4 MAX W (1864–1920) - SAGE Publications · In1893,attheageof29,WebermarriedMarianneSchnitger,adistantcousin,andfinally left his childhood home. Today, Marianne Weber is recognized

Key Concepts

� Verstehen

� Ideal types

� Protestant ethic

� Calling

� Iron cage

� Rationalization

� Bureaucracy

� Authority

� Charisma

� Class, status, and party

No one knows who will live in this cage in the future, or whether at the end ofthis tremendous development entirely new prophets will arise, or there will bea great rebirth of old ideas and ideals, or, if neither, mechanized petrificationembellished with a sort of convulsive self-importance. For of the last stage ofthis cultural development it might well be truly said: “Specialists without spirit,sensualists without heart; this nullity imagines that it has attained a level of civ-ilization never before achieved.”

(Weber 1904–05/1958:182)

From the course requirements necessary to earn your degree, to the paperwork andtests you must complete in order to receive your driver’s license, to the record keep-ing and mass of files that organize most every business enterprise, our everyday life

is channeled in large measure through formalized, codified procedures. Indeed, in Westerncultures few aspects of life have been untouched by the general tendency toward rationalizationand the adoption of methodical practices. So, whether it’s developing a long-term financial

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plan for one’s business, following the advice written in sex manuals, or even planning forone’s own death, little in modern life is left to chance. It was toward an examination of thecauses and consequences of this “disenchantment” of everyday life that Max Weber’s wide-ranging work crystallized. In this chapter, we explore Weber’s study of this general trend inmodern society as well as other aspects of his writings. But while Weber did not self-consciously set out to develop a unified theoretical model, making his intellectual pathunlike that followed by both Marx and Durkheim, it is this characteristic of his work that hasmade it a continual wellspring of inspiration for other scholars. Perhaps the magnitude ofWeber’s impact on the development of sociology is captured best by the prominent socialtheorist, Raymond Aron, who described Weber as “the greatest of the sociologists” (Aron1965/1970:294).

� A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH

Max Weber, Jr., was born in Erfurt, Germany, in 1864. He was the eldest of eight childrenborn to Max Weber, Sr., and Helene Fallenstein Weber, although only six survived to adult-hood. Max Jr. was a sickly child. When he was four years old, he became seriously ill withmeningitis. Though he eventually recovered, throughout the rest of his life he suffered thephysical and emotional aftereffects of the disease, most apparently anxiety and nervous ten-sion. From an early age, books were central in Weber’s life. He read whatever he could gethis hands on, including Kant, Machiavelli, Spinoza, Goethe, and Schopenhauer, and hewrote two historical essays before his 14th birthday. But Weber paid little attention in classand did almost no work for school. According to his widow Marianne, although “he was notuncivil to his teachers, he did not respect them. . . . If there was a gap in his knowledge, hewent to the root of the matter and then gladly shared what he knew” (Marianne Weber1926/1975:48).

In 1882, at 18 years old, Weber took his final high school examinations. His teachersacknowledged his outstanding intellectual accomplishments and thirst for knowledge, butexpressed doubts about his “moral maturity.” Weber went to the University of Heidelbergfor three semesters and then completed one year of military service in Strasbourg. Whenhis service ended, he enrolled at the University of Berlin and, for the next eight years, livedat his parents’ home. Upon passing his first examination in law in 1886, Weber began workas a full-time legal apprentice. While working as a junior barrister, he earned a Ph.D. ineconomic and legal history in 1889. He then took a position as lecturer at the University ofBerlin.

Throughout his life, Weber was torn by the personal struggles between his mother and hisfather. Weber admired his mother’s extraordinary religious piety and devotion to her family,and loathed his father’s abusive treatment of her. At the same time, Weber admired hisfather’s intellectual prowess and achievements and reviled his mother’s passivity. Weber fol-lowed in his father’s footsteps by becoming a lawyer and joining the same organizations ashis father had at the University of Heidelberg. Like his father, he was active in governmentaffairs as well. As a member of the National Liberal Party, Max Sr. was elected to theReichstag (national legislature) and later appointed by Chancellor Bismarck to the PrussianHouse of Deputies. For his part, Max Jr. was a committed nationalist and served the govern-ment in numerous capacities, including as a delegate to the German Armistice Commissionin Versailles following Germany’s defeat in World War I. But he was also imbued with asense of moral duty quite similar to that of his mother. Weber’s feverish work ethic—hedrove himself mercilessly, denying himself all leisure—can be understood as an inimitablecombination of his father’s intellectual accomplishments and his mother’s moral resolve.

154 � SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY IN THE CLASSICAL ERA

In 1893, at the age of 29,Weber married Marianne Schnitger, a distant cousin, and finallyleft his childhood home. Today, Marianne Weber is recognized as an important feminist,intellectual, and sociologist in her own right. She was a popular public speaker on social andsexual ethics and wrote many books and articles. Her most influential works, Marriage andMotherhood in the Development of Law (1907) and Women and Love (1935), examinedfeminist issues and the reform of marriage. However, Marianne is known best as the intel-lectual partner of her husband. She and Max made a conscious effort to establish an egali-tarian relationship, and worked together on intellectual projects. Interestingly, Mariannereferred to Max as her “companion” and implied that theirs was an unconsummated mar-riage. (It is rumored that Max had a long-lasting affair with a woman of Swiss nobility whowas a member of the Tobleron family.) Despite her own intellectual accomplishments,Marianne’s 700-page treatise, Max Weber: A Biography, first published in 1926, hasreceived the most attention, serving as the central source of biographical information on herhusband (and vital to this introduction as well).

In 1894, Max Weber joined the faculty at Freiburg University as a full professor of eco-nomics. Shortly thereafter, in 1896, Weber accepted a position as chair of economics at theUniversity of Heidelberg, where he first began his academic career. But in 1897, he suffereda serious nervous breakdown. According to Marianne, the breakdown was triggered by theinexorable guilt Weber experienced after his father’s sudden death. Just seven weeks beforehe died,Weber had rebuked his father over his tyrannical treatment of his mother. The seniorWeber had prohibited his wife Helene from visiting Max and Marianne at their home inHeidelberg without him. When he and Helene showed up together for the visit, his sonforced him to leave. Unfortunately, that was the last time father and son ever spoke.

Weber experienced debilitating anxiety and insomnia throughout the rest of his life. Heoften resorted to taking opium in order to sleep. Despite resigning his academic posts, trav-eling, and resting, the anxiety could not be dispelled. Nevertheless, he had spurts of manicintellectual activity and continued to write as an independent scholar. In 1904, Weber trav-eled to the United States and began to formulate the argument of what would be his mostcelebrated work, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (Weber 1904–05/1958).

After returning to Europe, Weber resumed his intellectual activity. He met with the bril-liant thinkers of his day, including Werner Sombart, Paul Hensel, Ferdinand Tönnies, ErnstTroeltsch, and Georg Simmel (see Chapter 6). He helped establish the Heidelberg Academyof the Sciences in 1909 and the Sociological Society in 1910 (Marianne Weber1926/1975:425). However, Weber was still plagued by compulsive anxiety. In 1918, hehelped draft the constitution of the Weimar Republic while giving his first university lec-tures in 19 years at the University of Vienna. He suffered tremendously, however, and turneddown an offer for a permanent post (Weber 1958:23). In 1920, at the age of 56, Max Weberdied of pneumonia. Marianne lived for another 34 years and completed several importantmanuscripts left unfinished at her husband’s death.

INTELLECTUAL INFLUENCES AND CORE IDEAS �

Weber’s work encompasses a wide scope of substantive interests. Most, if not all, of his writ-ing has had a profound impact on sociology. As such, an attempt to fully capture the breadthand significance of his scholarship exceeds the limitations of a single chapter. Nevertheless,we can isolate several aspects of his work that, taken together, serve as a foundation forunderstanding the impetus behind much of his writing. To this end, we divide our discussionin this section into two major parts: (1) Weber’s view of the science of sociology and (2) hisengagement with the work of Friedrich Nietzsche and Karl Marx.

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Sociology

Weber defined sociology as “a science which attempts the interpretive understanding ofsocial action in order thereby to arrive at a causal explanation of its course and effects”(Weber 1947:88). In casting “interpretive understanding,” or Verstehen, as the principalobjective, Weber’s vision of sociology offers a distinctive counter to those who sought tobase the young discipline on the effort to uncover universal laws applicable to all societies.Thus, unlike Durkheim, who analyzed objective, sui generis “social facts” that operatedindependently of the individuals making up a society, Weber turned his attention to the sub-jective dimension of social life, seeking to understand the states of mind or motivations thatguide individuals’ behavior.

In delimiting the subject matter of sociology, Weber further specified “social action” tomean that which, “by virtue of the subjective meaning attached to it by the acting individ-ual (or individuals), it takes account of the behaviour of others and is thereby oriented in itscourse” (Weber 1947:88). Such action can be either observable or internal to the actor’simagination, and it can involve a deliberate intervening in a given situation, an abstaining ofinvolvement, or acquiescence. The task for the sociologist is to understand the meaningsindividuals assign to the contexts in which they are acting and the consequences that suchmeanings have for their conduct.

To systematize interpretive analyses of meaning,Weber distinguished four types of socialaction. In doing so, he clearly demonstrates his multidimensional approach to the problemof action (see Figure 4.1). First is instrumental-rational action. Such action is geared towardthe efficient pursuit of goals through calculating the advantages and disadvantages associ-ated with the possible means for realizing them. Under this category would fall the decisionof a labor union to strike in order to bargain for greater employment benefits. Rehearsingone’s performance for an upcoming job interview is another example of instrumental-rationalaction.


Nonrational

Rational

Figure 4.1 Weber’s Four Types of Social Action

Individual Collective

Affective action

Traditional action

Value-rational action

Instrumental-rationalaction

Like instrumental-rational action, value-rational action involves the strategic selection ofmeans capable of effectively achieving one’s goals. However, value-rational action is pur-sued as an end in itself, not because it serves as a means for achieving an ulterior goal. Assuch, it “always involves ‘commands’ or ‘demands” that compel the individual to follow aline of conduct for its own sake—because it is the “right” thing to do (Weber 1947:116).Examples of this type of action include risking arrest to further an environmental cause, orrefraining from cheating on exams.

The third type of social action outlined by Weber is traditional action, where behaviorsare determined by habit or longstanding custom. Here, an individual’s conduct is shaped notby a concern with maximizing efficiency or commitment to an ethical principle, but ratherby an unreflective adherence to established routines. This category includes religious ritesof passage such as confirmations and bar mitzvahs, singing the national anthem at the startof sporting events, and eating turkey at Thanksgiving with one’s family.

The fourth type is affective action, which is marked by impulsiveness or a display ofunchecked emotions. Absent from this behavior is the calculated weighing of means for agiven end. Examples of affective action are a baseball player arguing an umpire’s calledstrike or parents crying at their child’s wedding ceremony.

It is important to point out that in everyday life a given behavior or course of conduct islikely to exhibit characteristics of more than one type of social action. Thus, a person maypursue a career in social work not only because it is a means for earning a salary, but alsobecause he is committed to the goal of helping others as a value in its own right. Weber’scategories of social action, then, serve as ideal types or analytical constructs against whichreal-life cases can be compared. Such “pure” categories are not realized in concrete cases,but instead are a conceptual yardstick for examining differences and similarities, as well ascausal connections, between the social processes under investigation. Thus, “ideal” refers toan emphasis on particular aspects of social life specified by the researcher, not to a valuejudgment as to whether something is “good” or “bad.” As you will read in the selections thatfollow, Weber’s work is guided in large measure by constructing ideal types. For instance,his essay on bureaucracy consists in the main of a discussion of the ideal characteristics ofsuch an organization. Similarly, his essay on the three forms of domination involves isolat-ing the features specific to each ideal type, none of which actually exists in pure form.

Weber’s notion of sociology as an interpretive science based on Verstehen (understand-ing) and his focus on constructing ideal types marks his ties to important intellectual debatesthat were taking shape in German universities (Bendix 1977). At the heart of the debates wasthe distinction drawn between the natural and social sciences, and the methodologies appro-priate to each. The boundary separating biology, chemistry, and physics from history, eco-nomics, psychology, and sociology was an outgrowth of German Idealism and thephilosophy of Immanuel Kant (1724–1804). Kant argued that the realm of mind and“spirit” was radically different from the external, physical world of objects. According toKant, because individuals create meaning and ultimately are free to choose their course ofaction, it is not possible to construct universal laws regarding human behavior. As a result,social life is not amenable to scientific investigation. On the other hand, absent of con-sciousness, objects and processes occurring in the natural world are open to scientific analy-sis and the development of general laws regarding their actions.

Among the scholars grappling with the implications of the Kantian division were thehistorical economists Wilhelm Dilthey (1833–1911) and Heinrich Rickert (1863–1936),whose work would have a profound impact on Weber. It was Dilthey who articulated theview that historical studies, and the social sciences more generally, should seek to under-stand particular events and their relationship to the specific contexts in which they occur.The task of history, then, is to interpret the subjective meanings actors assign to their

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conduct, not to search for causal explanations couched in terms of universal laws.According to Dilthey, any attempt to produce general causal laws regarding human behav-ior would not capture the unique historical conditions that shaped the events in questionor a society’s development. Moreover, such efforts would fail to study the very things thatseparate social life from the physical world of objects—human intent and motivation.Unlike the natural sciences and their analyses of the regularities governing observableobjects and events, the social sciences aim to understand the internal states of actors andtheir relationship to behaviors.

In Weber’s own definition of sociology, quoted above, we clearly see his indebtednessto Dilthey’s work. Following Dilthey, Weber cast the social sciences as a branch ofknowledge dedicated to developing an interpretive understanding of the subjective mean-ings actors attach to their conduct. However, Weber maintained a view not shared byDilthey—that the social sciences, like the natural sciences, are conducted by making useof abstract and generalizing concepts. Here lies the impetus behind Weber’s developmentof ideal types as a method for producing generalizable findings based on the study of his-torically specific events. For Weber, scientific knowledge is distinguished from nonsci-entific analyses not on the basis of the subject matter under consideration, but rather onhow such studies are carried out. Thus, in constructing ideal types of action, Weberargued that analyses of the social world were not inherently less scientific or generaliz-able than investigations of the physical world. Nevertheless, Weber’s Verstehen approachled him to contend that the search for universal laws of human action would lose sight ofwhat is human—the production of meaningful behavior as it is grounded within a spe-cific historical context.

It is in his notion of ideal types that we find Weber’s links to the work of HeinrichRickert. As a neo-Kantian thinker, Rickert accepted the distinction between the naturaland social sciences as self-evident. However, he saw the differences between the twobranches of knowledge as tied to the method of inquiry appropriate to each, not to anyinherent differences in subject matter, as did Dilthey. According to Rickert, regardless ofwhether an investigator is trying to understand the meanings that motivate actors orattempting to uncover universal laws that govern the world of physical objects, they wouldstudy both subjects by way of concepts. Moreover, it is through the use of concepts thatthe investigator is able to select the aspects of the social or natural world most relevant tothe purpose of her inquiry. The difference between the sciences lies, then, in how conceptsare used to generate knowledge.

While the natural sciences used concepts as a way to generate abstract principles thatexplain the uniformities that shape the physical world, Rickert maintained that concepts usedin the social sciences are best directed toward detailing the particular features that account forthe uniqueness of an event or a society’s development. In short, for Rickert the natural scienceswere driven by the deductive search for universal laws. On the other hand, the social scienceswere committed to producing inductive descriptions of historically specific phenomena.

For example, in subjecting molecules to changes in temperature and pressure, aphysicist is interested in explaining the molecules’ reactions in terms of causal lawswhose validity is not restricted to any specific time period or setting. Conversely,social scientists studying episodes of protests, for instance, should seek to understandwhy individuals chose to act and how the cultural and institutional contexts shapedtheir behaviors. But because the contexts in which, for instance, the French Revolution,the Boston Tea Party, and the women’s suffrage movement occurred were historicallyunique, it is not possible to formulate generalized explanations of protests on the basisof such specific, unreplicable events. Attempts to do so would require a level of con-ceptual abstraction that would necessarily lose sight of the particulars that made theevents historically meaningful.


Weber’s use of ideal types as a method for framing his analyses stems in importantrespects from Rickert’s discussions on the role of concepts in the sciences. However, hedid not share Rickert’s view that the social sciences are unable to construct generalcausal explanations of historical events or societal development. Here, Weber sought toforge a middle ground between the generating of abstract laws characteristic of the nat-ural sciences and the accumulation of historically specific facts that some contendedmust guide the social sciences. To this end, he cast the determination of causality as anattempt to establish the probability that a series of actions or events are related or havean elective affinity. Hence, Weber’s notion of causality is fundamentally different fromthe conventional scientific usage, which sees it as the positing of invariant and necessaryrelationships between variables. According to Weber, the complexities of social life makeit unamenable to formulating strict causal arguments such as those found in the naturalsciences. While it can be stated that temperatures above 32 degrees Fahrenheit (x) willcause ice to melt (y), such straightforward, universal relationships between variables can-not be isolated when analyzing social processes; individual conduct and societal devel-opments are not carried out with the constancy and singular causal “elegance” thatcharacterizes the physical world. Thus, a sociologist cannot say with the same degree ofcertainty that an increase in educational attainment (x) will cause a rise in income (y),because while this relationship between the two variables may be probable, it is notinevitable. One need only keep in mind that a university professor with a Ph.D. typicallymakes far less money than a corporate executive with a bachelor’s degree. As a result,sociologists should set out to determine the set of factors that, when taken together, havean elective affinity with a particular outcome. Armed with ideal types, the sociologistcan then develop general arguments that establish the probable relationship between acombination of causes and a particular consequence.

Of Nietzsche and Marx

The honesty of a contemporary scholar . . . can be measured by the position he takes vis-à-vis Nietzsche and Marx. Whoever fails to acknowledge that he could not carry out themost important part of his own work without the work done by both . . . deceives himselfand others. The intellectual world in which we live is a world which to a large extent bearsthe imprint of Marx and Nietzsche.1

Such were the words spoken by Max Weber to his students shortly before his death.While his vision of sociology as a discipline was shaped in large measure by his links toGerman Idealism and the controversies surrounding historical studies, his substantive inter-ests bear important connections to the work of Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) and KarlMarx (1818–1883).

Evidencing his connection to Nietzsche, a major theme running throughout the whole ofWeber’s work is rationalization. By rationalization, Weber was referring to an ongoingprocess in which social interaction and institutions become increasingly governed bymethodical procedures and calculable rules. Thus, in steering the course of societal devel-opment, values, traditions, and emotions were being displaced in favor of formal and imper-sonal bureaucratic practices. While such practices may breed greater efficiency in obtainingdesignated ends, they also lead to the “disenchantment of the world” where “there are nomysterious incalculable forces that come into play, but rather that one can, in principle, mas-ter all things by calculation” (Weber 1919/1958:139).

Max Weber � 159

1Quoted in Robert J. Antonio (1995:3).

Few domains within modern Western societies have escaped from the trend toward ratio-nalization. For instance, music became thoroughly codified by the 1500s with the develop-ment of scales derived from mathematical formulas and tonal and rhythmic notation. Whilemusical improvisation by no means disappeared, it henceforth was based on underlying sys-tematized principles of melody and harmony. The visual arts likewise became codifiedaccording to principles of perspective, composition, and color against which the avant-gardepurposively rebels (and is thus no less subject to). Sex as an “irrational” bodily pleasure oras a rite tied to orgiastic rituals has been replaced by sex as a rational practice necessary forprocreation. And procreation has itself come under increasing scientific control as advancesin birth control and in vitro fertilization make it possible to plan when a birth will occur, tocircumvent a person’s natural infertility, and even to prenatally select specific traits. Thetransformation of sex was itself part of the broader displacement of magical belief systemsby doctrinal religions, which were themselves later marginalized by an instrumental, scien-tific worldview. With each step, the work of fortune and fate, and mysterious and unknownpowers were further removed from everyday life. The pantheon of gods and spirits that onceruled the universe would be distilled and simplified into the one all-knowing, omnipotentGod, who would eventually lose his throne to the all-seeing telescope. And finally, Weberplaces special emphasis on the changes to social life brought on by the rationalization ofcapitalistic economic activity, as you will read below.

The ambivalence with which Weber viewed the process of rationalization stems from theloss of ultimate meaning that accompanied the growing dominance of an instrumental andscientific orientation to life. While science can provide technological advances that enableus to address more efficiently how to do things, it cannot provide us with a set of meaningsand values that answer the more fundamental question: Why? Unlike those who saw in theEnlightenment’s debunking of magical superstitions and religious beliefs the road toprogress, Weber maintained that rationalization—and the scientific, calculative outlook inwhich it is rooted—does not generate “an increased and general knowledge of the conditionsunder which one lives” (Weber 1919/1958:139). They offer, instead, techniques empty ofultimate meaning.

Weber’s reluctance to champion the progress brought by science and technologicaladvances was influenced by Nietzsche’s own nihilistic view of modernity expressed mostboldly in his assertion, “God is dead” (Nietzsche 1866/1966). Nietzsche’s claim reflectedhis conviction that the eclipse of religious and philosophical absolutes brought on by therise of science and instrumental reasoning had created an era of nihilism or meaningless-ness. Without religious or philosophical doctrines to provide a foundation for moral direc-tion, life itself would cease to have an ultimate purpose. No longer could ethicaldistinctions be made between what one ought to do and what one can do (Nietzsche1866/1966).

Weber was unwilling to assign a determinative end to history, however. Whether or notthe spiritual void created by the disenchantment of the modern world would continue was,for him, an open question. The search for meaning—which Weber saw as the essence ofthe human condition—carried out in a meaningless world sparked the rise of charismaticleaders who were capable of offering their followers purpose and direction in their lives.(See “The Types of Legitimate Domination” below.) Ruling over others by virtue of theirprofessed “state of grace,” such figures were capable of radically transforming the exist-ing social order. Weber’s depiction of the power of charismatic leaders, with their abilityto transcend the conventions and expectations imposed by the social order, bears impor-tant similarities to Nietzsche’s notion of the Übermensch, or “superman.” For Nietzsche,the fate of humanity and what is truly human lay in the hands of the Übermenschen, whoalone are capable of overcoming the moral and spiritual bankruptcy that he believed cor-rupted the modern age (Nietzsche 1883/1978).


In addition to drawing inspiration from Nietzsche’s work, much of Weber’s writing reflectsa critical engagement with and extension of Marx’s theory of historical materialism.2 As wenoted in Chapter 2, Marx saw class struggles as the decisive force in the evolution of history.Class struggles were, in turn, the inevitable outcome of the inherent contradictions found in allprecommunist economic systems.While finding much convincing in Marx’s argument,Webernevertheless did not embrace it in its entirety. In constructing his own theoretical framework,Weber departed from Marx in a number of respects, three of which we outline here.

First,Weber maintained that social life did not evolve according to some immanent or nec-essary law. Thus, unlike Marx, Weber did not foresee a definitive “end of prehistory” towardwhich social evolution progressed. Instead, he saw the future of modern society as an openquestion, the answer to which it is impossible to foretell. This position, coupled with his viewthat rationalizing processes had transformed modern society into an “iron cage” (see below),accounts for Weber’s unwillingness to accept a utopian vision of humanity’s future.

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

It is difficult to overstate the influence that the work of German philosopher andsocial critic Friedrich Nietzsche has had on twentieth-century thought. From theolo-gians and psychologists, to philosophers and sociologists, to poets and playwrights,Nietzsche’s ideas have penetrated virtually every domain of modern intellectual cul-ture. It was not until after his death, however, that he would earn such acclaim, forduring his life his writings attracted but the smallest of audiences.

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

The man who declared, “God is dead” and who argued that truth, values, andmorals are not based on some intrinsic, ahistorical criteria, but, instead, are estab-lished by the victors in the unending struggle for power, did not enter the canon ofliberal academia without controversy. Owing to the intentional distortions and forg-eries of some of his writing by his sister, Elisabeth, Nietzsche was often interpretedas an anti-Semitic fascist. Though he abhorred such hatred as “slavish” and “herd-like,” Hitler’s Third Reich reinvented Nietzsche’s notion of the “will to power” andthe Übermensch or “superman” as a justification for its military aggression andgenocidal practices. Fortunately, contemporary scholars of Nietzsche’s work havecorrected many of Elisabeth’s falsities, allowing the true intention of his piercing,original insights into modern culture to be realized.

Significant Others

2It is important to point out that Weber’s critique of Marx was based more on secondary interpretationsof Marx’s work than on a thorough, firsthand encounter with his writings, since much of it wasunavailable. In Weber’s time, and continuing today, Marx was (is) often miscast by his followers andcritics alike as an economic determinist. Perhaps more accurately, then, Weber was responding to a“crude,” reductionist version of Marxism.

Second, he contended that the development of societies could not be adequately explainedon the basis of a single or primary causal mechanism. The analysis of economic conditions andclass dynamics alone could not capture the complex social and cultural processes responsiblefor shaping a society’s trajectory. In particular, Weber maintained that Marx, in emphasizingeconomic factors and class-based interests, underestimated the role that ideas play in deter-mining a society’s course of development. On this point, Weber sought to incorporate Marx’sargument into his own work while offering what he saw as a necessary corrective, remarking,“Not ideas, but material and ideal interests, directly govern men’s conduct. Yet very frequentlythe ‘world images’ that have been created by ‘ideas’have, like switchmen, determined the tracksalong which action has been pushed by the dynamic of interest” (Weber 1915/1958:280).

Acknowledging the powerful sway that “interests” hold over individuals as they charttheir course of action, Weber nevertheless argued that ideas play a central role in shaping thepaths along which interests are realized. He saw ideas as an independent cultural force andnot as a reflection of material conditions or the existing mode of production. As the sourcefor constructing meaning and purposeful lines of action, ideas are not simply one elementamong others confined to the “superstructure.” Instead, they serve as the bases on whichindividuals carve out possible avenues of action, and, more dramatically, when advanced bya charismatic leader ideas can inspire revolution.

A third difference lies in where the two theorists located the fundamental problems fac-ing modern industrial society. As you read previously, Marx identified capitalism as the pri-mary source of humanity’s inhumanity. The logic of capitalism necessarily led to theexploitation of the working class as well as to the alienation of the individual from his work,himself, and others. For Weber, however, it was not capitalism but the process of rational-ization and the increasing dominance of bureaucracies that threatened to destroy creativityand individuality. By design, bureaucratic organizations—and the rational procedures thatgovern them—routinize and standardize people and products. Though making for greaterefficiency and predictability in the spheres of life they have touched, the impersonality ofbureaucracies, their indifference to difference, has created a “cold” and empty world. (SeeWeber’s essay “Bureaucracy,” excerpted below.)

Not surprisingly, then, Weber, unlike many of his contemporaries, did not see in social-ism the cure for society’s ills. In taking control of a society’s productive forces, socialistforms of government would only further bureaucratize the social order, offering a poor alter-native to capitalism. Indeed, Weber believed capitalism was a “better” economic system tothe extent that its competitiveness allowed more opportunities to express one’s individualityand creative impulses. Clearly, Weber did not embrace Marx’s or his followers’ calls for acommunist revolution, because such a movement, to the extent that it led to an expansion ofthe scope of bureaucracies, would accelerate the hollowing out of human life.


Robert Michels (1876–1936): The Iron Law of Oligarchy

Political activist and sociologist, Robert Michels is best known for his studies on theorganization of political parties. Influenced by the ideas of his teacher and mentor,Max Weber, Michels argued that all large-scale organizations have a tendency toevolve into hierarchical bureaucracies regardless of their original formation and ulti-mate goals. Even organizations that adopt an avowedly democratic agenda areinevitably subject to this “iron law of oligarchy” because leadership is necessarilytransferred to an elite decision-making body.

Significant Others

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Michels developed his argument in Political Parties (1911) in which he examinedthe organizational structures of western European socialist trade unions and politicalparties. During the late 1800s, the democratic ethos was particularly strong withinthese revolutionary socialist parties whose principal aim was to overthrow aristocraticor oligarchic regimes and replace them with governing bodies controlled directly bythe people. Despite their intent on destroying elite rule—the rule of the many by thefew—these parties were themselves unable to escape the tendency toward oligarchy.

Michels advanced his ideas in part as a response to his disillusionment with theGerman Social Democratic Party. An active member of the party, he witnessed first-hand its growing political conservatism. (Michels was censured by German governmentauthorities for his political radicalism, compelling him to take positions at universitiesin Italy and Switzerland.) Established in the 1870s as an advocate for the working class,theMarxist-inspired party abandoned its revolutionary program soon after its formation,as its ambitions to wrest control of the means of production into the hands of the peoplewas replaced by the conservative goals of increasing its membership, amassing funds forits war chest, and winning electoral seats in the German legislature through which piece-meal reform might be gained. Considered a vanguard of the proletariat revolution, thisdramatic shift in party tactics signaled a rejection of Marxist principles and the aban-donment of the struggle for realizing an ideal democracy where workers controlled theirlabor and freedom from want existed throughout society.

What led to the cooptation of this and similarly driven parties’ ideals? The answerlies in the working classes’ lack of economic and political power. In order to effectdemocratic change, the otherwise powerless working-class individuals must firstorganize; their strength as a movement is directly related to their strength in numbers.Numbers, however, require representation through individual delegates who areentrusted by the mass to act on its behalf. Despite Marx’s utopian promise, thegrowth in numbers necessary to achieve power makes it impossible for the people toexercise direct control over their destinies. Instead, the success of working-class par-ties hinges on creating an organization committed to representing its interests:“Organization is . . . the source from which the conservative currents flow over theplain of democracy, occasioning there disastrous floods and rendering the plainunrecognizable” (Michels 1911/1958:26). The inevitable rise of an organizationbrings with it the equally inevitable need for technical expertise, centralized author-ity, and a professional staff to ensure its efficient functioning. Bureaucratizationtransforms the party from a means to an end, to an end in itself. The preservation ofthe organization itself becomes the essential aim, and its original democratic ambi-tions are preserved only in talk, because aggressive action against the state wouldsurely threaten its continued existence.

Thus, while “[d]emocracy is inconceivable without organization” (Michels1911/1958:25), the inherently oligarchic and bureaucratic nature of party organiza-tions saps its revolutionary zeal and replaces it with the pursuit of disciplined, cautiouspolicies intended to defend its own long-term interests, which do not necessarily coin-cide with the interests of the class it represents. As Michels notes, it would seem

society cannot exist without a “dominant” or “political” class [that] . . . consti-tutes the only factor of sufficiently durable efficacy in the history of humandevelopment. . . . [T]he state, cannot be anything other than the organization ofa minority. It is the aim of this minority to impose upon the rest of society a

(Continued)

� WEBER’S THEORETICAL ORIENTATION

Weber’s work is avowedly multidimensional. This is depicted in Figure 4.2 by his position-ing relative to the other theorists discussed in this text. He explicitly recognized that indi-vidual action is channeled through a variety of motivations that encompass both rationalistand nonrationalist dimensions. Moreover, his definition of sociology as a science aimedat the interpretive understanding of social action squarely places the individual and her


(Continued)

“legal order,” which is the outcome of the exigencies of dominion and of theexploitation of the mass of helots effected by the ruling minority, and can neverbe truly representative of the majority. The majority is thus permanently inca-pable of self-government. Even when the discontent of the masses culminates ina successful attempt to deprive the bourgeoisie of power, this is . . . effected onlyin appearance; always and necessarily there springs from the masses a new orga-nized minority which raises itself to the rank of a governing class. Thus themajority of human beings, in a condition of eternal tutelage, are predestined bytragic necessity to submit to the dominion of a small minority, and must be con-tent to constitute the pedestal of an oligarchy. (Michels 1911/1958:406, 407)

Mead Durkheim

Simmel

Individual

Du Bois

Collective

WEBER

GilmanMarx

Nonrational

Rational

Figure 4.2 Weber’s Basic Theoretical Orientation

conduct at the center of analysis. Complementing this position areWeber’s substantive inter-ests that led him to study religious idea systems, institutional arrangements, class and statusstructures, forms of domination, and broad historical trends; in short, elements aligned withthe collective dimension of social life.

Of course, not every essay incorporates elements from each of the four dimensions. Forinstance,Weber’s discussion of bureaucracy (excerpted below) focuses on the administrativefunctions and rules that account for the efficiency and impersonality that mark this organi-zational form. As a result, he emphasizes the structural or collectivist aspects of bureaucra-cies and how they work down to shape a given individual’s behaviors and attitudes withinthem. Thus, you will find Weber remarking, “The individual bureaucrat cannot squirm outof the apparatus into which he has been harnessed. . . . [H]e is only a small cog in a cease-lessly moving mechanism which prescribes to him an essentially fixed route of march”(Weber 1925d/1978:988). Weber’s interest, then, lies here in describing the bureaucraticapparatus replete with its institutionalized demands for technical expertise and leveling ofsocial differences.3

In Figure 4.3, we have highlighted a number of key concepts found in our precedingremarks or in the primary selections that follow. From the chart, it is readily apparent that

Max Weber � 165

Nonrational

Traditional authority

Protestant ethic

Status groups

Rational-legal authority

Party

Classes

Bureaucracy

Capitalism

Rational

Figure 4.3 Weber’s Core Concepts


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

Affective action

Traditional action

Value-rational action

“Calling”

Charisma

Charismatic authority

Instrumental-rationalaction

Weber’s theoretical orientation spans each of the four dimensions. Because some of theseconcepts were discussed previously (for instance, those regarding the types of action) andothers will be addressed later in our introductions to the selections, we will restrict ourcomments in this section to a single example that underscores Weber’s multidimensionalapproach.

In The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1904–05), Weber discusses theimportance of the calling in motivating individuals to pursue worldly success. A doctrinefirst espoused by the Protestant reformer Martin Luther (1483–1546), the idea that eachindividual has a calling or “life-task” has its roots in a religious quest for salvation. Interms of our theoretical map, then, the calling reflects a nonrationalist orientation toaction. The actions of the religiously faithful were motivated by the moral obligation toperform the duties of his labor to the best of his abilities. Here, the individual’s actions areinspired by his desire to glorify God and thus gain confidence in the certainty of Hisgrace, not by a desire to accumulate wealth as a means for purchasing material goods.Moreover, the calling is an individualist concept. It serves as the basis on which individ-uals make sense of their life circumstances as they chart their chances for attainingworldly success and eternal salvation.

Weber’s analysis of the calling, however, was not tied solely to an examination ofhow religious ideas motivate individual conduct. For Weber, the significance of the call-ing also lies in its fueling a dramatic social transformation: the growth and eventualdominance of capitalism and the accompanying rationalization of much of social life.While oversimplifying his argument, Weber contended that the development of modernforms of capitalism was tied to the ascetic lifestyle demanded by the pursuit of one’scalling. Originally a religious injunction to lead a life freed from the “temptations of theflesh,” the secularization of the calling was a major force contributing to the explosivegrowth of capitalism in the West as businesses were increasingly organized on the basisof impersonal, methodical practices aimed at the efficient production of goods and ser-vices. Profit was now sought not to ensure one’s state of grace, but because it was inone’s self-interest to do so. Stripped of its religious impulses and spiritual moorings, thecalling was further transformed into an overarching rationalist orientation to action that,as we remarked earlier, introduced methodical and calculative procedures into not onlyeconomic practices, but also into numerous spheres of life including politics, art, andsex, to name only a few.

Last,Weber’s argument reveals a decidedly collectivist element as well. The ascetic idealslying at the heart of the Protestant ethic were carried into the practical affairs of economicactivity and social life more generally. This unleashed the process of rationalization, disen-chanting Western society and creating an iron cage from which the individual is left withlittle power to escape. The dominance of capitalism and impersonal, bureaucratic forms oforganization was a collective force that determined the life-chances of the individual. Thisdynamic is illustrated in the following passage taken from The Protestant Ethic and withwhich we end this section:

The Puritan wanted to work in a calling; we are forced to do so. For when asceticism wascarried out of monastic cells into everyday life, and began to dominate worldly morality,it did its part in building the tremendous cosmos of the modern economic order. Thisorder is now bound to the technical and economic conditions of machine productionwhich to-day [sic] determine the lives of all the individuals who are born into this mech-anism, not only those directly concerned with economic acquisition, with irresistibleforce. (Weber 1904–05/1958:181)


Readings

In the selections that follow you will be introduced to five of Weber’s most influ-ential writings. In the first reading, excerpts from The Protestant Ethic and theSpirit of Capitalism (Weber 1904–05) offer Weber’s analysis of the relationshipbetween Protestantism and the economic and cultural life of modern Westernsociety. In the second reading, from “The Social Psychology of the WorldReligions,” Weber expands this theme in an examination of the psychologicalmotivations underlying the “world religions.” In the third reading, Weber inves-tigates the crosscutting sources of power: class, status, and party. A paralleltheme is addressed in the fourth selection, “TheTypes of Legitimate Domination,”in which Weber outlines three distinct types of domination or authority. Finally,in “Bureaucracy,” we end with Weber’s description of bureaucracy, the predom-inant form of modern social organizations.

Introduction to The Protestant Ethicand the Spirit of Capitalism

Beyond doubt, one of the most influential sociology books ever written, The ProtestantEthic masterfully captures the two subjects that preoccupied Weber’s intellectual activities:(1) the rationalizing tendencies so prevalent in Western society and (2) the role of ideas inshaping them. In addressing these twin issues, Weber argues that a religious belief system,intended to explain the path to a transcendent eternal salvation, paradoxically fueled the cre-ation of a secular world in which “material goods have gained an increasing and finally aninexorable power over the lives of men as at no previous period in history” (Weber1904–05/1958:181).

Unlike Marx, who viewed religion as “the opiate of masses,” or as an ideology thatserved the economic interests of the ruling class, and unlike Durkheim, who saw in religionhumanity’s worship of itself, Weber saw in religious beliefs a system of meaning aimed atexplaining the existence of suffering and evil in the world. For Weber, such explanationshave a profound impact on individuals’ actions, and consequently on the broader socialorder. Of particular import is whether in addressing these ultimate issues, a belief systemorients its adherents toward a “mastery” of the world or a mystical or contemplative escapefrom it. Thus, Protestantism, and Calvinism in particular, demanded that its followers serveas the “instruments” of God in order to fashion the world in His image. Conversely, Easternreligions such as Buddhism and Hinduism required their faithful to become “vessels” for thedivine spirit in order to commune with otherworldly cosmic powers. The active engagementwith the external, secular world called for by the Protestant belief system functioned as apotent impetus for social change, while the inward search for spiritual awakening charac-teristic of the major Eastern religions proved to be a socially conservative force.

In developing a scientifically based account of the independent role religious ideas canplay in shaping the social order and, in particular, economic systems, Weber offered a pow-erful critique of Marxist theories of capitalism. As we discussed previously, he saw in his-torical materialism a one-sided causal interpretation, and, in several passages of TheProtestant Ethic, you will read Weber clearly setting his sights on piercing this doctrine. As

Max Weber � 167

a counter to Marx’s emphasis on property relations and class struggle, Weber maintainedthat the extraordinarily methodical attitude that characterized Protestant asceticism wasintegral to the rise and eventual dominance of Western capitalism.1 Thus, Weber sought todemonstrate that not only “material” factors, but also “ideal” factors can be instrumental inproducing social change. In doing so, he sparked one of the most important and enduringdebates in the history of sociology.

Having already highlighted several key elements of The Protestant Ethic when we out-lined Weber’s theoretical orientation, we briefly call attention to the book’s main ideas.Weber traced the rise of individualism to the late sixteenth century and the ProtestantReformation, which, among other things, redefined the nature of the relationship betweenman and God. Led byMartin Luther (1483–1546), the Protestant Reformers insisted thateach individual must methodically strive to realize a moral and righteous life each andevery day in all their practical activities, as a constant expression of their devotion to theglorification of God. This methodical individualism challenged the previously dominantreligious practice in which a handful of religious professionals (clergy) performed ritualsin order to appease the gods either on behalf of the whole society or on behalf of thosewho paid them for their services. But Luther maintained that these token, periodic rituals(for instance, the Catholic confessional) or occasional “good works” could never placateor gain the favor of a great and all-powerful God. Instead, it was the duty of each to sub-mit to the will of God through faithful dedication to his calling. It was demanded of richand poor alike to be content with their lot, for it was God’s unfathomable will that hadassigned to each his station in life.

With its emphasis on submission and faith, Luther’s view of the calling, like theCatholicism it rebelled against, promoted a traditional economic ethic that discouragedboth laboring and profit seeking beyond what had long been established through custom.Workers and merchants sought simply to maintain the level of productivity and standard ofliving associated with the vocation in which they were engaged. However, in the hands oflater Puritans leaders, the meaning of the calling was transformed. Under John Calvin(1509–64) and Richard Baxter (1615–91), the calling was interpreted as God’s com-mandment to work for His divine glory. With submission and faith no longer sufficient forgaining confidence in one’s salvation, how could the believer know that he was fulfillinghis calling and thus might be one of His elect? Existing beyond the influence of mortals,only God knows who will be saved; there could be no certainty of proof of one’s state ofgrace. The best one could hope for was a divinely granted sign. And that sign?: success andprofit in worldly affairs, the pursuit of which was now religiously enjoined. Baxter statedthe injunction thusly, “If God show you a way in which you may lawfully get more than inanother way . . . if you refuse this, and choose the less gainful way, you cross one of theends of your calling, and you refuse to be God’s steward, and to accept His gifts and usethem for Him when He requireth it” (Weber 1904–05/1958:162). Profit was now understood


1Significantly, Weber’s central point was not that the Protestant ethic caused the emergence and growthof Western capitalism. Protestantism alone was not sufficient for creating this profound economicchange. Rather, he argued that Protestant asceticism combined with a number of other important struc-tural and social factors to produce the dominance of Western capitalism. In particular, Weber pointedto the separation of business pursuits from the home; the development of rational bookkeeping meth-ods; technological advances in methods of production, distribution, and communication; the develop-ment of a rational legal system based on impersonal, formal rules; and most importantly, the rationalorganization of free labor.

to be a visible blessing from God that allowed the faithful to answer the most burning ofall questions: Am I saved? Possessed by this “new spirit,” one’s predestined, eternal fatewas now tied to the success of his conduct in work, a sphere of activity that was catapultedto the center of the believer’s existence.

It was not success itself that offered proof, however. Rather, it was how success wasachieved that marked a person as one of God’s elect. Baxter cautioned his followers that,“You may labour to be rich for God, though not for the flesh and sin” (Weber 1904–05/1958:162). In this proscription lay the seeds for the subjective disposition that wouldignite the growth of capitalism. Wealth served as confirmation of one’s salvation only if itdid not lead to idleness or the enjoyment of luxuries. Profitableness, moreover, was bestguaranteed when economic pursuits were carried out on the basis of methodical and ratio-nal planning. Thus, ascetic restrictions on consumption were combined with the religiouslyderived compulsion to increase one’s wealth. The ethical imperative to save and invest one’swealth would become the spiritual foundation for the spread of capitalism.

It would not be long, however, before the rational pursuit of wealth and bureaucraticstructures necessary to modern capitalism would render obsolete the religious ethic that firsthad imbued work with a sense of meaning and purpose.2 Chained by unquenchable con-sumption, modern humanity is now left to live in a disenchanted world where “materialgoods have gained an increasing and finally inexorable power over the lives of men” (Weber1904–05/1958:180). “In Baxter’s view the care for external goods should only lie on theshoulders of the ‘saint like a light cloak, which can be thrown aside at any moment.’ But fatedecreed that the cloak should become an iron cage” (ibid.:181).

And what of the iron cage today? Consider some statistics from the U.S. CommerceDepartment and the Federal Reserve Board: The average household is saddled with a creditcard debt of $8,000, while the nation’s credit card debt currently stands at $880 million. Notincluding home mortgages, in 2003, the average household was faced with more than$18,000 in total debt. As a nation, consumer debt soared to nearly 2 trillion dollars, anincrease of 40 percent from 1998’s total. Not surprisingly, personal savings rates havedeclined.After essential expenditures, Americans saved 9 percent of their disposable incomeduring the 1980s. This rate fell to 5 percent during the 1990s, and in 2006 Americans regis-tered a negative savings rate (–1 percent) for the first time since the Great Depression.Currently, 40 percent of Americans spend more than they earn. Far from being a “lightcloak,” our “care for external goods” has become central to our personal identity and senseof self. We define ourselves through the cars we drive, the clothes we wear, the places wevacation, and the neighborhoods we live in rather than through a sense of ultimate purposeor meaning to life. Whether it’s trying to keep up with the Joneses or to distinguish ourselvesfrom the herd, we are in continual “need” of new and better products, the purchasing ofwhich requires ever-longer working hours in order to earn more money, so we can spendmore money. To keep pace with the growing accumulation of products, over the last 50 yearsthe average home size has doubled. Still, we can’t seem to fit everything in so we hire com-panies to organize our closets and garages, or, when that fails, we pay to pack our “unessen-tial” belongings into one of the thousands of self-storage spaces that dot the landscape. LikeMarx’s views on the fetishism of commodities and Veblen’s notion of conspicuous con-sumption, the iron cage has imprisoned us in the pursuit of the “lifestyles of the rich andfamous” whether or not we can afford to live like the affluent.

Max Weber � 169

2One need merely note the spread of capitalism to countries and regions of the world that have not beenexposed in any significant degree to Protestantism.


THE SPIRIT OF CAPITALISM

In the title of this study is used the somewhatpretentious phrase, the spirit of capitalism.What is to be understood by it? The attempt togive anything like a definition of it brings outcertain difficulties which are in the very natureof this type of investigation. . . .

Thus, if we try to determine the object, theanalysis and historical explanation of which weare attempting, it cannot be in the form of a con-ceptual definition, but at least in the beginningonly a provisional description of what is heremeant by the spirit of capitalism. Such adescription is, however, indispensable in orderclearly to understand the object of the investiga-tion. For this purpose we turn to a document ofthat spirit which contains what we are lookingfor in almost classical purity, and at the sametime has the advantage of being free from alldirect relationship to religion, being thus, forour purposes, free of preconceptions.

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

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

“Remember, that money is of the prolific,generating nature. Money can beget money, andits offspring can beget more, and so on. Fiveshillings turned is six, turned again it is seven andthreepence, and so on, till it becomes a hundredpounds. The more there is of it, the more it pro-duces every turning, so that the profits rise

quicker and quicker. He that kills a breeding-sow,destroys all her offspring to the thousandth gen-eration. He that murders a crown, destroys all thatit might have produced, even scores of pounds.”

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

“The most trifling actions that affect a man’scredit are to be regarded. The sound of yourhammer at five in the morning, or eight at night,heard by a creditor, makes him easy six monthslonger; but if he sees you at a billiard-table, orhears your voice at a tavern, when you should beat work, he sends for his money the next day;demands it, before he can receive it, in a lump.

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

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

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

From The Protestant Ethic and theSpirit of Capitalism (1904)

Max Weber

SOURCE: The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, 1st edition, by Max Weber. Copyright © 1958.Reprinted by permission of Pearson Education, Inc., Upper Saddle River, New Jersey.

Max Weber � 171

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

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

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

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

It is Benjamin Franklin who preaches to us inthese sentences, the same which FerdinandKürnberger satirizes in his clever and maliciousPicture of American Culture as the supposedconfession of faith of the Yankee. That it is thespirit of capitalism which here speaks in charac-teristic fashion, no one will doubt, however littlewe may wish to claim that everything whichcould be understood as pertaining to that spirit iscontained in it. Let us pause a moment to con-sider this passage, the philosophy of whichKürnberger sums up in the words, “They maketallow out of cattle and money out of men.” Thepeculiarity of this philosophy of avarice appearsto be the ideal of the honest man of recognizedcredit, and above all the idea of a duty of the indi-vidual toward the increase of his capital, which isassumed as an end in itself. Truly what is herepreached is not simply a means of making one’sway in the world, but a peculiar ethic. The infrac-tion of its rules is treated not as foolishness but asforgetfulness of duty. That is the essence of thematter. It is not mere business astuteness, thatsort of thing is common enough, it is an ethos.This is the quality which interests us. . . .

Now, all Franklin’s moral attitudes arecoloured with utilitarianism. Honesty is useful,because it assures credit; so are punctuality,industry, frugality, and that is the reason they arevirtues. A logical deduction from this would bethat where, for instance, the appearance of hon-esty serves the same purpose, that would suf-fice, and an unnecessary surplus of this virtuewould evidently appear to Franklin’s eyes asunproductive waste. And as a matter of fact, thestory in his autobiography of his conversion tothose virtues, or the discussion of the value of a

strict maintenance of the appearance of mod-esty, the assiduous belittlement of one’s owndeserts in order to gain general recognition later,confirms this impression. According toFranklin, those virtues, like all others, are onlyin so far virtues as they are actually useful to theindividual, and the surrogate of mere appear-ance is always sufficient when it accomplishesthe end in view. It is a conclusion which isinevitable for strict utilitarianism. The impres-sion of many Germans that the virtues professedby Americanism are pure hypocrisy seems tohave been confirmed by this striking case. But infact the matter is not by any means so simple.Benjamin Franklin’s own character, as it appearsin the really unusual candidness of his autobiog-raphy, belies that suspicion. The circumstancethat he ascribes his recognition of the utility ofvirtue to a divine revelation which was intendedto lead him in the path of righteousness, showsthat something more than mere garnishing forpurely egocentric motives is involved.

In fact, the summum bonum of this ethic, theearning of more and more money, combinedwith the strict avoidance of all spontaneousenjoyment of life, is above all completely devoidof any eudæmonistic, not to say hedonistic,admixture. It is thought of so purely as an end initself, that from the point of view of the happi-ness of, or utility to, the single individual, itappears entirely transcendental and absolutelyirrational. Man is dominated by the making ofmoney, by acquisition as the ultimate purpose ofhis life. Economic acquisition is no longer sub-ordinated to man as the means for the satisfac-tion of his material needs. This reversal of whatwe should call the natural relationship, so irra-tional from a naïve point of view, is evidently asdefinitely a leading principle of capitalism as itis foreign to all peoples not under capitalisticinfluence. At the same time it expresses a type offeeling which is closely connected with certainreligious ideas. If we thus ask, why should“money be made out of men,” Benjamin Franklinhimself, although he was a colourless deist,answers in his autobiography with a quotationfrom the Bible, which his strict Calvinistic fatherdrummed into him again and again in his youth:“Seest thou a man diligent in his business? Heshall stand before kings” (Prov. xxii. 29). Theearning of money within the modern economic


order is, so long as it is done legally, the resultand the expression of virtue and proficiency in acalling; and this virtue and proficiency are, as itis now not difficult to see, the real Alpha andOmega of Franklin’s ethic, as expressed in thepassages we have quoted, as well as in all hisworks without exception.

And in truth this peculiar idea, so familiar tous to-day, but in reality so little a matter of course,of one’s duty in a calling, is what is most charac-teristic of the social ethic of capitalistic culture,and is in a sense the fundamental basis of it. It isan obligation which the individual is supposed tofeel and does feel towards the content of his pro-fessional activity, no matter in what it consists, inparticular no matter whether it appears on the sur-face as a utilization of his personal powers, oronly of his material possessions (as capital).

Of course, this conception has not appearedonly under capitalistic conditions. On the con-trary, we shall later trace its origins back to atime previous to the advent of capitalism. Stillless, naturally, do we maintain that a consciousacceptance of these ethical maxims on the partof the individuals, entrepreneurs or labourers,in modern capitalistic enterprises, is a condi-tion of the further existence of present-day cap-italism. The capitalistic economy of the presentday is an immense cosmos into which the indi-vidual is born, and which presents itself to him,at least as an individual, as an unalterable orderof things in which he must live. It forces the indi-vidual, in so far as he is involved in the system ofmarket relationships, to conform to capitalisticrules of action. The manufacturer who in the longrun acts counter to these norms, will just asinevitably be eliminated from the economic sceneas the worker who cannot or will not adapt him-self to them will be thrown into the streets with-out a job.

Thus the capitalism of to-day, which has cometo dominate economic life, educates and selectsthe economic subjects which it needs through aprocess of economic survival of the fittest. Buthere one can easily see the limits of the conceptof selection as a means of historical explanation.In order that a manner of life so well adapted tothe peculiarities of capitalism could be selected atall, i.e. should come to dominate others, it hadto originate somewhere, and not in isolated

individuals alone, but as a way of life common towhole groups of men. This origin is what reallyneeds explanation. Concerning the doctrine ofthe more naïve historical materialism, that suchideas originate as a reflection or superstructure ofeconomic situations, we shall speak more indetail below. At this point it will suffice for ourpurpose to call attention to the fact that withoutdoubt, in the country of Benjamin Franklin’s birth(Massachusetts), the spirit of capitalism (in thesense we have attached to it) was present beforethe capitalistic order. . . . It is further undoubtedthat capitalism remained far less developed insome of the neighbouring colonies, the laterSouthern States of the United States of America,in spite of the fact that these latter were foundedby large capitalists for business motives, whilethe New England colonies were founded bypreachers and seminary graduates with the helpof small bourgeois, craftsmen and yoemen, forreligious reasons. In this case the causal relationis certainly the reverse of that suggested by thematerialistic standpoint.

But the origin and history of such ideas ismuch more complex than the theorists of thesuperstructure suppose. The spirit of capital-ism, in the sense in which we are using theterm, had to fight its way to supremacy againsta whole world of hostile forces. A state of mindsuch as that expressed in the passages we havequoted from Franklin, and which called forththe applause of a whole people, would both inancient times and in the Middle Ages have beenproscribed as the lowest sort of avarice and asan attitude entirely lacking in self-respect. It is,in fact, still regularly thus looked upon by allthose social groups which are least involved inor adapted to modern capitalistic conditions.This is not wholly because the instinct of acqui-sition was in those times unknown or undevel-oped, as has often been said. Nor because theauri sacra fames, the greed for gold, was then,or now, less powerful outside of bourgeois cap-italism than within its peculiar sphere, as theillusions of modern romanticists are wont tobelieve. The difference between the capitalisticand pre-capitalistic spirits is not to be found atthis point. The greed of the Chinese Mandarin,the old Roman aristocrat, or the modern peas-ant, can stand up to any comparison. And the

Max Weber � 173

auri sacra fames of a Neapolitan cab-driver orbarcaiuolo, and certainly of Asiatic representa-tives of similar trades, as well as of the crafts-men of southern European or Asiatic countries,is, as anyone can find out for himself, verymuch more intense, and especially moreunscrupulous than that of, say, an Englishmanin similar circumstances. . . .

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

One of the technical means which the modernemployer uses in order to secure the greatest pos-sible amount of work from his men is the deviceof piece-rates. In agriculture, for instance, thegathering of the harvest is a case where thegreatest possible intensity of labour is called for,since, the weather being uncertain, the differencebetween high profit and heavy loss may dependon the speed with which the harvesting can bedone. Hence a system of piece-rates is almostuniversal in this case. And since the interest ofthe employer in a speeding-up of harvestingincreases with the increase of the results and theintensity of the work, the attempt has again andagain been made, by increasing the piece-rates ofthe workmen, thereby giving them an opportu-nity to earn what is for them a very high wage, tointerest them in increasing their own efficiency.But a peculiar difficulty has been met with sur-prising frequency: raising the piece-rates hasoften had the result that not more but less hasbeen accomplished in the same time, because theworker reacted to the increase not by increasingbut by decreasing the amount of his work. Aman, for instance, who at the rate of 1 mark peracre mowed 2½ acres per day and earned 2½marks, when the rate was raised to 1.25 marksper acre mowed, not 3 acres, as he might easilyhave done, thus earning 3.75 marks, but only 2acres, so that he could still earn the 2½ marks towhich he was accustomed. The opportunity ofearning more was less attractive than that ofworking less. He did not ask: how much can Iearn in a day if I do as much work as possible?but: how much must I work in order to earn thewage, 2½ marks, which I earned before and

which takes care of my traditional needs? This isan example of what is here meant by traditional-ism. A man does not “by nature” wish to earnmore and more money, but simply to live as he isaccustomed to live and to earn as much as is nec-essary for that purpose. Wherever modern capi-talism has begun its work of increasing theproductivity of human labour by increasing itsintensity, it has encountered the immenselystubborn resistance of this leading trait of pre-capitalistic labour.And to-day it encounters it themore, the more backward (from a capitalisticpoint of view) the labouring forces are withwhich it has to deal.

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

But the effectiveness of this apparently soefficient method has its limits. Of course thepresence of a surplus population which it canhire cheaply in the labour market is a necessityfor the development of capitalism. But thoughtoo large a reserve army may in certain casesfavour its quantitative expansion, it checks itsqualitative development, especially the transi-tion to types of enterprise which make moreintensive use of labour. Low wages are by nomeans identical with cheap labour. From apurely quantitative point of view the efficiencyof labour decreases with a wage which is physi-ologically insufficient, which may in the longrun even mean a survival of the unfit. . . . Lowwages fail even from a purely business point ofview wherever it is a question of producinggoods which require any sort of skilled labour,


or the use of expensive machinery which is eas-ily damaged, or in general wherever any greatamount of sharp attention or of initiative isrequired. Here low wages do not pay, and theireffect is the opposite of what was intended. Fornot only is a developed sense of responsibilityabsolutely indispensable, but in general also anattitude which, at least during working hours, isfreed from continual calculations of how thecustomary wage may be earned with a maxi-mum of comfort and a minimum of exertion.Labour must, on the contrary, be performed as ifit were an absolute end in itself, a calling. Butsuch an attitude is by no means a product ofnature. It cannot be evoked by low wages orhigh ones alone, but can only be the product ofa long and arduous process of education. To-day,capitalism, once in the saddle, can recruit itslabouring force in all industrial countries withcomparative ease. In the past this was in everycase an extremely difficult problem. And evento-day it could probably not get along withoutthe support of a powerful ally along the way,which, as we shall see below, was at hand at thetime of its development. . . .

Now, how could activity, which was at bestethically tolerated, turn into a calling in thesense of Benjamin Franklin? The fact to beexplained historically is that in the most highlycapitalistic centre of that time, in Florence of thefourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the moneyand capital market of all the great politicalPowers, this attitude was considered ethicallyunjustifiable, or at best to be tolerated. But inthe backwoods small bourgeois circumstancesof Pennsylvania in the eighteenth century, wherebusiness threatened for simple lack of money tofall back into barter, where there was hardly asign of large enterprise, where only the earliestbeginnings of banking were to be found, thesame thing was considered the essence of moralconduct, even commanded in the name of duty.To speak here of a reflection of material condi-tions in the ideal superstructure would be patentnonsense. What was the background of ideaswhich could account for the sort of activityapparently directed toward profit alone as a call-ing toward which the individual feels himself tohave an ethical obligation? For it was this ideawhich gave the way of life of the new entrepre-neur its ethical foundation and justification. . . .

ASCETICISM AND THE

SPIRIT OF CAPITALISM

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

For the purposes of this chapter, though by nomeans for all purposes, we can treat asceticProtestantism as a single whole. But since thatside of English Puritanism which was derivedfrom Calvinism gives the most consistent reli-gious basis for the idea of the calling, we shall,following our previous method, place one of itsrepresentatives at the centre of the discussion.Richard Baxter stands out above many other writ-ers on Puritan ethics, both because of his emi-nently practical and realistic attitude, and, at thesame time, because of the universal recognitionaccorded to his works, which have gone throughmany new editions and translations. He was aPresbyterian and an apologist of the WestminsterSynod, but at the same time, like so many of thebest spirits of his time, gradually grew away fromthe dogmas of pure Calvinism. . . . His ChristianDirectory is the most complete compendium ofPuritan ethics, and is continually adjusted to thepractical experiences of his own ministerial activ-ity. In comparison we shall make use of Spener’sTheologische Bedenken, as representative ofGerman Pietism, Barclay’s Apology for theQuakers, and some other representatives ofascetic ethics, which, however, in the interest ofspace, will be limited as far as possible.

Now, in glancing at Baxter’s Saints’ Everlas-ting Rest, or his Christian Directory, or similarworks of others, one is struck at first glance bythe emphasis placed, in the discussion of wealth

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and its acquisition, on the ebionitic elements ofthe New Testament. Wealth as such is a greatdanger; its temptations never end, and its pursuitis not only senseless as compared with the dom-inating importance of the Kingdom of God, butit is morally suspect. Here asceticism seems tohave turned much more sharply against theacquisition of earthly goods than it did inCalvin, who saw no hindrance to the effective-ness of the clergy in their wealth, but rather athoroughly desirable enhancement of their pres-tige. Hence he permitted them to employ theirmeans profitably. Examples of the condemna-tion of the pursuit of money and goods may begathered without end from Puritan writings, andmay be contrasted with the late mediæval ethi-cal literature, which was much more open-minded on this point.

Moreover, these doubts were meant with per-fect seriousness; only it is necessary to examinethem somewhat more closely in order to under-stand their true ethical significance and implica-tions. The real moral objection is to relaxation inthe security of possession, the enjoyment ofwealth with the consequence of idleness and thetemptations of the flesh, above all of distractionfrom the pursuit of a righteous life. In fact, it isonly because possession involves this danger ofrelaxation that it is objectionable at all. For thesaints’ everlasting rest in the next world; on earthman must, to be certain of his state of grace, “dothe works of him who sent him, as long as it is yetday.” Not leisure and enjoyment, but only activityserves to increase the glory of God, according tothe definite manifestations of His will.

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

that, and, according to Baxter, it is always thosewho are not diligent in their callings who haveno time for God when the occasion demands it.

Accordingly, Baxter’s principal work is dom-inated by the continually repeated, often almostpassionate preaching of hard, continuous bodilyor mental labour. It is due to a combination oftwo different motives. Labour is, on the onehand, an approved ascetic technique, as it alwayshas been in the Western Church, in sharp con-trast not only to the Orient but to almost allmonastic rules the world over. It is in particularthe specific defence against all those tempta-tions which Puritanism united under the nameof the unclean life, whose rôle for it was byno means small. The sexual asceticism ofPuritanism differs only in degree, not in funda-mental principle, from that of monasticism; andon account of the Puritan conception of mar-riage; its practical influence is more far-reachingthan that of the latter. For sexual intercourse ispermitted, even within marriage, only as themeans willed by God for the increase of Hisglory according to the commandment, “Be fruit-ful and multiply.” Along with a moderate veg-etable diet and cold baths, the same prescriptionis given for all sexual temptations as is usedagainst religious doubts and a sense of moralunworthiness: “Work hard in your calling.” Butthe most important thing was that even beyondthat labour came to be considered in itself theend of life, ordained as such by God. St. Paul’s“He who will not work shall not eat” holdsunconditionally for everyone. Unwillingness towork is symptomatic of the lack of grace. . . .

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


far-reaching psychological consequences, andbecame connected with a further development ofthe providential interpretation of the economicorder which had begun in scholasticism.

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

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

But the characteristic Puritan element appearswhen Baxter sets at the head of his discussionthe statement that “outside of a well-markedcalling the accomplishments of a man are onlycasual and irregular, and he spends more time inidleness than at work,” and when he concludes itas follows: “and he [the specialized worker] willcarry out his work in order while anotherremains in constant confusion, and his businessknows neither time nor place. . . therefore is acertain calling the best for everyone.” Irregularwork, which the ordinary labourer is often forcedto accept, is often unavoidable, but always anunwelcome state of transition. A man without acalling thus lacks the systematic, methodicalcharacter which is, as we have seen, demandedby worldly asceticism.

The Quaker ethic also holds that a man’s lifein his calling is an exercise in ascetic virtue, aproof of his state of grace through his conscien-tiousness, which is expressed in the care andmethod with which he pursues his calling. WhatGod demands is not labour in itself, but rationallabour in a calling. In the Puritan concept of thecalling the emphasis is always placed on this

methodical character of worldly asceticism, not,as with Luther, on the acceptance of the lotwhich God has irretrievably assigned to man.

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

It is true that the usefulness of a calling, andthus its favour in the sight of God, is measuredprimarily in moral terms, and thus in terms ofthe importance of the goods produced in it forthe community. But a further, and, above all, inpractice the most important, criterion is found inprivate profitableness. For if that God, whosehand the Puritan sees in all the occurrences oflife, shows one of His elect a chance of profit,he must do it with a purpose. Hence the faithfulChristian must follow the call by taking advan-tage of the opportunity. “If God show you a wayin which you may lawfully get more than inanother way (without wrong to your soul or toany other), if you refuse this, and choose the lessgainful way, you cross one of the ends of yourcalling, and you refuse to be God’s steward, andto accept His gifts and use them for Him whenHe requireth it: you may labour to be rich forGod, though not for the flesh and sin.”

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

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The emphasis on the ascetic importance of afixed calling provided an ethical justification ofthe modern specialized division of labour. In asimilar way the providential interpretation ofprofit-making justified the activities of the busi-ness man. The superior indulgence of theseigneur and the parvenu ostentation of the nou-veau riche are equally detestable to asceticism.But, on the other hand, it has the highest ethicalappreciation of the sober, middle-class, self-made man. “God blesseth His trade” is a stockremark about those good men who had success-fully followed the divine hints. The whole powerof the God of the Old Testament, who rewardsHis people for their obedience in this life, neces-sarily exercised a similar influence on thePuritan who, following Baxter’s advice, com-pared his own state of grace with that of theheroes of the Bible, and in the process inter-preted the statements of the Scriptures as thearticles of a book of statutes. . . .

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

As against this the Puritans upheld their deci-sive characteristic, the principle of ascetic con-duct. For otherwise the Puritan aversion to sport,even for the Quakers, was by no means simplyone of principle. Sport was accepted if it serveda rational purpose, that of recreation necessaryfor physical efficiency. But as a means for thespontaneous expression of undisciplinedimpulses, it was under suspicion; and in so faras it became purely a means of enjoyment, orawakened pride, raw instincts or the irrationalgambling instinct, it was of course strictly con-demned. Impulsive enjoyment of life, whichleads away both from work in a calling and fromreligion, was as such the enemy of rational asceti-cism, whether in the form of seigneurial sports,or the enjoyment of the dance-hall or the public-house of the common man. . . .

The theatre was obnoxious to the Puritans, andwith the strict exclusion of the erotic and ofnudity from the realm of toleration, a radicalview of either literature or art could not exist. The

conceptions of idle talk, of superfluities, and ofvain ostentation, all designations of an irrationalattitude without objective purpose, thus notascetic, and especially not serving the glory ofGod, but of man, were always at hand to serve indeciding in favour of sober utility as against anyartistic tendencies. This was especially true in thecase of decoration of the person, for instanceclothing. That powerful tendency toward unifor-mity of life, which to-day so immensely aids thecapitalistic interest in the standardization of pro-duction, had its ideal foundations in the repudia-tion of all idolatry of the flesh. . . .

Although we cannot here enter upon a dis-cussion of the influence of Puritanism in allthese directions, we should call attention to thefact that the toleration of pleasure in culturalgoods, which contributed to purely aesthetic orathletic enjoyment, certainly always ran upagainst one characteristic limitation: they mustnot cost anything. Man is only a trustee of thegoods which have come to him through God’sgrace. He must, like the servant in the parable,give an account of every penny entrusted to him,and it is at least hazardous to spend any of it fora purpose which does not serve the glory of Godbut only one’s own enjoyment. What person,who keeps his eyes open, has not met represen-tatives of this view-point even in the present?The idea of a man’s duty to his possessions, towhich he subordinates himself as an obedientsteward, or even as an acquisitive machine,bears with chilling weight on his life. Thegreater the possessions the heavier, if the asceticattitude toward life stands the test, the feeling ofresponsibility for them, for holding them undi-minished for the glory of God and increasingthem by restless effort. The origin of this type oflife also extends in certain roots, like so manyaspects of the spirit of capitalism, back into theMiddle Ages. But it was in the ethic of asceticProtestantism that it first found a consistent eth-ical foundation. Its significance for the develop-ment of capitalism is obvious.

This worldly Protestant asceticism, as wemay recapitulate up to this point, acted power-fully against the spontaneous enjoyment of pos-sessions; it restricted consumption, especially ofluxuries. On the other hand, it had the psycho-logical effect of freeing the acquisition of goods


from the inhibitions of traditionalistic ethics. Itbroke the bonds of the impulse of acquisition inthat it not only legalized it, but (in the sense dis-cussed) looked upon it as directly willed byGod. The campaign against the temptations ofthe flesh, and the dependence on externalthings, was, as besides the Puritans the greatQuaker apologist Barclay expressly says, not astruggle against the rational acquisition, butagainst the irrational use of wealth.

But this irrational use was exemplified in theoutward forms of luxury which their code con-demned as idolatry of the flesh, however naturalthey had appeared to the feudal mind. On theother hand, they approved the rational and utilitar-ian uses of wealth which were willed by God forthe needs of the individual and the community.They did not wish to impose mortification on theman of wealth, but the use of his means for nec-essary and practical things. The idea of comfortcharacteristically limits the extent of ethically per-missible expenditures. It is naturally no accidentthat the development of a manner of living con-sistent with that idea may be observed earliest andmost clearly among the most consistent represen-tatives of this whole attitude toward life. Overagainst the glitter and ostentation of feudal mag-nificence which, resting on an unsound economicbasis, prefers a sordid elegance to a sober sim-plicity, they set the clean and solid comfort of themiddle-class home as an ideal.

On the side of the production of private wealth,asceticism condemned both dishonesty andimpulsive avarice. What was condemned as cov-etousness, Mammonism, etc., was the pursuit ofriches for their own sake. For wealth in itself wasa temptation. But here asceticism was the power“which ever seeks the good but ever creates evil”;what was evil in its sense was possession and itstemptations. For, in conformity with the OldTestament and in analogy to the ethical valuationof good works, asceticism looked upon the pursuitof wealth as an end in itself as highly reprehensi-ble; but the attainment of it as a fruit of labour ina calling was a sign of God’s blessing. And evenmore important: the religious valuation of rest-less, continuous, systematic work in a worldlycalling, as the highest means to asceticism, and atthe same time the surest and most evident proof ofrebirth and genuine faith, must have been themost powerful conceivable lever for the expansion

of that attitude toward life which we have herecalled the spirit of capitalism.

When the limitation of consumption is com-bined with this release of acquisitive activity,the inevitable practical result is obvious: accu-mulation of capital through ascetic compulsionto save. The restraints which were imposed uponthe consumption of wealth naturally served toincrease it by making possible the productiveinvestment of capital. . . .

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

To be sure, these Puritanical ideals tended togive way under excessive pressure from the temp-tations of wealth, as the Puritans themselvesknew very well. With great regularity we find themost genuine adherents of Puritanism among theclasses which were rising from a lowly status, thesmall bourgeois and farmers, while the beati pos-sidentes, even among Quakers, are often foundtending to repudiate the old ideals. It was thesame fate which again and again befell the pre-decessor of this worldly asceticism, the monasticasceticism of the Middle Ages. In the latter case,when rational economic activity had worked outits full effects by strict regulation of conduct andlimitation of consumption, the wealth accumu-lated either succumbed directly to the nobility, asin the time before the Reformation, or monasticdiscipline threatened to break down, and one ofthe numerous reformations became necessary.

In fact the whole history of monasticism is ina certain sense the history of a continual strug-gle with the problem of the secularizing influ-ence of wealth. The same is true on a grandscale of the worldly asceticism of Puritanism.The great revival of Methodism, which pre-ceded the expansion of English industry towardthe end of the eighteenth century, may well becompared with such a monastic reform. We mayhence quote here a passage from John Wesleyhimself which might well serve as a motto foreverything which has been said above. For it showsthat the leaders of these ascetic movements

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understood the seemingly paradoxical relation-ships which we have here analysed perfectlywell, and in the same sense that we have giventhem. He wrote:

“I fear, wherever riches have increased, theessence of religion has decreased in the sameproportion. Therefore I do not see how it ispossible, in the nature of things, for any revivalof true religion to continue long. For religionmust necessarily produce both industry andfrugality, and these cannot but produce riches.But as riches increase, so will pride, anger, andlove of the world in all its branches. How thenis it possible that Methodism, that is, a religionof the heart, though it flourishes now as agreen bay tree, should continue in this state?For theMethodists in every place grow diligentand frugal; consequently they increase ingoods. Hence they proportionately increase inpride, in anger, in the desire of the flesh, thedesire of the eyes, and the pride of life. So,although the form of religion remains, thespirit is swiftly vanishing away. Is there no wayto prevent this—this continual decay of purereligion? We ought not to prevent people frombeing diligent and frugal; we must exhort allChristians to gain all they can, and to save allthey can; that is, in effect, to grow rich.”

There follows the advice that those who gainall they can and save all they can should alsogive all they can, so that they will grow in graceand lay up a treasure in heaven. It is clear thatWesley here expresses, even in detail, just whatwe have been trying to point out.

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

A specifically bourgeois economic ethic hadgrown up. With the consciousness of standing inthe fullness of God’s grace and being visiblyblessed by Him, the bourgeois business man, aslong as he remained within the bounds of formal

correctness, as long as his moral conduct wasspotless and the use to which he put his wealthwas not objectionable, could follow his pecu-niary interests as he would and feel that he wasfulfilling a duty in doing so. The power of reli-gious asceticism provided him in addition withsober, conscientious, and unusually industriousworkmen, who clung to their work as to a lifepurpose willed by God.

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

Now naturally the whole ascetic literature ofalmost all denominations is saturated with theidea that faithful labour, even at low wages, onthe part of those whom life offers no other oppor-tunities, is highly pleasing to God. In this respectProtestant Asceticism added in itself nothingnew. But it not only deepened this idea most pow-erfully, it also created the force which was alonedecisive for its effectiveness: the psychologicalsanction of it through the conception of thislabour as a calling, as the best, often in the lastanalysis the only means of attaining certainty ofgrace. And on the other hand it legalized theexploitation of this specific willingness to work,in that it also interpreted the employer’s businessactivity as a calling. It is obvious how powerfullythe exclusive search for the Kingdom of Godonly through the fulfilment of duty in the calling,and the strict asceticism which Church disciplinenaturally imposed, especially on the propertylessclasses, was bound to affect the productivity oflabour in the capitalistic sense of the word.The treatment of labour as a calling became as


characteristic of the modern worker as the corre-sponding attitude toward acquisition of the busi-ness man. It was a perception of this situation,new at his time, which caused so able an observeras Sir William Petty to attribute the economicpower of Holland in the seventeenth century tothe fact that the very numerous dissenters in thatcountry (Calvinists and Baptists) “are for themost part thinking, sober men, and such asbelieve that Labour and Industry is their dutytowards God.” . . .

One of the fundamental elements of the spiritof modern capitalism, and not only of that but ofall modern culture: rational conduct on the basisof the idea of the calling, was born—that is whatthis discussion has sought to demonstrate—fromthe spirit of Christian asceticism. One has only tore-read the passage from Franklin, quoted at thebeginning of this essay, in order to see that theessential elements of the attitude which wasthere called the spirit of capitalism are the sameas what we have just shown to be the content ofthe Puritan worldly asceticism, only without thereligious basis, which by Franklin’s time haddied away. The idea that modern labour has anascetic character is of course not new. Limitationto specialized work, with a renunciation of theFaustian universality of man which it involves, isa condition of any valuable work in the modernworld; hence deeds and renunciation inevitablycondition each other today. This fundamentallyascetic trait of middle-class life, if it attempts tobe a way of life at all, and not simply the absenceof any, was what Goethe wanted to teach, at theheight of his wisdom, in the Wanderjahren, andin the end which he gave to the life of his Faust.For him the realization meant a renunciation, adeparture from an age of full and beautifulhumanity, which can no more be repeated in thecourse of our cultural development than can theflower of the Athenian culture of antiquity.

The Puritan wanted to work in a calling; weare forced to do so. For when asceticism was car-ried out of monastic cells into everyday life, andbegan to dominate worldly morality, it did its partin building the tremendous cosmos of the moderneconomic order. This order is now bound to thetechnical and economic conditions of machineproduction which to-day determine the lives ofall the individuals who are born into this mecha-nism, not only those directly concerned with

economic acquisition, with irresistible force.Perhaps it will so determine them until the lastton of fossilized coal is burnt. In Baxter’s viewthe care for external goods should only lie on theshoulders of the “saint like a light cloak, whichcan be thrown aside at any moment.” But fatedecreed that the cloak should become an iron cage.

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

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

But this brings us to the world of judgments ofvalue and of faith, with which this purely histori-cal discussion need not be burdened. The nexttask would be rather to show the significance ofascetic rationalism, which has only been touchedin the foregoing sketch, for the content of practi-cal social ethics, thus for the types of organiza-tion and the functions of social groups from theconventicle to the State. Then its relationsto humanistic rationalism, its ideals of life and

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Introduction to “The Social Psychologyof the World Religions”

In this essay, Weber extends his analysis developed in The Protestant Ethic by taking up fivemajor world religions—Confucianism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam, and Christianity—toaddress more generally the relationship between religion and “economic ethics.” (He wascompleting his studies on Judaism when he died.) In doing so, he again provides an accountof religious experience that diverges from those offered by Marx and Durkheim. Drawing acontrast with Marxist views, Weber asserts that religion is not a “simple ‘function’ of thesocial situation of the stratum which appears as its characteristic bearer” nor does it repre-sent “the stratum’s ‘ideology’ [nor is it] a ‘reflection’ of a stratum’s material or ideal interest-situation” (Weber 1958:269–70). Religion, instead, shapes economic, practical behavior justas much as such behavior shapes religious doctrines. Most importantly, religions address thepsychological need of the fortunate to legitimate their good fortune, while for the less for-tunate they offer the promise of a future salvation. While this “religious need” may be uni-versal, the form in which it is met varies across different social strata (warriors, peasants,political officials, intellectuals, “civic”) that exhibit an affinity for particular religiousworldviews. Nevertheless, these worldviews have their own impact on behavior that cannotbe understood simply as a reflection of its bearer’s material position. This is particularly thecase for religious virtuosos whose quest for salvation is guided by authentically spiritualmotives. For the devout, actively proving oneself as an instrument or tool of God’s will, com-muning contemplatively with the cosmic love of Nirvana, or striving for orgiastic ecstasy,represents genuine religious aims that cannot be reduced to some sort of underlying “dis-torted” class interest. Nor can the motives of the devout be understood as misguided inten-tions to deify society or as expressions of the collective conscience, as Durkheim wouldcontend.

Weber also notes how religions have fostered the “rationalization of reality.” Offering apromise of redemption, whether it be from social oppression, evil spirits, the cycle ofrebirths, human imperfections, or any number of other forces, all religions counter a “sense-less” world with the belief that “the world in its totality is, could, and should somehow be ameaningful ‘cosmos’” (Weber 1958:281). The specific religious form of meaning is derived

cultural influence; further to the development ofphilosophical and scientific empiricism, to tech-nical development and to spiritual ideals wouldhave to be analysed. Then its historical develop-ment from the mediæval beginnings of worldlyasceticism to its dissolution into pure utilitarian-ism would have to be traced out through all theareas of ascetic religion. Only then could thequantitative cultural significance of asceticProtestantism in its relation to the other plasticelements of modern culture be estimated.

Here we have only attempted to trace the factand the direction of its influence to their motivesin one, though a very important point. But it

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

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from a “systematic and rationalized ‘image of the world” that determines “‘[f]rom what’ and‘for what’ one wished to be redeemed and . . . ‘could be’ redeemed” (ibid.:280). Religiondeclares that the world is not a playground for chance; instead, it is ruled by reasons andfates that can be “known.” Knowing how to redeem oneself and how to obtain salvationrequires that one knows how the world “works.” In devising answers for such concerns, reli-gions have developed along two primary paths: “exemplary” prophecy and “emissary”prophecy.

Exemplary prophecy is rooted in the conception of a supreme, impersonal being accessi-ble only through contemplation, while emissary prophecy conceives of a personal God whois vengeful and loving, forgiving and punishing, and who demands of the faithful active, eth-ical conduct in order to serve His commandments. Though the masses may be religiously“unmusical,” the religiosity of the devout (monks, prophets, shamans, ascetics) nevertheless“has been of decisive importance for the development of the way of life of the masses,” par-ticularly with regard to regulating practical, economic activity (Weber 1958:289). Thus, reli-gions grounded in an exemplary prophecy (e.g., Buddhism, Hinduism) lead adherents awayfrom workaday life by seeking salvation through extraordinary psychic states attainedthrough mystical, orgiastic, or ecstatic experiences. The virtuoso’s hostility toward economicactivity discourages this-worldly practical conduct by viewing it as “religiously inferior,” adistraction from communing with the divine. Absent from the contemplative, mystical“flight from the world” is any psychological motivation to engage in worldly action as a pathfor redemption. As a result, a rationalized economic ethic remains underdeveloped.

Conversely, religions based on an emissary prophecy (e.g., Judaism, Christianity, Islam)require the devout to actively fashion the world according to the will of their god. Not con-templative “flight from,” but, rather, ascetic “work in” this world is the path for redemptionaccording this prophecy. Seeking mystical union with the cosmos is understood here as anirrational act of hedonism that devalues the God-created world. The virtuoso is instead com-pelled to “prove” himself as a worthy instrument of God through the ethical quality of hiseveryday activity. This psychological imperative leads to the development of rational, eco-nomic ethic that transforms work into a “holy,” worldly calling. Everyday life is here the set-ting for the “methodical and rationalized routine-activities of workaday life in the service ofthe Lord” (Weber 1958:289). Yet, as Weber argued in The Protestant Ethic, this worldview,while faithful to God’s commandments and devoted to creating His Kingdom on earth, leadsto a thoroughgoing “disenchantment of the world.”


From “The Social Psychologyof the World Religions” (1915)

Max Weber

SOURCE: Translation of the Introduction to The Economic Ethic of the World Religions by Max Weber, 1915.

By “world religions,” we understand the fivereligions or religiously determined systems oflife-regulation which have known how to gathermultitudes of confessors around them. The termis used here in a completely value-neutral sense.The Confucian, Hinduist, Buddhist, Christian,and Islamist religious ethics all belong to thecategory of world religion. A sixth religion,Judaism, will also be dealt with. It is includedbecause it contains historical preconditions

decisive for understanding Christianity andIslamism, and because of its historic andautonomous significance for the development ofthe modern economic ethic of the Occident—asignificance, partly real and partly alleged,which has been discussed several timesrecently. . . .

What is meant by the “economic ethic” of areligion will become increasingly clear duringthe course of our presentation. . . . The term

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“economic ethic” points to the practicalimpulses for action which are founded in thepsychological and pragmatic contexts of reli-gions. The following presentation may besketchy, but it will make obvious how compli-cated the structures and how many-sided theconditions of a concrete economic ethic usuallyare. Furthermore, it will show that externallysimilar forms of economic organization mayagree with very different economic ethics and,according to the unique character of their eco-nomic ethics, how such forms of economicorganization may produce very different histor-ical 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 theform of the economic organization.

No economic ethic has ever been determinedsolely by religion. In the face of man’s attitudestowards the world—as determined by religiousor other (in our sense) “inner” factors—an eco-nomic ethic has, of course, a high measure ofautonomy. Given factors of economic geogra-phy and history determine this measure ofautonomy in the highest degree. The religiousdetermination of life-conduct, however, is alsoone—note this—only one, of the determinantsof the economic ethic. Of course, the religiouslydetermined way of life is itself profoundly influ-enced by economic and political factors operat-ing within given geographical, political, social,and national boundaries. We should lose our-selves in these discussions if we tried to demon-strate these dependencies in all theirsingularities. Here we can only attempt to peeloff the directive elements in the life-conduct ofthose social strata which have most stronglyinfluenced the practical ethic of their respectivereligions. These elements have stamped themost characteristic features upon practicalethics, the features that distinguish one ethicfrom others; and, at the same time, they havebeen important for the respective economicethics. . . .

It is not our thesis that the specific nature ofa religion is a simple “function” of the social sit-uation of the stratum which appears as its char-acteristic bearer, or that it represents thestratum’s “ideology,” or that it is a “reflection”of a stratum’s material or ideal interest-situation.

On the contrary, a more basic misunderstandingof the standpoint of these discussions wouldhardly be possible.

However incisive the social influences, eco-nomically and politically determined, may havebeen upon a religious ethic in a particular case,it receives its stamp primarily from religioussources, and, first of all, from the content of itsannunciation and its promise. Frequently thevery next generation reinterprets these annunci-ations and promises in a fundamental fashion.Such reinterpretations adjust the revelations tothe needs of the religious community. If thisoccurs, then it is at least usual that religious doc-trines are adjusted to religious needs. Otherspheres of interest could have only a secondaryinfluence; often, however, such influence is veryobvious and sometimes it is decisive.

For every religion we shall find that a changein the socially decisive strata has usually been ofprofound importance. On the other hand, thetype of a religion, once stamped, has usuallyexerted a rather far-reaching influence upon thelife-conduct of very heterogeneous strata. Invarious ways people have sought to interpret theconnection between religious ethics and interest-situations in such a way that the former appearas mere “functions” of the latter. Such interpre-tation occurs in so-called historical material-ism—which we shall not here discuss—as wellas in a purely psychological sense. . . .

In treating suffering as a symptom of odious-ness in the eyes of the gods and as a sign ofsecret guilt, religion has psychologically met avery general need. The fortunate is seldom sat-isfied with the fact of being fortunate. Beyondthis, he needs to know that he has a right to hisgood fortune. He wants to be convinced that he“deserves” it, and above all, that he deserves itin comparison with others. He wishes to beallowed the belief that the less fortunate alsomerely experience his due. Good fortune thuswants to be “legitimate” fortune.

If the general term “fortune” covers all the“good” of honor, power; possession, and plea-sure, it is the most general formula for the ser-vice of legitimation, which religion has had toaccomplish for the external and the inner inter-ests of all ruling men, the propertied, the victo-rious, and the healthy. In short, religion providesthe theodicy of good fortune for those who are


fortunate. This theodicy is anchored in highlyrobust (“pharisaical”) needs of man and is there-fore easily understood, even if sufficient atten-tion is often not paid to its effects. . . .

The annunciation and the promise of religionhave naturally been addressed to the masses ofthose who were in need of salvation. They andtheir interests have moved into the center of theprofessional organization for the “cure of thesoul,” which, indeed, only therewith originated.The typical service of magicians and priestsbecomes the determination of the factors to beblamed for suffering, that is, the confession of“sins.” At first, these sins were offenses againstritual commandments. The magician and priestalso give counsel for behavior fit to remove thesuffering. The material and ideal interests ofmagicians and priests could thereby actually andincreasingly enter the service of specificallyplebeian motives. A further step along thiscourse was signified when, under the pressureof typical and ever-recurrent distress, the reli-giosity of a “redeemer” evolved. This religiositypresupposed the myth of a savior, hence (at leastrelatively) of a rational view of the world.Again, suffering became the most importanttopic. The primitive mythology of nature fre-quently offered a point of departure for this reli-giosity. The spirits who governed the comingand going of vegetation and the paths of celes-tial bodies important for the seasons of the yearbecame the preferred carriers of the myths ofthe suffering, dying, and resurrecting god toneedful men. The resurrected god guaranteedthe return of good fortune in this world or thesecurity of happiness in the world beyond. . . .

The need for an ethical interpretation of the“meaning” of the distribution of fortunes amongmen increased with the growing rationality ofconceptions of the world. As the religious andethical reflections upon the world were increas-ingly rationalized and primitive, and magicalnotions were eliminated, the theodicy of suffer-ing encountered increasing difficulties.Individually “undeserved” woe was all too fre-quent; not “good” but “bad” men succeeded—even when “good” and “bad” were measured bythe yardstick of the master stratum and not bythat of a “slave morality.”

One can explain suffering and injusticeby referring to individual sin committed in a

former life (the migration of souls), to the guiltof ancestors, which is avenged down to the thirdand fourth generation, or—the most principled—to the wickedness of all creatures per se. Ascompensatory promises, one can refer to hopesof the individual for a better life in the future inthis world (transmigration of souls) or to hopesfor the successors (Messianic realm), or to abetter life in the hereafter (paradise). . . .

The distrust of wealth and power, which as arule exists in genuine religions of salvation, hashad its natural basis primarily in the experienceof redeemers, prophets, and priests. They under-stood that those strata which were “satiated” andfavored in this world had only a small urge to besaved, regardless of the kind of salvationoffered. Hence, these master strata have beenless. “devout” in the sense of salvation religions.The development of a rational religious ethichas had positive and primary roots in the innerconditions of those social strata which were lesssocially valued.

Strata in solid possession of social honor andpower usually tend to fashion their status-legendin such a way as to claim a special and intrinsicquality of their own, usually a quality of blood;their sense of dignity feeds on their actual oralleged being. The sense of dignity of sociallyrepressed strata or of strata whose status is neg-atively (or at least not positively) valued is nour-ished most easily on the belief that a special“mission” is entrusted to them; their worth isguaranteed or constituted by an ethical impera-tive, or by their own functional achievement.Their value is thus moved into somethingbeyond themselves, into a “task” placed beforethem by God. One source of the ideal power ofethical prophecies among socially disadvan-taged strata lies in this fact. . . .

Psychologically considered, man in quest ofsalvation has been primarily preoccupied byattitudes of the here and now. The puritan certi-tudo salutis, the permanent state of grace thatrests in the feeling of “having proved oneself,”was psychologically the only concrete objectamong the sacred values of this ascetic religion.The Buddhist monk, certain to enter Nirvana,seeks the sentiment of a cosmic love; the devoutHindu seeks either Bhakti (fervent love in thepossession of God) or apathetic ecstasy. TheChlyst with his radjeny, as well as the dancing

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Dervish, strives for orgiastic ecstasy. Othersseek to be possessed by God and to possess God,to be a bridegroom of the Virgin Mary, or to bethe bride of the Savior. The Jesuit’s cult of theheart of Jesus, quietistic edification, the pietists’tender love for the child Jesus and its “runningsore,” the sexual and semi-sexual orgies at thewooing of Krishna, the sophisticated cultic din-ners of the Vallabhacharis, the gnostic onanistcult activities, the various forms of the uniomystica, and the contemplative submersion inthe All-one—these states undoubtedly havebeen sought, first of all, for the sake of suchemotional value as they directly offered thedevout. In this respect, they have in fact beenabsolutely equal to the religious and alcoholicintoxication of the Dionysian or the soma cult;to totemic meat-orgies, the cannibalistic feasts,the ancient and religiously consecrated use ofhashish, opium, and nicotine; and, in general, toall sorts of magical intoxication. They have beenconsidered specifically consecrated and divinebecause of their psychic extraordinariness andbecause of the intrinsic value of the respectivestates conditioned by them. . . .

The two highest conceptions of sublimatedreligious doctrines of salvation are “rebirth” and“redemption.” Rebirth, a primeval magicalvalue, has meant the acquisition of a new soul bymeans of an orgiastic act or through methodi-cally planned asceticism. Man transitorilyacquired a new soul in ecstasy; but by means ofmagical asceticism, he could seek to gain it per-manently. The youth who wished to enter thecommunity of warriors as a hero, or to partici-pate in its magical dances or orgies, or whowished to commune with the divinities in culticfeasts, had to have a new soul The heroic andmagical asceticism, the initiation rites of youths,and the sacramental customs of rebirth at impor-tant phases of private and collective life are thusquite ancient. The means used in these activitiesvaried, as did their ends: that is, the answers tothe question, “For what should I be reborn?” . . .

The kind of empirical state of bliss or experi-ence of rebirth that is sought after as thesupreme value by a religion has obviously andnecessarily varied according to the character ofthe stratum which was foremost in adopting it.The chivalrous, warrior class, peasants, businessclasses, and intellectuals with literary education

have naturally pursued different religious ten-dencies. As will become evident, these tenden-cies have not by themselves determined thepsychological character of religion; they have,however, exerted a very lasting influence uponit. The contrast between warrior and peasantclasses, and intellectual and business classes, isof special importance. Of these groups, theintellectuals have always been the exponents ofa rationalism which in their case has been rela-tively theoretical. The business classes (mer-chants and artisans) have been at least possibleexponents of rationalism of a more practicalsort. Rationalism of either kind has borne verydifferent stamps, but has always exerted a greatinfluence upon the religious attitude.

Above all, the peculiarity of the intellectualstrata in this matter has been in the past of thegreatest importance for religion. At the presenttime, it matters little in the development of a reli-gion whether or not modern intellectuals feel theneed of enjoying a “religious” state as an “expe-rience,” in addition to all sorts of other sensa-tions, in order to decorate their internal andstylish furnishings with paraphernalia guaran-teed to be genuine and old. A religious revivalhas never sprung from such a source. In the past,it was the work of the intellectuals to sublimatethe possession of sacred values into a belief in“redemption.” The conception of the idea ofredemption, as such, is very old, if one under-stands by it a liberation from distress, hunger,drought, sickness, and ultimately from sufferingand death.Yet redemption attained a specific sig-nificance only where it expressed a systematicand rationalized “image of the world” and repre-sented a stand in the face of the world. For themeaning as well as the intended and actual psy-chological quality of redemption has dependedupon such a world image and such a stand. Notideas, but material and ideal interests, directlygovern men’s conduct. Yet very frequently the“world images” that have been created by“ideas” have, like switchmen, determined thetracks along which action has been pushed bythe dynamic of interest. “From what” and “forwhat” one wished to be redeemed and, let us notforget, “could be” redeemed, depended uponone’s image of the world.

There have been very different possibilitiesin this connection: One could wish to be saved


from political and social servitude and liftedinto a Messianic realm in the future of thisworld; or one could wish to be saved from beingdefiled by ritual impurity and hope for the purebeauty of psychic and bodily existence. Onecould wish to escape being incarcerated in animpure body and hope for a purely spiritualexistence. One could wish to be saved from theeternal and senseless play of human passionsand desires and hope for the quietude of the purebeholding of the divine. One could wish to besaved from radical evil and the servitude of sinand hope for the eternal and free benevolence inthe lap of a fatherly god. One could wish to besaved from peonage under the astrologicallyconceived determination of stellar constella-tions and long for the dignity of freedom andpartaking of the substance of the hidden deity.One could wish to be redeemed from the barri-ers to the finite, which express themselves insuffering, misery and death, and the threateningpunishment of hell, and hope for an eternal blissin an earthly or paradisical future existence. Onecould wish to be saved from the cycle of rebirthswith their inexorable compensations for thedeeds of the times past and hope for eternal rest.One could wish to be saved from senselessbrooding and events and long for the dreamlesssleep. Many more varieties of belief have, ofcourse, existed. Behind them always lies a standtowards something in the actual world which isexperienced as specifically “senseless.” Thus,the demand has been implied: that the worldorder in its totality is, could, and should some-how be a meaningful “cosmos.” This quest, thecore of genuine religious rationalism, has beenborne precisely by strata of intellectuals. Theavenues, the results, and the efficacy of thismetaphysical need for a meaningful cosmoshave varied widely. Nevertheless, some generalcomments may be made.

The general result of the modern form ofthoroughly rationalizing the conception of theworld and of the way of life, theoretically andpractically, in a purposive manner, has been thatreligion has been shifted into the realm of theirrational. This has been the more the case thefurther the purposive type of rationalization hasprogressed, if one takes the standpoint of anintellectual articulation of an image of theworld. This shift of religion into the irrational

realm has occurred for several reasons. On theone hand, the calculation of consistent rational-ism has not easily come out even with nothingleft over. In music, the Pythagorean “comma”resisted complete rationalization oriented totonal physics. The various great systems ofmusic of all peoples and ages have differed inthe manner in which they have either covered upor bypassed this inescapable irrationality or, onthe other hand, put irrationality into the serviceof the richness of tonalities. The same hasseemed to happen to the theoretical conceptionof the world, only far more so; and above all, ithas seemed to happen to the rationalization ofpractical life. The various great ways of leadinga rational and methodical life have been charac-terized by irrational presuppositions, whichhave been accepted simply as “given” and whichhave been incorporated into such ways of life.What these presuppositions have been is histor-ically and socially determined, at least to a verylarge extent, through the peculiarity of thosestrata that have been the carriers of the ways oflife during its formative and decisive period.The interest situation of these strata, as deter-mined socially and psychologically, has madefor their peculiarity, as we here understand it.

Furthermore, the irrational elements in therationalization of reality have been the loci towhich the irrepressible quest of intellectualismfor the possession of supernatural values hasbeen compelled to retreat. That is the more sothe more denuded of irrationality the worldappears to be. The unity of the primitive imageof the world, in which everything was concretemagic, has tended to split into rational cognitionand mastery of nature, on the one hand, and into“mystic” experiences, on the other. The inex-pressible contents of such experiences remainthe only possible “beyond,” added to the mecha-nism of a world robbed of gods. In fact, thebeyond remains an incorporeal and metaphysi-cal realm in which individuals intimately pos-sess the holy. Where this conclusion has beendrawn without any residue, the individual canpursue his quest for salvation only as an indi-vidual. This phenomenon appears in some form,with progressive intellectualist rationalism,wherever men have ventured to rationalize theimage of the world as being a cosmos governedby impersonal rules. Naturally it has occurred

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most strongly among religions and religiousethics which have been quite strongly deter-mined by genteel strata of intellectuals devotedto the purely cognitive comprehension of theworld and of its “meaning.” This was the casewith Asiatic and, above all, Indian world reli-gions. For all of them, contemplation becamethe supreme and ultimate religious value acces-sible to man. Contemplation offered thementrance into the profound and blissful tranquil-lity [sic] and immobility of the All-one. Allother forms of religious states, however, havebeen at best considered a relatively valuableErsatz for contemplation. This has had far-reaching consequences for the relation of reli-gion to life, including economic life, as we shallrepeatedly see. Such consequences flow fromthe general character of “mystic” experiences, inthe contemplative sense, and from the psycho-logical preconditions of the search for them.

The situation in which strata decisive for thedevelopment of a religion were active in practi-cal life has been entirely different. Where theywere chivalrous warrior heroes, political offi-cials, economically acquisitive classes, or,finally, where an organized hierocracy domi-nated religion, the results were different thanwhere genteel intellectuals were decisive.

The rationalism of hierocracy grew out of theprofessional preoccupation with cult and mythor—to a far higher degree—out of the cure ofsouls, that is, the confession of sin and counselto sinners. Everywhere hierocracy has sought tomonopolize the administration of religious val-ues. They have also sought to bring and to tem-per the bestowal of religious goods into the formof “sacramental” or “corporate grace,” whichcould be ritually bestowed only by the priest-hood and could not be attained by the individ-ual. The individual’s quest for salvation or thequest of free communities by means of contem-plation, orgies, or asceticism, has been consid-ered highly suspect and has had to be regulatedritually and, above all, controlled hierocratically.From the standpoint of the interests of thepriesthood in power, this is only natural.

Every body of political officials, on the otherhand, has been suspicious of all sorts of individ-ual pursuits of salvation and of the free forma-tion of communities as sources of emancipationfrom domestication at the hands of the institution

of the state. Political officials have distrustedthe competing priestly corporation of grace and,above all, at bottom they have despised the veryquest for these impractical values lying beyondutilitarian and worldly ends. For all politicalbureaucracies, religious duties have ultimatelybeen simply official or social obligations of thecitizenry and of status groups. . . .

It is also usual for a stratum of chivalrouswar-riors to pursue absolutely worldly interests andto be remote from all “mysticism.” Such strata,however, have lacked—and this is characteristicof heroism in general—the desire as well as thecapacity for a rational mastery of reality. Theirrationality of “fate” and, under certain condi-tions, the idea of a vague and deterministicallyconceived “destiny” (the Homeric Moira) hasstood above and behind the divinities anddemons who were conceived of as passionate andstrong heroes, measuring out assistance and hos-tility, glory and booty, or death to the humanheroes.

Peasants have been inclined towards magic.Their whole economic existence has beenspecifically bound to nature and has made themdependent upon elemental forces. They readilybelieve in a compelling sorcery directed againstspirits who rule over or through natural forces,or they believe in simply buying divine benevo-lence. Only tremendous transformations of life-orientation have succeeded in tearing them awayfrom this universal and primeval form of reli-giosity. Such transformations have been derivedeither from other strata or from mightyprophets, who, through the power of miracles,legitimize themselves as sorcerers. Orgiasticand ecstatic states of “possession,” produced bymeans of toxics or by the dance, are strange tothe status honor of knights because they are con-sidered undignified. Among the peasants, how-ever, such states have taken the place that“mysticism” holds among the intellectuals.

Finally, we may consider the strata that in thewestern European sense are called “civic,” aswell as those which elsewhere correspond tothem: artisans, traders, enterprisers engaged incottage industry, and their derivatives existingonly in the modern Occident. Apparently thesestrata have been the most ambiguous withregard to the religious stands open to them. Andthis is especially important to us. . . .


Of course, the religions of all strata are cer-tainly far from being unambiguously dependentupon the character of the strata we have pre-sented as having special affinities with them.Yet, at first sight, civic strata appear, in thisrespect and on the whole, to lend themselves toa more varied determination. Yet it is preciselyamong these strata that elective affinities forspecial types of religion stand out. The tendencytowards a practical rationalism in conduct iscommon to all civic strata; it is conditioned bythe nature of their way of life, which is greatlydetached from economic bonds to nature. Theirwhole existence has been based upon technolog-ical or economic calculations and upon the mas-tery of nature and of man, however primitive themeans at their disposal. The technique of livinghanded down among them may, of course, befrozen in traditionalism, as has occurred repeat-edly and everywhere. But precisely for these,there has always existed the possibility—eventhough in greatly varying measure—of lettingan ethical and rational regulation of life arise.This may occur by the linkage of such an ethicto the tendency of technological and economicrationalism. Such regulation has not alwaysbeen able to make headway against traditionswhich, in the main, were magically stereotyped.But where prophecy has provided a religiousbasis, this basis could be one of two fundamen-tal types of prophecy which we shall repeatedlydiscuss: “exemplary” prophecy, and “emissary”prophecy.

Exemplary prophecy points out the path tosalvation by exemplary living, usually by a con-templative and apathetic-ecstatic life. The emis-sary type of prophecy addresses its demands tothe world in the name of a god. Naturally thesedemands are ethical; and they are often of anactive ascetic character.

It is quite understandable that the moreweighty the civic strata as such have been, andthe more they have been torn from bonds oftaboo and from divisions into sibs and castes,the more favorable has been the soil for reli-gions that call for action in this world. Underthese conditions, the preferred religious atti-tude could become the attitude of active asceti-cism, of God-willed action nourished by thesentiment of being God’s “tool,” rather thanthe possession of the deity or the inward and

contemplative surrender to God, which hasappeared as the supreme value to religionsinfluenced by strata of genteel intellectuals. Inthe Occident the attitude of active asceticismhas repeatedly retained supremacy over con-templative mysticism and orgiastic or apatheticecstasy, even though these latter types havebeen well known in the Occident. . . .

In the missionary prophecy the devout havenot experienced themselves as vessels of thedivine but rather as instruments of a god. Thisemissary prophecy has had a profound electiveaffinity to a special conception of God: the con-ception of a supra-mundane, personal, wrath-ful, forgiving, loving, demanding, punishingLord of Creation. Such a conception stands incontrast to the supreme being of exemplaryprophecy. As a rule, though by no means with-out exception, the supreme being of an exem-plary prophecy is an impersonal being because,as a static state, he is accessible only by meansof contemplation. The conception of an activeGod, held by emissary prophecy, has dominatedthe Iranian and Mid-Eastern religions and thoseOccidental religions which are derived fromthem. The conception of a supreme and staticbeing, held by exemplary prophecy, has cometo dominate Indian and Chinese religiosity.

These differences are not primitive innature. On the contrary, they have come intoexistence only by means of a far-reaching sub-limation of primitive conceptions of animistspirits and of heroic deities which are every-where similar in nature. Certainly the connec-tion of conceptions of God with religiousstates, which are evaluated and desired assacred values, have also been strongly influen-tial in this process of sublimation. These reli-gious states have simply been interpreted in thedirection of a different conception of God,according to whether the holy states, evaluatedas supreme, were contemplative mystic experi-ences or apathetic ecstasy, or whether theywere the orgiastic possession of god, or vision-ary inspirations and “commands.” . . .

The rational elements of a religion, its “doc-trine,” also have an autonomy: for instance, theIndian doctrine of Kharma, the Calvinist beliefin predestination, the Lutheran justificationthrough faith, and the Catholic doctrine ofsacrament. The rational religious pragmatism of

Max Weber � 189

salvation, flowing from the nature of the imagesof God and of the world, have under certain con-ditions had far-reaching results for the fashion-ing of a practical way of life.

These comments presuppose that the natureof the desired sacred values has been stronglyinfluenced by the nature of the external interest-situation and the corresponding way of life ofthe ruling strata and thus by the social stratifi-cation itself. But the reverse also holds: wher-ever the direction of the whole way of life hasbeen methodically rationalized, it has been pro-foundly determined by the ultimate valuestoward which this rationalization has beendirected. These values and positions were thusreligiously determined. Certainly they have notalways, or exclusively, been decisive; however,they have been decisive in so far as an ethicalrationalization held sway, at least so far as itsinfluence reached. As a rule, these religious val-ues have been also, and frequently absolutely,decisive. . . .

The empirical fact, important for us, thatmen are differently qualified in a religious waystands at the beginning of the history of religion.This fact had been dogmatized in the sharpestrationalist form in the “particularism of grace,”embodied in the doctrine of predestination bythe Calvinists. The sacred values that have beenmost cherished, the ecstatic and visionarycapacities of shamans, sorcerers, ascetics, andpneumatics of all sorts, could not be attained byeveryone. The possession of such faculties is a“charisma,” which, to be sure, might be awak-ened in some but not in all. It follows from thisthat all intensive religiosity has a tendencytoward a sort of status stratification, in accor-dance with differences in the charismatic quali-fications. “Heroic” or “virtuoso” religiosity isopposed to mass religiosity. By “mass” weunderstand those who are religiously “unmusi-cal”; we do not, of course, mean those whooccupy an inferior position in the secular statusorder. . . .

Now, every hierocratic and official authorityof a “church”—that is, a community organizedby officials into an institution which bestowsgifts of grace—fights principally against all vir-tuoso-religion and against its autonomousdevelopment. For the church, being the holderof institutionalized grace, seeks to organize the

religiosity of the masses and to put its own offi-cially monopolized and mediated sacred valuesin the place of the autonomous and religious sta-tus qualifications of the religious virtuosos. Byits nature, that is, according to the interest-situ-ation of its officeholders, the church must be“democratic” in the sense of making the sacredvalues generally accessible. This means that thechurch stands for a universalism of grace andfor the ethical sufficiency of all those who areenrolled under its institutional authority.Sociologically, the process of leveling consti-tutes a complete parallel with the political strug-gles of the bureaucracy against the politicalprivileges of the aristocratic estates. As withhierocracy, every full-grown political bureau-cracy is necessarily and in a quite similar sense“democratic”—namely, in the sense of levelingand of fighting against status privileges thatcompete with its power. . . .

The religious virtuosos saw themselves com-pelled to adjust their demands to the possibili-ties of the religiosity of everyday life in order togain and to maintain ideal and material mass-patronage. The nature of their concessions havenaturally been of primary significance for theway in which they have religiously influencedeveryday life. In almost all Oriental religions,the virtuosos allowed the masses to remainstuck in magical tradition. Thus, the influence ofreligious virtuosos has been infinitely smallerthan was the case where religion has undertakenethically and generally to rationalize everydaylife. This has been the case even when religionhas aimed precisely at the masses and has can-celled however many of its ideal demands.Besides the relations between the religiosity ofthe virtuosos and the religion of the masses,which finally resulted from this struggle, thepeculiar nature of the concrete religiosity of thevirtuosos has been of decisive importance forthe development of the way of life of themasses. This virtuoso religiosity has thereforealso been important for the economic ethic ofthe respective religion. The religion of the virtu-oso has been the genuinely “exemplary” andpractical religion. According to the way of lifehis religion prescribed to the virtuoso, therehave been various possibilities of establishing arational ethic of everyday life. The relation ofvirtuoso religion to workaday life in the locus of


the economy has varied, especially according tothe peculiarity of the sacred values desired bysuch religions.

Wherever the sacred values and the redemp-tory means of a virtuoso religion bore a con-templative or orgiastic-ecstatic character, therehas been no bridge between religion and thepractical action of the workaday world. In suchcases, the economy and all other action in theworld has been considered religiously inferior,and no psychological motives for worldly actioncould be derived from the attitude cherished asthe supreme value. In their innermost beings,contemplative and ecstatic religions have beenrather specifically hostile to economic life.Mystic, orgiastic, and ecstatic experiences areextraordinary psychic states; they lead awayfrom everyday life and from all expedient con-duct. Such experiences are, therefore, deemed tobe “holy.” With such religions, a deep abyss sep-arates the way of life of the laymen from that ofthe community of virtuosos. The rule of the sta-tus groups of religious virtuosos over the reli-gious community readily shifts into a magicalanthropolatry; the virtuoso is directly wor-shipped as a Saint, or at least laymen buy hisblessing and his magical powers as a means ofpromoting mundane success or religious salva-tion. As the peasant was to the landlord, so thelayman was to the Buddhist and Jainist bhikshu:ultimately, mere sources of tribute. Such tributeallowed the virtuosos to live entirely for reli-gious salvation without themselves performingprofane work, which always would endangertheir salvation. Yet the conduct of the laymancould still undergo a certain ethical regulation,for the virtuoso was the layman’s spiritualadviser, his father confessor and directeur del’âme. Hence, the virtuoso frequently exercisesa powerful influence over the religiously“unmusical” laymen; this influence might not bein the direction of his (the virtuoso’s) own reli-gious way of life; it might be an influence inmerely ceremonious, ritualist, and conventionalparticulars. For action in this world remained inprinciple religiously insignificant; and com-pared 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 gen-uine magician serves others.

Things have been quite different where thereligiously qualified virtuosos have combinedinto an ascetic sect, striving to mould life in thisworld according to the will of a god. To be sure,two things were necessary before this couldhappen in a genuine way. First, the supreme andsacred value must not be of a contemplativenature; it must not consist of a union with asupra-mundane being who, in contrast to theworld, lasts forever; nor in a unia mystica to begrasped orgiastically or apathetic-ecstatically.For these ways always lie apart from everydaylife and beyond the real world and lead awayfrom it. Second, such a religion must, so far aspossible, have given up the purely magical orsacramental character of the means of grace. Forthese means always devalue action in this worldas, at best, merely relative in their religious sig-nificance, and they link the decision about sal-vation to the success of processes which are notof a rational everyday nature.

When religious virtuosos have combined intoan active asceticist sect, two aims are com-pletely attained: the disenchantment of theworld and the blockage of the path to salvationby a flight from the world. The path to salvationis turned away from a contemplative “flightfrom the world” and towards an active ascetic“work in this world.” If one disregards the smallrationalist sects, such as are found all over theworld, this has been attained only in the greatchurch and sect organizations of Occidental andasceticist Protestantism. The quite distinct andthe purely historically determined destinies ofOccidental religions have co-operated in thismatter. Partly the social environment exerted aninfluence, above all, the environment of the stra-tum that was decisive for the development ofsuch religion. Partly, however—and just asstrongly—the intrinsic character of Christianityexerted an influence: the supra-mundane Godand the specificity of the means and paths ofsalvation as determined historically, first byIsraelite prophecy and the thora doctrine.

The religious virtuoso can be placed in theworld as the instrument of a God and cut offfrom all magical means of salvation. At thesame time, it is imperative for the virtuoso thathe “prove” himself before God, as being calledsolely through the ethical quality of his conductin this world. This actually means that he

Max Weber � 191

“prove” himself to himself as well. No matterhow much the “world” as such is religiouslydevalued and rejected as being creatural and avessel of sin, yet psychologically the world is allthe more affirmed as the theatre of God-willedactivity in one’s worldly “calling.” For thisinner-worldly asceticism rejects the world in thesense that it despises and taboos the values ofdignity and beauty, of the beautiful frenzy andthe dream, purely secular power, and the purelyworldly pride of the hero. Asceticism outlawedthese values as competitors of the kingdom ofGod. Yet precisely because of this rejection,asceticism did not fly from the world, as didcontemplation. Instead, asceticism has wishedto rationalize the world ethically in accordancewith God’s commandments. It has thereforeremained oriented towards the world in a morespecific and thoroughgoing sense than did thenaive “affirmation of the world” of unbrokenhumanity, for instance, in Antiquity and in lay-Catholicism. In inner-worldly asceticism, thegrace and the chosen state of the religiouslyqualified man prove themselves in everydaylife. To be sure, they do so not in the everydaylife as it is given, but in methodical and ratio-nalized routine-activities of workaday life in theservice of the Lord. Rationally raised into avocation, everyday conduct becomes the locusfor proving one’s state of grace. The Occidentalsects of the religious virtuosos have fermentedthe methodical rationalization of conduct,

including economic conduct. These sects havenot constituted valves for the longing to escapefrom the senselessness of work in this world, asdid the Asiatic communities of the ecstatics:contemplative, orgiastic, or apathetic. . . .

We have to remind ourselves in advance that“rationalism” may mean very different things.It means one thing if we think of the kind ofrationalization the systematic thinker performson the image of the world: an increasingtheoretical mastery of reality by means ofincreasingly precise and abstract concepts.Rationalism means another thing if we think ofthe methodical attainment of a definitely givenand practical end by means of an increasinglyprecise calculation of adequate means. Thesetypes of rationalism are very different, in spiteof the fact that ultimately they belong insepa-rately together. . . .

“Rational” may also mean a “systematicarrangement.” In this sense, the following meth-ods are rational: methods of mortificatory or ofmagical asceticism, of contemplation in its mostconsistent forms—for instance, in yoga—or inthe manipulations of the prayer machines oflater Buddhism.

In general, all kinds of practical ethics that aresystematically and unambiguously oriented tofixed goals of salvation are “rational,” partly inthe same sense as formal method is rational, andpartly in the sense that they distinguish between“valid” norms and what is empirically given.

�

Introduction to “The Distribution of Power Within thePolitical Community: Class, Status, Party”

In “Class, Status, Party,” we again find Weber engaged in an implicit debate with Marx.While Marx saw interests, and the power to realize them, tied solely to class position, Webersaw the two as flowing from several sources. In fact, he argued that distinct interests andforms of power were connected to economic classes, status groups, and political parties.(See Table 4.1.) The result is a discarding of Marx’s model in favor of a more complex viewof how interests shape individuals’ actions and the organization of societies.

Weber begins this essay with a definition of power, a definition that to this day guideswork in political sociology. He defines it as “the chance of a man or of a number of men torealize their own will in a social action even against the resistance of others” (Weber1925b/1978:926). Such chances, however, are not derived from a single source, nor is powervalued for any one particular reason. Power may be exercised for economic gain, to increaseone’s “social honor” (or status), or for its own sake. Moreover, power stemming from one

source, for instance economic power, may not translate into other domains. Thus, a personwho has achieved substantial economic wealth through criminal activity will not have a highdegree of status in the general society. Conversely, academics have a relatively high degreeof status, but little economic power. Whatever power intellectuals have stems from theirsocial honor, not from their ability to “realize their own will” through financial influence.

This essay is significant not only for its picture of the crosscutting sources of interestsand power. Weber also offers here a distinct definition of class as well as his conception ofstatus groups and parties. Recall that for Marx classes are based on a group’s more or lessstable relationship to the means of production (owners of capital versus owners of laborpower). For Weber, however, classes are not stable groups or “communities” produced byexisting property relations. Instead, they are people who share “life chances” or possibilitiesthat are determined by “economic interests in the possession of goods and opportunities forincome” within the commodity and labor markets (Weber 1925b/1978:927). While recog-nizing with Marx that “property” and “lack of property” form the basic distinction betweenclasses, Weber nevertheless argued that classes are themselves the product of a shared “classsituation”—a situation that reflects the type and amount of exchanges one can pursue in themarket.

Status groups, on the other hand, are communities. The fate of such communities is deter-mined not by their chances on the commodity or labor markets, however, but by “a specific,positive or negative, social estimation of honor” (Weber 1925b/1978:932, emphasis in theoriginal). Such “honor” is expressed through “styles of life” or “conventions” that identifyindividuals with specific social circles. Race, ethnicity, religion, taste in fashion and the arts,and occupation have often formed a basis for making status distinctions. More than any-thing, membership in status groups serves to restrict an individual’s chances for social inter-action. For instance, the selection of marriage partners has frequently depended on apotential mate’s religion or ethnicity. Even in modern, “egalitarian” societies like the UnitedStates, interracial marriages are relatively uncommon.

Additionally, regardless of possessing significant economic power or material wealth,one’s race or religion can either close or open a person to educational and professionalopportunities, as well as to membership in various clubs or associations.1 Indeed, once mem-bership into a style of life or institution can be bought, its ability to function as an expres-sion of social honor or sign of exclusivity is threatened. This dynamic can be seen in shiftingfashions in clothes and tastes in music, as well as in the democratization of educationwhereby proper “breeding” is no longer a prerequisite for getting a college diploma.

The third domain from which distinct interests are generated and power is exercised isthe “legal order.” Here, “parties’ reside in the sphere of power” (Weber 1925b/1978:938).They include not only explicitly political groups, but also rationally organized groups moregenerally. As such, parties are characterized by the strategic pursuit of goals and the main-tenance of a staff capable of implementing their objectives. Moreover, they are not neces-sarily tied to either class or status group interests, but are aimed instead at “influencing acommunal action no matter what its content may be” (ibid.). Examples of parties includelabor unions, which, through bureaucratic channels and the election of officers, seek to win


1During the early years of unionizing in the United States, trade unions were segregated racially, andat times ethnically. Thus, while sharing a common “class situation,” workers, nevertheless, weredivided by status group memberships. Some sociologists and labor historians have argued that theoverriding salience of racial (i.e., status group) divisions fractured the working class, preventing work-ers from achieving more fully their class-based interests. Similar arguments have been made withregard to the feminist movement. In this case, white, middle-class women are charged with forsakingthe plight of non-white and lower-class women in favor of pursuing goals that derive from their uniqueclass situation.

economic benefits on behalf of workers, and, of course, the Republican and Democratic par-ties, which pursue legislative action that alternates between serving the class interests oftheir constituents (e.g., tax policy, trade regulations) and the interests of varying statusgroups (e.g., affirmative action, abortion rights, and gun control).

Max Weber � 193

ORDER


ACTION

Nonrational StatusStatus Groups: “A specific, positive or negative, socialestimation of honor.”

Rational Interests

Class: People who share “life chances” or possibilitiesthat are “determined by economic interests in thepossession of goods and opportunities for income.”

Party: Aimed at “influencing a communal action nomatter what its content may be.”

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

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

Max Weber

SOURCE: Excerpts from Max Weber’s Economy and Society, 2 vols. Translated and edited by Guenther Roth andClaus Wittich. Copyright © 1978 the Regents of the University of California. Published by the University ofCalifornia Press.

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

“Economically conditioned” power is not, ofcourse, identical with “power” as such. On thecontrary, the emergence of economic power maybe the consequence of power existing on othergrounds. Man does not strive for power only inorder to enrich economically. Power, includingeconomic power, may be valued for its own sake.Very frequently the striving for power is also con-ditioned by the social honor it entails. Not allpower, however, entails social honor: The typical

American Boss, as well as the typical big specula-tor, deliberately relinquishes social honor. Quitegenerally, “mere economic” power, and especially“naked” money power, is by no means a recog-nized basis of social honor. Nor is power the onlybasis of social honor. Indeed, social honor, orprestige, may even be the basis of economicpower, and very frequently has been. Power, aswell as honor, may be guaranteed by the legalorder, but, at least normally, it is not their primarysource. The legal order is rather an additional fac-tor that enhances the chance to hold power orhonor; but it can not always secure them.

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


used. Of course, the status order is strongly influ-enced by it, and in turn reacts upon it.

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

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

It is the most elemental economic fact that theway in which the disposition over material prop-erty is distributed among a plurality of people,meeting competitively in the market for the pur-pose of exchange, in itself creates specific lifechances. The mode of distribution, in accord withthe law of marginal utility, excludes the non-wealthy from competing for highly valued goods;it favors the owners and, in fact, gives to them amonopoly to acquire such goods. Other thingsbeing equal, the mode of distribution monopo-lizes the opportunities for profitable deals for allthose who, provided with goods, do not necessar-ily have to exchange them. It increases, at leastgenerally, their power in the price struggle withthose who, being propertyless, have nothing tooffer but their labor or the resulting products, andwho are compelled to get rid of these products inorder to subsist at all. The mode of distributiongives to the propertied a monopoly on the possi-bility of transferring property from the sphere ofuse as “wealth” to the sphere of “capital,” that is,it gives them the entrepreneurial function and allchances to share directly or indirectly in returnson capital. All this holds true within the area inwhich pure market conditions prevail. “Property”and “lack of property” are, therefore, the basiccategories of all class situations. It does not mat-ter whether these two categories become effectivein the competitive struggles of the consumers orof the producers.

Within these categories, however, class situa-tions are further differentiated: on the one hand,according to the kind of property that is usable for

returns; and, on the other hand, according to thekind of services that can be offered in the market.Ownership of dwellings; workshops; warehouses;stores; agriculturally usable land in large or smallholdings—a quantitative difference with possiblyqualitative consequences; ownership of mines;cattle; men (slaves); disposition over mobileinstruments of production, or capital goods of allsorts, especially money or objects that can easilybe exchanged for money; disposition over prod-ucts of one’s own labor or of others’ labor differ-ing according to their various distances fromconsumability; disposition over transferablemonopolies of any kind—all these distinctionsdifferentiate the class situations of the propertiedjust as does the “meaning” which they can give tothe use of property, especially to property whichhas money equivalence. Accordingly, the proper-tied, for instance, may belong to the class of ren-tiers or to the class of entrepreneurs.

Those who have no property but who offerservices are differentiated just as much accord-ing to their kinds of services as according to theway in which they make use of these services, ina continuous or discontinuous relation to a recip-ient. But always this is the generic connotation ofthe concept of class: that the kind of chance inthe market is the decisive moment which pre-sents a common condition for the individual’sfate. Class situation is, in this sense, ultimatelymarket situation. The effect of naked possessionper se, which among cattle breeders gives thenon-owning slave or serf into the power of thecattle owner, is only a fore-runner of real “class”formation. However, in the cattle loan and in thenaked severity of the law of debts in such com-munities for the first time mere “possession” assuch emerges as decisive for the fate of the indi-vidual; this is much in contrast to crop-raisingcommunities, which are based on labor. Thecreditor-debtor relation becomes the basis of“class situations” first in the cities, where a“credit market,” however primitive, with rates ofinterest increasing according to the extent ofdearth and factual monopolization of lending inthe hands of a plutocracy could develop.Therewith “class struggles” begin.

Those men whose fate is not determined bythe chance of using goods or services for them-selves on the market, e.g., slaves, are not, how-ever, a class in the technical sense of the term.They are, rather, a status group.

Max Weber � 195

C. Social action flowing from class interest.According to our terminology, the factor thatcreates “class” is unambiguously economic inter-est, and indeed, only those interests involved inthe existence of the market. Nevertheless, theconcept of class-interest is an ambiguous one:even as an empirical concept it is ambiguous assoon as one understands by it something otherthan the factual direction of interests followingwith a certain probability from the class situationfor a certain average of those people subjected tothe class situation. The class situation and othercircumstances remaining the same, the directionin which the individual worker, for instance, islikely to pursue his interests may vary widely,according to whether he is constitutionally qual-ified for the task at hand to a high, to an average,or to a low degree. In the same way, the directionof interests may vary according to whether or notsocial action of a larger or smaller portion ofthose commonly affected by the class situation,or even an association among them, e.g., a tradeunion, has grown out of the class situation, fromwhich the individual may expect promisingresults for himself. The emergence of an associ-ation or even of mere social action from a com-mon class situation is by no means a universalphenomenon.

The class situation may be restricted in itsefforts to the generation of essentially similarreactions, that is to say, within our terminology,of “mass behavior.” However, it may not evenhave this result. Furthermore, often merelyamorphous social action emerges. For example,the “grumbling” of workers known in ancientOriental ethics: The moral disapproval of thework-master’s conduct, which in its practicalsignificance was probably equivalent to anincreasingly typical phenomenon of preciselythe latest industrial development, namely, theslowdown of laborers by virtue of tacit agree-ment. The degree in which “social action” andpossibly associations emerge from the massbehavior of the members of a class is linked togeneral cultural conditions, especially to thoseof an intellectual sort. It is also linked to theextent of the contrasts that have already evolved,and is especially linked to the transparency ofthe connections between the causes and the con-sequences of the class situation. For howeverdifferent life chances may be, this fact in itself,according to all experience, by no means gives

birth to “class action” (social action by themembers of a class). For that, the real conditionsand the results of the class situation must be dis-tinctly recognizable. For only then the contrastof life chances can be felt not as an absolutelygiven fact to be accepted, but as a resultant fromeither (1) the given distribution of property, or(2) the structure of the concrete economic order.It is only then that people may react against theclass structure not only through acts of intermit-tent and irrational protest, but in the form ofrational association. There have been “class sit-uations” of the first category (1), of a specifi-cally naked and transparent sort, in the urbancenters of Antiquity and during the MiddleAges; especially then when great fortunes wereaccumulated by factually monopolized tradingin local industrial products or in foodstuffs; fur-thermore, under certain conditions, in the ruraleconomy of the most diverse periods, whenagriculture was increasingly exploited in aprofit-making manner. The most important his-torical example of the second category (2) is theclass situation of the modern proletariat.

D. Types of class struggle.Thus every class maybe the carrier of any one of the innumerable pos-sible forms of class action, but this is not neces-sarily so. In any case, a class does not in itselfconstitute a group (Gemeinschaft). To treat“class” conceptually as being equivalent to“group” leads to distortion. That men in thesame class situation regularly react in massactions to such tangible situations as economicones in the direction of those interests that aremost adequate to their average number is animportant and after all simple fact for the under-standing of historical events. However, this factmust not lead to that kind of pseudo-scientificoperation with the concepts of class and classinterests which is so frequent these days andwhich has found its most classic expression inthe statement of a talented author, that the indi-vidual may be in error concerning his interestsbut that the class is infallible about its interests.

If classes as such are not groups, neverthe-less class situations emerge only on the basis ofsocial action. However, social action that bringsforth class situations is not basically actionamong members of the identical class; it is anaction among members of different classes.Social actions that directly determine the class


situation of the worker and the entrepreneur are:the labor market, the commodities market, andthe capitalistic enterprise. But, in its turn, theexistence of a capitalistic enterprise presup-poses that a very specific kind of social actionexists to protect the possession of goods per se,and especially the power of individuals to dis-pose, in principle freely, over the means of pro-duction: a certain kind of legal order. Each kindof class situation, and above all when it restsupon the power of property per se, will becomemost clearly efficacious when all other determi-nants of reciprocal relations are, as far as possi-ble, eliminated in their significance. It is in thisway that the use of the power of property in themarket obtains its most sovereign importance.

Now status groups hinder the strict carryingthrough of the sheer market principle. In the pre-sent context they are of interest only from thisone point of view. Before we briefly considerthem, note that not much of a general nature canbe said about the more specific kinds of antago-nism between classes (in our meaning of theterm). The great shift, which has been going oncontinuously in the past, and up to our times, maybe summarized, although at a cost of some preci-sion: the struggle in which class situations areeffective has progressively shifted from consump-tion credit toward, first, competitive struggles inthe commodity market and then toward wage dis-putes on the labor market. The class struggles ofAntiquity—to the extent that they were genuineclass struggles and not struggles between statusgroups—were initially carried on by peasants andperhaps also artisans threatened by debt bondageand struggling against urban creditors. . . .

The propertyless of Antiquity and of theMiddle Ages protested against monopolies, pre-emption, forestalling, and the withholding ofgoods from the market in order to raise prices.Today the central issue is the determination ofthe price of labor. The transition is representedby the fight for access to the market and for thedetermination of the price of products. Suchfights went on between merchants and workersin the putting-out system of domestic handicraftduring the transition to modern times. Since it isquite a general phenomenon we must mentionhere that the class antagonisms that are condi-tioned through the market situations are usuallymost bitter between those who actually anddirectly participate as opponents in price wars. It

is not the rentier, the share-holder, and thebanker who suffer the ill will of the worker, butalmost exclusively the manufacturer and thebusiness executives who are the direct opponentsof workers in wage conflicts. This is so in spiteof the fact that it is precisely the cash boxes ofthe rentier, the shareholder, and the banker intowhich the more or less unearned gains flow,rather than into the pockets of the manufacturersor of the business executives. This simple state ofaffairs has very frequently been decisive for therole the class situation has played in the forma-tion of political parties. For example, it has madepossible the varieties of patriarchal socialismand the frequent attempts—formerly, at least—of threatened status groups to form allianceswith the proletariat against the bourgeoisie.

E. Status honor. In contrast to classes, Stände(status groups) are normally groups. They are,however, often of an amorphous kind. In con-trast to the purely economically determined“class situation,” we wish to designate as statussituation every typical component of the life ofmen that is determined by a specific, positive ornegative, social estimation of honor. This honormay be connected with any quality shared by aplurality, and, of course, it can be knit to a classsituation: class distinctions are linked in themost varied ways with status distinctions.Property as such is not always recognized as astatus qualification, but in the long run it is, andwith extraordinary regularity. In the subsistenceeconomy of neighborhood associations, it isoften simply the richest who is the “chieftain.”However, this often is only an honorific prefer-ence. For example, in the so-called pure moderndemocracy, that is, one devoid of any expresslyordered status privileges for individuals, it maybe that only the families coming under approxi-mately the same tax class dance with one another.This example is reported of certain smallerSwiss cities. But status honor need not neces-sarily be linked with a class situation. On thecontrary, it normally stands in sharp oppositionto the pretensions of sheer property.

Both propertied and propertyless people canbelong to the same status group, and frequentlythey do with very tangible consequences. Thisequality of social esteem may, however, in thelong run become quite precarious. The equalityof status among American gentlemen, for

Max Weber � 197

instance, is expressed by the fact that outside thesubordination determined by the different func-tions of business, it would be considered strictlyrepugnant—wherever the old tradition stillprevails—if even the richest boss, while playingbilliards or cards in his club would not treat hisclerk as in every sense fully his equal inbirthright, but would bestow upon him the con-descending status-conscious “benevolence”which the German boss can never dissever fromhis attitude. This is one of the most importantreasons why in America the German clubs havenever been able to attain the attraction that theAmerican clubs have.

In content, status honor is normally expressedby the fact that above all else a specific style oflife is expected from all those who wish tobelong to the circle. Linked with this expecta-tion are restrictions on social intercourse (thatis, intercourse which is not subservient to eco-nomic or any other purposes). These restrictionsmay confine normal marriages to within the sta-tus circle and may lead to complete endogamousclosure. Whenever this is not a mere individualand socially irrelevant imitation of another styleof life, but consensual action of this closingcharacter, the status development is under way.

In its characteristic form, stratification bystatus groups on the basis of conventional stylesof life evolves at the present time in the UnitedStates out of the traditional democracy. Forexample, only the resident of a certain street(“the Street”) is considered as belonging to“society,” is qualified for social intercourse, andis visited and invited. Above all, this differentia-tion evolves in such a way as to make for strictsubmission to the fashion that is dominant at agiven time in society. This submission to fashionalso exists among men in America to a degreeunknown in Germany; it appears as an indica-tion of the fact that a given man puts forward aclaim to qualify as a gentleman. This submis-sion decides, at least prima facie, that he will betreated as such. And this recognition becomesjust as important for his employment chances inswank establishments, and above all, for socialintercourse and marriage with “esteemed”families, as the qualification for dueling amongGermans. As for the rest, status honor isusurped by certain families resident for a longtime, and, of course, correspondingly wealthy(e.g., F.F.V., the First Families of Virginia), or by

the actual or alleged descendants of the “IndianPrincess” Pocahontas, of the Pilgrim fathers, orof the Knickerbockers, the members of almostinaccessible sects and all sorts of circles settingthemselves apart by means of any other charac-teristics and badges. In this case stratification ispurely conventional and rests largely on usurpa-tion (as does almost all status honor in its begin-ning). But the road to legal privilege, positive ornegative, is easily traveled as soon as a certainstratification of the social order has in fact been“lived in” and has achieved stability by virtue ofa stable distribution of economic power.

F. Ethnic segregation and caste. Where the con-sequences have been realized to their full extent,the status group evolves into a closed caste. Statusdistinctions are then guaranteed not merely byconventions and laws, but also by religious sanc-tions. This occurs in such a way that every physi-cal contact with a member of any caste that isconsidered to be lower by the members of a highercaste is considered as making for a ritualisticimpurity and a stigma which must be expiated bya religious act. In addition, individual castesdevelop quite distinct cults and gods.

In general, however, the status structurereaches such extreme consequences only wherethere are underlying differences which are heldto be “ethnic.” The caste is, indeed, the normalform in which ethnic communities that believein blood relationship and exclude exogamousmarriage and social intercourse usually associ-ate with one another. Such a caste situation ispart of the phenomenon of pariah peoples and isfound all over the world. These people formcommunities, acquire specific occupational tra-ditions of handicrafts or of other arts, and culti-vate a belief in their ethnic community. Theylive in a diaspora strictly segregated from allpersonal intercourse, except that of an unavoid-able sort, and their situation is legally precarious.Yet, by virtue of their economic indispensability,they are tolerated, indeed frequently privileged,and they live interspersed in the political com-munities. The Jews are the most impressive his-torical example.

A status segregation grown into a caste differsin its structure from a mere ethnic segregation: thecaste structure transforms the horizontal andunconnected coexistences of ethnically segre-gated groups into a vertical social system of


super- and subordination. Correctly formulated: acomprehensive association integrates the ethni-cally divided communities into one political unit.They differ precisely in this way: ethnic coexis-tence, based on mutual repulsion and disdain,allows each ethnic community to consider its ownhonor as the highest one; the caste structure bringsabout a social subordination and an acknowledge-ment of “more honor” in favor of the privilegedcaste and status groups. This is due to the fact thatin the caste structure ethnic distinctions as suchhave become “functional” distinctions within thepolitical association (warriors, priests, artisansthat are politically important for war and forbuilding, and so on). But even pariah peoples whoare most despised (for example, the Jews) are usu-ally apt to continue cultivating the belief in theirown specific “honor,” a belief that is equally pecu-liar to ethnic and to status groups.

However, with the negatively privileged sta-tus groups the sense of dignity takes a specificdeviation. A sense of dignity is the precipi-tation in individuals of social honor and ofconventional demands which a positively priv-ileged status group raises for the deportment ofits members. The sense of dignity that charac-terizes positively privileged status groups isnaturally related to their “being” which doesnot transcend itself, that is, it is related to their“beauty and excellence” (öικειoν εργoν). Theirkingdom is “of this world.” They live for thepresent and by exploiting their great past. Thesense of dignity of the negatively privilegedstrata naturally refers to a future lying beyondthe present, whether it is of this life or ofanother. In other words, it must be nurtured bythe belief in a providential mission and by abelief in a specific honor before God. The cho-sen people’s dignity is nurtured by a beliefeither that in the beyond “the last will be thefirst,” or that in this life a Messiah will appearto bring forth into the light of the world whichhas cast them out the hidden honor of thepariah people. This simple state of affairs, andnot the resentment which is so strongly empha-sized in Nietzsche’s much-admired construc-tion in the Genealogy of Morals, is the sourceof the religiosity cultivated by pariah statusgroups. . . .

For the rest, the development of status groupsfrom ethnic segregations is by no means thenormal phenomenon. On the contrary. Since

objective “racial differences” are by no meansbehind every subjective sentiment of an ethniccommunity, the question of an ultimately racialfoundation of status structure is rightly a ques-tion of the concrete individual case. Very fre-quently a status group is instrumental in theproduction of a thoroughbred anthropologi-cal type. Certainly status groups are to a highdegree effective in producing extreme types, forthey select personally qualified individuals(e.g., the knighthood selects those who are fitfor warfare, physically and psychically). Butindividual selection is far from being the only,or the predominant, way in which status groupsare formed: political membership or class situa-tion has at all times been at least as frequentlydecisive. And today the class situation is by farthe predominant factor. After all, the possibilityof a style of life expected for members of a statusgroup is usually conditioned economically.

G. Status privileges. For all practical purposes,stratification by status goes hand in hand with amonopolization of ideal and material goods oropportunities, in a manner we have come to knowas typical. Besides the specific status honor,which always rests upon distance and exclusive-ness, honorific preferences may consist of theprivilege of wearing special costumes, of eatingspecial dishes taboo to others, of carryingarms—which is most obvious in its conse-quences—, the right to be a dilettante, forexample, to play certain musical instruments.However, material monopolies provide the mosteffective motives for the exclusiveness of a statusgroup; although, in themselves, they are rarelysufficient, almost always they come into play tosome extent. Within a status circle there is thequestion of intermarriage: the interest of thefamilies in the monopolization of potential bride-grooms is at least of equal importance and is par-allel to the interest in the monopolization ofdaughters. The daughters of the members must beprovided for.With an increased closure of the sta-tus group, the conventional preferential opportu-nities for special employment grow into a legalmonopoly of special offices for the members.Certain goods become objects for monopoliza-tion by status groups, typically, entailed estates,and frequently also the possession of serfs orbondsmen and, finally, special trades. Thismonopolization occurs positively when the status

Max Weber � 199

group is exclusively entitled to own and to man-age them; and negatively when, in order to main-tain its specific way of life, the status group mustnot own and manage them. For the decisive roleof a style of life in status honor means that statusgroups are the specific bearers of all conventions.In whatever way it may be manifest, all styliza-tion of life either originates in status groups or isat least conserved by them. Even if the principlesof status conventions differ greatly, they revealcertain typical traits, especially among the mostprivileged strata. Quite generally, among privi-leged status groups there is a status disqualifica-tion that operates against the performance ofcommon physical labor. This disqualification isnow “setting in” in America against the old tradi-tion of esteem for labor. Very frequently everyrational economic pursuit, and especially entre-preneurial activity, is looked upon as a disqualifi-cation of status. Artistic and literary activity isalso considered degrading work as soon as it isexploited for income, or at least when it is con-nected with hard physical exertion.An example isthe sculptor working like a mason in his dustysmock as over against the painter in his salon-likestudio and those forms of musical practice thatare acceptable to the status group.

H. Economic conditions and effects of statusstratification. The frequent disqualification ofthe gainfully employed as such is a direct resultof the principle of status stratification, and ofcourse, of this principle’s opposition to a distri-bution of power which is regulated exclusivelythrough the market. These two factors operatealong with various individual ones, which willbe touched upon below.

We have seen above that the market and itsprocesses knows no personal distinctions: “func-tional” interests dominate it. It knows nothing ofhonor. The status order means precisely thereverse: stratification in terms of honor and stylesof life peculiar to status groups as such. The sta-tus order would be threatened at its very root ifmere economic acquisition and naked economicpower still bearing the stigma of its extra-statusorigin could bestow upon anyone who has wonthem the same or even greater honor as the vestedinterests claim for themselves. After all, givenequality of status honor, property per se repre-sents an addition even if it is not overtly acknowl-edged to be such. Therefore all groups having

interest in the status order react with specialsharpness precisely against the pretensions ofpurely economic acquisition. In most cases theyreact the more vigorously the more they feelthemselves threatened. . . . Precisely because ofthe rigorous reactions against the claims of prop-erty per se, the “parvenu” is never accepted, per-sonally and without reservation, by the privilegedstatus groups, no matter how completely his styleof life has been adjusted to theirs. They will onlyaccept his descendants who have been educatedin the conventions of their status group and whohave never besmirched its honor by their owneconomic labor.

As to the general effect of the status order,only one consequence can be stated, but it is avery important one: the hindrance of the freedevelopment of the market. This occurs first forthose goods that status groups directly withholdfrom free exchange by monopolization, whichmay be effected either legally or conventionally.For example, in many Hellenic cities during the“status era” and also originally in Rome, theinherited estate (as shown by the old formula forplacing spendthrifts under a guardian) wasmonopolized, as were the estates of knights, peas-ants, priests, and especially the clientele of thecraft and merchant guilds. The market isrestricted, and the power of naked property perse, which gives its stamp to class formation, ispushed into the background. The results of thisprocess can be most varied. Of course, they donot necessarily weaken the contrasts in the eco-nomic situation. Frequently they strengthen thesecontrasts, and in any case, where stratification bystatus permeates a community as strongly as wasthe case in all political communities of Antiquityand of the MiddleAges, one can never speak of agenuinely free market competition as we under-stand it today. There are wider effects than thisdirect exclusion of special goods from the mar-ket. From the conflict between the status orderand the purely economic order mentioned above,it follows that in most instances the notion ofhonor peculiar to status absolutely abhors thatwhich is essential to the market: hard bargaining.Honor abhors hard bargaining among peers andoccasionally it taboos it for the members of a sta-tus group in general. Therefore, everywhere somestatus groups, and usually the most influential,consider almost any kind of overt participation ineconomic acquisition as absolutely stigmatizing.


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

An “occupational status group,” too, is a statusgroup proper. For normally, it successfully claimssocial honor only by virtue of the special style oflife whichmay be determined by it.The differencesbetween classes and status groups frequently over-lap. It is precisely those status communities moststrictly segregated in terms of honor (viz., the Indiancastes) who today show, although within very rigidlimits, a relatively high degree of indifference topecuniary income. However, the Brahmins seeksuch income in many different ways.

As to the general economic conditions mak-ing for the predominance of stratification by sta-tus, only the following can be said. When thebases of the acquisition and distribution ofgoods are relatively stable, stratification by sta-tus is favored. Every technological repercussionand economic transformation threatens stratifi-cation by status and pushes the class situationinto the foreground. Epochs and countries inwhich the naked class situation is of predomi-nant significance are regularly the periods oftechnical and economic transformations. Andevery slowing down of the change in economicstratification leads, in due course, to the growthof status structures and makes for a resuscitationof the important role of social honor.

I. Parties.Whereas the genuine place of classesis within the economic order, the place of statusgroups is within the social order, that is, withinthe sphere of the distribution of honor. Fromwithin these spheres, classes and status groupsinfluence one another and the legal order andare in turn influenced by it. “Parties” reside inthe sphere of power. Their action is orientedtoward the acquisition of social power, that is tosay, toward influencing social action no matterwhat its content may be. In principle, partiesmay exist in a social club as well as in a state.As over against the actions of classes and statusgroups, for which this is not necessarily thecase, party-oriented social action alwaysinvolves association. For it is always directedtoward a goal which is striven for in a plannedmanner. This goal may be a cause (the party

may aim at realizing a program for ideal ormaterial purposes), or the goal may be personal(sinecures, power, and from these, honor for theleader and the followers of the party). Usuallythe party aims at all these simultaneously.Parties are, therefore, only possible withingroups that have an associational character, thatis, some rational order and a staff of personsavailable who are ready to enforce it. For par-ties aim precisely at influencing this staff, andif possible, to recruit from it party members.

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

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

Before we do this, we should add one moregeneral observation about classes, status groupsand parties: The fact that they presuppose alarger association, especially the framework of apolity, does not mean that they are confined toit. On the contrary, at all times it has been the

Max Weber � 201

order of the day that such association (evenwhen it aims at the use of military force in com-mon) reaches beyond the state boundaries. Thiscan be seen in the [interlocal] solidarity of inter-ests of oligarchs and democrats in Hellas, ofGuelphs and Ghibellines in the Middle Ages,and within the Calvinist party during the age ofreligious struggles; and all the way up to

the solidarity of landlords (InternationalCongresses of Agriculture), princes (HolyAlliance, Karlsbad Decrees [of 1819]), socialistworkers, conservatives (the longing of Prussianconservatives for Russian intervention in 1850).But their aim is not necessarily the establish-ment of a new territorial dominion. In the mainthey aim to influence the existing polity.

Introduction to “The Types of Legitimate Domination”

In this selection, Weber defines three “ideal types” of legitimate domination: rational orlegal authority, traditional authority, and charismatic authority. (See Table 4.2.) Asabstract constructs, none of the ideal types actually exists in pure form. Instead, publicauthority is based on some mixture of the three types. Nevertheless, social systems gener-ally exhibit a predominance of one form or another of domination.

Before briefly describing the forms of legitimate authority, we first need to clarifyWeber’sdefinition of legitimacy. By “legitimacy,” Weber was referring to the belief systems on whichvalid commands issuing from authority figures are based. Such belief systems supply the jus-tifications and motives for demanding obedience and allow those in authority to rightfullyexercise domination over others. It is to these justifications that authority figures turn whenseeking to legitimate their actions and the actions of those subjected to their commands.

Modern states are ruled through rational-legal authority. This form of domination isbased on the rule of rationally established laws. Legitimacy thus rests “on a belief in thelegality of enacted rules and the right of those elevated to authority under such rules to issuecommands” (Weber 1925c/1978:215). Obedience is owed not to the person who exercisesauthority, but to the office or position in which authority is vested. It is the impersonal, legalorder that vests the superior with the authority to demand compliance, a right that is cededon vacating the office. Once retired, a police officer or judge is but another civilian and assuch no longer has the power to enforce the law.

Traditional authority is the authority of “eternal yesterday.” It rests on an “establishedbelief in the sanctity of immemorial traditions” (ibid.:215). This is the rule of kings andtribal chieftains. Leadership is attained not on the basis of impersonally measured merit, buton lines of heredity or rites of passage. Subjects owe their allegiance not to bureaucraticallyimposed rules and laws that are open to change, but to their personal “master” whosedemands for compliance and loyalty are legitimated by sacred, inviolable traditions.

Weber’s third type of authority derives from the charisma possessed by the leader.Demands for obedience are legitimated by the leader’s “gift of grace,” which is demonstratedthrough extraordinary feats, acts of heroism, or revelations—in short, the miracles of heroesand prophets. Like traditional authority, loyalty is owed to the person and not to an officedefined through impersonal rules. But unlike traditional authority, legitimacy is not based onappeals to sacred traditions or on the exalting of “what has always been.” Instead, compliancefrom “disciples” is demanded on the basis of the “conception that it is the duty of those subjectto charismatic authority to recognize its genuineness and to act accordingly” (ibid.:242).

History is replete with charismatic leaders who have inspired intense personal devotionto themselves and their cause. From Jesus and Muhammad, Joan of Arc and Gandhi, toNapoleon and Hitler, such leaders have proved to be a powerful force for social change, bothgood and bad. Indeed, in its rejection of both tradition and rational, formal rules, charismatic

�

authority, by its very nature, poses a challenge to existing political order. In breaking fromhistory as well as objective laws, charisma is a creative force that carries the commandment:“It is written, but I say unto you.”


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

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

Embodiments of legitimate domination:President Clinton exercised rational-legalauthority; Queen Victoria ruled on thebasis of traditional authority; MahatmaGandhi possessed charismatic authority.

However, the revolutionary potential of charismatic authority makes it inherently unsta-ble. Charisma lasts only as long as its possessor is able to provide benefits to his followers.If the leader’s prophecies are proved wrong, if enemies are not defeated, if miraculous deedsbegin to “dry up,” then his legitimacy will be called into question. On the other hand, evenif such deeds or benefits provide a continued source of legitimacy, the leader at some pointwill die. With authority resting solely in the charismatic individual, the movement heinspired will collapse along with his rule, unless designs for a successor are developed.Often, the transferring of authority eventually leads to the “routinization of charisma” andthe transformation of legitimacy into either a rational-legal or traditional type—witness theCatholic Church.

Max Weber � 203

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

ORDER


ACTION

NonrationalCharismatic: “Giftof grace” of leader

Traditional: “Established belief in the sanctity ofimmemorial traditions”

RationalRational-Legal: “Belief in the legality of enactedrules and the right of those elevated toauthority under such rules to issue commands”

Table 4.2 Weber’s Types of Legitimate Domination


DOMINATION AND LEGITIMACY

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

Not every case of domination makes use ofeconomic means; still less does it always haveeconomic objectives. However, normally the ruleover a considerable number of persons requires astaff, that is, a special group which can normallybe trusted to execute the general policy as well asthe specific commands. The members of theadministrative staff may be bound to obedienceto their superior (or superiors) by custom, byaffectual ties, by a purely material complex ofinterests, or by ideal (wertrationale) motives.The quality of these motives largely determinesthe type of domination. Purely material interestsand calculations of advantages as the basis ofsolidarity between the chief and his administra-tive staff result, in this as in other connexions, ina relatively unstable situation. Normally otherelements, affectual and ideal, supplement suchinterests. In certain exceptional cases the formeralone may be decisive. In everyday life theserelationships, like others, are governed by cus-tom and material calculation of advantage. Butcustom, personal advantage, purely affectual orideal motives of solidarity, do not form a suffi-ciently reliable basis for a given domination. Inaddition there is normally a further element, thebelief in legitimacy.

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

The Three Pure Types of Authority

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

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

2. Traditional grounds—resting on an estab-lished belief in the sanctity of immemor-ial traditions and the legitimacy of thoseexercising authority under them (tradi-tional authority); or finally,

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

In the case of legal authority, obedience isowed to the legally established impersonal order.

From “The Types of Legitimate Domination” (1925)

Max Weber

SOURCE: Excerpts from Max Weber’s Economy and Society, 2 vols. Translated and edited by Guenther Rothand Claus Wittich. Copyright © 1978 the Regents of the University of California. Published by the Universityof California Press.

Max Weber � 205

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

LEGAL AUTHORITY WITH A

BUREAUCRATIC STAFF

Legal Authority: The Pure Type

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

1. That any given legal norm may be estab-lished by agreement or by imposition, on groundsof expediency or value-rationality or both, with aclaim to obedience at least on the part of themembers of the organization. This is, however,usually extended to include all persons within thesphere of power in question—which in the case ofterritorial bodies is the territorial area—who standin certain social relationships or carry out formsof social action which in the order governing theorganization have been declared to be relevant.

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

3. That thus the typical person in authority, the“superior,” is himself subject to an impersonal

order by orienting his actions to it in his owndispositions and commands. (This is true notonly for persons exercising legal authority whoare in the usual sense “officials,” but, forinstance, for the elected president of a state.)

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

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

The purest type of exercise of legal authorityis that which employs a bureaucratic administra-tive staff. Only the supreme chief of the organi-zation occupies his position of dominance(Herrenstellung) by virtue of appropriation, ofelection, or of having been designated for thesuccession. But even his authority consists ina sphere of legal “competence.” The wholeadministrative staff under the supreme authoritythen consist, in the purest type, of individualofficials (constituting a “monocracy” asopposed to the “collegial” type, which will bediscussed below) who are appointed and functionaccording to the following criteria:

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

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

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

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

(5) Candidates are selected on the basis oftechnical qualifications. In the most ratio-nal case, this is tested by examination


or guaranteed by diplomas certifyingtechnical training, or both. They areappointed, not elected.

(6) They are remunerated by fixed salaries inmoney, for the most part with a right topensions. Only under certain circum-stances does the employing authority,especially in private organizations, have aright to terminate the appointment, but theofficial is always free to resign. Thesalary scale is graded according to rank inthe hierarchy; but in addition to this crite-rion, the responsibility of the position andthe requirements of the incumbent’ssocial status may be taken into account.

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

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

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

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

This type of organization is in principleapplicable with equal facility to a wide varietyof different fields. It may be applied in profit-making business or in charitable organizations,or in any number of other types of private enter-prises serving ideal or material ends. It isequally applicable to political and to hierocraticorganizations. With the varying degrees ofapproximation to a pure type, its historical exis-tence can be demonstrated in all these fields. . . .

TRADITIONAL AUTHORITY:THE PURE TYPE

Authority will be called traditional if legiti-macy is claimed for it and believed in byvirtue of the sanctity of age-old rules and pow-ers. The masters are designated according to

traditional rules and are obeyed because oftheir traditional status (Eigenwürde). This typeof organized rule is, in the simplest case, pri-marily based on personal loyalty which resultsfrom common upbringing. The person exercis-ing authority is not a “superior,” but a personalmaster, his administrative staff does not con-sist mainly of officials but of personal retain-ers, and the ruled are not “members” of anassociation but are either his traditional “com-rades” or his “subjects.” Personal loyalty, not theofficial’s impersonal duty, determines the rela-tions of the administrative staff to the master.

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

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

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

Thus there is a double sphere:

a) that of action which is bound to specifictraditions;

b) that of action which is free of specificrules.

In the latter sphere, the master is free to dogood turns on the basis of his personal pleasureand likes, particularly in return for gifts—thehistorical sources of dues (Gebühren). So far ashis action follows principles at all, these aregoverned by considerations of ethical commonsense, of equity or of utilitarian expediency.They are not formal principles, as in the case oflegal authority. The exercise of power is orientedtoward the consideration of how far master andstaff can go in view of the subjects’ traditionalcompliance without arousing their resistance.When resistance occurs, it is directed against the

Max Weber � 207

master or his servant personally, the accusationbeing that he failed to observe the traditionallimits of his power. Opposition is not directedagainst the system as such—it is a case of “tra-ditionalist revolution.”

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

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

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

b) a rationally established hierarchy,

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

d) technical training as a regular requirement,

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

CHARISMATIC AUTHORITY

The term “charisma” will be applied to a cer-tain quality of an individual personality byvirtue of which he is considered extraordinaryand treated as endowed with supernatural,superhuman, or at least specifically excep-tional powers or qualities. These are such as arenot accessible to the ordinary person, but areregarded as of divine origin or as exemplary,and on the basis of them the individual con-cerned is treated as a “leader.” In primitive cir-cumstances this peculiar kind of quality isthought of as resting on magical powers,whether of prophets, persons with a reputa-tion for therapeutic or legal wisdom, leaders inthe hunt, or heroes in war. How the quality inquestion would be ultimately judged from anyethical, aesthetic, or other such point of view isnaturally entirely indifferent for purposes of

definition. What is alone important is how theindividual is actually regarded by those subjectto charismatic authority, by his “followers” or“disciples.”. . .

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

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

III. An organized group subject to charis-matic authority will be called a charismaticcommunity (Gemeinde). It is based on an emo-tional form of communal relationship(Vergemeinschaftung). The administrative staffof a charismatic leader does not consist of “offi-cials”; least of all are its members technicallytrained. It is not chosen on the basis of socialprivilege nor from the point of view of domes-tic or personal dependency. It is rather chosen interms of the charismatic qualities of itsmembers. The prophet has his disciples; thewarlord his bodyguard; the leader, generally, hisagents (Vertrauensmänner). There is no suchthing as appointment or dismissal, no career, nopromotion. There is only a call at the instance ofthe leader on the basis of the charismatic quali-fication of those he summons. There is no hier-archy; the leader merely intervenes in general orin individual cases when he considers themembers of his staff lacking in charismaticqualification for a given task. There is no suchthing as a bailiwick or definite sphere of com-petence, and no appropriation of official powerson the basis of social privileges. There may,


however, be territorial or functional limits tocharismatic powers and to the individual’s mis-sion. There is no such thing as a salary or abenefice.

Disciples or followers tend to live primar-ily in a communistic relationship with theirleader on means which have been provided byvoluntary gift. There are no established admin-istrative organs. In their place are agents whohave been provided with charismatic authorityby their chief or who possess charisma of theirown. There is no system of formal rules, ofabstract legal principles, and hence no processof rational judicial decision oriented to them.But equally there is no legal wisdom orientedto judicial precedent. Formally concrete judg-ments are newly created from case to case andare originally regarded as divine judgmentsand revelations. From a substantive point ofview, every charismatic authority would haveto subscribe to the proposition, “It is writ-ten . . . but I say unto you . . .” The genuineprophet, like the genuine military leader andevery true leader in this sense, preaches, cre-ates, or demands new obligations—most typi-cally, by virtue of revelation, oracle,inspiration, or of his own will, which are rec-ognized by the members of the religious, mili-tary, or party group because they come fromsuch a source. Recognition is a duty. Whensuch an authority comes into conflict with thecompeting authority of another who alsoclaims charismatic sanction, the only recourseis to some kind of a contest, by magical meansor an actual physical battle of the leaders. Inprinciple, only one side can be right in such aconflict; the other must be guilty of a wrongwhich has to be expiated.

Since it is “extra-ordinary,” charismaticauthority is sharply opposed to rational, and par-ticularly bureaucratic, authority, and to tradi-tional authority, whether in its patriarchal,patrimonial, or estate variants, all of which areeveryday forms of domination; while the charis-matic type is the direct antithesis of this.Bureaucratic authority is specifically rational inthe sense of being bound to intellectuallyanalysable rules; while charismatic authority isspecifically irrational in the sense of being for-eign to all rules. Traditional authority is boundto the precedents handed down from the past

and to this extent is also oriented to rules.Within the sphere of its claims, charismaticauthority repudiates the past, and is in this sensea specifically revolutionary force. It recognizesno appropriation of positions of power by virtueof the possession of property, either on the partof a chief or of socially privileged groups. Theonly basis of legitimacy for it is personalcharisma so long as it is proved; that is, as longas it receives recognition and as long as the fol-lowers and disciples prove their usefulnesscharismatically. . . .

IV. Pure charisma is specifically foreign toeconomic considerations. Wherever it appears,it constitutes a “call” in the most emphatic senseof the word, a “mission” or a “spiritual duty.” Inthe pure type, it disdains and repudiates eco-nomic exploitation of the gifts of grace as asource of income, though, to be sure, this oftenremains more an ideal than a fact. It is not thatcharisma always demands a renunciation ofproperty or even of acquisition, as under certaincircumstances prophets and their disciples do.The heroic warrior and his followers activelyseek booty; the elective ruler or the charismaticparty leader requires the material means ofpower. The former in addition requires a bril-liant display of his authority to bolster his pres-tige. What is despised, so long as the genuinelycharismatic type is adhered to, is traditional orrational everyday economizing, the attainmentof a regular income by continuous economicactivity devoted to this end. Support by gifts,either on a grand scale involving donation,endowment, bribery and honoraria, or by beg-ging, constitute the voluntary type of support.On the other hand, “booty” and extortion,whether by force or by other means, is the typi-cal form of charismatic provision for needs.From the point of view of rational economicactivity, charismatic want satisfaction is a typi-cal anti-economic force. It repudiates any sort ofinvolvement in the everyday routine world. Itcan only tolerate, with an attitude of completeemotional indifference, irregular, unsystematicacquisitive acts. In that it relieves the recipientof economic concerns, dependence on propertyincome can be the economic basis of a charis-matic mode of life for some groups; but that isunusual for the normal charismatic “revolu-tionary.” . . .

Max Weber � 209

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

THE ROUTINIZATION OF CHARISMA

In its pure form charismatic authority has acharacter specifically foreign to everyday rou-tine structures. The social relationships directlyinvolved are strictly personal, based on thevalidity and practice of charismatic personalqualities. If this is not to remain a purely transi-tory phenomenon, but to take on the characterof a permanent relationship, a “community” ofdisciples or followers or a party organization orany sort of political or hierocratic organization,it is necessary for the character of charismaticauthority to become radically changed. Indeed,in its pure form charismatic authority may besaid to exist only in statu nascendi. It cannotremain stable, but becomes either traditional-ized or rationalized, or a combination of both.

The following are the principal motivesunderlying this transformation: (a) The idealand also the material interests of the followersin the continuation and the continual reactiva-tion of the community, (b) the still strongerideal and also stronger material interests of themembers of the administrative staff, the disci-ples, the party workers, or others in continuingtheir relationship. Not only this, but they havean interest in continuing it in such a way thatboth from an ideal and a material point of view,their own position is put on a stable everydaybasis. This means, above all, making it possibleto participate in normal family relationships orat least to enjoy a secure social position in

place of the kind of discipleship which is cutoff from ordinary worldly connections, notablyin the family and in economic relationships.

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

Concomitant with the routinization ofcharisma with a view to insuring adequate suc-cession, go the interests in its routinization on thepart of the administrative staff. It is only in theinitial stages and so long as the charismatic leaderacts in a way which is completely outside every-day social organization, that it is possible for hisfollowers to live communistically in a communityof faith and enthusiasm, on gifts, booty, or spo-radic acquisition. Only the members of the smallgroup of enthusiastic disciples and followers areprepared to devote their lives purely idealisticallyto their call. The great majority of disciples andfollowers will in the long run “make their living”out of their “calling” in a material sense as well.Indeed, this must be the case if the movement isnot to disintegrate.

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

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


developing political body—the “state” in therational case—vassals, benefice-holders, officialsor appointed party officials (instead of voluntaryparty workers and functionaries) are differentiatedfrom the “tax payers.”. . .

It follows that, in the course of routinization,the charismatically ruled organization is largelytransformed into one of the everyday authorities,the patrimonial form, especially in its estate-type or bureaucratic variant. Its original pecu-liarities are apt to be retained in the charismaticstatus honor acquired by heredity or office-holding. This applies to all who participate inthe appropriation, the chief himself and the

members of his staff. It is thus a matter of thetype of prestige enjoyed by ruling groups. Ahereditary monarch by “divine right” is not asimple patrimonial chief, patriarch, or sheik; avassal is not a mere household retainer or offi-cial. Further details must be deferred to theanalysis of status groups.

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

Introduction to “Bureaucracy”

In this essay, Weber defines the “ideal type” of bureaucracy, outlining its unique and mostsignificant features. The salience of Weber’s description lies in the fact that bureaucracieshave become the dominant form of social organization in modern society. Indeed, bureau-cracies are indispensable to modern life. Without them, a multitude of necessary tasks couldnot be performed with the degree of efficiency required for serving large numbers of indi-viduals. For instance, strong and effective armies could not be maintained, the mass pro-duction of goods and their sale would slow to a trickle, the thousands of miles of publicroadways could not be paved, hospitals could not treat the millions of patients in need ofcare, and establishing a university capable of educating 20,000 students would be impossi-ble. Of course, all of these tasks and countless others are themselves dependent on a bureau-cratic organization capable of collecting tax dollars from millions of people.

Despite whatever failings particular bureaucracies may exhibit, the form of organizationis as essential to modern life as the air we breathe. In accounting for the ascendancy ofbureaucracies, Weber is clear:

The decisive reason for the advance of bureaucratic organization has also been itspurely technical superiority over any other form of organization. . . . Precision, speed,unambiguity, knowledge of the files, continuity, discretion, unity, strict subordination,reduction of friction and of material and personal costs—these are raised to the opti-mum point in the strictly bureaucratic administration. . . . As compared with all[other] forms of administration, trained bureaucracy is superior on all these points.(Weber 1925d/1978:973, emphasis in the original)

A number of features ensure the technical superiority of bureaucracies. First, authority ishierarchically structured, making for a clear chain of command. Second, selection of per-sonnel is competitive and based on demonstrated merit. This reduces the likelihood ofincompetence that can result from appointing officials through nepotism or by virtue of tra-dition. Third, a specialized division of labor allows for the more efficient completion ofassigned tasks. Fourth, bureaucracies are governed by formal, impersonal rules that regulateall facets of the organization. As a result, predictability of action and the strategic planningthat it makes possible are better guaranteed.

�

Max Weber � 211

As the epitome of the process of rationalization, however, Weber by no means embracedunequivocally the administrative benefits provided by bureaucracies. While in importantrespects, bureaucracies are dependent on the development of mass democracy for theirfullest expression, they nevertheless create new elite groups of experts and technocrats.Moreover, he contended that their formal rules and procedures led to the loss of individualfreedom.1 For those working in bureaucracies (and countless do), Weber saw the individual“chained to his activity in his entire economic and ideological existence” (Weber1925d/1978:988). The bureaucrat adopts as his own the detached, objective attitudes onwhich the efficiency and predictability of bureaucracies depend. Operating “‘[w]ithoutregard for persons . . . [b]ureaucracy develops the more perfectly, the more it is ‘dehuman-ized,’ the more completely it succeeds in eliminating from official business love, hatred, andall purely personal, irrational, and emotional elements which escape calculation”(ibid.:975). Whether as an employee or as a client, who among us has not been confrontedwith the faceless impersonality of a bureaucracy immune to the “special circumstances”that, after all, make up the very essence of our individuality?

1As we noted earlier, Weber’s analysis of bureaucratic organizations offers an important critique ofMarx’s perspective. While Marx argued that capitalism is the source of alienation in modern society,Weber saw the source lying in bureaucracies and the rational procedures they embody. Additionally, inrecognizing that bureaucracies create elite groups of technocrats who pursue their own professionalinterests, Weber also suggested that such organizational leaders (i.e., state officials) do not necessar-ily advance the interests of a ruling capitalist class. A related theme can likewise be found in “Class,Status, Party.”

Photo 4.2 Look Familiar? Waiting in Line at a University Student Services Building

CHARACTERISTICS OFMODERN BUREAUCRACY

Modern officialdom functions in the followingmanner:I. There is the principle of official jurisdic-

tional areas, which are generally ordered byrules, that is, by laws or administrative regula-tions. This means:

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

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

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

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

ruler executes the most important measuresthrough personal trustees, table-companions, orcourt-servants. Their commissions and powersare not precisely delimited and are temporarilycalled into being for each case.II. The principles of office hierarchy and of

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

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

based upon written documents (the “files”),which are preserved in their original or draftform, and upon a staff of subaltern officials andscribes of all sorts. The body of officials work-ing in an agency along with the respective appa-ratus of material implements and the filesmakes up a bureau (in private enterprises oftencalled the “counting house,” Kontor).In principle, the modern organization of

the civil service separates the bureau from the


From “Bureaucracy” (1925)

Max Weber

SOURCE: Excerpts from Max Weber’s Economy and Society, 2 vols. Translated and edited by Guenther Rothand Claus Wittich. Copyright © 1978 the Regents of the University of California. Published by the Universityof California Press.

private domicile of the official and, in general,segregates official activity from the sphere ofprivate life. Public monies and equipment aredivorced from the private property of the official.This condition is everywhere the product of along development. Nowadays, it is found in pub-lic as well as in private enterprises; in the latter,the principle extends even to the entrepreneur atthe top. In principle, the Kontor (office) is sep-arated from the household, business from pri-vate correspondence, and business assets fromprivate wealth. The more consistently the mod-ern type of business management has been car-ried through, the more are these separations thecase. The beginnings of this process are to befound as early as the Middle Ages.It is the peculiarity of the modern entrepre-

neur that he conducts himself as the “first offi-cial” of his enterprise, in the very same way inwhich the ruler of a specifically modern bureau-cratic state [Frederick II of Prussia] spoke ofhimself as “the first servant” of the state. Theidea that the bureau activities of the state areintrinsically different in character from the man-agement of private offices is a continentalEuropean notion and, by way of contrast, istotally foreign to the American way.IV. Office management, at least all special-

ized office management—and such manage-ment is distinctly modern—usually presupposesthorough training in a field of specialization.This, too, holds increasingly for the modernexecutive and employee of a private enterprise,just as it does for the state officials.V.When the office is fully developed, official

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

general rules, which are more or less stable,more or less exhaustive, and which can belearned. Knowledge of these rules represents aspecial technical expertise which the officials

possess. It involves jurisprudence, administrativeor business management.The reduction of modern office management

to rules is deeply embedded in its very nature.The theory of modern public administration, forinstance, assumes that the authority to order cer-tain matters by decree—which has been legallygranted to an agency—does not entitle theagency to regulate the matter by individual com-mands given for each case, but only to regulatethe matter abstractly. This stands in extremecontrast to the regulation of all relationshipsthrough individual privileges and bestowals offavor, which, as we shall see, is absolutely dom-inant in patrimonialism, at least in so far as suchrelationships are not fixed by sacred tradition.

THE POSITION OF THE OFFICIAL WITHIN

AND OUTSIDE OF BUREAUCRACY

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

I. Office Holding as a Vocation

That the office is a “vocation” (Beruf) findsexpression, first, in the requirement of a pre-scribed course of training, which demands theentire working capacity for a long period of time,and in generally prescribed special examinationsas prerequisites of employment. Furthermore, itfinds expression in that the position of the offi-cial is in the nature of a “duty” (Pflicht). Thisdetermines the character of his relations in thefollowing manner: Legally and actually, officeholding is not considered ownership of a sourceof income, to be exploited for rents or emolu-ments in exchange for the rendering of certainservices, as was normally the case during theMiddle Ages and frequently up to the thresholdof recent times, nor is office holding considereda common exchange of services, as in the case offree employment contracts. Rather, entrance intoan office, including one in the private economy,is considered an acceptance of a specific duty offealty to the purpose of the office (Amtstreue) inreturn for the grant of a secure existence. It isdecisive for the modern loyalty to an office that,

Max Weber � 213


in the pure type, it does not establish a relation-ship to a person, like the vassal’s or disciple’sfaith under feudal or patrimonial authority, butrather is devoted to impersonal and functionalpurposes. These purposes, of course, frequentlygain an ideological halo from cultural values,such as state, church, community, party or enter-prise, which appear as surrogates for a this-worldly or other-worldly personal master andwhich are embodied by a given group.The political official—at least in the fully

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

II. The Social Position of the Official

A. Social esteem and status convention.Whether he is in a private office or a publicbureau, the modern official, too, always strivesfor and usually attains a distinctly elevatedsocial esteem vis-à-vis the governed. His socialposition is protected by prescription about rankorder and, for the political official, by specialprohibitions of the criminal code against“insults to the office” and “contempt” of stateand church authorities.The social position of the official is normally

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

Sometimes the status factor is explicitlyacknowledged; for example, in the prescriptionthat the acceptance of an aspirant to an officecareer depends upon the consent (“election”) bythe members of the official body. . . .Usually the social esteem of the officials is

especially low where the demand for expertadministration and the hold of status conven-tions are weak. This is often the case in new set-tlements by virtue of the great economicopportunities and the great instability of theirsocial stratification: witness the United States.

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

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

Max Weber � 215

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

trained experts is considerable, and the party faith-ful have to take into account an intellectuallydeveloped, educated, and free “public opinion,”the use of unqualified officials redounds uponthe party in power at the next election. Naturally,this is more likely to happen when the officialsare appointed by the chief. The demand for atrained administration now exists in the UnitedStates, but wherever, as in the large cities,immigrant votes are “corralled,” there is, ofcourse, no effective public opinion. Therefore,popular election not only of the administrativechief but also of his subordinate officialsusually endangers, at least in very largeadministrative bodies which are difficult tosupervise, the expert qualification of theofficials as well as the precise functioning ofthe bureaucratic mechanism, besides weaken-ing the dependence of the officials upon thehierarchy. The superior qualification andintegrity of Federal judges appointed by thepresident, as over and against elected judges, inthe United States is well known, although bothtypes of officials are selected primarily in termsof party considerations. The great changes inAmerican metropolitan administrationsdemanded by reformers have been effectedessentially by elected mayors working with anapparatus of officials who were appointed bythem. These reforms have thus come about in a“caesarist” fashion. Viewed technically, as anorganized form of domination, the efficiency of“caesarism,” which often grows out of democ-racy, rests in general upon the position of the“caesar” as a free trustee of the masses (of thearmy or of the citizenry), who is unfettered bytradition. The “caesar” is thus the unrestrained

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

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

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

E. Fixed career lines and status rigidity. Theofficial is set for a “career” within the hierar-chical order of the public service. He expects tomove from the lower, less important and less


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

THE TECHNICAL SUPERIORITY OF

BUREAUCRATIC ORGANIZATION OVERADMINISTRATION BY NOTABLES

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

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

mum possibility for carrying through the prin-ciple of specializing administrative functionsaccording to purely objective considerations.Individual performances are allocated to func-tionaries who have specialized training and whoby constant practice increase their expertise.“Objective” discharge of business primarilymeans a discharge of business according to cal-culable rules and “without regard for persons.”“Without regard for persons,” however, is also

the watchword of the market and, in general, ofall pursuits of naked economic interests.Consistent bureaucratic domination means theleveling of “status honor.” Hence, if the principleof the free market is not at the same timerestricted, it means the universal domination ofthe “class situation.” That this consequence ofbureaucratic domination has not set in every-where proportional to the extent of bureaucrati-zation is due to the differences between possibleprinciples by which polities may supply theirrequirements. However, the second elementmentioned, calculable rules, is the most important

Max Weber � 217

one for modern bureaucracy. The peculiarity ofmodern culture, and specifically of its technicaland economic basis, demands this very “calcula-bility” of results. When fully developed, bureau-cracy also stands, in a specific sense, under theprinciple of sine ira ac studio. Bureaucracy developsthe more perfectly, the more it is “dehumanized,”the more completely it succeeds in eliminatingfrom official business love, hatred, and all purelypersonal, irrational, and emotional elementswhich escape calculation. This is appraised as itsspecial virtue by capitalism.The more complicated and specialized mod-

ern culture becomes, the more its external sup-porting apparatus demands the personallydetached and strictly objective expert, in lieuof the lord of older social structures who wasmoved by personal sympathy and favor, bygrace and gratitude. Bureaucracy offers theattitudes demanded by the external apparatusof modern culture in the most favorable combi-nation. In particular, only bureaucracy hasestablished the foundation for the administra-tion of a rational law conceptually systematizedon the basis of “statutes,” such as the laterRoman Empire first created with a high degreeof technical perfection. During the MiddleAges, the reception of this [Roman] law coin-cided with the bureaucratization of legaladministration: The advance of the rationallytrained expert displaced the old trial procedurewhich was bound to tradition or to irrationalpresuppositions. . . .

THE LEVELING OF SOCIAL DIFFERENCES

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

A. Administrative Democratization

Bureaucratic organization has usually comeinto power on the basis of a leveling of eco-nomic and social differences. This leveling hasbeen at least relative, and has concerned the

significance of social and economic differencesfor the assumption of administrative functions.Bureaucracy inevitably accompanies modern

mass democracy, in contrast to the democraticself-government of small homogeneous units.This results from its characteristic principle: theabstract regularity of the exercise of authority,which is a result of the demand for “equalitybefore the law” in the personal and functionalsense—hence, of the horror of “privilege,” andthe principled rejection of doing business “fromcase to case.” Such regularity also follows fromthe social pre-conditions of its origin. Any non-bureaucratic administration of a large socialstructure rests in some way upon the fact thatexisting social, material, or honorific prefer-ences and ranks are connected with administra-tive functions and duties. This usually means thatan economic or a social exploitation of position,which every sort of administrative activity pro-vides to its bearers, is the compensation for theassumption of administrative functions.Bureaucratization and democratization within

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

B. Mass Parties and the BureaucraticConsequences of Democratization

This applies not only to the state. For it is noaccident that in their own organizations thedemocratic mass parties have completely bro-ken with traditional rule by notables basedupon personal relationships and personalesteem. Such personal structures still persist


among many old conservative as well as oldliberal parties, but democratic mass parties arebureaucratically organized under the leader-ship of party officials, professional party andtrade union secretaries, etc. In Germany, forinstance, this has happened in the SocialDemocratic party and in the agrarian mass-movement; in England earliest in the caucusdemocracy of Gladstone and Chamberlainwhich spread from Birmingham in the 1870’s.In the United States, both parties sinceJackson’s administration have developedbureaucratically. In France, however, attemptsto organize disciplined political parties on thebasis of an election system that would compelbureaucratic organization have repeatedlyfailed. The resistance of local circles of nota-bles against the otherwise unavoidable bureau-cratization of the parties, which wouldencompass the entire country and break theirinfluence, could not be overcome. Everyadvance of simple election techniques based onnumbers alone as, for instance, the system ofproportional representation, means a strict andinter-local bureaucratic organization of theparties and therewith an increasing dominationof party bureaucracy and discipline, as well asthe elimination of the local circles of nota-bles—at least this holds for large states.The progress of bureaucratization within the

state administration itself is a phenomenonparalleling the development of democracy, asis quite obvious in France, North America, andnow in England. Of course, one must alwaysremember that the term “democratization” canbe misleading. The demos, itself, in the senseof a shapeless mass, never “governs” largerassociations, but rather is governed. Whatchanges is only the way in which the executiveleaders are selected and the measure of influ-ence which the demos, or better, which socialcircles from its midst are able to exert upon thecontent and the direction of administrativeactivities by means of “public opinion.”“Democratization,” in the sense here intended,does not necessarily mean an increasinglyactive share of the subjects in government. Thismay be a result of democratization, but it is notnecessarily the case.

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

THE OBJECTIVE AND SUBJECTIVE BASESOF BUREAUCRATIC PERPETUITY

Once fully established, bureaucracy is amongthose social structures which are the hardestto destroy. Bureaucracy is the means of trans-forming social action into rationally orga-nized action. Therefore, as an instrument ofrationally organizing authority relations,bureaucracy was and is a power instrument ofthe first order for one who controls thebureaucratic apparatus. Under otherwiseequal conditions, rationally organized anddirected action (Gesellschaftshandeln) issuperior to every kind of collective behavior(Massenhandeln) and also social action (Gemein-schaftshandeln) opposing it. Where administra-tion has been completely bureaucratized, the

Max Weber � 219

resulting system of domination is practicallyindestructible.The individual bureaucrat cannot squirm out

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

with or replace the bureaucratic apparatus onceit exists, for it rests upon expert training, a func-tional specialization of work, and an attitude seton habitual virtuosity in the mastery of singleyet methodically integrated functions. If theapparatus stops working, or if its work is inter-rupted by force, chaos results, which it is diffi-cult to master by improvised replacements fromamong the governed. This holds for publicadministration as well as for private economicmanagement. Increasingly the material fate ofthe masses depends upon the continuous andcorrect functioning of the ever more bureau-cratic organizations of private capitalism, andthe idea of eliminating them becomes more andmore utopian.Increasingly, all order in public and private

organizations is dependent on the system offiles and the discipline of officialdom, thatmeans, its habit of painstaking obedience withinits wonted sphere of action. The latter is themore decisive element, however important inpractice the files are. The naive idea ofBakuninism of destroying the basis of “acquiredrights” together with “domination” by destroy-ing the public documents overlooks that the set-tled orientation of man for observing theaccustomed rules and regulations will survive

independently of the documents. Every reorga-nization of defeated or scattered army units, aswell as every restoration of an administrativeorder destroyed by revolts, panics, or other cata-strophes, is effected by an appeal to this condi-tioned orientation, bred both in the officials andin the subjects, of obedient adjustment to such[social and political] orders. If the appeal issuccessful it brings, as it were, the disturbedmechanism to “snap into gear” again.The objective indispensability of the once-

existing apparatus, in connection with its pecu-liarly “impersonal” character, means that themechanism—in contrast to the feudal orderbased upon personal loyalty—is easily made towork for anybody who knows how to gain con-trol over it. A rationally ordered officialdom.continues to function smoothly after theenemy has occupied the territory; he merelyneeds to change the top officials. It continuesto operate because it is to the vital interest ofeveryone concerned, including above all theenemy. After Bismarck had, during the longcourse of his years in power, brought his min-isterial colleagues into unconditional bureau-cratic dependence by eliminating allindependent statesmen, he saw to his surprisethat upon his resignation they continued toadminister their offices unconcernedly andundismayedly, as if it had not been the inge-nious lord and very creator of these tools whohad left, but merely some individual figure inthe bureaucratic machine which had beenexchanged for some other figure. In spite of allthe changes of masters in France since the timeof the First Empire, the power apparatusremained essentially the same.Such an apparatus makes “revolution,” in

the sense of the forceful creation of entirelynew formations of authority, more and moreimpossible—technically, because of its controlover the modern means of communication(telegraph etc.), and also because of itsincreasingly rationalized inner structure. Theplace of “revolutions” is under this processtaken by coups d’état, as again France demon-strates in the classical manner since all suc-cessful transformations there have been of thisnature. . . .


1. How can the rise of “new age” move-ments, extreme sports, religious fundamen-talisms, and spiritual healers be explained inlight of Weber’s discussion of rationalizationand the “disenchantment of the world”?

2. What are some of the essential differ-ences between Weber’s view of religion andDurkheim’s? Which view better explains therole of religion in contemporary life?

3. In developing his ideal type of bureau-cracy, Weber highlights the rational aspects ofthis organizational form. In what ways mightbureaucracies exhibit “irrational” or ineffi-cient features? How have bureaucracies“dehumanized” social life, transformingmodernity into an iron cage?

4. Given Weber’s three types of legitimatedomination, the political system in the UnitedStates is best characterized as based on legal

authority. What elements of the other types ofauthority can, nevertheless, still be found?How might political controversies result fromthe “illegitimate mixing” of different types ofauthority? Provide examples.

5. Following Weber’s argument in theProtestant Ethic and Spirit of Capitalism, whatrole did the “calling” and outward signs ofgrace play in the development of capitalism?When capitalism was firmly established, whateffect did it have on the religiously based ideas?

6. In what way(s) is Weber’s analysis ofclass, status, and party different from Marx’sunderstanding of class and social stratifica-tion? What are the implications of the differ-ence(s) for designating the proletariat arevolutionary force for social change and forunderstanding the exercise of power in theUnited States?

Discussion Questions

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4 MAX W (1864–1920) - SAGE Publications · In1893,attheageof29,WebermarriedMarianneSchnitger,adistantcousin,andfinally left his childhood home. Today, Marianne Weber is recognized