 1900 the Empress-Dowager still took very unfavorable notice of a censor's
request to abolish them. Cf. the rescripts in the Pelting Gazette concerning the
'orthodox army' (10 January 1899), concerning the 'review' during the Japanese
war (21 December 1894), concerning the importance of military ranks (i and 10
November 1898), and from an earlier period, e.g. (23 May 1878).
18. Concerning this pracrice cf. Etienne Zi (S.J.), 'Pratique des Examens Mili-
taires en Chine,' Varietes Sinologiques, no. 9. Subjects for examination were arch-
ery and certain gymnastic feats of strength; and, formerly, the writing of a disser-
tation; since 1807, however, the wridng of a section of one hundred characters
from the U-King (theory of war), allegedly dating from the time of the Chou
dynasty, was required. A great many officers did not acquire degrees and the
Manchus were freed from taking them altogether.
19. A Taotai (prefect) for his military merits had been taken over from the
officers' ranks into the civil administration. In response to a complaint an Imperial
rescript {Peking Gazette, 17 September 1894) comments as follows: although the
officer's conduct in the matter in question has substantively been found free from
fault, he nevertheless has shown his 'rough soldierly manners' by his conduct, 'and
we have to ask ourselves whether he possesses the cultivated manners which for
a person of his rank and position must appear indispensable.' Therefore it is
recommended that he resume a military position.
The abolition of age-old archery and of other very old sports as elements of
'military' training was made almost impossible by the rites, which in their be-
ginnings probably were still connected with the 'bachelor house.' Thus the Em-
press, when rejecting the reform proposals, makes reference to these rites.
20. The French authors for the most part designate seng ytten, siu tsai
by 'baccalaureate' [bachelor's degree], kju jin by 'licentiate' [master's degree],
tien se by 'doctorate.' The lowest degree gave a claim to a stipend only to the
top graduates. The bachelors who had received a stipend were called lin cheng
(magazine prebendaries), bachelors selected by the director and sent to Peking
were called pao \ong, those among them who were admitted to the college
yu kpng, and those who had acquired the bachelor degree by purchase were called
kien cheng.
21. The charismatic qualifies of the descendant simply were proof for those of
his sib, hence of the forebears. At the time, Chi Hwang-Ti had abolished this
custom, as the son was not to judge the father. But since then almost every
founder of a new dynasty has bestowed ranks to his ancestors.
22. By the way, this is a rather certain symptom of its recent origin!
23. Cf. for this: Biot, Essai sur I' histoire de l' instruction publique en Chine et
de la corporation des Lettres (Paris, 1847). (It is sfiU useful.)
NOTES 465
24. Complaints at Ma Tuan Lin, translated in Biot, p. 481.
25. Themes for them are given by Williams, cf. Zi, loc. cit.
26. This held especially for the examinations for the master's degree, where the
theme of the dissertation often called for an erudite, philological, literary, and his-
torical analysis of the respective classical text. Cf. the example given by Zi, loc. cit.
p. 144.
27. This held especially for the highest degree ('doctorate') for which the em-
peror, often in person, gave the themes and for which he classified the graduates.
Questions of administrative expediency, preferably connected with one of the 'six
questions' of Emperor Tang, were customary topics. (Cf. Biot, p. 209, note i, and
Zi, loc. cit. p. 209, note i.)
28. Siao Hio, ed. de Harlez, v, 11, i, 29, 40. Cf. the quotation from Chu Tse,
ibid. p. 46. Concerning the question of generations, cf. i, 13.
29. Loc. cit. I, 25, furthermore 2. Introduction No. 5 f .
30. There were literary prescriptions also for this.
31. It need hardly be mentioned that what is here said about language and
script reproduces exclusively what such eminent sinologists, as especially the late
W. Grube, teach the layman. It does not result from the author's own studies.
32. J. Edkins, 'Local Values in Chinese Arithmetical Notation,' Journal of the
Peking Oriental Society, i, no. 4, pp. 161 f. The Chinese abacus used the (decimal)
positional value. The older positional system which has fallen into oblivion seems
to be of Babylonian origin.
33. de Harlez, Siao Hio, p. 42, note 3.
34. Also, Timkovski, Reise durch China (1820-21), German by Schmid (Leip-
zig, 1825), emphasizes this.
35. For such a self-impeachment of a frontier officer who had been inattentive,
see No. 567 of Aurel Stein's documents, edited by E. de Chavannes. It dates from
the Han period, hence long before the introduction of examinations.
36. The beginnings of the present Peking Gazette go back to the time of the
second ruler of the Tang dynasty (618-907).
37. Actually one finds in the Peking Gazette, with reference to the reports partly
of censors, partly of superiors, laudations and promotions (or the promise of such)
for deserving officials, demotions of insufficiently qualified officials for other offices
('that he may gather experiences,' loc. cit. 31 December, 1897 and many other
issues), suspension from office with half pay, expulsion of totally unqualified offi-
cials, or the statement that the good services of an official are balanced by faults
which he would have to remedy before further promotion. Almost always detailed
reasons are given. Such announcements were especially frequent at the end of the
year but there was also a great volume at other times. There are also to be found
posthumous sentences to be whipped for (obviously) posthumously demoted offi-
cials. {Peking Gazette, -26 May 1895.)
38. Cf. A. H. Smith, Village Life in China (Edinburgh, 1899), p. 78.
39. For the following see Kun Yu, Discours des Royaumes, Annales Nationalcs
des Etats Chinoises de X au V siecles, ed. de Harlez [London, 1895], pp. 54, 75, 89,
159, 189, and elsewhere.
40. Tschepe, Varietes Sinologiques, 27, p. 38. He begs to be punished. Similarly
in A. Stein's documents, loc. cit. no. 567.
41. See, however, the rescript in the Peking Gazette of 10 April 1895, by which
promotions were posthumously given to officers who chose death after the sur-
render of Wei-hai-wei (obviously because they took the guilt upon themselves and
thus prevented the compromise of the Emperor's charisma by the disgrace).
466 NOTES
42. There was, however, at least in one district, also a temple of Tat Ki, the
primary matter (chaos), from which the two substances are said to have developed
by division ('Schih Luh Kuoh Kiang Yuh Tschi,' translated by Michels, p. 39).
43. According to de Groot.
44. Cf. the excerpts translated from his memoirs by Grafin Hagen (Berlin, 1915),
pp. 27, 29, 33.
45. Cf. the elegant and ingenious, though quite shallow, notes of Cheng Ki
Tong, which were intended for Europeans. {China und die Chinesen, German by
A. Schultze [Dresden und Leipzig, 1896], p. 158.) Concerning Chinese conversa-
tion, there are some observations which well agree with what has been said above
in Hermann A. Keyserling, The Travel Diary of a Philosopher, trans, by J. Holroyd
Reece (New York, 1925).
46. 'Siao Hioh' (trans, by de Harlez, Annales du MusSe, Guimet xv, 1889) is the
work of Chou Hi (twelfth century a.d.). His most essential achievement was the
definitive canonization of Confucianism in the systematic form he gave to it. For
Chou Hi cf. Gall, 'Le Philosophe Tchou Hi, sa doctrine etc.,' Varietes Sinologiqttes,
6 (Shanghai, 1894). It is essentially a popular commentary to the Li Ki, making
use of historical examples. In China every grade school pupil was famihar with it.
47. The number of 'masters' was allocated to the provinces. If an emergency loan
was issued — even after the Taiping rebellion — higher quotas were promised occa-
sionally to the provinces for the raising of certain minimum sums. At every exam-
ination only ten 'doctors' were allowed to graduate, the first three of whom enjoyed
an especially high prestige.
48. The paramount position of personal patronage is illustrated by the com-
parison between the extraction of the three highest graduates and that of the high-
est mandarins as given by Zi, loc. cit. Appendix 11, p. 221, note i. Disregarding
the fact that of the 748 high official posidons, occupied from 1646 to 1914, 398
were occupied by Manchus although but three of them were among the highest
graduates (the three tien she put in the first place by the Emperor), the province
of Honan procured 58, that is, one sixth of all high officials, solely by virtue of
the powerful posidon of the Tseng family, whereas almost two thirds of the
highest graduates stemmed from other provinces which altogether had a share of
only 30 per cent in these offices.
49. This means was first systematically used by the Ming Emperors in 1453. (But,
as a financial measure, it is to be found even under Chi Hwang-Ti.) The lowest
decree originally cost 108 piasters, equal to the capitalized value of the study
prebends, then it cost 60 taels. After an inundation of the Hoang-ho, the price
had been reduced to about 20 to 30 taels in order to expand the market and thereby
procure ample funds. Since 1693 the purchasers of the bachelor's degree were also
admitted to the higher examinations. A Taotai position with all secondary expenses
cost about 40,000 taels.
50. That is why the emperors under certain conditions when placing the candi-
dates took into consideration whether or not the candidate belonged to a province
which as yet had no graduate who had been put in first place.
51. Se Ma Tsien's treatise on the balance of trade {ping shoan) (no. 8, chap. 30,
in vol. Ill of Chavannes' edition) represents a rather good example of Chinese
cameralism. It is also the oldest document of Chinese economics that has been
preserved. Topics which in our view do not belong to the 'balance of trade' are:
big trading profits during the period of the Warring States, degradation of the
merchants in the unified empire, exclusion from office, fixation of salaries and, in
accordance with them, fixation of land taxes, taxes of commerce, forest, water
NOTES 467
(appropriated by the 'great families'), the question of private monetization, the
danger of too large an enrichment of private persons (but: where there is wealth
there is virtue, which is quite Confucian in thought), costs of transport, purchases
of titles, monopolies of salt and iron, registering of merchants, internal tariffs,
policies of price stabilization, struggles against commissions being given to whole-
sale purveyors to the state instead of direct commissions being given the artisans.
The objective of this cameralist financial policy was internal order through stability,
and not a favorable balance of foreign trade.
52. The Kg Hong merchants' monopoly of the trade of Canton harbor, the only
one opened to foreigners, existed until 1892 and had been set up in order to choke
any intercourse of the Barbarians with the Chinese. The enormous profits which
this monopoly yielded caused the concerned office prebendaries to be disinclined to
any voluntary change in this condition.
53. Not only the official Ming history (cf. the following note) is full of this but
so is the 'Chi li kuo kiang yu chi' (Histoire geographique des XVI Royaumes, ed.
Michels, [Paris, 1891]). Thus, in 1368 the harem is excluded from affairs
of state at the request of the Hanlin Academy (p. 7) ; in 1498 representation of the
Hanlin Academy at the occasion of the palace fire and the demand (typical for
accidents) to 'speak freely' against the favorite eunuch (cf. following note).
54. Numerous cases illustrating this struggle are to be found, for instance in
the 'Yu tsiuan tung kien kang mu' [Ming History of Emperor Kien Lung], trans,
by Delamarre (Paris, 1865). Consider the fifteenth century: in 1404 a eunuch is
at the head of the army (p. 155). Since then this occurs repeatedly; thus, in 1428
(p. 223). Hence, the intrusion of palace officials into the administration in 1409
(p. 168). In 1443 a Hanlin doctor demands the abolition of cabinet rule, a reduction
of the corvee, and above all, council meetings of the Emperor, with the literati.
A eunuch kills him (p. 254). In 1449 the favorite eunuch is killed at the request
of the literati (p. 273), in 1457, however, temples are established in his honor.
In 1471 the counselors have to communicate with the Emperor through the
eunuch (p. 374). The very same is reported by Hiao Kong (361-28 b.c). In 1472
we meet eunuchs as secret policemen (p. 273), which in 1481 is abolished at the
request of the censors (p. 289). In 1488 the old ritual is restored (the same occurs
in numerous instances).
The removal of a eunuch in 1418 took an awkward course for the literati when
the list was found on the eunuch of the literati who had bribed him. The literati
were successful in having the list secreted and in seeing to it that a different pre-
text was found for the removal of the literati who had done the bribing (ibid.
p. 422).
55. Cf. E. Backhouse and J. O. P. Bland, China under the Empress Dowager
(Heinemann, 1910) and, against this, the famous memorial of Tao Mo from the
year 1901.
56. When in 1441 a sun eclipse predicted by the astrologers failed to occur, the
Board of Rites congratulated him— but the Emperor rejected this.
57. See the (previously cited) memorial, 1878, of the Hanlin Academy to the
Empress.
58. Loc. cit. chap. 9, pp. 130 f.
59. See the decree of the Empress of February 1901.
60. Loc. cit. p. 457.
61. For instance, 'Yu tsiuan kien kang mu' of Emperor Kien Lung (loc. cit.
pp. 167, 223), 1409 and 1428. An edict forbidding in a similar manner interference
in the administration was given the military even in 1388 (ibid.).
Ind
ex
Abnegation of the world, 327-31
Absentee ownership, 366
Absolutism, princely, 230, 365; and cap-
italism, 230
Abstinences, 271-2
Academic career, in Germany and U.S.,
I29ff.
freedom of, 19, 387 f.
lectures and political values, 145, 150
role of chance in, 132-3
Academies, 134
Action, communal, and class interest, 183-4
irrational, 254
political, economic conditions of, 85 f.;
tragedy of, 117
societal, 228
t>'pes of, 56
Administration, amateur, in U.S., 88
city, 238
concentration of means of, 221-4
costs of, 81, 214, 224
and economic organization, 81
ownership of means of, 298
Administrative agencies, collegial, 89
means, concentration of, 298
officials, 88 f., 90-91; see also Bureaucracy
staff, types of, 80 f.
tasks of bureaucracy, 209-14
Adolf, Gustav, 260
Aesthetics, 144, 154
Affinity, elective, 62-3, 284-5
Agrarian institutions, history of, 10; prob-
lems, 34, 372
Agricultural proletariat, 363
Agriculture, and capitalism, 366 ff.
medieval, 374
' separation of ownership and manage-
ment in, 381
Alienation, 50; from nature, 344
America, see United States
Anabaptism, 340, 451
Anarchism, 120, 229, 334
Ancestor cult, 423
469
Ancient societ)', 19; see also Greece, Rome
Anglo-Saxon clubs, 388
gentlemen, contrasted, 390 ff.
society, 40
Annals, Chinese, 444; virtues praised in,
435
Anthropological types, selection of, 190;
relevances of, 173, 177
Anti-intcllcctualism, 142 f., 152
Anti-Semitism, 19
Antiquit)', Great Powers in, 161
Archilochus, 345
Archiv fiir Sozialwissenschaft und Sozial-
politik., 14, 46, 66
Aristocracy, 81, 386 ff.
of education, 371 ff.
in Germany, 390
intellectual, 49
landed, 373 ff.
and rents, 369
Aristocratic forms and democratization, 392
Aristophanes, 167
Aristotle, 141
Armies, American, 9
bureaucratization of, 222-3; in China, 421
disintegration of, 229
and household, separation of, 258
organizations, their economic bases, 257,
259-60
in politics, 227
Roman, 222
t)pes of, 221 £.
Aroon, R., 447
Art, 3, 191
of brotherliness, religious ethic, 341
competes with salvation religion, 342
and eroticism, 350
of imperial Germany, 155
and morals, 342
and rationalization, 342
and religion, competition between, 341 f.
and science, 141; psychology of, 136-8
470 INDEX
Artisans, in Antiquity, 185
in India, 411-12
and protestant sects, 314
traditionalism of, 413
Artist, attitude of, 341; status of, 191
Asceticism, 276
of Christian knighthood, 346
dual nature of, 327
inner- worldly, 61
and mysticism, 325-6
sects of, 313 fif.
typology of, 324-7
and virtuosos, 290
W.'s attitude towards, 20
Aspasia, 345
Aspiration, goals of, 436
Associations, voluntary, 57, 310 ff.
Athenian democracy, 57, 227
Austria, 389
Authority, bases of and types of, 295 fif.
of the Brahman, 396
bureaucratic, 196
charismatic, 244; the sociology of, ch.
IX, 245-52; defined, 295; foundation
and instability of, 248-51
disintegration of, 297
irrationality of charismatic and tradi-
tionalist, 296
legal, 79, 299
patrimonial, 296
political, 31
and status, 224
Autonomy of spheres, 268, 328, 334, 339;
of religion, 270
Bacon, Francis, 142
Bakuninism, 229
Balance, internal, 208
Bamberger, Ludwig, 46, 447
Baptism, adult, 314
Baptists, in America, 453; history, 451; and
wealth, 308
Barth, Karl, 448
Baudelaire, Charles, 148, 333
Baumgarten family, 9
Bebel, August, 45, 112, 447
Behavior and religion, 270
Bekker, J., 11
Belgium, 371
Below, Professor von, 376 f., 378
Bennigsen, Rudolf B., 3
Bentham, J., 293
Berlin bureaucrats, stupidity of, 50
Bernstein, Eduard, 24, 312
Bethman, Theobald, 41
Beyond Good and Evil, 447
Bhagavad-Gita, 123
Bismarck, 32!, 35, 45, 229, 234, 239, 389
Blood groups, and prophecies of salvation,
328 ff.
Bolshevism and the Soviets, 99-100
Booty capitalism, see Capitalism
Borkman, John Gabriel, 12
Boss, political, in U.S., 102, 109-10, 180
Bourgeois ascent, 383
Boyen, H. von, 390
Brahmanism, 416 ff.
Brahmans, 269, 396, 409, 439
and the castes in India, ch. xvi, 396-415
and princes, 404
see also Caste, Hinduism
Brentano, Lujo, 19, 25
Bridegroom, purchase of, 408
Brotherhoods, in U.S., 308
Brotherliness, religion of, 330
and art, 341
and economic sphere, 331-3
and war, 336
Bruck, Moeller van den, 69, 448
Brutality, 355
Buddha, 126, 357
Buddhism, 267-301
Biilow, Bernard Furst von, Den\wurdig\ei-
ten, 449
Bureaucracy, 22, 43; ch. viii, 196-244; ch.
xvTi, 416-44
and the army, 222-3
and capitalism, 49, 223, 230 f.
characteristics of, 196-8, 295
and charisma, 246 ff., 254; a philosophy
of history, 51-5
in China, 226, 421, 441
community action and societal action, 228
counter tendencies to, 232
cultural effects of, 240-41, 243
and democracy, 18, 224 f., 231, 240, 242;
in America, 17
and Democratic mass parties, 209 f., 225
development of, 209-14, 235-40, 243
and discipline, 254
economic basis of, 204
economic and social consequences of,
230-32
economic preconditions of, 208
and education, 240-43
and estates, 231
and experts, 216, 234, 241
in France, 226
German, 50, 228, 370, 436
and the great state, 209 f.
historical examples of, 204 f.
and the individual, 50
INDEX
471
Bureaucracy (Cont.)
and law, 216-21
and market economy, 215
model of, 204
and monarchy, 234
and official secrecy, 233, 437
and parliaments, 43, 89
permanence of, 228-30
and power, 220, 232-5
predictions of, 211
presupposidons and causes of, 204-9
and princes, 231
and religion, 226, 283, 295
in Russia, 37, 226
and science, 223-4
and Social Democrats, 103
technical superiority of, 214-16
and traditionalism, 54, 245
and the United States, 17, 211
Bureaucratic state, depersonalization of, 334
organization of, 231
structure, 210, 245
Business, cycles, 68
life in U.S., 308
sect membership in, 303, 305 ff.
Byron, Lord, quoted, 369
Cabinet, 90
Caesar, Julius, 55
Caesarism, 17, 106, 370; Bismarck's, 33
Calhoun, John Caldwell, 107
Calvin, John, 55, 336, 371, 453
Calvinism, 124, 287, 359
Capelle, 41
Capitalism, 15
administratively strangled, 165
'adventure,' 67
American, 15
ancient, 227
and aristocracy of education, 371 ff.
booty, 67
and bureaucracy, 49, 230 ff.
and caste system, 412
colonial, 66
and culture, 371
and democracy, 71
dynamics of, 68
effects of, 364, 372; on agriculture, 366 ff.
enterprise, presuppositions of, 185
ethos, diffusion of, 308; and ascetic sects,
322
European contrasted with American, 372 ff.
fiscal, 67
in Germany, ch. xiv, 363-85
historical phases of, 68
imperialist, 66, 168 ff.
Capitalism (Cont.)
impersonal nature of, 331
in India, 413 ff.
and the individual, 58
irrationality of, 49
and land ownership, 368, 383
modern and Roman law, 217
modern industrial, uniqueness of 67-8,
309
pariah, 66
political, 66
and princely absolutism, 230
and the Protestant ethic, 450; Ephriam
Fischoff on, 447
Protestant sects and the spirit of, ch. xiii,
302-22
and rational impersonality, 73, 331
types of, 65-70
and war, 222
W.'s causal analysis of, 61; t>'pology of, 60
Careers: cost of, 242
within hierarchy, 203
official, in China, 437, 438-40
political, 108
Carlyle, Thomas, 135; quoted, 385; Heroes
and Hero Worship, 53
Caste, and the Brahman, ch. xvi, 396-415
and capitalism, 412
concept defined, 188 f., 397 ff., 411
endogamy, 399
and ethnic segregation, 188-90
and guilds, 399-405
and pariah peoples, 189
and sex, 406
and social rank, 397, 399, 404, 408-9,
410, 411
and status group, 405-9
and traditionalism, 411-15
and tribe, 398-9
see also Brahmans, Hinduism
Catiiolicism, ii, 320, 370 ff.
bureaucratization of, 226, 295, 299
Center party, 39
Causal explanation, 57; pluralism, 34, 231,
376
Causus system, in England, 105 ff.
Censorship, 112
Chamberlain, Joseph, 105, 106
Channing, William E., 8
Charisma, bureaucracy and, 51-5, 246 ff.
concept of, 52 ff.
and discipline, 254 ff., 262-4
and divine right of kings, 249
the education, 426
its general character, 245-8
ideological function, 262, 264
472 INDEX
Charisma (Cont.)
and Kadi-justice, 250
in the modern world, 72
and patriarchal structure, 247
prophetic vs. priesthood, 328
routinization o£, 53, 54, 297; economic
factors in, 262 f.
Charismatic authority, 244
capitalists, 67
defined, 295
domination and legal codes, 250
foundations and instability of, 248-51
kingship, 251-2
leaders, 43, 80; and followings, 296
legitimation, 78-9
the sociology of, ch. ix, 245-52
warrior kings in China, 421
Chastisement, 271-2
Chicago, lawlessness of, 15
China, ch. xvii, 415-44
bureaucracy in, 226, 421, 441
corporal punishment in, 435
economic policy in, 440-42
education in, 424, 429 ff.
emperor of, 247
Gazette in, 437
the gentleman ideal in, 436-8
good and evil spirits, 436
harem system in, 443
literature of, 421-2, 430, 444
merit system, 419
North vs. South in, 424
oratory in, 433
politics, 442-4
scapegoat mechanism in, 438
script and language in, 430
sib in, 434
stratification in, 416-44
sultanism and eunuchs in, 442-4
wealth in, 439
Chivalrous warriors, see Warriors
Christ (Jesus), 52, 119, 126, 248, 329, 357
Christianity, 64, 148-9, 267-301
education, types of in, 428
its stratum, 269
Church, 295, see also Religion
bureaucracy, 226, 295
conservatism of, 370 f.
conventicles within, 314
defined, 288
European, 370-71
and peasant, 370
recruitment by birth, 305
in United States, affiliation, 302 ff.; and
state, 302, 312
Cicero, 4, 32
City administration, 238; educating in-
fluence of, 378
Civic strata, practical rationalism of, 284-5;
and religion, 284
Civil servants, Chinese, 423; German, 17;
types of, 99
Civil Service Reform, in U.S., iio-ii
Civil War, U.S., 369
Clans, interest, 166; and justice, 221
status groups and world religions, 268 ff.
structure, 170
Clarkson, Thomas, 451
Class, and community, 184-5
consciousness, 69, 184; of proletariat, 372
defined, 181, 405
franchise, Prussian, 373
generic connotation of concept of, 182
interest, 184; concept of, defined, 183
and communal action, 183-4
and Marx, 47
and military service, 222
movement, 184; modern, 63
parties, 186; workingmen, 372
and political power, 227
and rationalism, 279
and religion, 269, 270, 273, 274, 277, 292
situation, defined, 181, 301; and market-
situation, 1 81 -3
and status, 282; party, ch. vii, 180-95
structure, in Germany, 364
struggles, evolution of, 185; origin of,
183; types of, 184-6; Marxist concept
of, 49
Classical economists, 56
Cleon, 96
Clerics, as administrators, 352; income of,
318; literate, 92
Closure, 187, 233, 258
legal, 405
of sacramental communion, 314
and scarcity of enonomic opportunities,
401
Club, Anglo-Saxon, contrasted with German,
388
and dueling corps, 388
pattern, American, 18
Cobden, Richard, 107
Co-existence of Spheres, 296
Coincidence, or convergence, point of, 63
Collegiate bodies, 83, 236 ff.; principles and
experts, 237
Colonial capitalism, 66; problems, 31
Columbia University, 15, 16
Commensalism and connubium, 311
Commensalism of norms, 402 f., 407, 408
Common law and Roman law, 217 fT.
Communal action, defined, 183; and class
interest, 183-4
Communication, and bureaucracy, 213-1^;
limits of, 347
Communism, warrior, 257-9, 275-9, 297
Community, 57; and class, 184-5; and soci-
etal action in bureaucracy, 228
Compensation, postulate, 354
Compromise, 288
Comte, A., 44, 57, 447
Concentration of means of administration,
221-4; of warfare, 260
Concept, origin and significance of, 141
Condorcet, Louis, 57
Conduct, ethical and religious doctrine of,
321; meaningful, 55; transformation of
types of, 228
Conflict, sociology of, 186, 226, 255, 269,
329; social, exploitation of, 227
Confucianism, economic ethic of, 267-301
education, 426-34
rationalist character of, 293
its stratum, 268
Confucius, 420, 421-2, 437
Congress of Arts and Science, 14, 363
Connubium, 241, 300, 407; status of, 401,
405 f., 409; see also Marriage, Love,
Sex
Consciousness, false, 58
Conscription, universal, 260
Consequences, unintended, paradox of 328,
332
Constructed type, meaning of, 294, 324, 358
Constitutional endowment, 183, 462; mon-
archy, 90
Consumption, communism of, 297
Contemplation, religious, 282
Conventions of parties, churches, 103; and
status groups, 191, 301
Convergence, see Coincidence
Conversation, eroticism as a stimulus of,
346; Chinese, 437, 465
Co-operatives, 371; clerical leaderships of,
371; in Europe, 367; rural, 371
Corporate bodies, types of, 237
Corruption, in U.S., 17
Counsellor, types of, 99
Courage, 155
Courts and the Methodists, 318
Credit rating, 319; and religion, 303
Cromwell, Oliver, 55, 71, 254, 256, 260, 318,
337; and army discipline, 456
Crowd instincts and politics, 394
Crusades, 269; religious propaganda of, 65,
336 f.
INDEX 473
Crypto-croticism, 346
Cultivated man, 356; and expert, 426 fT.;
and the specialist, 242-3
Cultural effects, of bureaucracy, 240, 243
of discipline, 240, 254
of mass democracy, 240
Cultural spheres, segregation of, 62; law-
ful autonomy of, 123
Culture, borrowing of, 93, 131, 217, 408
and capitalism, 371
devaluation of, 357
Hellenic, 430
and nature, 344
salon, 346
and state, 212
and wealth, 212
Darwinism, social, 35
Death, fear of, 171; attitudes toward, 356;
meaning of, 335 ff., 356; Tolstoi on,
139-40
Degradation, social, 368
Degrees, 464; prices of, 466
Demagogue, 96
Democracy, 17, 242, 370
ambivalence of, 240
in America, 17, 57, 71, 90, 149, 310, 392
and armies, 257
Athenian, 57, 227
and bureaucracy, 17, 18, 225, 231, 240,
242
constitutional, 42
definition of, 60
in England, 90
and individualism, 71 f.
and law and justice, 220 f., 240
mass, 105; cultural effects of, 240; and
bureaucracy, 224 f.
plebiscitarian, 104; and political machines,
103 f.
political concept of, 226
social, 446
and status privileges, 187
W.'s attitude towards, 38, 55; and con-
cept of, 42-3
Democratization, active, 227
and academically certified man, 393
and aristocradc forms, 392
and bureaucratization, 225, 231
and economic conditions, 227
Demosthenes, 345
Desertion, 248, 249
Determinism, social, 54
Devotion, types of, 348
Dewey, John, 65
Dharma, 123
474 INDEX
Dialectics, 47, 88, 322
Dignity, 12, 283
and literati, 393
sense of, defined, 189-90
and strata, 276
W.'s sense of, 4, 393
Dilettante vs. expert, 22, 232, 234
Dilthey, Wilhelm, 3, 56
Discipline, authoritarian means, 320
bureaucracy, 229, 254
and charisma, 254 ff., 262-4
church, 456
concept defined, 253
and credit rating, 319
effects of, 240, 256, 257
and ethical motives, 254
factory, 261, 414
hostile to charisma or to status group,
254 ff-
its meaning, ch. x, 253-64
military, 254, 255 ff., 318
origins of, in war, 255-61
Prussian, 460
sect, 456
voluntary self-discipline, 320
Disease, 144; ethical obligations of, 330
Disenchantment, 282
'disenchantment of the world,' 51
of Occidental culture, 139 f.
of the world, 148, 155, 350, 357
Disraeli, Benjamin, 106
Distress, types of, 280
Discrimination, racial, 311
Divine right of kings and charisma, 249
Doctrines, religious, 270
Donor, political, 106
Donors, party, 247
Dostoievski, F., 122, 126
Dualism, Chinese, 436; religious, 358
Dueling, 6, 311, 391; corps, 46, 388, 459 f.
Dutch and Italian Renaissance universities,
142; Pietists, 454
Dynamics, social, W.'s theory of, 52
Eckhart, Meister, 286
Economic conditions, 190; and democratiza-
tion, 227
Economic determination, 259; Marx and W.,
47
Economic enterprise, distribution of power
in, 91
Economic ethic, autonomy of, 268
of religion, defined, 267 ff.
and stratification, 268 ff.
Economic man and political man, 333-4
Economic mentalities and religions, 292 ff.
Economic order, defined, 181; alienation
from, 297; and status order, 301
Economic structure and political expansion,
165 f.
Economics and mysticism, 333; and politics,
82
Economists, classical, 56
Economy, subsistence, 367
Ecstasy, 343; beauty of, 30; contemplative,
orgiastic, apathetic, 291; euphoria of,
330
Education, 74, 192
American, 149
and bureaucracy, 240-3
and capitalism, stratum of aristocracy of,
371 ff-
Chinese, 424; costs of, 434; levels of, 438;
of the literati, 417 ff.; development of
higher, 429 ff.; and career, 438-40
Confucian, its typological position, 426-34
in Germany, 427
military, in the Middle Ages, 428
and political orders, 4^
and politics, 145
and religion, 351
social types of, 426 ff .
sociology of, 92, 243, 352, 387
system, 432; discussion of foundations of,
243
and training, their rationalization, 240-43
types of, 428
of warriors, 351
W.'s, 6
Elections, costs of, 105, 109; selection by,
239
Elective affinity, see Affinity
Elusinian mysteries, 273
Emotional influence, 171
Empirical technology, 217
Emigration, 366; German, to the U.S., 382
Ends and means, 121 f., 124, 151
England, democracy in, 90
early history of parties in, 100 f.
election agent in, 102 f.
gentlemen in, lOO-ioi
gentry in, 93
and Germany, 218
history of party organization in, T04 f.
landlord in, 363; contrasted with Prussian
landlord, 380 ff.; social origin of, 381
self-government, 93
role of political notables in, ii2
and Rome, 211
Enrollments, student, 242; determining fac-
tors in, 133; as test of qualification, 133
Enthusiasm, 53, 155, 277; and work, 136
INDEX
475
Erinnertingen, 447
Erotic passion, beauty of, 349; sensation, 346
Eroticism, defined, 344
development of, 344 fl.
irrationality of, 345
and religion, 343-50
and self-control, 349
and sobriety, 344
Estates, 81; defined, 83; ambivalence of
bureaucracy towards, 231; expropriation
of, 298
Esthetics and magical religiosity, 341; and
religion, 340-43
Ethical absolutism, 119; and pacifism, Chan-
ning's, 8
Ethics, business, 312
economic, 268 fl.
heroic, 20
organic social, 338
and politics, 118, 128
religious, types of, 123 f., 267 f., 292 ff.;
Buddhist, 267-301; Christian, 267-301;
Confucian, 267-301; Hinduist, 267-301;
Islamist, 267-301
of responsibility and of ultimate ends, 9,
120 f.
and science, 148, 151 -2
W.'s personal, 20
Ethnic diiTerences and nation, 173
Ethnic groups and nation, 177
Ethnic problems of U.S., South, 364; seg-
regation and caste, 188-90
Europe, agriculture in, 366
capitalism in, contrasted with American,
372 flf.
church in, 370
Eastern, 40
officialdom in, 88
peasant in, contrasted with American
farmer, 365
stratum of state officials in, 370
Eunuchs and sultanism, see under China
Examinations, expert, and bureaucratization,
241
and bureaucracy, 240 f.
in China, 422.-6
rigor of, 433
specialized, ambivalence of democracy to,
240
system, origin of, 424
Expansion and bureaucratic structure, 210;
and economic structure, 165 f.; politi-
cal, 254; and export trade, 163-5
Expectancies, 103, 128
Experience, cult of, 137
intensive ways of, 350
Experience (Cont.)
romantic desire for, 149
types of, 347
Experiment, rational, 141
Expert, examinations and bureaucratization,
241; knowledge, types of, 235
Experts, and bureaucracy, 216
bureaucratic, and political rulers, 234
and the collegiate principle, 237
control of, 234
and cultivated man, 426 ff.
and dilettantes, 22, 234
exploitation of, 235
specialized training of, 426
Exports, interest in, and political expansion,
163-5
Expropriation of states, 83, 93
of means of administration, 82
political, 83
of Prussian cottager, 382
Factory, discipline in, 261, 414
'False consciousness,' 58
Family tradition, 104
Farmer, adjustment to capitalism of, 367;
American, 363 ff.; co-operatives, 367
Fascism, 44
Favoritism, 130, 198
Feudalism, 47, 244
assemblies, 238
honor, 254, 345, 435
knights and religion, 283
nobility, 99
universality of, 300
Fichte, Johann G., 74, 121, 126
Fischer, Kuno, 11
Fischoff, Ephriam, 447
Flattery and fear, 98
'Folk spirit,' 65
Forster, F. W., 122, 124, 245
Fortune, and religion, 271
Fortunes, distribution of, 275
Fraternities, college, 309; student, 387 ff.
Fraternity man, 390 ff.
Fraternization of castes and guilds, 402 ff.
France, bureaucratization of, 226
nobility in, 380
parties and patronage in, 27, 101-2, 112
prefects, 91, 238
revolution, 72, 173, 380, 394
role of political notables in, 112
Frankjtirter Zeitting, 19, 42
Frederick the Great, 65, 223, 234, 260, 448
Frederick William i of Prussia, 236
Frederick 11 of Prussia, 448
476 INDEX
Freedom, 13
its conditions, 70-74
and democracy, contradicted by capital-
ism, 71
personal, and rationality, 50
W.'s conception of, 73
Freiburg, intellectual circles at, 11; Uni-
versity, professorship at, W., 11
Freud, Sigmund, 20
Fugger, Jacob, 67
Galileo, 142
Gazette, in China, 437
'Genuis,' concept of, 53
Gentleman, Anglo-Saxon, 390 fl.
American, and equality of status, 187,
305
English, their political role, loo-ioi
ideal of in China, 436-8
Gentry, English, their political role, 93;
stratum, 391
George, Stefan, 22, 52
German, 392
American, 187
bureaucracy, 17, iii, 370, 388, 427, 436,
438
capitalism, 383
civil servants, 17
classics, 394
emigration to the U.S., 382
foreign policy, 35
fraternity man, 390 ff.
historiography of, 65
imperialism, 36, 376
knights, 378
land distribution, 364
law, 217
liberalism, 17, 372
morale building, 122
parties, political, 46, 87, loi, inf., 340
peace delegation to Versailles, 41
professors, 28
school boy, 149-50
sociological society, 21
spirit and political problems, 393 ff.
stereotype of America, 57
universities, 19, 24; enrollment, 133; and
the American system, 131
youth in, 149; anti-rationalism, 143;
yearning for leadership, 153
Germans and Slavs, competition between,
382, 384
Germany, 387
aristocracy in, 390
art of, 155
and Austria, 388
Germany (Cont.)
as breeding place of rational examinations,
241
city culture of western, 377
class structure fixed in, 364
constitutional democracy in, 42
constitutionalism of, 37
dissolution of manorial community in,
374
eastern expansion of, 376 '
education in, 427
and England, 218
future of, 34, 384-5
hypocrisy in U.S. and, 309
industry of the east, 162, 380
intellectual situation in, during W.'s life-
time, 45
intellectual traditions of, 24
191 8, Revolution in, 41, 82, 92, 113, 115,
128, 235
parvenu in, 387, 389
protectionism in agriculture and industry
in, 382
rural society and capitalism in, ch. xiv,
363-85
and Russia, 175
social structure of, 16; and institutional
orders, concept of, 49; types of, 57; and
types of capitalism, 65-70
unchurchly traditions in, 304
unified economic territory of, 162-3
western and eastern, 374, 376
Gervinus, G. G., 3
Gesammelte Aufsaetze ztir Soziologie ttnd
Sozialpoliti/{, 448
Ghetto, 403
Ghibellines, see Guelfs
Gibbon, Edward, 15, 445
Gideon, 273
Gladstone, William E., 106, 113
Gneisenau, A. N. von, 390
Gneist, Rudolf, 9
Goals of aspiration, 436
God, conception of an active, 285
and devil, 358
supra-mundane, and active asceticism, 325
Goethe, 22, 137, 350
Goldschmidt, Jakob, 10
Gould, Jay, 309
Gothein, Eberhard, 21
Great powers, prestige and power of, 159-
62; in Antiquity, 161
Greece, forensic speech in, 430, 433
Greek law, 219
Gruhle, H., 21
Guelfs and the Ghibellines, 99-100
INDEX
477
Guest or pariah people, definition, 399; see
also Pariah
Guilds, 321
and castes, 399-405
in Occident and Orient, 400 ff.
status struggle of, 400
Guilt feelings, W.'s, 10, 11
Gundolf, Friedrich, 21, 22
Hanseatic League, 67
Harlotry, sacred, 343
Hebrew prophecy, 22, 62, 64
Hegel, 45, 56, 58, 63, 70; and Ranke, 24
Heidelberg, intellectual circles at, 11, 20-21;
students in, 22-3; W. at, 6, 11
Hellenic culture, conversation and dialogue,
430
education, t>'pcs of, in, 428
masculine character of, 345, 346
Helmholtz, H. L. F. von, 136
Hensel, Paul, 11, 21
Hereafter, compensation in, 276; concepts
of, 275
Herrenvolk, mission of the, 25, 391
Hervay, Prof., 15
Herzen, Alexander, 393
Hierocracy, 282 ff.; associations, 294
Hinduism, 123, 267-301, 396-415
and Brahmanism, contrasted, 416 ff.
dietary rules, 408
see also Brahmans and Caste
Historical materialism, W.'s battle with, 63;
W.'s early opinion of, 34
Historical school, 44, 45
Historical time, concept of, 190
Historiography, German, 65
History, idealist interpretation of, 59; a
philosophy of, 51-5; W.'s construction
of, 55
Holland, Kuyper schism, 316
Holy states, 327
Homer, 256
Homosexuality, 345
Honigsheim, Paul, 21
Honor, social, distribution of, 181
Honor and clan, 187
Hoplites, 57, 226, 256, 345
Household and army, separation of, 258
Humanists, in China and the Occident, 93,
427 f.
elites, 74
literati, 92
Hume, David, 13
Hypergamy, 407; and wealth, 406
Hypocrisy, 309
Ideal type, see Types
Ideas, elective affinity of, 62-3
import of, 47
and interests, 280; sociology of, 61-5
and motives, 286
and their publics, (ti,
their role in history, 63
Ideologies, as racism, 25; as weapons, 61
Ideology, religion as, 269 ff.
Immigration, U.S., 15, 16
Impeachment, 249, 434
Imperialism, ancient and modern, 163
aspirations of, 39
and capitalism, 66, 168 f.
and collective economy, 168
economic foundations of, 162-71
expansion motives of, 164
German, 36
interest groups in, 164
and labor, 170
mechanism, transparency of, 170
and socialism, 169-70
Impersonality, rational, and capitalism, 73
Income, categories of, 86; and religion, 289
Independence, political, and wealth, 235
India, ch. xvi, 396-415
artisan in, 411-12
capitalism in, 413 ff.
census of, 411
descent of mixed bloods in, 406
famine in, 402
language in, 414
marriage cartels in, 406
nobility of, 404
polyandry and polygamy in, 406
religions of, and aristocracies of salva-
tion, 54
religiosity in, 323
types of education in, 428
See also Brahmans, Hinduism
Indian question and its administration, U.S.,
16
Indispensability and power, 232
Individual, and capitalism, 58
concept of, 73
morally responsible, 70
person, the ultimate unit of his analysis, 55
Individualism, 15; and democracy, opportuni-
ties for, 71
Indoctrination, 145, 146
Infanticide, 258, 407
Innocent iii, 295, 298
Inspiration, its role in science, 135 f.
Institutions, agrarian, history of, 10
Integration, forcible, 255
Intellectual liberty, as highest value, a
478 INDEX
tntellectualism, inconsistency of, 353; and
nature, 344, 347
Intellectuals, defined, 176
exponents of a religious rationalism, 279
Occident and Orient, differences in, 64
over-production of, 438
and religion, 154-5, 280; ethics of, 324
strata of, compared, 416-17
types of, 51
Intelligentsia, 134
modern political, 70
sociology of, 371
types of, 418
Intention, subjective and objective results of,
320
Interaction, human, categories of, 55
Interest groups, their secret knowledge, 235
Interests and ideas, 280; sociology of, 61-5
International policy, W. on, 40
Interpretation, two meanings of, 56
Intuition and calculation, 135, 136
Ireland, W.'s trip to, 11
Irrational ends and rational means, 293
Irrationality, of the course of the world, 354
and rationality, scale of, 57
of singular individual, 347
of the world, religious problem of, 123
Isaiah, 148; quoted, 156
Islam, types of education in, 428
Islamism, stratum of, 269
Islamist, 267-301
Isolationism, 159
Israel, historical destinies of, 62
Italy, 371
Jackson, Andrew, 107, 108
Jaffe, Edgar, 22
James i, 315
James, William, 308
Japan, 426-7
Jaspers, Karl, 21, 26-7
Jellinek, Georg, 11, 21
Jentsch, Carl, 42, 446
Jephthah, 273
Jeremiah, 27, 52
Jesuit order, 65
Jewry, 56, 66, 173, 189, 403, 413
fate of, 156
peculiarity of, 273
theological possession of, 153, 219
Jews, opportunity for, 134
Johann xxii, 298
Journalism, modern political, sociology of,
96-9
Journalist, political role of, 97-9
skill, 96
types of, 99
Judaism, 134, 267, 275; see also Hebrew
prophecy
ancient, smdies in, 27
stratum of, 269
types of education in, 428
Junkers, 45, 224, 382, 386
as capitalists, 381
as free traders, 382
and national character, ch. xv, 386-95
rule, 373
studies of their economy in East Elbian,
W.'s, 34
Jurisdiction, area of, 295
Jurisprudence, its problems, 144-5
Jurists, 299; historical role of, 299; political
role of, 93-4
Justice, and clan interests, 221
and democracy, 220
Kadi-, 219, 221; and empirical, 216 f.;
and charisma, 250
limits of, 355
types of, 216
Kadi-justice, see under Justice
Kaiser, the, 35, 37, 38, 97, 128, 235; W.'s
attitude towards, 26, 30, 31, 39, 97
Kant, E., 74, 126, 154
Kapp, Friedrich, 3, 17
Karatajev, Platon, 126
Katitaliya Arthasastra, 123
Kautsky, K., 24
Kehr, Eckart, 446
Kharma, 275
Kingship, charismatic, 251-2, 264; and die
social order, 263
Kisriakovski, T., 37
Klebs, Otto, 21
Knies, K. G. A., 11
Knight, education of, 428, 436
Knighthood, asceticism of, 346; emergence
of, 255
Knowledge, fusion of, 237
and power, 44, 233
secret, of interest groups, 235
sociology of, 8, 64, 220, 237, 239, 262,
276, 293, 351
Krupp, Alfred, 36
Krishna, 273
Ksatriya, 409
Kulturkampf, 32
Kuyper, 453; schism, Holland, 316
1
INDEX
479
Labor, and imperialism, 170
leaders, W.'s attitude towards, 26
and pacifism, 170
U.S., leaders, corruption in, 112
Land, competition for, 382
feudal conquest, 165
scarcity, 165-6
and status, 366
Landlords, English, 363; social origin
381
Prussian, 380 ff.
stratum of, 386 ff.
Language, in China, 430 ff.
in India, 414
and nation, 172, 177 ff.
Lao-tse, 326, 420
Lask, Emil, 21
Lassalle, F., 45
Law, 9; see also Justice
and bureaucracy, 216-21
common, 217 f.
courts and religious sects, 318
defined, i 80
and democracy, 220 f.
German, 217
Greek, 219
and order, maintenance of, 91
Oriental, 219
rational, ambivalence of democracy to,
rationalization of, 93, 94, 218
and religion, 273
Roman, 93, 216, 217 f.
separation of public and private, 239
and status, 199
studies in, W., 8
Lawyers, 85, 94-5, 217
Leadership, 225, 245, 251
political, 38, 97
qualities, 150
religious, 268, 269, 273
of a state, 85
Lecky, W. E. H., 53, 447
Legitimacy, basis of, 294
Legitimation, charismatic, 78-9
legal, 78-9
psychological needs for, 271
traditional, 78-9
Leisure class, 381
Leonardo, 141; and science, 142
Leroy-Beaulieu, P., 234
Li Hung Chang, 92, 437
Liberal, thinking, 66; W. as a, 50, 53
Liberalism, 45; German, 372
Lieber, Francis, 27
Liebig, Justus, 223
Liebknecht, Wilhelm, 45
Life, and death, attitudes toward, 356
its meaning, 140; for scientist, 142
satisfaction with, weariness of, 356
styles of, 300
Lincoln, Abraham, 55, 113
List, Fricdrich, 45
Literati, 268
Chinese, ch. xvir, 416-44; and princely
of, absolutism and capitalism, 420
and concept of office, 419 ff.
and dignity, 393
German, 393 f.
humanistic, 92
status-honor of, 434-6
Literature, accessibility to masses, 178
ancient, 345
Chinese, 430; ancient, 421
and education, 427 ff.
modern, 348
and national language, 178
of U.S., 319
and women, 178, 346
Lord's Supper, social significance of, 314,
402, 404, 450, 452 f.
Lotze, H., Microcosm, 7
Louisiana purchase, 385
Love, and fate, 348
and mysticism, 347
240 psychology of, 347
see also Connubium, Sex
Lowenstein, Karl, 21
Loyola, Ignatius, 254
Ludendorff, W.'s conversation with, 41-2
Lukacs, Georg, 21, 154
Luther, Martin, 124, 337, 349, 370 f., 454,
456
Machiavelli, 126
Machiavellianism, 123
Machine, and bureaucrat, 228
and democracy, 103
politics, 17, 255
types of, 113
Magic, 350
and masses, 277
and peasants, 283
practices, 327
religiosity and esthetics, 341
and sex, 343 ff.
special ends of, 331
Magicians, 272; and priests, 272 ff.
Man, modern, W.'s image of, 73-4
and nature, 346
political, 333-4
Management, bureaucratic, 196; and owner-
ship in agriculture, 381
480 INDEX
Manchus, 444
Mandarin, Chinese, 92, 422-6
and Brahmans, contrasted, 416 ff.
charisma of, 439
popular image of, 433
Maria Theresa, 260
Market economy and bureaucracy, 215
Market-situation and class-situation, 181 -3
Marriage, cartels in India, 406
child, 407
conceptions of, 343 ff.
interpretations of, 350
and status in Europe, in America, 405
universal conception of, 344
Marx, Karl, 10, 47, 50, 62, 64, 65, 66
on capitalism, 68
and classes, 47
quoted on India, 411-12
view of ideas, 61 f.
and W., 46-51
Marxism, 23, 24, 38, 42, 45, 46, 70
class struggle, 49
method, 58
thought, 58
Masculinity, of Hellenic culture, 345; of
Renaissance, 346
Mass democracy and bureaucracy, 224 f,
men, types of, 394-5
religiosity, 287
Masses, Chinese, apolitical attitude of, 439
and magic, 277
and pacifism, 170
and religion, 289
Matthew, 61; quoted, 329
Maurer, Georg Ludwig von, 449
Maurice, of Orange, 260
Mayer, Robert, 136
Mead, George H., 73
Meaning, objective and subjective, 58
religious quest for, 351-2
scientific refutation of, 351-2
Means, of administration, the concentration
of, 221-4
and ends, 78, 87, 121 f., 124, 151, 279
expropriation of, 82
of production, separation from, 224; so-
cialization of, 49
Medicine, its presuppositions, 144
Medieval city, sociological characteristics of,
402
Mediocrity, its predominiance in universities,
132
Mehring, Franz, 24
Meinicke, Friedrich, 23
Mencius, 249, 422
Mendelssohn, A., 217
Merit system, iii, 240; Chinese, 419
Messianic promises, 273
Method, 268, 292, 294, 299
comparative, 60
of ideal types, 323-4
quantitative, 59
of social science, 14, 55-61
W.'s, 52, 59
Methodist 'classes,' 456; economic policy,
313; and the courts, 318
Michels, Robert, 19, 21
Middle Ages, church discipline in, 319
conception of lady in, 346
education in, 428
social mobility in, 401
Middle classes, 241, 309
Military, education, 428
leadership and discipline, 254, 255 ff.
occupation, 229
officers, selection of, 222
secret, 233
service and classes, 222
Mill, James, 147
Mill, John Stuart, 43, 50; Principles of
Political Economy, 447
Millenniumism, 340
Ming dynasty, 424
Miquel, Minister von, 387
Misfortune, and religion, 272
Missionary prophecy, 285
Mohammedans of India, 396
Moltke, Helmuth von, 390
Mommsen, Theodor, 3, 10
Monarchy, constitutional, 263
Monarchs, incarnate, interment, 263 ff.; and
bureaucracy, 234
Money, 331; economy, a presupposition of
bureaucracy, 204 f.
Monkhood, 65, 292, 323, 332
Monopolization of advantageous positions,
241
Montaigne, Michel, 13
Morale building, German, 122
Morals and art, 342
Morgan, J. P., 309
Mormonism, 52
Motives, contradictory, 291
determining rationalization, 270-71
of feudal knight, 254
and ideas, 286
imputation of unconscious, 348, 355
political, 117
for the rejection of the world, 323-4
sufficient, 277
Mu kong, 420
Municipal politics, 106
I
i
INDEX
481
Munsterberg, Hugo, 11, 14, 21
Munzer, Thomas, 314
Murray, John, 445
Music, sociology of, 51-2, 281, 307, 341, 429
Mystic, 290
Mysticism, 272
and asceticism, 324-7
and economics, 333
and love, 347
55,
260; III, 395
176
Napoleon i, 52,
Nation, 171 -9
concept of, 172 f..
and ethnic groups, 173, 177
and language, 172, 177
and religion, 173
National, character, 65; and the Junkers,
ch. XV, 386-95
liberalism, 32
solidarity, 173
sentiments, 385; varieties of, 175
state and economic policy, 1 1
National Socialists, 446
Nationalism, 65
Nationalization of war, 223, 260
Nature, and culture, 344; and man, 346
Naumann, Pastor, 11, 36, 446
Naval poUcy, Tirpitz's, 40
Navalism, 57
Nazis, 69
Needs, religious, 270-72, 273
Negroes, see under United States
New England, aristocracy, 319;
struggles, 315
Neumann, Karl, 11, 21
New York City, 15
Niagara Falls, 15
Nietzsche, Friedrich, 13, 25,
27o-7i> 393
Genealogy of Morals, 190
his theory of resentment, 62, 190
his view of ideas, 61 f.
Nobility, court, 93; Russian, 226
Nominalism, W.'s, 55, 59
Northclifle, Lord, 97
Notables, motives of, 104; political, role of,
104, 112
Obedience, 78; motives of, 299
Objectivity, 146, 216
Occident, the, 84
citizenry, 403 fif.
culture, 83; disenchantment of, 139 f.
and Orient, intellectuals in, 64; guilds in,
400 ff.
Occupation and status group, 193
religious
62, 143, I.
Office, auctioning of, no
farming out of, 109
hereditary appropriation of, 423
literati and concept of, 419 ff.
purchase of, 109, 425
Officers, selection of, 222
Official, the 283, 295
'administrative' and 'political,' 90-91
appointments and elections of, 200-201
bureaucratic, position of, 198-204
career, 434, 438-40
in China, 438-40
as cleric, 298
dictatorship of, 50
discipline of, 229
function of, 196-8
motives of, 203
origin of, 88
and patronage, 87-8
and politician, 95
recruitment of, 298
salary of, 203
secrecy and bureaucracy, 233
separation of private sphere from, 295
and sibs, 439-40
social esteem, 199-200
social recruitment of, 208
stratum of, 298, 370
tenure of, 202-3
Oppenheimcr, Franz, 165
Opponents, direct and indirect, 186
Opportunism, no, 308
Oratory, in Greece and China, 430, 433
pulpit, 307
in Reichstag, inf.
Organizations, large scale, economic dis-
cipline of, 261-2
Orgy and sacrament, 278
Orient, see Occident
Oriental law, 219
Orientations, intellectual, 45-74
Ostrogorsky, M. Y., 104
Other-worldly values, 277
Ownership, absentee, 366; of means of
administration, 81; see also Property
Pacifism, and Channing's ethical absolutism,
8
and labor, 170
and the masses, 170
reasons for failure, 171
W.'s stand on, 38-9
Pan-Germanic League, 37
Paradox of unintended consequences, 54,
130, 235, 322, 332
482
Pariah, capitalism, 66
and caste, 189
definition, 399
people, religion of, 190
status, 96, 114
Parliaments, and bureaucracies, 89
British, 104
members of, 106-7
and unification of state apparatus, 90
Parliamentary committee, 107; competition
and bureaucracy, 43
Parsees, 66
Parties, 194-5
in England, 100 f.
in Germany, m ff.
ideological, 1 1 1
, leadership of, 85
mass and bureaucracy, 209 f., 225
v'and societalization, 194
and stratification, 194-5
.. and structure of domination, 195
V in U.S., 109
Party, American, 107 ff., 211
discipline, 106
■ English, 104 f.
German, 46, lOi
finance, 10 1, 109
machine, 105
modern forms of, 102
notables, motives of, 100, 104
official, 99, 102
and organizations, 99 ff .
and patronage, 87-8
struggles, means of, 194
W.'s view of, 42
of workingmen, 372
Party, Class, Status, ch. vii, 180-95
Patrimonialism, 244, 297
authority, 296
in China, 438, 441
development of, 297
Patriarchalism, 297, 244
and bureaucratic structures, 245
and charisma, structure contrasted, 247
defined, 296, 334
leaders and followings, 296
Patronage, of office, Germany, 87
opposed by modern officialdom, 87-8
and party struggles, 87-8
Parvenu, in Germany, 387, 389
Paul, 403
Paulinian, 275
Peasant, 379
Calderon's and Shakespeare's treatment
of, 192
and capitalism, 368
INDEX
Peasant (Cont.)
churches, 370
constrasted with American farmer, 365
and magic, 283
unsublimated sexuality of, 349
Penn, William, 350
Pennalism, 387-8
Pericles, 96, 345
Permanence and routine, 297
Personality, change, 122
models, democratization of, 391
role in history of, 63
in science, 137
strucmre and voluntary associations, 18,
320
traits and capitalism, 320
types, 18, 242-3; of humanist elites, 74;
Latin, 391
and stratification, 391 ff.
W.'s concept of, 55
Perspective, shift of, 348
Pnilistinism, 27
Philosophy, and religion and science, 350 ff.
Phyle, defined, 398
Pietists, Dutch, 454
Plantation, ancient, 261
Plato, 136, 345; Republic, 140, 141; and
Socrates, 428
Pluralism, causal, 268, 276, 376; ethical,
118; W.'s, 61
Politicians, and officials, their roles, 95
professional, 92 ff.; their rise, 83; in
Germany, 112
qualities of, 115 f.
Politics, armies in, 227
as an avocation, 83, 102
calling for, 127
Chinese, 442-4
concept of, 77-8
and crowd instincts, 394
and economics, 82, 375; Marx and W.
on, 47
and education, 145
elements in, 99
and ethics, 118, 128
its ethos, 117 f.
living 'for' or 'off,' 84 f.
municipal, 106
numbers in, 106, 108, 232
rewards of, 114, 115
as a vocation, ch. iv, 77-128; ethical
paradoxes of, 125; its inner enjoyment,
114 ff.
Poland, 33, 39. 173. 380, 384
Polar opposites, 349
Polyandry and polygamy, in India, 406
I
I
INDEX
Polytheism of values, 70, 123, 147-9
Power, and bureaucracy, 220, 232-5
defined, 180
distribution of, in private enterprise, 91
dynamics of, 159
and indispensability, 232
and knowledge, 44, 233
minimization of in democracy, 242
political, 227
and prestige, 78; distribution of, 172; of
the Great Powers, 159-62
responsibility of, 115
and the social order, 180-81
structures of, ch. vi, 159-95
usurpation of, 237
Prebends, competition for, 438
office-, 442
organization, defined, 207
Pre-bureaucratic rulers, 216, 220, 229
Precapitalist domination, 33 1
Predestination, 287, 359
Predictions, 88, 169, 175, 215, 231, 260,
366; and control, 139
Presuppositions, religious, 273
Press, studies of, 21
Pressure, political, 165-6
Prestige, feeling of, given by power, 78
forms of, 172, 310
of office of descent, 423
of officialdom, in China, 438-40
and power, distribution of, 172; of the
Great Powers, 159-62
of writing, reading, speech, 430
Pretexts, ideological, 355
Priestly power, through education, 351
Priests, 344
and magicians, 272 ff.
and universities, 432
Priesthood, 351 ff.
agent of tradition, 351
political use of, 92
and virtuosos, 288
Princes, and bureaucracy, 231
Privatization of values and human rela-
tions, 155
Privilege, legitimation of, 262
Production, 364; ownership of means of,
297, 367
Professions, 99-100
Professors, political, 25
Progress, 51, 356; in science, 138
Proletariat, agricultural, 363
class consciousness of, 372
class situation, 184
Propaganda, 107; religious, of the Cru-
sades, 65
483
Property, conflict between capital and, 368
and class situations, types of, 182
distribution of, 181
and management in agriculture, 381
in the means of production, 367
order, 84-5
Prophecy, exemplary, 285; and emissary,
291 ff.
of salvation and blood groups, 328 ff.
see also Hebrew prophecy
Prophet, 274, 327
Prophets, Hebrew, studies of, 22, 418
Prostitution, sacred, 343
Protectionism in agriculture and industry,
382
Protestant Ethic, The, 16, 18-19, 63, 67
and the Spirit of Capitalism, 14, 320,
450; Ephriam Fischoff on, 447
Protestant sects, and capitalism, 312
and spirit of capitalism, ch. xii, 302-22
voluntary associations, U.S., 17
Protestantism, 124
Prussian, class franchise, 373
cottager, expropriation of, 382
discipline, 460
landlord contrasted with English land-
lord, 380 ff.
spirit, 390
Psychic, malady, W.'s, 11; states, extraordi-
ary, 345, 349; W.'s, 8; and religious
interpretations, 278
Psychology, social, of the world religions,
52, ch. XI, 267-301; industrial, 19, 21
Public opinion, 221, 225
Publicity and secrecy, in China, 437
Puritanism, 50, 58, 336; unbrotherliness of,
332 ff.
Quaker, charities and propaganda of, 319;
official legend of, 317
Quantitative method, 59 f.
Quantity-quality, 59, 182, 211-12, 225
Race, 391; and soil, 378
Racism, as ideology used by the ruling
class, 25
Ranke, L. v., 24, 44, 45, 56
Ratzel, F., 44
Rational attitudes, power of, 324
Rational economy and lovelessncss, 355;
expediencies, and 'types' of motivated
ictions, 56
Rationalism, and classes, 279
formalist juristic and legal type of dom-
ination, 299
meanings of, 293 ff.
484 INDEX
Rationalism (Cont.)
practical, and civic strata, 284-5; and
theoretical, 279
religious, intellectuals exponents of, 279
typology and sociology of, 324
Rationality, escape from, 347
formal and substantive, 220, 298-9, 331
and irrationality, scale of, 57
love as a triumph over, 346
and personal freedom, 50
and religion, 275
Rationalization, meaning of, 51
Rationalization, and art, 342
of education and training, 240-43
ethical, 117; of life conduct, 270-71
of everyday life, 288
irrational presupposition of, 281
of life, segmental, total, 327
and official career, 434
Real estate, development of, 306
'Reasons of state,' as yardstick of values, 35
Rebirth, 279, see also Salvation
Redemption, 279
conception of, 280
cults of, 272
rational aim of, 327
various contents of, 280-81
see also Salvation
Refuge of the altar, 155
Reichstag, oratory in, 112
Rejection of world, 291; motives for, 323-4
Religion, 267-359
acdvities, W.'s observations on, 303 ff.
anti-intellcctualism of, 352
and art, competition between, 342
and artisans, 314
attitude, W.'s, 5, 25
brotherly, and economic sjihere, 330-33
and bureaucracy, 283
and capitalism, W.'s causal analysis of, 61
charisma, personal, office, 316; ijualifica-
tions, 287
and class, 270, 273, 274, 277, 279, 282,
292
and the Crusades, 65
defense of, 352
doctrine and ethical conduct, 270, 321
dualism, 358
and economic sphere, 267 f., 289, 292 ff.,
303. 331-3
and education, 351
and emotion, 278
essence, alienation from life order, 357
ethics, types of, 292 ff., 324, 341
and feudal knights, 283
and good fortune, 271
Religion (Cont.)
of India, 54, 287, 323
and intellectuals, 154-5, 280, 324, 350-58
interpretation and psychic states, 278
and law, 273
leadership in, 269
and masses, 274, 287 ff., 289
ministration, monopolization of, 282
and nation, 173
need for, 281; and doctrines of, 270-2
of pariah people, 190
and philosophy, 350 ff.
and politics, 333-40
presuppositions of, 273
promises of, 273 ff., 276, 277
and psychological meaning, 291
and rationality, 275, 285, 327
reintcrpretation of, 270
rejections of the world and their direc-
tions, ch. xni, 323-59
and rural co-operative movement, 371
and science, 142-3, 154-5, 35o ff-> 355
sects, see Sects
and sex, 343-50, 355
shift of, into the irrational realm, 123,
281
social conditions of, 277
social determination of, 285
and the social order, 269, 273
and suffering, 271 ff.
and urbanism, 269, 319
in various strata, 279 ff.
virtuoso, 277, 287 ff., 332
and war, 335-7
and wealth, 313
world, definitions, 267; and status groups,
268 ff.; social psychology of, ch. xi,
267-301
and the world, tensions between, 327,
228 ff., 332-3
Religiosity, heroic, 449
intensive, and status stratification, 287
rational, 273
Rentiers, class of, 380
Rents, and aristocracies, 369; and war, 165,
167
Representation, of interests, 194; propor-
tional, 114
Repression, W.'s attitude towards, 20
Republic, Plato's, 140, 141
Resentment, Nietzsche's theory of, 62, 190
and religion, 276
and theodicy of suffering, 276
theory of, 270-71
Responsibility, 40, 249
delegation of, 263
I
INDEX
485
Responsibility (Cont.)
ethic of, 9
of individual, 70
joint responsibility of congregation, 315 ff.
Retirement from office, in England, 91
Revoludon, French, see under France
of Germany, 1918, 41, 82, 113, 115, 128,
235
Puritan, 340
Rewards, for study, 241
Ricardo, David, 68
Richter, Eugen, 45; Politisches ABC Btich,
446
Rickert, Wilhelm, 11, 18
Ritual, 269, 283, 301, 401 ff., 408, 413, 429
Robespierre, 72
Roles, coincidence of, 133
Roman, army, 222, 256
law, 93, 216, 219; and modern capitalism,
217
Rome, 13
decline, 209 f.
and England, 211
expansion of, 166-7
Roscher, Wilhelm, 44
Rosthorn, von, 462
Rousseau, J. J., 31, 44
Routine, banality of, 247; and permanence,
297
Routinization, of charisma, 53, 54, 262 ff.,
297, 420; patterns of, 297
Rulers, political, and bureaucratic expert, 234
Ruling class, and racism, 25
Russia, 19, 48, 162, 164, 173, 380
Bolshevist, 41
bureaucratization of, 37, 226
Czarism in, 36
nobility in, 226, 425 f.
officials in, 40
revolution of 1905, 19, 37
serf, 380
and the U.S., 72
Sacrament, and orgy, 278
Sacrifice, of the intellect, 44, 154-5, 35^
St. Francis, 119, 126
St. Louis, 16
Salvation, art competes with, 342; incon-
sistency of, 353
officials' suspicions of, 283
promises of, 273 ff.
prophecies of, 328 ff.
psychology of, 278
quest of, and atritudes of the here and
now, 278
and religions of India, 54
Salvation (Cont.)
types of religious, 380
universal need for, 353
see also Rebirth, Redemption
Salz, Arthur, 21
Samurai, 426-7
Sappho, 345
Satsudra, 409
Saviors, imitation of, 357, 374; myth of, 273
Schafer, Dietrich, 145
Scharnhorst, David von, 390
Schiller, Friedrich, 73; 'disenchantment of
the world,' 51
Schmid-Rombcrg, Klare, 21
Schmidt, Julian, 3
Schmidt, R., 216
Schmollcr, Gustav, 19, 44
Schnitger, Marianne, see Weber, Marianne
Scholars, universal, sociological conditions
for, 23
School boy, German and American con-
trasted, 149-50
Science, and aesthetics, 144
bureaucratization of, 223-4
calculation in, 135
calling for, 134 f.
clarification of, ethical consequences,
151-2
contribudons to life, 150 f.
cultural, 144
fundamental value of, 153
historical, 144
and jurisprudence, 144
institutes of, 131, 223
limits of, 146, 148, 151
meaning of to Leonardo, 142
meaning of life, 143
and medicine, 144
in Middle Ages, 142
in modern times, 142 f.
natural, 144
origin of, 142
personality in, 137
and philosophy, 350 ff.
presuppositions of, 143-4, '53
progress in, 137 f.
and psychology, 136-8
and religion, 142-3, 355
for science's sake, 144
specialization, 134-5
value of, 138, 140 f.
as a vocation, ch. v, 129-56
Scodand, W.'s trip to, 1 1
Script, and language, in China, 430
Sealsfield, Charles, 17, 445
486
INDEX
Secrecy, military, political, and official, 233,
437
Sect, ad'fiission to, 307, 315
charismatic lay minister, 317
competition among, 306 ff.
competition and cartels, 306
control of laymen, 315
definition of, 306
and divorce, 306
discipline of, 306, 317
economic conduct of, 312, 321
and economic order, 306
guild members of, 321
local units of, 316, 455
members of, 305 ff., 319
obligatory communion, 315
prestige of, 305, 322
voluntary associations, 311
Secularization, 94, 303, 307
Segregation, ethnic and caste, 188-90
of cultural spheres, 62
W.'s, 47
Seidenadel, C. W., 363
Selection, academic, 132
apparatus, 132
ecclesiastic, 132
by election, 239
laws of, 132
objective reasons, 133
Self-clarification, 152
Self-control and eroticism, 349
Self-equipment of knights, 259
Self-valuation, 276
Sentiments, displacement of, 270
Sex, 258, 343-50, 406
love, euphoria, 348
love and religion, 355
orgies, 278
see also Connubium, Love
Shakespeare, treatment of the peasant, 192
Shi-Hwang-Ti, 420, 442
Sib, in China, 434; and officials, 439-40
Siebeck, Paul, 21
Simmel, Georg, 14, 19, 21, 115
Sin, 272 ff .
Single-factor theorem, 47
Skills, 243
Slave galleys, 255
Slavs and Germans, 382, 384
Smith, Adam, 45, 58
Sobriety, 345; and eroticism, 344
Social ascent, 309, 310
Social Democratic Party, bureaucratization
of, 103
Social Democrats, 32, 36, 38, 45
Social dynamics, 194
Social mobility, 202; in Germany, 382;
and kingship, 263; in Middle Ages, 401;
and military discipline, 257; order
and economically determined power,
180-81; and religion, 273
Social science, methods of, 55-61; their
problems, 145
Socialism, aspirations of, W.'s debunking of,
48, 121 f., 125 f.
and imperialism, 169-70
and internationalism, 174
modern, 68
Socialization, 72; of the means of produc-
tion, efFects of, 49
Societal action, and community action in
bureaucracy, 228; defined, 183
Societalization and parties, 194
Society, and capitalism in Germany, ch. xiv,
363-85
German, 21
rural, 363 fl.
in U.S., 363 ff.
La Sociologie Allemande, 447
Sociology, academic, in Germany, 45
of conflict, 186, 226, 251
of education, 92, 243
of ideas and interests, 61-5
of knowledge, 8, 64, 220, 233, 237, 239;
W.'s contribution to, 51
political, W.'s work in, 37
Socrates, 141
Sohm, Rudolph, 52, 246
Soil and Race, 378
Solidarity, 195
Sombart, Werner, 14, 21, 68; quoted, 66;
The Jews and Economic Life, 56
Sophistication, 348; of aborigines, 343
Sorel, Georg, 66
Soviets, compared with the Guelfs, 99-100
Spain, party struggles and patronage, 87
Specialization, academic, 134
Specialized expert training, 426
Spener, 142
Spengler, Oswald, 70
Spheres, autonomy of, 267
coexistence of, 217, 296
psychological relations of, 348
separation of public and private, 237
Spoils system, 18, 88; in the U.S., 108
South America, party struggles and patron-
age in, 87
State, and church, 352; in U.S., 312
and culture, 212
definition of, 77-8, 334; W.'s concept of,
48
great, and bureaucracy, 209 f.
I
4
INDEX
487
State (Cont.)
leadership of, 85
modern, 82
origin of, 251
and territory, 78
total, 49
types of, 81
W.'s ambivalent attitude to, 441
Statistics, computations, 135; concealment of,
233
Status, 69, 96
ascent, 202
and authority, 224
carriers of a virtuoso religion, 287
and caste, contrasted, 405-9
characteristics, 242
claims, 241
class and party, ch. vii, 180-95
class and religion, 282
conventions, 191, 301
discipline hostile to, 254 fif.
endogamy, 405
groups, defined, 186-7, 405
honor, 186-7; of the literati, 434-6
and land, 366
and hw, 199
and the market principle, 185
and marriage, 405
and occupation, 193
order, in U.S. and in Germany, 310; and
economic order, 193, 301
patrimonialism, defined, 298
prerequisites of, 310
privileges, 190-2; and democracy, 187
projection of, into the past, 464
segregation, means of, 403
situation, defined, 186-7, 300
Stoicism, W.'s, 10
Strata, of aristocracy of education and
capitalism, 371 ff.
of intellectuals, compared, 416-17
of officials, 298; of state officials in
Europe and U.S., 370
political, recruitment of, 85-6
privileged and underprivileged, 276
and religious states, 279 fl.
and sense of dignity, 276
Stratification, 180-95, 300-301, 386-95
in China, 416-44
and economic ethics, 268 ff.
in India, 396-415
and parties, 194-5
and personality types, 391 fT.
social, in Germany, 364
status, guarantees of, 187-8
status, and intensive religiosity, 287
Stratification (Cont.)
theories of, 57, 68-9
Strauss, D. R, T/ie Old and the New Belief,
7
Structural explanations, 57 f.; principles,
correspondence of, 209, 215, 223, 295
Structure of domination and parties, 195;
of power, ch. vi, 159-95
Study, goals and types of, 432; rewards
for, 241
Sublimation, 280, 327; and brutality, 348;
or orgy, 278
Subsistence economy, 377
Substitution, psychological, 118, 348, 349
Suffering, evaluation of, in religious ethics,
271
meaning of, 274
and religion, 275
theodicy of, 275 ff.; and resentment, 276
Sufism, 269
Suicide, 356, 434, 435, 443; attitude towards,
13
Sultanism and eunuchs, see under China
Super- and sub-ordination, 201
Supernatural gifts, 245
Swammerdam, 142
Switzerland, party struggles and patronage,
87; travel in, 13
Sybel, H. v., 3
Symbols, transfer of, 345
Symptomatic phenomena, 113
Syndicalism, 120
Tammany Hall, no
Tang dynasty, 424
Tao Mo, 443
Tax-farming, 205 f.; system, motives of,
206
Tax, gathering, 205; privileges, 365
Teacher, American's conception of, 149-50
bias of, 146, 147
duties of, 146, 147
as a leader, 149, 150
Teaching, load, 131; presupposition of, 152
Tensions, unconscious, 328
Technology, military and discipline, 255 ff.;
and warfare, 255
Tenure, the official's, 202-3
Theodicy, three forms of, 358-9
of misfortune, 274
of suffering, 274 fT.
Theology, 23
its claims to be a science, 153
presuppositions of, 153-4
problem of limits of science, 154
Tilsit, 223
488 INDEX
Time, historical, 51
Tirpitz, Alfred von, 36, 40, 41
Titles, 106
Tobler, Mina, 21
Tolerance, 189
Toller, Ernst, 22
Tolstoi, Leo, 143, 152, 348
on death, 139-40
W.'s appreciation of, 39
Tonnies, Ferdinand, 21, 46; and Gemein-
schaft und Gesellschaft, 46
Trade, export, and political expansion,
163-5
'Traditional' conduct and 'affectual' action,
56
Traditionalism, artisan's, 413
and bureaucratization, 54
and castes, 411 -15
defined, 296
Traditionalization and routinization of
charisma, 297
Training, legal, 218
Traits, selection of, 320
Travel, W.'s, 14; to Spain, 11; to Switzer-
land, 13; to Venice, 13
Treitschke, H. v., 3, 9, 25
Tribal exogamy, 399
Tribe and caste, contrasted, 398-9
Troeltsch, Ernst, 11, 14, 21, 43, 325, 447,
450
Trotsky, Leon, 64, 78
Tuskegee Institution, 16
Types, constructed or ideal, 59 f., 294, 323 f.
Ulema, 449
'Understanding,' sociology of, 56
Unintended consequences, paradox of, 54
United States, 31, 48, 392
academic career in, 129 ff.
agrarian future in, 383 ff.
amateur administration in, 88
armies, 9
Baptists in, 453
and bureaucracy, 211; role of, in a
democracy, 17
cabinet, 108
church affiliation, 302 ff.
church and state in, 302, 312
Civil War, 369
clubs in, 18, 311
college professors, 15
democracy in, 57, 71, 90, 149, 310, 392
education, 149-50
gentlemen, and equality of status, 187
German emigration to, 382
German stereotype of, 57
United States (Cont.)
hypocrisy in, 309
immigration, 15 f.
Indian question, 16
labor, corruption in, 112
labor leaders in, 16
literature, 319
Negroes, 16, 177, 311, 364, 405, 408
party in, 88, 107 ff., 211
political boss in, 102, 109-10, 180
predictions, 385
Protestant sects, 17, 306 ff., 309
role of brotherhood in business life, 308
role of political notables in, 112
rural society in, 363 ff.
and Russia, 72
social trends in, 310, 392
spoils system in, 108
state officials in, 370
status order in, 188, 310
W. in, 17, 303 ff.
and World War i, 39 f.
Universal conscription, 260
Universalism, of religion, brotherhood, love,
330
Universalist Church, 336
University, German, competition for en-
rollments in, 133; and the American
system, 131
posts, 23
predominance of mediocrity, 132
and priests, 432
Renaissance, Italian, and Dutch, 142
Vienna, 23
Upanishads, 122
Upper class, imitation of, 311
Urban, Pope, 160
Urbanism and religion, 269
Utopian ideas, 229
Vaisya, 409
Value-neutral concepts, 243, 245, 247, 267
Values, conflict of, 148, 152-3
other-worldly, 277
their place in academic lectures, 150
political, and academic lectures, 145 f.
polytheism of, 70
privatization of, and human relations, 155
'reasons of state' as yardstick of, 35
Vanity, 137
Vassals, erotic service of, 346
Veda, 396
Versailles, German peace delegation, 41
Vienna, university lectures at, 23
Violence and the state, 78
Virginia, 'first famihes of,' 188
INDEX
489
Virtues, in Chinese Annals, 435
Virtuosity, 449
Virtuoso or heroic religion, 287, 289
Virtuosos, and ascetic sect, 290
and priesthoods, struggle between, 288
religious, 277; economies of, 332
Visibility, social, 403
Vocation, Puritan ethic of, 332
Voluntary associations, 57, 307-11; and the
personality structure, 18, 320
Vossler, Karl, 12, 21, 178
Vote buying, 113
Voters, rural, 104
Wallenstein, Albrecht von, 260
Wang An Shi, 440, 442
Wang Mang, 424, 444
War, boom, 170
and brotherhood, 336
and capitalism, 222
causes of and guilt for, 27, 40, 118
in China, 418
death in, 336
fear of defeat in, 171
First World, 39 f., 392
interest in, 167
and Lutheranism, 337
modern, 334
nationalization of, 223
origins of discipline in, 255-61
peasants and recruits for, 365
profitability of, 120
regulation, 440
and religion, in competition, 335-7
risks in, 171
role of claims to prestige in, 160
and sex, 258, 345, 406
U.S., Civil, 369
use of emotional factors in, 254 f.
Warriors, chivalrous, 283; communism,
257-9; rise of chief, 259
Washington, George, 55, 107
Wealth, and Baptists, 308
in China, 439
and culture, 212
and economic independence, 85
ethical obligation of, 329-30
and hypergamy, 406
and political independence, 235
and religion, 313
Weber, Alfred, 3, 11, 28
Weber, Max, biography of, ch. i, 3-31
academic career and teaching, 11, 12, 14,
23, 132; at Freiburg, 11; at Heidelberg,
II
Weber, Max (Cont.)
appearance, 6-8, 29
army life, 7, 8, 26
character, 28; anger, 12; ascetic drive for
work, 30; personal ethics, 20; pessimism,
35) 50> 71-2; pragmatic view, 9, 38, 65,
299; sense of dignity, 4, 118; of honor,
21; of humor, 12, 317; sense of guilt,
lo-ii, 29; stoicism, 10, 127
death, 23
early life, 4 f.
education, 4 f., 6, 9; in Berlin and Goet-
tingen, 8, 10; at Heidelberg, 6-7;
Ph.D. thesis, 9
rftarriage, 10 f., 29
religion, 5, 25, 28, 29
travels, 11, 13, 14, 15-17
his background and family, 3, 5-6, 9, it,
13, 23, 25, 28; American relatives, 304
his concept of personality, 55; of historical
time, 51; of the state, 48
his construction of history, 55
his image of modern man, 73-4
his intellectual orientations, ch. in, 45-74
his linguistic abilities, 23
his models of identification, 29
his pluralism, 61
his political views, ch. 11, 23, 25, 31, 32-
44, 48, 370
his psychic disturbances, 8, 11 f., 13, 23,
28 f., 37
his segregation of cultural spheres, 47
his self-image, 9, 12, 27, 70, 73, 246; his
image to others, 26
his style, 4, 26
his style of thought, 44
and agrarian problems, 34
and asceticism, 20
and capitalism, 60, 61
and democracy, 38, 42-3, 55
and historical materialism, 34, 63
and ideological phenomena, 48
and imperialism, 35
and intellectual liberty, 33
and international policy, 40
and Judaism, 27
and Junker economy, 34
and the Kaiser, 26, 39
and labor leaders, 26
and law, 9
and liberalism, 50, 53
and Marx, 46-61
and national sentiment, 385
and pacifism, 38-9
and party life, 42
490
Weber, Max (Cont.)
and racial arguments, 43, 177, 412
and religion, 61
and social dynamics, 52
and U.S., 15-17
and woman's emancipation movement,
Weber, Marianne Schnitzer, 10, 29, 445
Webster, Daniel, 107
Wei, the feudal state of, 418
Weierstrass, 136
Welfare, 249
Wen Ti, 442
Western civilization, zones of gravity, 72
Wilhelm 11, see Kaiser
Windelband, Wilhelm, 21
Woman's emancipation movement, W.'s
titude toward, 26
INDEX
Worker, conditioning of, 261; see also Class,
Proletariat
Workingmen, class party of, 372
World, meanings of the, 153; primitive
image of, 282
26 Wu Ko Tu, 443
Wundt, Wilhelm, 44
Yang, Chinese dualism of good and evil
spirits, 436
Yankee, life-cycles and clubs, 309
Yin, Chinese dualism of good and evil
spirits, 436
Youth, 126, 156; groups and religion, 155
at- Zimmerwald faction, 121
Zoroastrianism, 273, 275, 358
I
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