Max Weber's political ideas in the perspective of our time 9780870230097, 0870230093

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Max Weber's pcliticai

ideas

in

the perspective

ofourtime

Karl Loewenstein

BOSTON PUBLIC LIBRARY

N Library,

Max Weber s

Political Ideas

in the Perspective

of Our Time

German Information Center

Max Weber

Max

Weber's Political Ideas in the Perspective

of Our Time

by Karl Loewenstein Translated from the by Richard

German

and Clara Winston

The University of Massachusetts

Press

Copyright

©

1965 Athenaum Verlag GmbH., Frankfurt

Copyright

©

am Main

1966 by The University of Massachusetts Press

Library of Congress Catalog Card

Number 66-16541

Printed in the United States of America

Second Printing 1972

Gratefully remembering

Heidelberg, as

when

it

was

the author was young

Foreword

In the decades since

Max

have mined the rich achievements

—

Weber's death in 1920, many scholars deposits of his oeuvre. His most significant

the theory of social and economic organization,

the sociology of religion and of law, the methodology of philos-

ophy and the humanities

Nor

has the part

—have

Max Weber

received the attention they merit.

played in

the last years of his life been overlooked.

German politics during One aspect of his work,

however, seems to have been given somewhat This

is

the significant contribution which he

tual leader to

and

German

policy of his day

just after the First

stitution, his real ideas

World War. His

an

intellec-

on the

state

on

and con-

practice of politics.

dismissed these works as no more

than journalistic by-products of his

be sure, like everything he did, but history,

as

due.

extensive treatises

on the theory and

Weber may have

made

its

and of the future during

these issues contained his political thinking

Students of

than

less

which therefore has been

mind still

—

of high quality, to

journalism outraced by

rightly consigned to oblivion.

Possibly this approach explains the one glaring gap in the general

appreciation of his work.

In these pages

Max Weber Germany's

I

have undertaken to

rectify this situation.

For

viewed what were then the burning problems of

political reconstruction in the context of political or-

ganization throughout the Western world. In so doing he gave the problems a significance that transcended the topical occasion

by

far.

The problems

of

Germany provided Weber,

as a thinker

FOREWORD

Xll

and a system-builder, with a welcome opportunity

Germans

that their

problems of

own

problems

political

political organization

reflected

to

show

the

fundamental

common to the whole Western German politics of the

world. Consequently, what he wrote on

day constituted a contribution to topical as ever. It seems a

and in

critically

political theory,

and remains

as

rewarding task to examine his ideas

context, all the

more

so since apparently

no one

has yet undertaken such a study. I

have attempted to interpret

their

own

him

at the

terms, as

it

Max

were; that

is

time he expounded them.

speak for himself. Even were

I

more

Weber's

political ideas

on

to say, as they appeared to

therefore let

I

Max Weber

familiar with the subsequent

on Max Weber than I am, since I have not lived in Gerfor more than thirty years, I would prefer to omit any consideration of such secondary materials and keep the learned apparatus of footnotes to a minimum. A pure and simple account of Max Weber's political and conliterature

many

stitutional theories as of the

yses

second decade of

this century

be of limited historical interest today. His

at best

become of

real significance to us if

we

would

political anal-

pose them against the

developments that have changed the face of the world in the

in-

Some of these developments have deepened the Weber drew, others have blurred them. In pointing out the we have traveled in the interval, my discussion will, I hope,

terceding years. lines

road

help clarify the governmental and constitutional problems of our

own

more detail I must refer the reader to my book, Power and the Governmental Process (Chicago, 1957;

day. For

Political

Phoenix Paperback, 1965), which

treats the

contemporary scene

in a fuller context.

Some June series

9,

sections of this essay are based

on

a lecture

I

delivered

on

1964, at the University of Munich as part of a lecture

celebrating the one hundredth anniversary of Weber's

birth.

Karl Loewenstein

3

Contents

Foreword I.

xi

Remarks on Method i.

Max

i

Weber's Typology of Patterns of Government

in Historical Perspective

II.

III.

i

2.

Max Weber

3.

The Twentieth-Century Revolution

as a Political Scientist

Max Weber's View

4 in Political

of the Political Future of

Attitude toward

2.

Max Weber

3.

German Federalism

13

of Political Reality after

Over- all View

2. 3.

The The

4.

Parliamentarism as the Generating Force

5.

The

6.

The Techniques

7.

Political Parties

World War

23 27

Position of the Bureaucracy in

Modern

Position of the Second

Society

30

40

Chamber

in the Parliamentary System

48

of Direct Democracy

The Plebiscitary Leader The Caesaristic Leader The Charismatic Leader The Typology of Legitimate Authority Personal Recollections of

$2

56

IV. Plebiscitary Mass Democracy and Caesarism

Epilogue.

I

23

Franchise

for Political Leadership

3.

15

18

1.

4.

7 1

and the Weimar Constitution

Max Weber's View

2.

Germany

Monarchy

1.

1.

Technique

Max Weber

63 63 68

74 88 91

I.

1.

Max

Remarks on Method

Weber's Typology of Patterns of Government

in Historical Perspective

Although limited in scope, the frame of reference of our undertaking

is

the history of ideas.

validity, in the light

political

I

shall attempt to appraise the

of our present experience with contemporary

forms and procedures, of

Max

Weber's ideas on the

organization of the political process and the technique of statecraft.

This

term

latter

institutions,

is

Max

Weber's own. 1

It

denotes

all

the

procedures and modes of conduct associated with

the operations of government in the incipient mass society of

Max

Weber's day,

as well as in the full-blown technological

mass society of today.

It

focuses attention especially

upon those

forms of organization that have developed in the Western world, since

it

was with these

ideas that

Max Weber

was prin-

cipally concerned.

What we

are attempting in the present essay, then,

is

both a

study of foresight and a study in retrospect. For the

first,

we

must reconstruct the background of experience and

state

of

knowledge against which

Max Weber

projected his thoughts

about the future shape of Western state society. In retrospect, on the other hand,

we

shall

have to measure

Max

Weber's views

1 See, for example, Max Weber, Gesammelte politische Schriften (Tubingen: Mohr, 1958) (hereafter cited as Pol. Scbr.), pp. 296 ff.

REMARKS ON METHOD

2

against the

new ways

of manipulating the machinery of the state

that have developed during the past half-century.

Methodologically, our project

some ways

parallel to cer-

de Tocqueville which are attracting con-

tain studies of Alexis

siderable interest nowadays.

mass democracy was only in through the United

in

is

States.

More than

a century ago,

when

its

infancy, de Tocqueville traveled

The

recent studies seek to evaluate de

Tocqueville, not only as a keen-eyed tourist, but as a prophet

with a well-nigh uncanny sense of the shape of things to come in America's present-day democratic society.

Such a comparison between de Tocqueville and does

all

honor

the Frenchman systematizer,

was

to the former.

As

really not in the

is

Max Weber

a conscious empiricist, however,

whose knowledge of

truly universal. In this respect

same

class

political

with the

and

Max Weber

German

social matters

towers over the

leading sociologists and social psychologists of the nineteenth

and twentieth centuries

—such men

as

Lorenz von

Stein,

Auguste

Comte, Graham Wallas, Gaetano Mosca, and Vilfredo Pareto. In originality and wealth of ideas, only Jacob Burckhardt might possibly be mentioned in the

same breath with Weber. But

Burckhardt's field of vision began and ended with Europe; he

equated the history

Europe with

of

Weber's researches, on the

"world history."

Max

contrary, took in the historical tides

of the entire globe.

Both in tory,

his scope

Max Weber

and

whose Esprit des Lois political

—

first

modern

truly age.

comprehensive work of

But in one important

French magistrate cannot equal the retired

professor; that

which remains ours

the

is

sociology in the

aspect, the retired

German

his insight into the operations of his-

properly belongs in the class of Montesquieu,

to this

is,

in the latter' s historical knowledge,

—and indeed

day

especially in this day of

almost inconceivable. Along with that vast knowledge,

moreover,

Weber had

the gift of organizing the results of his re-

searches into generally relevant categories or types, and thereby

TYPOLOGY OF PATTERNS OF GOVERNMENT rendering

it

For Weber was the

practically useful.

last

polyhistor

to date: a universal scholar of Aristotelian proportions. as

much

at

home

New

Egypt of the

in the

Kingdom,

3

He

was

in republi-

can Rome, in ancient Judaism, in medieval feudalism, and in the Oriental cultures of India and China as he was in the Ger-

many, England, America, France, and Russia of

his

own

day.

Because he systematized his historical insights within a frame-

work of

"ideal types," he

was

equipped than anyone

also better

phenomena of the

else to classify the social

past.

For their be-

wildering variety he found permanently meaningful categories.

He

was

also able to

his universal scientific

fit

the experiences of his

framework and could,

predictions of future developments

he regarded

his general system. If

own

time into

therefore, venture to

on the

his system as

make

basis

beyond

of

chal-

was by no means a piece of cranky scholarrogance. Rather, his typology was based on so vast a body

lenge, his conviction arly

of learning, so great a mass of data, that he could not help con-

And

indeed one of his basic con-

sidering

it

clusions

(startling to his contemporaries,

universally valid.

for granted)

was

—and —

concerns throughout

this,

and nowadays taken was we may add, one of his primary

"In the simple questions of the technique

of arriving at policy decisions, the mass state does not permit

unlimited choice. There are only a restricted number of forms." 2

Drawing upon to be

historical experience,

an all-inclusive

list

tion or "types of governance." parallels for the present

future.

he compiled what he

felt

of possible forms of political organiza-

From

these categories he derived

and perhaps even conclusions about the

Our purpose now,

in the very spirit of

verse the process and to examine in retrospect

Weber,

is

to re-

how good Weber's

prognoses were.

A ville

reservation

is

in order.

Max Weber,

like Alexis

de Tocque-

before him, had not thought of assuming the mantle of the

2 Pol. Schr., pp.

296

ff.

REMARKS ON METHOD

4

prophet. In the final analysis piricist

—with the added

was able

Weber was

also

an observing em-

virtue that, unlike the Frenchman,

he

to fuse his historical analysis into a typological system.

His approach was non-valuational; his observations were never intended to lead to a

chiliastic salvationism in

Toynbee, nor to a pessimistic vision of

wald Spengler. Before we begin our

make

fairness,

the vein of Arnold

cyclical decline a la

retrospect,

we

must, in

Osall

the point that in Weber's day there was not even

the faintest glimmering of those revolutionary upheavals which the machinery of state society.

Not even

would undergo

could have foreseen those. to try to give

in the technological mass

the most imaginative science fiction novelist It is

therefore neither just nor sensible

Weber good or bad marks for bull's-eyes or misses The value of our retrospect lies rather in showing

on

this issue.

to

what extent the prognoses he derived from

his historical

typology have been borne out in our time. In undertaking this

how

task,

we

Max

Weber's day in rationalizing the

shall be able to

mechanisms.

To

Max

far

we have come

political process

arrive at such a picture

added reward for our

2.

measure

since

and

its

would represent an

labors.

Weber as a

Political Scientist

In fairness to Weber, and in keeping with our aims,

we must

begin by examining the special conditions of the age in which

Max Weber formed chiefly

his

on

his

political

views.

his political writings dealing

Germany. 3 They were

all, let

Our

study

is

based

with current events in

us not forget, livres d' occasion,

3

These are collected in Pol. Schr. and include principally (in chrono"Wahlrecht und Demokratie in Deutschland" (1917), pp. 133 ff.; "Parliament und Regierung im neugeordneten Deutschland" (1918), pp. 294 ff.; "Deutschlands kiinftige Staatsform" (1918), pp. 436 ff.; and that still exemplary essay, "Politik als Beruf," pp. 439 ff. Johannes Winckelmann, who is generally credited with doing so much logical order):

for

Weber

studies, has

attempted to assemble the apposite material in

MAX WEBER AS A POLITICAL SCIENTIST though of major First

caliber.

World War

public.

5

All were written toward the end of the

or in the chaotic

They were produced,

first

Weimar Retime when the

year of the

in other words, at a

Imperial Reich was on the verge of collapse. Bismarck's deter-

mination to make Germany a Greater Prussia had imposed a

upon the country which proved to be all but unbearable, and one which the disaster of defeat had erased. On the other hand, Weber was also writing at a time when authority was heritage

generally discredited and the old attitudes of subservience were

being shattered. This meant that Germany was being offered a rare chance to turn over a

new

leaf in her history.

the opportunity to seek salvation in a rather than a

"German"

Staatsidee,

She now had

Western and European,

which Weber, for

his part,

Germany, he believed, should adopt the

persistently denounced.

well-tested political techniques of the practically advanced

ern world. This, however, was not to be until our the Bonn government succeeded Weimar and the Hitler regime

own

West-

era,

when

the unfortunate experiments of

—

a fact that

may

lend topical in-

terest to the present study. I

need not belabor the point that sociology

practiced

it

was the

scientia universalis within

as

Max Weber

which

all

other

branches of the humanities could lodge. Within that framework, studies in political rational politics

and constitutional law

as the infrastructure of

own Max Weber

were not undertaken for

only as a means to a sociological end.

their

sake, but

was,

it

is

& Kumblet, 1956). This collection governmental authority, under the title, "Die drei reinen Typen der legitimen Herrschaft" {Staatssoziologie, pp. 99 ff.). I have also referred upon occasion to the general material in Wirtschaft und Gesellschajt (4th ed., Tubingen: Mohr, 1956), here-

Staatssoziologie

(Berlin:

Duncker

also contains the typology of

after cited as

A

W.u.G.

Our study is no exercise attempted to interpret Max Weber in terms of his total context, in the "spirit" of his political writings, without citing chapter and verse in every single case for the opinions ascribed to him. in

cautionary avis au lecteur

"Weberology." That

is,

is

in order here.

we have

6

REMARKS ON METHOD

true, a

lawyer by training and, in addition, a favorite pupil of

the great

were

Mommsen.

Nevertheless, the professorships he held

in the field of political

law with the sovereign command of a

constitutional that field. 4

economy. Yet he could have taught

States, Russia,

and

addition to that depth. This

is all

at

—

German

Max

deep identification with the plight of his

to occupy himself

it

was

of his general sociological typology.

that

as a political publicist

in the nature of his thought that

with German

he judged his country's current

may have seemed

political science as such

Weber's basic approach

was Germanocentric. But he had

law nor

universities.

Inevitably, given his

fatherland,

—

some extent of France and Switzerland in of Germany was amazing in breadth and the more remarkable when we consider that at to

that time neither comparative

was taught

specialist in

His knowledge of the law of England, the United

It

history.

affairs as specific aspects

was from

To

this angle that

the casual observer

he was only taking his stand on the

it

politics

of the day. But the universal systematizer of political and social

phenomena was always looking over the commentator's shoulder. And from our present vantage point we see that the scholar in the long run eclipsed the politician. Therefore, his political com-

mentary holds

its

attraction

and

its

interest for us,

even where

it

has been outmoded by subsequent and especially by present-day realities.

Unlike the present-day popularizers of history in the guise of 4 See, e.g., his masterly analysis of the situation

and the consequences

that flowed from the noted and notorious Article

9,

Section 2 of the

Bismarck constitution of 1871 {Pol. Schr., pp. 330 ff., 408 ff.). The article prohibited concurrent membership in the Bundesrat and the Reichstag, thereby automatically excluding the Reich Chancellor and the leading Reich cabinet ministers from the Reich parliament. This one measure was tantamount to nullifying the principle of the parliamentary system, the only feasible form of democratic government for Germany. This stumbling block was only removed at the eleventh hour, by the constitutional amendment of October 28, 1918 (Reich sgesetzblatt, p. 1274).

REVOLUTION IN POLITICAL TECHNIQUE scholars,

Max Weber had

no

illusions about the fate of the true

scholar's work. In his deservedly

famous

Wis sens chaff

lecture,

als Beruf, 6

he comments, not resignedly but with a

nite pride:

"A work

of art that

is

certain defi-

a true consummation

never

is

surpassed, never becomes obsolete. Conversely, those of us

work

as scholars

know

that

what we have done is

meaning of

Every

poses to

new

questions,

work.

and

.

.

.

very purpose

its

become outmoded." Weber was a

scholar

to

indeed the

is

scientific is

who

will be obsolete

the fate and

in ten, twenty, or fifty years. This scientific

7

achievement

be surpassed and

and nothing

else;

he

never wanted to be an amateur magician. Although he happened

—

—

to be a genius,

who

foresee the

which the Pandora's box of the next half -century

ills

can blame him

as a scholar

for failing to

would loose upon the world?

3.

The Twentieth-Century Revolution

This, then,

and

politics

is

our problem:

how

in Political Technique

does the world of government

appear in the second third of the twentieth century,

when matched against the political ideas so brilliant an observer as Max Weber was able to conceive at the end of the First World War? Today it is as if we are living in another universe. In the nineteenth century, progress and reason were seen as comple-

mentary. Thanks to progress, rationality was coming

more

to be the ruling principle of

human

more and

conduct, especially in

the realm of politics. That century of optimism was

blown

sky-

high by the guns of August 191 4. The twentieth century may

deed have brought progress, nical

if

we

take the

word

to

mean

improvements in the externals of our standard of

But the

political process is

no longer guided by

in-

tech-

living.

reason. Instead of

being complementary, progress and reason have actually become antithetical.

5

tion

Rational motivation of community

life

Reprinted in Wissenschajtslehre (Tubingen: Mohr,

from

p. 634.

has given

1951). Quota-

REMARKS ON METHOD

8

way

mass emotionality, which even the rational individual can

to

rarely

and only imperfectly escape

the masses, and conformity has age.

Mankind has been

form of

society

—

for he too

is

a

member

subjected to the totalitarian state, a

permeated by coercion rather than by the princi-

ple of rational utility which guided the nineteenth-century

The

totalitarian state,

whatever ideology

fication, is the legalization

juring

up an

of

become the watchword of the

it

may assume

of illegal violence.

It

state.

for justi-

operates by con-

illusion of spontaneous emotional responses

on the

part of the masses, while in reality the masses have been forced into acquiescence by a host of crude as well as subtle techniques.

After the First

many

to

World War,

constitutional democracy 6

seemed

of the best minds the infallible key to a happier future

for the nations. But

its

seemingly promising springtime proved

to be only a fleeting Indian

summer. Today,

constitutional de-

mocracy has been forced on the defensive throughout the world.

To

put that fact in

Max

Weber's language: the

illegitimate gov-

ernance by violence of plebiscitary Caesarism has ceased to be a historical exception

and has become a common phenomenon.

This term denotes a pattern of rule in which a single individual,

power by the confidence of the emotionalized masses, assumes supreme command. In the past, government by estabcarried to

lished rule or by sacred tradition* predominated; only once in a

power on a wave of mass emotion. Caesarism, wearing the pseudo-legal mask of neo-presiden-

while would a dictator

Now

tialism, or else

come

rise to

appearing as naked military dictatorship, has be-

ubiquitous.

The dynamism

of multiparty systems, based on

free decisions, has been replaced by the coercive apparatus of the

one-party 6

state.

Radio and television

—

in

Max

Weber's day

still

For the terminology employed here, see generally Karl Loewenstein, Power and the Governmental Process (Chicago, 1957; Phoenix

Political

Paperback, 1965). * Weber's expressions are Herrschaft kraft Satzung and traditionale Herrschaft.

REVOLUTION IN POLITICAL TECHNIQUE hidden in the future along with atomic energy, supersonic planes,

and automation

—have made

propaganda and opinion-molding buggy. Both the

fascist

9 air-

the past's naive methods of

horse and

as antiquated as the

and the communist brands of

totalitari-

anism have imposed the coercive ideology of the

state party

the self-determination of the free individual.

When

upon

the state

assumes control over the means of production and distribution, that capitalistic free enterprise

which

Max Weber

regarded as "a

system necessarily dominating the economy, and through daily lives of

it

the

7

men," has become extinguished. Nowadays, more

than one-third of the world's population lives under such noncapitalistic regimes.

Another large segment of the human race

has to live under military dictatorships which either deck them-

few ideological ribbons or govern by simple brute force, with no pretense to any ideology. The constitutional state, then restricted to Western Europe and America, has been selves out with a

formally espoused in Asia and Africa but has not really struck root there.

And

even in the West, the

social goal has ceased to

be

the individual's free integration into his community. Rather, political reality

assures

vious

its

is

shaped by an all-embracing welfare

citizens a degree of

expectations

state that

economic security beyond

but concomitantly

regiments

all

pre-

and devours

them. In retrospect, the First

appears but the prelude

and even more war has been followed by an unprecedented and perhaps,

terrible conflict. Total exhaustion in

to a second total

World War

in the long run, deceptive general prosperity, at least for the

nations of the West. In the course of this universal rise in living standards, something has quietly developed that has not,

amid

the hurly-burly of current events, received anything like the un-

derstanding of 7

Max Pol

it

deserves.

The implacably

contradictory ideologies

Weber's day have been defused, so Scbr., p. 242.

to speak.

They have

REMARKS ON METHOD

10

given way to a universal ideology to which the masses in

all

na-

tions are attached with blind devotion: the craving for a better

standard of living.

No

matter whether a country

is

organized on

the basis of liberal capitalism, socialism, totalitarian or fascism,

ment of

On

its

government defines

better material life for

this score,

its

its

supreme aim

communism

as the achieve-

people.

Max Weber was

and more ahead

a generation

of his time. For he was completely indifferent to the standard ideologies of his day,

—

and socialism ing

made

which were principally

totalitarian

communism and

When

their appearances.

liberal capitalism

fascism not yet hav-

he called for

"socialization,"

he meant a technical improvement of the machinery of socialism

was

no sense an absolute

in

value. In a

by an inexorable bureaucratization, ideologies shaping the conduct of public and private smallest consequence to him.

ward the various tive attitudes

ment,

8

state;

world gripped

as philosophies

life

seemed of the

In taking this indifferent view to-

ideologies, in regarding

them

as

wholly

rela-

toward society conditioned by time and environ-

Weber was

leaping over half a century and setting both

feet squarely in our

own

time. For anyone at all keen at reading

the signs of our times must recognize that the ideological fronts

dividing the world have become largely effaced. Whatever their labels, all ideologies of the present

of

how and

at

day come

what pace the standard of

be improved. The dispute in both camps is

coherent nowadays

—

tion, or a

long since ceased to be

8 It is significant that

in his use of the ,

neither of the

The

word "ideologues"

means

two

of achiev-

which even in the

free, or total socializa-

mean between

Max Weber nowhere

coherent philosophical systems.

passim )

Is free enterprise,

system that finds some

to questions

living of the masses can

—and

rages solely around the

ing the universal ideology. liberal states has

down

the public and

speaks of "ideologies" as

nearest he comes to the matter (e.g., Pol. Schr.,

which he obviously equates with

intellectuals.

is

pp. 55, 355, and

REVOLUTION IN POLITICAL TECHNIQUE private sectors of the in view?

The

That

is

economy

II

best suited to accomplish the

end

the overriding question.

may

altered position of the individual in society

well be

linked with this leveling of ideologies. For along with the withering of the ideologies has gone a general weakening of the idealism that sustained and fructified them.

The

individual

is

concerned solely with securing the best place for himself and his family in a community which he hopes will remain

everyone to

is

reform society

as a

class struggle, too, cal battlefield

The

whole,

has been

let

left

Since

static.

no need

better off than before, the individual feels

alone to revolutionize

it.

The

behind on the deserted ideologi-

of our grandfathers,

Max

Weber's contemporaries.

idealism that seeks to throw off the burden of historical in-

justice

may

still

among underdeveloped

here and there,

exist,

peoples or socially underprivileged groups as one of the aftereffects

of colonial rule; but

West and

it

no longer prevails

in the not quite satiated but by

now

in the satiated

far

from hungry

state

have had an-

East.

Finally, general prosperity

other important

effect.

and the welfare

To Max Weber and

his time, the highest

virtue of a citizen in a democratic state-society vidual's concern with his

own

polls

is

not even resignation.

when

told to, but

is

a lethargy that in

The masses just as

sign of this political apathy

political action

Max Weber is

many

obediently go to the

on the whole they leave

to the professional politicians,

One outward

indi-

government. But that concern has

been largely blunted; instead, there places

was the

foresaw. 9

the decrease in regis-

tered party members, observable in all countries. There

is

noth-

ing surprising about the trend, for the generation that followed

Weber's went through too much in the way of inflation and devaluation, economic insecurity, revolution and war. It

Max

9 See Pol. Schr., passim, especially pp. 377 the core of "Politik als Beruf," pp. 509 ff.

ff.;

this subject also

forms

REMARKS ON METHOD

12

simply lacks the fiber to subordinate personal well-being to the general welfare.

One might go on and on cal goals

Max

and

listing the radical

Weber's day. Even such a master of

Weber realities

we

politi-

historical typology as

could not possibly have foreseen them

ing pages

changes in

in political techniques that have taken place since

shall attempt to

show how

all.

In the follow-

close to present-day

he nevertheless came in many of his predictions.

Max

II.

Weber's View of

the Political Future

of Germany

It is

impossible to neatly separate

Germany's

political future

from

Max

Weber's prognosis for

his general predictions.

of the problems posed by the defeat of

broader

Since, however,

democratic,

German them

us briefly consider

1.

of

questions

Germany

Many

overlap the

government.

constitutional

were his primary concern,

affairs

let

first.

Attitude toward Monarchy

Max Weber

—

tion

was an unabashed monarchist, both by family

his parents

were National Liberals

erence. Before the collapse of 191 8,

—and by

tradi-

personal pref-

he considered monarchy, on

grounds of tradition and continuity, the logical form of govern-

ment

for

political

He

Germany. utility:

"The

definitely occupied

also

saw

highest

it

position in the state

and therefore withdrawn from the

struggle for power." 1 Such thinking

of the nineteenth century,

an active part in

as desirable for reasons of

official

when

was altogether

is

political

in the spirit

the monarch could and did claim

political leadership.

Max Weber was thinking He had been deeply im-

especially of the realm of foreign policy.

pressed by the quiet

England 1

Thus

— "more

frequently,

work behind the

scenes of

Edward VII of

than any other monarch of recent times a

e.g.,

Pol. Schr., p. 325.

13

THE POLITICAL FUTURE OF GERMANY

14

dominant personality." 2

He

had no great opinion of the power

of the crown to act as a check

and

rightly so.

upon the German

For the unpurged,

bureaucracy,

German buWeimar Republic.

monarchistic

still

reaucracy was instrumental in sabotaging the

Despite Weber's generally favorable attitude toward monarchy as

an

man

institution,

he was no admirer of the wearer of the Ger-

crown, Kaiser Wilhelm

raged by the conduct of this his reign,

and

last

the contrary, he was out-

of the Hohenzollerns during

especially after the collapse. Instead of consenting

and

to a timely abdication,

some of the blame bility

On

II.

thus, outwardly at least,

assuming

dodged

for the disaster, the Kaiser

responsi-

by fleeing to neutral Holland. In so doing, he sealed the

fate of the dynasties of the Lander, culture,

especially

passing, in

in

whose

Weber's view, a regrettable

other hand,

role as patrons of

the smaller princely courts,

Weber had nothing

loss to

made

Germany.

but contempt for the

their

On

way

the

vari-

ous dukes and princes in the midst of the war had haggled

among

themselves over royal and ducal

occupied but It

still

titles

to lands in the

not conquered East.

must have come hard

to this convinced monarchist to en-

dorse the parliamentary republic. Even after the collapse, he con-

tinued to assert that parliamentary monarchy was "technically the most adaptable and therefore the strongest form of govern-

ment." 8 But since the dynasties had exhausted their usefulness as

elements of political integration, no alternative existed but a

parliamentary republic. Moreover, various dynasties could

make no

it

seemed

to

union that had to be established. He had prospects of restoring the monarchy. And, in

little

2 See Pol. Scbr., pp.

198,

See Pol. Schr., pp. 437

ff.

in the

due course

among

the Ger-

316, 421. Most recent research, however, him; see Philip M. Magnus, King Edward

the Seventh (London: Murray, 1964). 3

faith

fact, in

the monarchistic spirit perished so completely

attributes far less influence to

Weber that the new federal

contribution to the

5

THE WEIMAR CONSTITUTION mans

that,

except for Austria, no

movement

1

for such restoration

ever arose.

however,

If,

we

look

at the

Max

matter from our present-day per-

spective,

we

socially

and

correct.

In the seven western European countries where mon-

see that

its

ground,

it

institution

as a

was altogether

proved to be far more firmly

estab-

anyone could have predicted a generation ago. 4

lished than

Even

integrating

politically

archy has held

Weber's opinion about monarchy

in England,

where the monarch

normal times has been

in

considered a decorative and rather expensive figurehead in the

bow

of the ship of

ligible part

two

state,

the crown plays a not altogether neg-

behind the scenes

as a balancing factor

between the

however, has van-

parties. Its usefulness to foreign policy,

ished completely. Almost every one of the remaining dynasties

has faced severe

of strength in the course of the past several

trials

decades: the abdication of

Leopold

Dutch

III

in

England

in 1936, of

of Belgium in 1950, and the domestic strains in the

royal family.

say that

But in general, monarchy in western Eu-

stability in the

rope has gained

may

Edward VIII

Max

intervening years. 5 Certainly

Weber's confidence in

its strictly

we

limited use-

fulness has not been discredited by events.

2.

Max

Weber and the Weimar Constitution

Weber's part in the shaping of the Weimar Republic's tution is so well known 6 that we need only outline it

The

distrust of provincial party bosses kept

tional

Assembly

itself.

But

his writings

him out of

on the

issues

constibriefly.

the

Na-

were widely

4 This does not, however, apply to the fickle Greeks, who since 1920 have repeatedly expelled their monarch and might do so again. 5 On monarchy in general after the Second World War, see Karl Loewenstein, Die Monarchie im modernen Staat (Frankfurt am Main:

Metzner, 1952). 6 See, e.g., J. P.

Mayer,

1944; 2nd ed., Faber

und

&

Max Weber and German

Faber, 1946), pp. 93

ff.;

Politics

R. Petzke,

sein Einfluss auf die Reichsverfassung (Leipzig, 1925).

(London,

Max Weber

THE POLITICAL FUTURE OF GERMANY

l6 read,

and policy-devising committees welcomed

vice. Since

writings

many

his expert ad-

of the proposals and suggestions he

made

in his

on Germany's future were already in the air, they were up by others. But he had the ear of Hugo Preuss, the

also taken

Weimar

architect of the

Constitution.

Weber

strongly advo-

cated a parliamentary system that would do away with Bis-

marck's burdensome legacy: Prussian hegemony in the Reich. it

turned out, this measure probably went

Weber had

was

had not

so thorough a "Prussification of the

effect

Reich" as had actually resulted from states, that

As

further than

expected. Perhaps the Bismarck Constitution

been intended to

German

much

its result.

But except for the South

it.

Under

the

Weimar

Constitu-

was reversed. There took place a "federalization of Prussia," produced above all by the splitting of the votes for

tion the process

the Reichsrat assigned to Prussia as a whole

provinces (Art. 63, Sec.

Furthermore,

1,

among her

various

Par. 2).

Weber made

a strong and decisive plea for a

popularly elected Reich president. 7

He

considered a strong presi-

dent the indispensable counterweight to a party-dominated parliament.

With wise

foresight,

he also recommended a safeguard

against any abuse of the presidential powers. This

was incorpo-

rated into Article 43, Section 2 of the Constitution, which pro-

vided for recall of the president by Reichstag and people. But his influence

was

also reflected in

some of the

such as the rule in Article 24, Section tary investigating

1

lesser provisions,

permitting a parliamen-

committee to be established on the motion of

a minority of the deputies to the Reichstag.

It

was

also

due to

his

writings that the constitution included provisions for initiative

and referendum (Arts. 72 ff.). 8 Max Weber's plea for a popularly elected president subsequently became a matter for violent controversy. 7 See, e.g.,

Schr., pp. 8

the essay

480

"Der Reichsprasident" (February, 1919),

ff.

See below, pp. 52

To Weber him-

ff.

in Pol.

7

THE WEIMAR CONSTITUTION self,

was patent

it

from

quite different since the

that the role of such a president that of the president of the

American Congress was not a parliament

would be

United

States,

in the accepted

But Weber was in no way responsible for the most

sense.

Weimar

mistake in the presidential

power

1

fatal

Constitution: to wit, the coupling of the

to appoint

and dismiss the chancellor with the

requirement that the chancellor must confidence of the Reichstag.

at the

To anyone

same time enjoy the

with a knowledge of

it would have seemed monstrous that a had the confidence of the Reichstag, or who

western parliamentarism chancellor

who

still

any rate had not forfeited

at

it

by losing a formal vote of

confi-

who did not Bruening in May 7932.

dence, could be arbitrarily dismissed by a president like his policies

Naturally,

—

Weber

as

was

to

happen

to

cannot be blamed for the perversion of the

parliamentary government that inevitably followed from that constitutional flaw: the "presidial" cabinets towards the

the

Weimar

end of

Republic. These cabinets, responsible to the presi-

dent instead of the parliament,

made

it

only too easy for the

Austrian corporal to seize the reins of government. But events in France in our ries

up

time confirm

Max

Weber's

political theo-

about the basic need for a plebiscitary head of

one of

in

shifted

from

no power of

own

all

Caught

recurrent plebiscitary periods, France, too, has

a president elected by parliament

to a popularly elected chief of state

power.

The

its

state.

and possessing

who

is

the center

9

proposal for yoking a popularly elected president with a

popularly elected parliament sounded reasonable at that time.

But in retrospect we perceive that the idea was an unfortunate mistake from the standpoint of political realities. For when conflicts arose between these two political organs, both anointed with

On Max

Weber's presumable attitude toward General de Gaulle, Karl Loewenstein, "Max Weber als 'Ahnherr' des plebiscitaren Fuhrerstaats," in Kolner Zeitschrift fur Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie, vol. 13 (1961), pp. 286 f. 9

see

THE POLITICAL FUTURE OF GERMANY

18

the oil of democracy, one proved stronger than the other. elected executive

was an individual and therefore more

it

was by numbers and by party

divisions.

effective

hampered

in the decision-making process than the parliament, as

The

Even before

Max

Weber's time, the Second French Republic of 1848 had proved that point: within three years the popularly elected president,

Louis Napoleon, was able to outmaneuver the National Assem-

and

bly

Weimar and

seize dictatorial powers.

the Spanish Re-

public under the constitution of 1931, which was modeled on

Weimar, produced the same impasse and the same

In

results.

the de Gaulle constitution of 1958, on the contrary, the danger

of such conflict was forestalled by establishing the presidency as

an independent center of

political

power. Since the amendment

to the French Constitution of 1962, the president directly

by the people.

An

3.

subservient to

German

no circumstances can

it

itself.

Federalism

Max Weber

viewed the organization of relationships between

the central government and the individual is

elected

oppositional parliament can, at most,

obstruct the president's wishes; under

make him

is

what we mean by federalism

10

—

as a

member

uniquely

states

—which

German

prob-

lem, although he cited American, Swiss, and Canadian parallels.

Here was one of the cases where his foresight and although his practical influence had long directly

ment.

best proved itself; since faded,

it

in-

helped shape the federal structure of the Bonn govern-

Weber

decided that a centralistic or unitarian solution

would not do for Germany, an advocate of

this in spite

socialization,

of the fact that he was

which required a strong

central

power. Socialization was only tentatively undertaken in the Wei-

mar

Republic, and Weimar's Article 165a and, even

10 See principally Pol. Schr., pp.

406

ff.,

440

ff.

more

so,

8

GERMAN FEDERALISM Article 15 of the

Bonn

had already foreseen 11

Constitution* remained dead

19

He

letters.

that in the period after the defeat of 191

would never tolerate a centralized Germany, so that the Republic had no choice but to be federalistic. Such an attitude on the part of the victors was even more marked after the Second World War. The Americans especially, in that respect much more naive than their allies, insisted on integral federalism the Allies

because they considered

German

centralism fons et origo mot-

orum of the Hitler dictatorship.

stand the fact that the Hitler as

states

They utterly failed to undermovement had used the smaller

springboards from which to attack Prussia and the

German new government would

Reich. In any case, in view of the overriding force of particularism,

have to be

Weber assumed

that the

cast in a federalistic

mold. His chief concern, then,

was with the federal organ through which the ticipate in the decisions state as a

was

states

would

par-

and the administration of the German

whole. In other words, which type of federal organ

one consisting of delegates of the Lander

to be preferred:

governments or of representatives of the Lander people? 12 As turned out, the

The American than

through

German

device of electing senators by popular vote rather

the

state

legislature

was then

(XVIIth Amendment, 191 3), but Weber suit

German

it

tradition did not fail to reassert itself.

conditions,

given the intensity of

ticularism. Equally unacceptable

relatively

felt that

it

new

would not

German

par-

was the privileged position of

Prussia under the Bismarck Constitution. Therefore he settled for the traditional solution: deputies to the Reichsrat appointed

by the

state

governments and acting according

The

received from them.

Reichsrat

ecutive instrument of the state governments.

party politics within

it

German term

is

The dynamics

would be determined by the

11 Pol. Schr., p. 449. 12 Pol. Schr., p. 450.

* The

to the instructions

would thus remain an

"Basic Law.'

ex-

of

constellation

20

THE POLITICAL FUTURE OF GERMANY

of parties in each

state.

Weimar, and Bonn

also,

adopted

this

scheme.

Perhaps there might have been a chance after 1945 to change over to the American system of popular election of the members

of the Bundesrat (as the Reichsrat

called in the

is

new Ger-

many). The Bundesrat would then have served as a genuine upper house, instead of remaining a house representing only the states.

state

Certainly the preconditions for such a change existed.

The

of Prussia had been wiped out by a rude stroke of the pen

on the part of the Allied Control Commission (February 1946).

The

full historical

import of that

grasped, let alone discussed.

a

man

like

Prussian

It

never been adequately

remains an open question whether

Max Weber would

hegemony with

act has

all his

have approved of

it;

he fought

might, but he had an apprecia-

tion of the genuine values of real Prussianism.

Weber, who con-

was embodied in the Constitution of the Reich a misfortune for the whole of Germany, could not sidered Bismarck's legacy as

it

know, could not even guess, that what Bismarck had

built

up

would be annihilated by Hitler and Hitler's defeat. But the elimination of Prussia opened the way for the creation of fewer, economically more viable territorial entities in a country whose population had become largely homogeneous, and which was freed at last from feudal junkerdom. The American pattern, by which the people of the states were represented in an upper house, would therefore have been quite feasible. But the state governments, so

unexpectedly strengthened after the 1945 collapse, refused to

let

They had no desire to surrender their own instrument of power to the vagaries of party-dominated popular elections. Moreover, Bonn lacked one

the Bundesrat slip from their control.

of the vital mechanisms by which centralism can oppose extreme federalism,

mar

typically

the

and had done so under both the Bismarck and Weinamely, a federal bureaucracy. Thus the

Constitutions

German

Bundesrat,

—

version of federalism

—a chamber,

in this case

composed of representatives of governments

GERMAN FEDERALISM rather than of the people

—came

to the fore once again. In this

matter, too,

Max Weber had predicted

More

anyone

clearly than

rightly.

else in his day,

that the key element of every federal

method of finances. 13

21

Weber

recognized

government was not the

federal decision-making, but the question of federal

"The

financial relationships are

what most

decisively

determine the real structure in a federal government." 14 Weimar, following the pattern of the Bismarck Constitution, found a rather centralistic solution, appropriate to the broader powers

of the central government: a federal income tax formed the core of

its

But where a federal income tax skims the

financial system.

cream, territorial units are forced onto so lean a diet that

we

can

no longer speak of genuine federalism. Such has been the lesson

Under

of financial experience.

extremely

states' -rights bent,

provisionally

Bonn

Constitution, with

That

is

its

the financial problem has been only

on an emergency and patchwork

settled,

(Arts. 105 ff.).

the

basis

plainly demonstrated by the recurrent

tug of war over finances, with the federal government always de-

manding a larger share in the taxes. The Swiss Federal Government likewise suffers from this chronic illness of temporary, stopgap solutions for

its

financial needs.

Should present prosper-

decline or vanish entirely, serious imbalances would prob-

ity

ably develop in both countries.

Max Weber

also foresaw the imperative

Germany 15

reorganization within lic

called Reich reform.

Many

—

need for

the issue the

territorial

Weimar Repub-

of the dwarf states inherited from

had to "end their senseless he had urged, by amalgamation (Thuringia) or absorption (Koburg by Bavaria). The hegemony of Prussia was broken by the well-known two-fifths clause of Article 61, Secd and by transfer of half its votes in the tion 1, Paragraph 2 the Bismarck Constitution in fact existence," as

,

Reichsrat to the provincial authorities (ibid., Par. 2). 13

Pol

Schr., p. 468.

14 Ibid.

15 Pol. Schr., pp.

450

f.

Bonn

car-

— THE POLITICAL FUTURE OF GERMANY

22

work

ried through the

that

Weimar had

imperfectly begun

thanks in part to the changes already wrought by Nazi centralism and in large part to the sometimes unwise but ultimately beneficial territorial regroupments imposed by the occupying Allied Powers. Only ten states (with

West

Berlin, eleven) have

remained, and the Federal Republic has thereby become a more homogeneous and compact governmental structure than either Bismarck's Reich or the

Weimar Republic

ever was.

The advo-

cates of reunification prefer to overlook the fact that the loss of

the East helped bring this about. this factor, litical

we need

To

realize the

importance of

only imagine the shifts in economic and po-

equilibrium that would inevitably result

Germany were

if

restored to her frontiers of 1937. Finally, there

one more development which,

is

Max Weber,

predicted by

conditions determine the

although

it

not directly

modern

state:

the Federal Republic,

has conscientiously tried to conform to the rituals of

federalism, has

Weimar

the

if

does bear out his theory that economic

had

to resort to centralism

much more than even

Republic. For under the conditions of the

modern

technological mass society, the really relevant decisions in every federal state

—

this applies

policies can only try

can afford to

emanate from the central government. let these

"sovereignty" of the that with the

—

Germany are made on Major economic and social

not only to

the federal, not on the state level.

member

states.

Max Weber

growth of the technological mass

has become less and

No

coun-

things be determined by the dubious

less viable as

clearly foresaw

society, federalism

an organizing principle.

He

considered this an inescapable consequence of universal suffrage.

And

despite all the protestations of the stalwart federalists, this

phenomenon of

a declining federalism and, correspondingly, of

a strengthened centralism,

16 ess,

may be

seen as a world-wide phe-

See Karl Loewenstein, Political Power and the Governmental Procpp. 292

ff.

Max

III.

View of

Political Reality

after

Over-all

1.

World War

I

View

Before and after the end of the First lished a

Weber's

number of

World War, Weber pub-

essays dealing specifically with the political

future of Germany. Nevertheless, they reflect his general view

of the political situation in Western governments and his ideas

concerning

We may sum up

it.

Democracy,

as

Weber saw

his insights as follows:

it,

was a postulate of

son devoid of emotional overtones. or ideologize;

nowhere did he

form of government, nity,

that

it

assert that

democracy

human

accords with

or eulogize in a similar vein.

He

it.

At

least

German

viewpoint, integral democracy appeared to

way

liberty

power

took 1

it

him

the only attain

in place of previous subservience to non-elected

holders. It

Weber

from the

overcome authoritarianism, and thus to

is

also significant that

do we find a discussion of freedom value.

idealize

the "best"

nature and dig-

feasible civic

is

believed in democracy be-

cause there was no reasonable alternative to

to

practical rea-

Nowhere did Weber

nowhere

in his

work

as a metaphysical or ethical

himself, a free personality in thought and action,

for granted; 1 but he evidently did not think

remark

much

of free-

"For after all it is primitive today (even the most conservative among us) would be able to live without these achievements dating from the period of 'the rights of man.' " The context of this sentence is Weber's comment on the danger: "How is it possible at all in the face Ci. his

in Pol. Schr., p. 321:

self-deception to imagine that

we

23

24

POLITICAL REALITY AFTER

dom

as

he

WORLD WAR

I

an ideological abstraction. Where he speaks of freedom,

treats it as a

mode

of sociological conduct conditioned by co-

2 existence in a particular environment. is

bound

to

wonder

at

the lack

The contemporary reader of emphasis Weber placed upon

the postulates of freedom that are everywhere the center of con-

cern in our time:

human

rights as the standard of

human

con-

duct and social justice as the ultimate purpose of state action.

Weber thought that term

of a natural law, superior to the State, as

was conceived

1848 to

fied in

little

suit the

in

1776 or 1789 or even

as

it

was modi-

outlook of the bourgeoisie. 3 Those

who

regard democracy as an essential realization of liberty, or even

only the guarantor of liberty, will scarcely hail

Weber

as a con-

vinced democrat. For he conceived of freedom and democracy as not necessarily identical cal.

In

ville,

—

in fact, far

this respect his attitude rather

who

it,

often antitheti-

resembles that of de Tocque-

coined that classical slogan of the "tyranny of the ma-

But

jority."

from

to

blame Weber on that score

that basically he took

to overlook the fact

is

freedom for granted, and in keeping with

the ideas of the nineteenth century felt that

its

only prospect of

of this tendency toward bureaucratization to preserve any remnants of 'individualistic freedom of mobility' in any sense?" (Italics in original.) 2 See,

e.g.,

"Politik als Beruf"

(Pol. Schr., p.

speaks of the "so-called free societies

.

freedom from domination by violence, but traditionally legitimized

of

all political

3

.

.

.

.

.

free

501). There Weber not in the sense of

in the sense of there being

power of sovereigns

no

as the exclusive source

authority."

The only

pertinent treatment of "freedoms" in W.u.G., vol. II, p. 733 has an exclusively sociological orientation; there Weber traces freedom of conscience, as the basic freedom, to religious sectarianism. Nowhere in the Pol. Schr. is there a full discussion of freedoms as supreme values.

When

the words "free" and "freedom" appear, they are often

in quotation marks, to suggest that they are

meant only conditionally. References to freedom in Weber's earlier writings on the Russian situation show a similar slant. The infrequency of such references in his tables of contents, which are otherwise fairly complete, suggests that as a scholar

Max Weber was

interested in the

in the sociological sense, not in

phenomenon of freedom only

freedom as an

ethical value.

OVER- ALL VIEW realization

was a humanly decent

he believed, could

What

craft.

would

political order.

25

Such an order,

arise only out of rational techniques of state-

mattered, then, were the institutions such statecraft

create. Ethical protestations in

themselves were only su-

perfluous rhetoric.

In the light of

German

conditions,

he concluded that lack of

freedom sprang from the dominance of an all-powerful bureaucDemocratization was the only alternative to the strangle-

racy.

hold of authority.

no concessions

He

took an entirely pragmatic viewpoint, with

to the illusions of ideology. Liberty,

he believed,

could be secured by specific techniques and institutions that gave

means

reaucracy.

He

an overbearing bu-

viewed "parliamentarization"

as the best of such

to check

monarchy was incapable of performing

instruments, since the this task.

By

and

restrain

the people the

parliamentarization he meant

more than the mere

existence of a political institution that could be called a parlia-

ment.

If,

like the Reichstag created

was without the the executive,

Weber

by Bismarck, such a body

effective constitutional

all

means for influencing

had was the "will to impotence." What

it

envisaged was a form of genuine popular representation

based on universal suffrage, whereby the millions of citizens could participate in political decision-making.

He

was aware, of

course, that the British Parliament, even without universal suffrage,

had served splendidly

as

such an instrument

twentieth century. Nevertheless,

its

down to the him no

pattern seemed to

longer in tune with the times, and he considered universal suffrage the

mentarism

demand of as

Rather, along with racy,

he saw

the hour. Yet he never postulated parlia-

an end in

it

as the

was

itself,

or as an ideal in itself desirable.

usefulness as a check

its

upon the bureauc-

spawning ground best suited for

him

political

problem of primary importance, to which a parliament seemed to hold the answer. Out of the free leadership. This

to

dynamics of partisan

a

politics,

within the framework of the

parliamentary process, an elite leadership would

arise.

Parliamen-

POLITICAL REALITY AFTER

26

tarization

and the

WORLD WAR

I

selection of the leadership, therefore,

were

complementary. Universal suffrage and parliamentary process necessitate the formation of political parties. Parties mobilize

the masses of the electorate and organize the elected representatives of the

people into effective cadres capable of action within

the parliament. Political parties, to

and

tive

freely

membership.

recruiting

He was

Weber, were

associations

freely competi-

founded on voluntary

not averse on principle to the proposals for

an upper house, or a second, coordinate chamber of deputies; but he was strongly opposed to any plan for electing such a

second house on an occupational-group

basis.

Democratization of the commonwealth was, to Weber, the essential correlate of

genuine parliamentarism. Since a republican

Germany had become

inevitable,

he would have

it

implemented

by devices of direct democracy. With a fully modern vision, he included in this form of democracy not only the referendum and the initiative but also direct popular election of the head of state.

He

such institutions

considered

not only as valuable

(though not infallible) regulators and correctives of representative

government but

as valid manifestations of the will of the

sovereign people.

As

things looked then in Germany, these prerequisites of par-

liamentarization were certain to be achieved. But he had

few

il-

lusions about the practical results of integral' democratization in

a

modern mass

society.

in such a society

is

The

natural type of political organization

Caesarism, the rise of the leader who, by the

magic of

his personality and mission, emerges as the chosen spokesman for the enfranchised masses and holds that position as

long

as

he proves

his worth.

According to Weber's typology

of forms of governance, plebiscitary democracy would be a fount of political leadership, which was as valid as the kind of leadership to arise out of parliamentarism under the rule of a leisure class. If

one signal element of

predominant,

it

is

Max

Weber's

political theory is

the central question of political leadership.

— THE FRANCHISE As

far as

he was concerned,

all

27

other technical aspects of state-

craft are secondary to this.

We have

summarized the principal elements of with some accuracy,

political sociology

one

else

might place the accents

we

Max

Weber's

hope, although some-

We

differently.

now

shall

at-

tempt to analyze these elements one by one in terms of Weber's forecast

and our present knowledge.

The Franchise

2.

Max Weber

Before the collapse in 191 8,

persistently

denounced

the moral injustice and political folly of the Prussian three-class

Geared

electoral system. it

as

was

it

had no current counterpart

and equal suffrage had

Weber

in Great Britain.

just

economic

to agrarian

in Europe.

At

interests,

that time, universal

been established

—

very belatedly

considered this the only fair and

modern

way

for a citizenry to throw off the yoke of authoritarian tutelage

and

participate in

its

His opposition to

government. electoral privileges for particular classes

was

conditioned chiefly by his negative attitude toward the aristocracy

of the time as a social

class.

4

He

ence of an aristocratic class in the

emphatically denied the exist-

Germany of

his time

and con-

sidered the aristocratic claims of the landowning Prussian Junkers

an anachronistic survival of feudal times. Scathingly, he

spoke of them

as

nothing but plebeians in their manners and

opinions. Generally, in fact,

Weber

reserved his harshest words

4 On this see especially Pol. Schr., pp. 258 ff. It has occasionally been suggested that Weber, in his attitude toward aristocracy, was influenced by Friedrich Nietzsche. But for this there is no clear evidence in his

from

imagine two personalities more in the midst of life and affirming it, and that of Nietzsche, who lashed out against the age he despised. Max Weber regarded Nietzsche to be far more an inspired poet than a philosopher objectively analyzing reality. That was all the more true of Weber's attitude toward the poet Stefan George, whom he met

writings. Aside different than

that of

this

it

Max

on a number of occasions.

is

hard

to

Weber, standing

WORLD WAR

POLITICAL REALITY AFTER

28

for the

German way

—

of life

I

in contrast to the English

mar Republic

also

was unsuccessful

took the iron broom of the East

it

them

finally

Weber's

from the

soil

canon of

The Wei-

gentlemanliness or even the spirit of the French salon.

in dealing with the Junkers;

German Communists

to

sweep

of Germany.

familiarity with the authentic aristocracies of the past

Rome to He was well

ranged from the hereditary aristocracies of Venice or Ancient China's aristocracy of

officials

and

aware of the great contributions that the

human

to

civilization. Nevertheless,

time aristocracy had outlived

this

creative social class.

He

its

felt that it

newly recreated

class or as a residue

fully confirmed

by subsequent

in England, inflation

usefulness as a politically

had no

future, either as a

of the past. This view was

history.

Nowhere in the world new one been created.

and the inheritance tax (the

latter

wiped out

introduced, by the way, by the Conservatives) have all

had made

aristocracies

he was persuaded that by

has a genuine aristocracy survived or a

Even

scholars.

but a fraction of the former landed aristocracy that used to

perform

services for Great Britain similar to those the senatorial

nobility rendered to the

economic independence destined

render

it

its

Roman

Republic.

as a leisure class,

Once

had

it

which formerly pre-

for politics as a profession, the aristocracy

had

to sur-

leadership role in government. 5

Universal and equal suffrage, then, seemed to

Weber

acceptable and appropriate to the needs of the day.

parliamentarization could only tion.

lost its

Here again

Max Weber

alone

Genuine

grow out of genuine democratizaon the head.

hit the prophetic nail

Since his day, universal suffrage has triumphed

all

over the

world. Relapses into an electoral system favoring the privileged classes

have been conspicuous by their absence.

No

developing

5 In the United States, too, the leisure class described by Max Weber's contemporary, Thorstein Veblen, has ceased to play a part in politics. This statement is not invalidated by the fact that certain presidential candidates have recently been recruited from among millionaires.

THE FRANCHISE

no matter how backward, can do without universal

country,

suffrage if

the

29

it

wishes to aspire to democratic respectability. Even of our time cloak their

barefaced military dictatorships

nakedness

and

with the pseudo-legitimation of manipulated

brazenly bogus the part that

general elections.

Weber

also correctly foresaw

would be played by universal

suffrage in the trans-

formation of mass democracy into Caesarism.

As

far as the technical features of universal suffrage are con-

Max Weber

cerned,

believed that proportional representation

could not serve as a vehicle for true political leadership 6 because, like the plebiscitary leadership of the political parties,

bound

to

lead to

"drying of the

a

politic,"

and

lowers."

Weber regarded

to

"intellectual proletarization of the

maintained, in horse-trading

who

termine

still,

party fol-

proportional representation a typical

product of a "leaderless" democracy.

Worse

was

it

blood of the body

life

among

It

inevitably results,

he

the party dignitaries to de-

should be placed on the representatives of interest

list,

and

in

what rank.

and pressure groups are

drawn into politics whose sole concern with public life is with what their backers can get out of it. The presence of such selfish interests depoliticizes the parliament and prevents the rise of any

When we

real corps of leaders.

9 1 91

—

consider that at the time

in

—

proportional representation had hardly been tested in

any mass democracy, so that the vast amount of unfavorable evidence that has since been amassed was then lacking, again pay tribute to

Max

Weber's

representation has since proved are

on the fringes of world

navia, the Netherlands, over, are blessed

by a

its

foresight.

value only in countries that

such as Switzerland, Scandi-

politics,

—

and Belgium politically

all

countries which, more-

mature population that agrees

on fundamentals. In some larger and more important flourished only briefly after the First

6

On

we must

For proportional

World War,

proportional representation see Pol. Schr., pp. 487

f.,

countries,

it

quite often

531

ff.

POLITICAL REALITY AFTER

30

wreaking havoc on

I

never become

political cohesiveness. It has

Anglo-Saxon countries; in other

established in

France,

WORLD WAR

countries, such as

has been attempted and then abandoned in favor of

it

the technique of majority representation. In the eral

German Fed-

Republic after 1945, the intention was to overcome some of

the failures of proportional representation by linking "personality

election"

of

individual

candidates.

it

to the

That

idea

stemmed from the British Occupation authorities and was in itself a happy variant. But the Germans only jumped from the frying pan into the fire when they tried to achieve governmental

—

—

always imperiled by a multi-party system by introducing the nefarious "five per cent clause," under which a party stability

is

permitted to participate in the distribution of the votes cast

common

for the

pool only

if

it

has obtained at least five per

cent of the total electoral vote. That clause

is

completely un-

democratic in character, despite the fact that the highest federal courts in

Germany (and

stitutional, for

parties.

it is

in Switzerland)

have declared

it

con-

simply an indirect gift to the existing political

Fundamentally,

it

has no

more

justification

than the out-

right gift of additional seats to the strongest party that has been tried at times in practices.

Max

tion has thus today

3.

The

If

Max Weber

Republican

Italy,

in imitation of Mussolini's

Weber's indictment of proportional representa-

become an axiom of

Position of the Bureaucracy in

Number

1, it

hierarchically organized

knowledge, which

7

26

Society

rule of a bureaucracy.

is

Enemy

What

scientifically trained staff,

and equipped with

special technological

entrusted with the administration of the

His study of history convinced him that an entrenched

On Max

f.

Modern

identified any single factor as Political

was the untrammeled

he meant by the bureaucracy was the

state.

political science. 7

Weber's rejection of the vocational franchise, see above pp.

1

THE BUREAUCRACY bureaucracy never reforms ishes only

when

racy.

No

arises

accord,

and

it

van-

the fate of any and

is

all

organized state can subsist without such a bureauc-

and

when

ship slip

own

its

controls has been obliterated. In uni-

it

What makes modern

cialization

of

bureaucratic control

versal terms, societies.

the state

itself

3

efficient

those

from

who

their

bureaucracy inescapable

technical training. 8

hold

The

is

real

its

spe-

dilemma

political responsibility let the leader-

hands and into the possession of the anony-

mous and

therefore irresponsible bureaucracy. 9 In Wilhelminian

Germany,

Max Weber had

ample opportunity

to observe

to themselves the function of political decision-making

own

ends.

He

for their

at

the time, that a responsible bureaucracy its

own

volition.

cated officials

would

and lead to

utter stagnation,

fall

and used

did not accept the argument, popular

it

of the people of

how

and obsessed with power, arrogated

bureaucrats, conscious of

A

state

would meet the needs dominated by

certifi-

prey to a kind of Chinese mandarinism

he maintained. Parliamentarism

him the only possible protection against bureaucratic domination. Only genuine parliamentarism, which would create

seemed

to

a body of responsible political leaders, could successfully countervail the

In

this

we have

omnipotence of bureaucracy. fundamental

thesis of

a correct premise

Max

Weber's

political sociology

and an incorrect conclusion. The past

half-century has completely confirmed his belief that the mass state society is

condemned

to bureaucracy.

seems dubious that parliamentarism can such a bureaucracy.

The

On

the other hand,

offset the

it

domination of

legislative state of his time,

which was

directed primarily by the parliament, has been transformed into

which by necessity must be managed by the bureaucracy. By the same token, the individual's demands upon his government have risen to an inconceivable the present-day administrative state,

*Pol. Schr.,p. 317. » Pol. Schr., p. 278.

POLITICAL REALITY AFTER

32

degree.

And

WORLD WAR

more and more evolved

as the administrative has

into the welfare state

—

—and where

is

I

that not

happening today?

We

bureaucratic administration has swelled and proliferated.

social services that the

need only think of the ever-increasing citizen claims as his right

—and which

inevitably bring

him

into

Such expansion requires an

daily contact with the bureaucracy.

inexorably growing army of administrative specialists

who

dis-

The well-known and incontrovertible

tribute these social services.

formula of "Parkinson's Law" postulates that such a bureaucratic apparatus

is,

by

its

very nature, always increasing.

But the matter does not end

there.

We

must remember

that

the concept of bureaucracy includes not only actual state officials

but functionaries in general. All other social organizations outside the state have likewise

become bureaucratized. This

cially valid for all political parties.

leisure class

—

as they

No

is

espe-

longer controlled by the

—they

were in the days of limited suffrage

have transformed themselves into gigantic business enterprises efficiently

administered by a professional party bureaucracy. That

holds not only for the totalitarian parties, whose structure

and

fully bureaucratic

hierarchical,

especially all socialist parties, which,

but for

is

bourgeois and

all

dependent on enlisting the

support of the masses, have become bureaucratic organizations.

They had no

choice but to

become

for efficiently raising campaign funds.

however,

ratization applies,

associations

and

interest

first

they were to find means

so, if 10

The

groups in our

pluralistic society. Pluralism

iron law of bureauc-

and foremost

and bureaucracy are

ing from the same

womb. Every

work of

dependency relationships.

pluralistic

individual

collective that paternalistically controls its

is

and

turn is run by its functionaries. But having engulfed this much, the iop/j/. Schr.,p. 316.

to all professional

infinitely multifarious sisters

emerg-

entangled in a net-

He

is

a unit of the

directs

him, and in

insatiable leviathan of

THE BUREAUCRACY bureaucracy

not yet

is

satisfied. Capitalistic

33

business concerns, to

the extent that they have outgrown small business or family firms (and the tendency everywhere

toward big business

is

or-

ganized in anonymous corporations or stock companies), are directed by a specially trained managerial class of functionaries,

which, with

regular promotions and pensions,

its

reaucratized. Business firms frequently

ing their

own

replacement personnel.

is

heavily bu-

assume the task of

The phenomenon

train-

of the

organization man, devoted body and soul to his company, was

observed in America, but

first

talist

system assumes the forms of a the

company

tainers.

is

The

trusts.

whose

cartels,

Among

officials.

what comes

Among

and the white-collar proved true in

all

Max

is

.

.

capitalistic profit

associations

is

irresistible

spheres of

human

growth of bureaucracy has

activity.

some day be eliminated now appears uncanof the steel casing of the industrial

No. Rather the management of the

would become

bureaucratic.

were done away with, the inate."

Furthermore,

state

.

.

...

nation-

some kind of

picture of that "future

of mankind

may be

to the helpless obedience of the fellahin in ancient

when

'asso-

If private capitalism

bureaucracy alone would dom-

Weber drew the when all

state of universal subservience

duced

pronounced. Thus

just as

alized industries, or those organized into ciation'

motive recedes;

economic security guaranteed by fixed

"A breakdown .

are likewise directed by a

Weber's prognosis of what would follow should

private capitalism nily prophetic.

They

employees, bureaucratization of the unions

Weber's prediction of the

structure?

the

services resemble those of govern-

them, the

to the fore

employment.

.

modern Japan,

feudalism, in which

the lord, the employees are the vassals and re-

and

Finally,

new economic

entrepreneurs, for their part, are organized in as-

specialized bureaucracy

sociations,

ment

spreading throughout the capi-

is

world. In certain environments, as in

the bureaucratic administration

.

.

.

re-

Egypt

itself will

de-

34

POLITICAL REALITY AFTER

cide

how

its affairs

lines today

can

WORLD WAR

11 are to be directed."

No

I

one who reads these

recognize the terrifying lineaments of the

fail to

totalitarian state.

we

In retrospect,

are

bound

Weber's error

to realize

in expect-

ing that parliamentarization would limit the domination of the bureaucracy and bring

We

ship.

under the control of the

it

political leader-

must, however, refrain from any general verdict be-

cause developments in different countries have proceeded along different lines.

In Germany, at any

German

place.

the hoped-for effect has not taken

rate,

parliamentarism, from which an elite leadership

should have risen organically, experienced extraordinary ties in

getting started: the

Damoclean sword of

difficul-

reparations, the

disastrous inflation, and the hardly less catastrophic deflation. Wherever any leadership showed signs of developing, it was

crushed by fratricidal parliamentary

strife.

But even without such problems, Weimar would not have been able to to

strip the

mind the sheep

above

all

in

bureaucracy of

Weimar. That

Anglo-Saxon

its is,

power.

The fox was

countries, civil servants

to hold parliamentary mandates. In fact, they

couraged to run for elective

office,

set

unlike most western and

were permitted

were

on the ground

actually en-

that they alone

possessed the technical knowledge indispensable for legislation.

Napoleon had been able to make use of the bureaucratic centralism he inherited from the ancien regime because the Revolution had destroyed the old class of civil servants, and he had created an imperial bureaucracy of his

new

officialdom, far

own

pliable instrument of governing. In the

on the other hand, any cries

of "vested rights."

remained 11

The

pp. 319

f.

at the

helm

to replace them.

from dominating him, was

as

political

The

result

in his

The

hand

a

young Weimar Republic,

purge would be blocked by

was

that the

same personnel

before 191 8. Supposedly, they accepted

quotations above (condensed here) will be found in Pol. Schr.,

THE BUREAUCRACY

mon-

"the facts of republicanism"; in practice they sailed under archistic tle

and anti-democratic

the Republic.

The weak

flags

of the

Weimar

their

utmost to

scut-

parliamentary leaders failed to de-

fend themselves against these last years

and did

35

officials.

Moreover, during the

Republic, the parliament was so di-

vided by partisanship that the ministerial bureaucracy could do exactly as

it

By

pleased.

imposed on the

virtue of the emergency ordinances

it

48 of the Constitution, it acted impervious to any control. Thus the Weimar

basis of Article

as actual legislator,

Republic was politically and administratively no

less

dominated

by the bureaucracy than the Empire had been.

The

result

was

that

German

officialdom offered not the slight-

The

est resistance to Hitler's despotism.

bureaucrats were con-

cerned only with saving their professional skins, even though

meant giving up

all their political

bureaucracy, which collapse of 1945

was anything but trained for

it

Nazi Party

influence to the its

tasks.

The

might have provided one of those rare oppor-

and renovation of officialdom. But some well-meaning though amateurish efforts on the part of the Occupation authorities, the chance was thrown away. No sooner had the Occupying Powers relaxed their pressure, when a solid phalanx of officials insisted on having the totality of their former power restored to them ( as evidenced by the contunities for a housecleaning

in spite of

troversy over Article 131 of the Constitution).

day the professional

As

a result, to-

class of officials, chiefly represented

ministerial bureaucracy in the federal

government and the

by the states,

Bonn reNor has anything been done about that most baneful feature of German parliamentarism: the habit of public officials of taking furloughs from their government jobs to serve as mem-

has once again become an unassailable pillar of the

gime.

bers of the parliaments of the cabinets. In spite of elaborate deals to distribute ministerial positions

among

the parties, the

leading posts in the ministerial bureaucracy are assigned in ac-

cordance with the goals of the majority party. Hence the bureauc-

POLITICAL REALITY AFTER

36

WORLD WAR

ratization of politics in both the federal states

appears unalterable, in

Germany

I

government and the

—

at least

contrary to

Max

Weber's hopes. In Scandinavia, the device of parliamentary commissioner

(Ombudsman) has been tried as a check on the bunow been introduced into New Zealand, and is

reaucracy. It has

being considered in other western countries (England, Australia, Switzerland, Canada, and also in a

few American

states). Its ef-

fectiveness as a counterweight to the bureaucracy cannot as yet be

conclusively judged; but recent experiences in

Germany with

a

parliamentary commissioner for matters of defense has scarcely

been encouraging.

when viewed

Outside of Germany the situation,

retrospec-

uniform. In France the bureaucracy has been the

tively, is less

power behind the political scenes ever since the ancien regime. At times during the Third and Fourth Republics, it had to share its monopoly with the parliamentary leadership; but the chronic instability of the cabinets

played into

its

hands, since

a constantly fluid situation, the only stable center.

Gaulle

its

principal representatives,

it

was, in

Under de

the young "technocrats,"

completely dominate the national stage. They have had no rivals because the policy of de-emphasizing parliament has, for the

time being, completely paralyzed the former parliamentary leadership. cials,

the

The high

quality of the French corps of professional

offi-

which was energetically modernized and democratized by

much maligned Fourth

less sinister

bureaucracy

—but is

Things are differences

Republic, makes this development

does not alter the fundamental fact that the

completely in the saddle. still

otherwise in the Anglo-Saxon countries, with

between Great Britain and the United

England too the

irresistible

has given rise to complaints about the

bureaucracy

States.

advance of the administrative

In

state

"new despotism" of

the

(Lord Hewart of Burley and others); but unlike

the Continent, there has been

some thinning of the

trees in the

bureaucratic forests. Parliamentary control over the administra-

THE BUREAUCRACY which was what

tion,

whole has been

who

Max Weber

obviously had in mind, on the

England. That

effective in

37

is

apparent to anyone

House of Commembers must understandably content themselves with random sampling. Above all (and this is the has ever attended a question period in the

—even though

mons

the

and pro-

decisive factor), the British civil servant by tradition fessional

the strictest political

practices

ethics

no matter what

serves every government,

with the same professional

zeal,

its

neutrality.

He

party complexion,

and has neither desire nor ambi-

tion to influence political decisions. 12

Yet

it

must be

said that

true parliamentary control of the administration, in spite of all

the requirements to submit administrative regulations to Parlia-

ment, the

is

largely

nominal in England,

just as

it

Parliament actually has no time to

first place,

is

elsewhere. In

make thorough

investigations; in the second place, M.P.'s lack the requisite tech-

knowledge.

nical

And

those aspects of economic and

services, in all

long to the public

and

in the nationalized industries

sector,

the

officials

social

social life that be-

in charge have quickly

taken over the reins. Parliamentary supervision has almost totally failed in this realm. This does not

mean

that an uncontrollable

bureaucracy will curtail the liberties of the citizenry; for like the Civil Sendee proper, the administrative bureaucracy in such

state-owned branches of the economy and welfare services has

no

political

carrying out

As er's

ambitions and its

is

concerned solely with effectively

tasks.

for bureaucracy in the United States

day

it

was undergoing

—even

a transformation

in

Max Web-

that apparently

12 The following sentences from "Parlament und Regierung im neugeordneten Deutschland" {Pol. Schr., pp. 339 f.), while not referring to England in their context, may serve as an accurate description of the

British official:

"[the professional official] takes pride in preserving im-

in

and being able

overcome

own

and opinions whatever general regulations or special instructions require of him, even and in fact when they do not correspond to his own political views." especially

partiality

to

order to carry out conscientiously

—

his

and

inclinations

skilfully

—

WORLD WAR

POLITICAL REALITY AFTER

38

escaped him.

He

treated the

American public

ject to the spoils system, as

century and

United

still

13

States.

was

to

I

service as

still

sub-

had been during the nineteenth

it

some extent

But even then the

at the

time of his

spoils system

had

visit to

the

largely given

permanent civil service based on competitive Today this professional officialdom is in charge, except for a few thousand so-called policy-making posts at the disposal of the party in power. 14 The completely depoliticized

way

to the present

examinations.

officialdom in the United States today forms neither a class nor

a state within the state, nor does civil service is exclusively

Due

ecutive branch.

America,

have

political ambitions.

still

current set of social values in

less respect

than

is

the

official class in

continental Europe or in Great Britain. In the matter

Max Weber dom

laid such stress

—Congress

counterparts.

On

The

an administrative instrument of the ex-

to the

held in far

it is

it

—

on which

parliamentary control of

has proved as powerless as have the one hand, this

is

its

official-

European

due to the separation of

States; on the other, the federal adminisbecome so huge and complicated that Con-

powers in the United trative apparatus has

gress cannot possibly attempt to supervise

In addition, in contrast to the

strict

it.

departmental or ministerial

structure of the administration in Europe, so-called

trusted the is

wildly

America operates the

Independent Regulatory Agencies. 15

most important administrative

misnamed government

cause of Congressional intention

To

these are en-

areas, especially

what

control of business. Partly be-

when

they were set up, partly

because of an inescapable evolutionary process, they have become is

See Pol. Schr., pp. 457, 497, 526, 529. See Karl Loewenstein, Verfassungrecht und V erfassungspraxis der Vereinigten Staaten (Berlin, Gottingen, Heidelberg: Springer, 1959) (= Enzyklopddie der Rechts- und Staatswissenschajt, Abt. Rechtswissen14

schaft), pp. 356 15

ft".

pp. 356 ff. and the author's special study: "Die Krise des amerikanischen Rundfunk- und Fernsehwesen," in Arch'iv des offent-

See op.

cit.,

lichen Rechts., vol. 86 (1961), pp. 404

ff.

THE BUREAUCRACY

39

"independent" of the President and of the departments subordinate to result,

him and

also

independent of Congress

which has recently given

rise to

much

The

itself.

complaint,

that

is

the agencies that are supposed to regulate industries tend to be-

come

the captives of these very industries.

that in the

United States

as well,

Thus we may conclude

parliamentary control of the bu-

reaucracy has not succeeded; yet the failure has had no political

consequences because the bureaucracy has no influence and no desire to exert

it.

Now, however, we Weber, from

shall

have

mate the dangers of uncontrolled bureaucracy, or danger that

might impose non-statutory or

it

upon the writings on the tions

Max

whether

to ask ourselves

Germanocentric viewpoint, did not overesti-

his

life

of the individual citizen.

subject

do we

at

any rate the

arbitrary restric-

Nowhere

find any discussion

in his

on the

insti-

tution of independent administrative courts as possible recourse

against administrative abuses and arbitrariness. 16 Granted, judicial control of the administration

perial

was underdeveloped

Germany; such control was only

mar Republic, with

its

instituted

deeper concern for

in im-

under the Wei-

civil

rights.

Since

Weber's time the courts have developed into a genuine Third

Power throughout the western the whole, then, the lance that reaucratic

omnipotence missed

constitutional democracies.

Max Weber

The

mark.

its

On

hurled against buparliaments have

proved unequal to the task of curbing bureaucracy, but the courts have stepped into the breach. that

was

certainly true for France,

Even

in

where ever

Max

Weber's time

since the eighteen-

seventies the Conseil d'fitat shouldered the task of protecting the citizen

from administrative

The

abuses.

ordinary French citizen

thus has a recourse against exces de pouvoir and detournement

16

Not even

in

proper place for

the it;

Rechtssoziologie,

the

work

which would have been the

contains only a single and unimportant

reference to administrative jurisdiction (edition:

i960 [= Soziologische Texte, vol.

2], p.

91).

Neuwied, Luchterhand,

POLITICAL REALITY AFTER

40

de pouvoir. In England, tribunals,

tive

WORLD WAR

likewise, a

different

number of

from the ordinary

I

special administracourts,

have been

established for the same purposes. In the United States, where

there seems to be less need for such protection, the regular courts can always intervene.

Weimar, and

especially

Bonn,

fur-

thered the system of independent judicial review of administrative acts. In addition, truly

independent courts for constitutional

questions have been created to deal with any infringement of the rule of

law by the highest organs of the government.

say, then, that

today

Max

We

may

Weber's demands for the end of ad-

ministrative secrecy and impartial control of the administrative services

have been largely met.

Parliamentarism as the Generating Force

4.

for Political Leadership

At

the end of the First

World War, Max Weber was

still

deeply

—mon-

concerned with Germany's future form of government archy or (parliamentary) republic.

He

was guided by the

classi-

of the general theory of the state as elaborated by

cal tenets

Roscher, Bluntschli, Treitschke, and Jellinek.

Under

pressure of

circumstances he finally decided in favor of a parliamentary republic, although

he was well aware that

it

would be handicapped

by the burden of defeat. 17 Today, the form of government means little

to us

and the pattern of government a great deal

that determines the

way

in

which the

to arrive at political decisions.

his stress

state

—

since

organs must cooperate

Max Weber,

on what pattern of government was

too, really placed

to be chosen.

On

the basis of his comparative typology of law, he clearly perceived that

—

in the

words we have already quoted: "In the simple ques-

tions of the technique of arriving at policy decisions, the state

mass

does not permit unlimited choice. There are only a

« Pol.

Schr., pp.

437

ff.

re-

—

1

PARLIAMENTARISM stricted

number of forms." 18 Since

for

Germany, the only remaining

tary republic. 19 If there

American

neither the

dential nor the Swiss directory type of

government was

alternative

were any doubts

4

presi-

suitable

was the parliamen-

as to

what

term

this

meant, his frequent references to the example of England should

have made the connotations

clear.

He

described the dynamics of

parliamentary government in England as follows: 20 trative

The

adminis-

heads (ministers) must either be drawn from the parlia-

ment (parliamentary system in the proper sense) or, at any rate, be dependent upon a vote of confidence by parliament in order to stay in office (parliamentary selection of leaders). They must be subject to questioning by parliament or

its

committees (parlia-

mentary responsibility of the leaders) and direct the administration along the guidelines approved by parliament (parliamentary administrative leader

who is

fits

control).

Weber's

"A

these conditions:

seeks office for the sake of

of

the

political

political leader is not

someone

its

definition

salary

and pension. Neither

he bent on exercising some bureaucratic function with the

minimum

of outside control.

which means

What he

politically responsible

seeks is political power power based on the confi-

dence and adherence of a party. As a minister, he will want to

remain

at the

head or in the midst of that

tain his influence over it."

Measured against

this

party, if only to

main-

21

English "ideal type," have Weber's

hopes of a parliamentary government for Germany been filled?

There

is

no question

18 Pol. Schr., p. 295. 19 The statement at

that

he considered

it

was

ful-

feasible, in

the beginning of the newspaper article "Innere Lage und Aussenpolitik" {Pol. Schr., pp. 280 ff.), written in February 1919, that Bolshevism would last for only a few months, was of course a monumental misjudgment. But compare the far more perspicacious comments in "Politik als Beruf," written more than a year later {Pol. Schr., p. 517). 20 See Pol. Schr., p. 328. 21 Pol. Schr., p. 412.

WORLD WAR

POLITICAL REALITY AFTER

42

I

Germany's tradition of subservience to

spite of

He

authority.

inveighed against the "idle talk of an incompatibility between the 'West European' and the 'German' concept of government" 22

—

talk

which

but fairly

to this day, after half a century, recurs in the covert,

common

assertion that the

Germans

are "not ripe" for

democracy. But almost in the same breath, Weber's profound

"Whether a really workable parcome into Germany, we do not know. It might equally well be undermined by the Right or foolishly skepticism breaks through:

liamentary system will

thrown overboard by the Left." 23 Truly prophetic words!

What,

then, did

he expect of German parliamentarism under

the most auspicious conditions?

From

his discussion of the in-

gredients of classical English parliamentarism,

we

see that

he

thought of the parliamentary process as the most desirable means, not only for controlling bureaucracy, but also for the creation of leadership.

He would

probably be intensely disap-

pointed by what has actually taken place, although as an his-

he was aware that the

torian

of generations,

when

man

of politics "must think in terms

considering problems of statecraft." 24

In extenuation of the

Weimar

Republic,

was born and lived under an unlucky

it

time, in terms of generations, in

Weimar

lems.

which

it

star.

must be It

to wrestle

said that

was not given with

its

prob-

simply had no chance to develop an organic

procedure for the parliamentary creation of political leadership.

Only

few

a

years of pseudo-prosperity could be interpolated be-

tween the aftermath of the war, with

nomic lic

crisis

was

Allies,

inflation,

caused by the world-wide depression.

also sorely pressed

who

its

still

and the

eco-

The Repub-

by the reparation demands of the

believed that the cost of the war must be borne

by the vanquished. Nevertheless, the 22 Pol. Scbr., p. 296. 23 Pol. Schr., p. 297. 24 Pol. Schr., p. 298.

Weimar

system, as such,

had

faults

which

PARLIAMENTARISM should not be minimized.

The fundamental

defect has been

tioned: the practice of drawing cabinet ministers

or from

among

non-political

from

43

men-

officials

experts outside the parliament.

Bureaucrats on leave, they were rank outsiders

who

could not

generate a parliamentary esprit de corps. Consequently, they

were the poorest

sort of material for a political leadership.

Max

Weber had been thinking of a parliament that would wield power. But the Weimar parliament was hamstrung by the no48 of the Constitution, which released the adfrom any responsibility to parliament. The Third

torious Article

ministration

French Republic in

its

declining days suffered similar debilitation

from the abuse of the pi ems pouvoirs. But even when prominent from outside officialdom took over some cabinet

party leaders

bred by proportional representation

posts, the multiparty system

prevented the

rise

of a genuine

elite leadership.

evitable coalition government, cabinet posts

horse-trading.

Thus nine-day-wonders

government ministers

membership

—men who did

in that standing

are called mintstrables potential cabinet

group of

For in the

in-

were assigned by

in party politics

became

not remotely qualify for top-flight candidates

on the Continent. Excessive

who

attrition of

members prevented the formation of an

or-

ganic leadership, let alone an elite corps of real leaders.

In

Bonn

though still

it

the multiparty system has been

much

reduced,

al-

has not entirely vanished; at the present time there are

four distinct parties in the federal parliament. Nevertheless,

the ways for developing parliamentary leadership have not been essentially

more

improved under the Bonn regime. That

regrettable because

Bonn

functions under

vorable conditions than did the

Weimar

is

all

much more

the fa-

Republic. Instead of

being subject to continual pressure from former enemy powers, the Federal Republic has risen rapidly to the position of a

courted ally of the victors. Nevertheless, things have not taken the happiest turn in Bonn,

where Adenauer's fourteen

authoritarian rule once again discouraged the rise of a

years of

group of

POLITICAL REALITY AFTER

44

A

responsible leaders.

WORLD WAR

I

good deal of the blame must

ascribed to the "chancellor principle," laid tution: since the federal chancellor alone

liament, the cabinet ministers are

down

is

also

be

in the Consti-

responsible to par-

downgraded

mere

to

tools of

the chancellor.

Had Adenauer

not insisted on overshadowing

all

rivals,

it

would have been possible and useful for the Christian Democratic Union, as long as it remained the permanent government party, to build rule,

up

a group of leaders within

its

But

ranks.

as a

only a few cabinet ministers succeeded in holding their

posts after

new

considered

members of an

worked out so

and these ministers could

elections,

far,

it

As

may, with some

The

"demo-authoritarian."

"elite."*

the

scarcely

justification,

chancellor comes to

be

Bonn system has be labeled

power by genuine

democratic techniques, which are plebiscitary as well as repre-

But

sentative.

his rule

is

authoritarian during the period between

The Bundestag cannot remove him

elections.

because of the

"constructive" vote of no-confidence.t Hence, the chancellor can

haughtily ignore any rising tide of popular opposition.

What tile

is

to the

more, the

Bonn

emergence of an

political climate has so far elite leadership.

Nor

been hos-

has there been

any provision for the development of such leadership in the party that potentially

Bonn

may

replace the

government party

in power.

has nothing like the well-known English institution of a

"shadow

cabinet."

Leadership in

Bonn has

therefore fallen

* This pattern was broken after the elections of 1965, when practically the members of Chancellor Erhard's Cabinets remained in office, though in a number of cases, their posts were shuffled. This fact does all

not invalidate the stricture in the text concerning their lack of leadership qualities.

fThis refers to the provision in Article 67 of the Bonn Constitution which stipulates that the chancellor can be removed from office by a vote of no confidence only when the federal parliament simultaneously agrees by majority vote on his successor, who is then to be installed in office by the federal president.

a

PARLIAMENTARISM

45

—

willy-nilly to the top officials of the ministerial bureaucracy

Weber would have gravely deplored. In fairness, however, it must be said that Bonn has proved more fortunate or more adept than Weimar in selecting its personnel. Certain small beginnings justify the hope that a real leadership may in of affairs

state

time develop. Efforts should certainly be made, however, to break

once and for

all

net ministers

who

with the time-honored ^practice of having cabiare not

members of the parliament

—

as

was the

case with the holder of the important defense ministry until 1965.

The

contrast

between authentic and specious parliamentarism

emerges clearly from a comparison of Great Britain.

Max Weber

Weimar and Bonn with

repeatedly stressed 25 that the British

Parliament had been the model school for the training of an political leadership

up

—

and,

we must now

elite

add, has remained so

to the present day.

No

one in England can

means

attain

—which power—un-

a cabinet position

the only possible access to effective political

he has climbed up the parliamentary ladder. Some do

less

slowly,

some

quickly; but every potential leader

it

thus forced

is

and

to demonstrate his political qualities to the party leadership

before the bar of public opinion. In the British political milieu, there

is

—and none

no room for a non-parliamentary demagogue

has appeared on the political stage within living memory.

The

English are therefore in the enviable position of always having

on top a

political

team consisting of people

who

are indubitably

amateurs in technical matters, but professionals in political fairs.

These amateurs have the

political

know-how

to direct their professional officials and, if

keep these

officials

within bounds.

25 See, e.g., Pol. Schr., p.

af-

experience and social

As Weber saw

it,

need

be, to

their

work

343 and passim. See his remark ibid., p. 343: body has been the site for the selection of those statesmen who have known how to subordinate a fourth of humanity '*.

.

.

After

all

this

to the rule of a tiny political minority."

POLITICAL REALITY AFTER

46

on committees was a

He

WORLD WAR

I

particularly valuable part of their training. 26

correctly recognized that universal suffrage,

which had

just

(191 8) been introduced, would strengthen, rather than weaken, parliamentarism.

He

also foresaw the

crumbling of the two-

party system as a result of the rise of the Labour Party, 27

though he could not have known that the healthy stinct

political in-

of the British people would shortly lead the nation back to

the habitual system of

two and only two alternating

parties.

The much-maligned Third and Fourth French Republics were genuine

also able to establish a

elite

leadership of ministrable s by

a system of parliamentary co-optation. In the course of the fre-

quent cabinet chairs

crises,

the ministerial candidates played musical

among the ministries. Though they passed from one ministry

to another, they

were often in a position

to place their political

experience at the disposal of the country for decades.

Men

like

Clemenceau, Briand, Poincare, and Tardieu in the Third, and Marie, Mollet, Pinay, and Prlimlin in the Fourth Republic, had qualities of leadership scarcely inferior to those of the corre-

sponding English teams. The de Gaulle regime, however, has virtually eliminated parliament as a school of political leadership.

De

Gaulle has autocratically ordained various "changes of

the guard" in the ministries.

He

has deliberately cultivated in

"his" parliament the "will to impotence" which

Max Weber

so

sharply denounced in the Bismarckian Reichstag. Such methods

have seriously impaired the process of rearing an experienced parliamentary leadership.

It

remains to be seen whether, after

the passing of the plebiscitary leader, the French tradition of a leadership group consisting of ministrables will reassert 26 Max Weber probably overestimated parliamentary investigations in shedding tices. The golden age of these inquiries Today, they have largely given way to Commissions.

MQl.Pol.Schr.,?. 371.

itself.

the importance of the great light

on administrative prac-

was

the nineteenth century.

the non-parliamentary Royal

PARLIAMENTARISM

The problem

of leadership

is

something

else again in the

47 non-

parliamentary countries of Switzerland and the United States. In the Swiss Confederation, the acknowledged leadership group, the

members of the Federal Council,

are

first

filtered

the sieve of parliament and the party directorates. entities are excluded.

In the United States, on the other hand,

a leading elite cannot

form within the government

cause each president picks a

own

party.

The

cabinet

end of an administration.

On

new

members

nessmen who often return office again.

through

Thus non-

cabinet, preferably

itself

be-

from

his

are usually politicians or busi-

to their

main occupation before the them to be called into

It is rare for

the other hand, various circumstances help to

produce in Congress a considerable corps of prominent veterans.

Concerned with

re-election, they are reluctant to accept positions

membership on committees. These men, however, hardly qualify for the term in the administration, preferring instead long-term

of

elite leadership.

Once more, looking backward, we realize that in the last halfcentury the power of the executive branch of government has steadily increased at the expense of the power of parliaments. This holds for executive power embodied in a prime minister or in the collective leadership cabinet. Wherever parliamentarism has survived in the Western world, the parliament

itself

has

yielded to the pressure of the irresistibly advancing executive

branch.

The

parliaments have been so weakened that they can no

longer adequately perform their primary task of acting as a check

on the government. Even

in England, the situation

the government of the party that has eral elections can

come

to

power

is

such that

in the gen-

no longer be deposed. Iron party

discipline

keeps the British Cabinet in power, even as the chancellor in

German

sustained in

power by the "con-

structive" vote of no-confidence. In countries

governed by multi-

the

Federal Republic

is

party coalitions, the fear of dissolution keeps the parliaments

from intervening

in the

work of the

administration.

Thus the

WORLD WAR

POLITICAL REALITY AFTER

48

characteristic political feature of

endowed with

our time

is

I

a strong executive

true political leadership. Plebiscitary elections and

the oligarchic nature of the policy-making function (which

Weber was completely aware of) have produced

we must

executive. Again,

accede to Weber's insight that the

value of the parliament does not

but chiefly in in

its

Max

this strong

lie in

the institution as such,

capacity to produce political leadership, which,

mass democracies, may be pitted against the

plebiscitary

leader.

To sum

up: in states with parliamentary "rule"

—

mislabeled

The United

States,

where Congress remains

must be

form

to the pattern of classical parliamentarism.

left

out of consideration, since

neo-presidentialism after the is

as they are

in a very strong posi-

tion,

impotence

—

the government has long since outrun parliament.

it

does not con-

Where we have

manner of de Gaulle, parliamentary

written into the very constitution, and the parlia-

ment

scarcely can operate effectively against the strong chief of

state.

And

wherever the new countries have

have made

their one-party systems

it

up a parliament, only a shadow cast by the set

all-powerful president. All the world over, constitutional democracy has been forced

bined help to explain

on the defensive. All these matters com-

why

parliamentarism, which in the nine-

teenth century seemed to be the ultimate in political wisdom,

has today undergone such widespread devaluation. Parliaments

no longer serve

as the foci

of power.

5. The Position of the Second Chamber in the Parliamentary System In

Germany

the upper chamber of parliament (the Reichsrat and

Bundesrat respectively)

by established tradition

primarily as an organ of the

states,

play in federal administration. Consequently, as in

most western

countries, as a

is

regarded

with an important part to it is

not constituted,

genuine upper house which

THE SECOND CHAMBER participates

in

functions

legislative

alongside

elected house of representatives. This peculiarity of

German

political

marck and probably even

the

49

popularly

feature seems to be a

thought that goes back to Bis-

further.

Max Weber

fully understood

the fundamental distinction between a system of delegates and one

of representatives, as

clear

is

from comparisons he draws with the

American Senate and the Swiss Council of

Weber

finally

bowed

German

to

upper house.

federalistic functions of the

States. Nevertheless,

tradition 28

and accepted the

He

took occasion,

however, to analyze carefully the position of the upper house within the structure of a parliamentary

Once again

state.

his

views were shaped by the example of England. There, barely a decade

earlier,

the

—

House of Lords had opposed

—

sons of economic interest

had taken a grave

elected lower house. It

for selfish rea-

the manifest will of the popularly constitutional crisis to

abridge the power of the upper house.

In a period of spreading democratization,

Weber

upper house can be formally "only a chamber with

whose limited though important

argued, an

lesser

powers

is

in being an advisory,

criticizing body, able to delay legislation

by suspensive veto but

task

unable to permanently block the desires of an indisputably strong majority of the popular representatives on a politically important question." 29

lower,

if

The upper house

only because

it

is

necessarily subordinate to the

lacks budgetary powers.

The

virtue of a

chamber based on popular election but representing the

on the other hand,

is

the smaller membership. This gives

tensified ability to act

and make more

Max Weber was

times; for the upper houses in

many

ff.

f.

ff.

far

ahead of his

countries, especially in Ger-

citadels of class privilege.

452

"in-

and demagoguery." 30

In advancing these arguments,

28 See Pol. Schr., pp. 29 Pol. Schr., pp. 247 so Pol. Schr., pp. 452

it

precise, strictly rational

decisions determined less by emotionality

many, were then

states,

and above, pp. 18

What he

ff.

says about

WORLD WAR

POLITICAL REALITY AFTER

50

I

the usefulness of an upper house with reasonably circumscribed

functions reads like a description of the present

"A

House of Lords:

center for individual political eloquence, for the expression

of diverse political opinion and the employment of political intelligence

men

by

holding no

office,

but experienced in

embodying a group of former statesmen with

office,

their extensive ex-

perience as contrasted to the present leadership of the political parties."

31

To

be sure, these words apply only to the notoriously

small group of peers

who

actively participate in the

work of the

House of Lords.

Once again Weber made an

accurate prediction of the political

future of the upper houses in parliamentary states. For after the virtual decapitation of the

House of Lords by

the Parliament

Acts of 191 1 (and 1949), the upper houses have almost everywhere been reduced to playing second fiddle to the lower houses.

The

fate of the

French Senate under the Third and Fourth Re-

publics, let alone the Fifth, stitution of

1947

is

the Senate in the

makes

that plain. Italy under the con-

an exception. The predominant position of

from the broader powers assigned Constitution.

United States derives

(non-parliamentary) to

it

from the

start

by the

But even in America the relationship of the two

chambers has somewhat fallen into line with the world-wide trend.

The House of

Representatives has

managed

to obtain

some

hold over foreign policy, formerly the Senate's monopoly, by

powers to appropriate money. Another decline of the two-chamber system

ment of

it.

Though more

is

New

Zealand's abandon-

British than the British, the

landers have dropped the British

model

its

significant sign of the

in this respect

New

Zea-

and gone

over to a single-chamber system. Moreover, a number of the

most modern constitutions and

virtually all the

sovereignty

—

those of Greece,

(except Madagascar)

si Pol. Schr., p. 248.

Denmark,

Israel,

former colonial countries that have achieved

have been converted to the

1

THE SECOND CHAMBER

5

one-chamber system and have entirely dispensed with a second

chamber sharing the

power. The recent establishment

political

of the two-chamber system in Turkey

is

than organizational reasons; the military

government fear the

due

to political rather

men who dominate

political parties that represent the

the

popular

will.

We need only mention briefly that Max Weber sharply rejected the ideas of suffrage based

on occupational groups and of a

second chamber to represent such groups. His arguments remain the classic statement of the case. 32 It

he maintained,

possible,

groups and interests.

nomic

economic

to organize a parliament according to their economic

The

life

would be completely im-

to divide the electorate into

infinite

complexity of constantly fluctuating eco-

cannot be reduced to mechanical formulas. "In an age

of constant technical and commercial reshufflings and continuous

realignment of economic and social

affiliations, it is

the height of

impractical absurdity to attempt the creation of political electorates as 'organic' associations in the old sense of the estates." 33

Experience with so-called "economic parliaments" has since

borne out

Max

Weber's skepticism. The Reichswirtschaftsrat

(Federal Economic Council)

165) was

stillborn. Similar

of the

Weimar

Republic (Art.

experiments by the Third and Fourth

Republics were pitched on a more modest key and therefore

proved more successful. The Economic Council was able to

offer

useful advice to economic planners, but did not presume a claim to share in political decisions.

Max

tion of occupational representation profit

who

imagine that a return to the good old days of feudal "estates

would provide a way out of wicked modern

dominated parliamentarism.

33

might well be read with

by those romantic muddleheads in present-day Germany

of the realm"

32

Weber's scathing denuncia-

Pol Pol

Schr., pp.

313

Schr., p. 244.

f.

party-

POLITICAL REALITY AFTER

52

WORLD WAR

I

The Techniques of Direct Democracy In his political writings, Weber devotes a surprising amount

6.

attention to direct democracy

—

—

initiative,

referendum, and

of

recall

34 in a parliamentary democracy.

The French Revolution might be regarded

as the

arena for

the intellectual and practical confrontation between Montesquieu

and Rousseau. Montesquieu considered representative govern-

ment the only litical

possible

constitutional

arrangement

for

po-

decision-making. Rousseau, with his mystical faith that

the "general will" was embodied in the people, rejected the

demanded direct expression of The actual organization of nine-

techniques of representation and the desires of the citizenry. 35

teenth-century states was based

and Abbe

Sieves, that

is,

on the views of Edmund Burke

representation in the

ment legitimized by popular

election.

the people's will has since repeatedly

But

form of a

parlia-

direct manifestation of

come

to the fore, chiefly in

plebiscites to decide questions of sovereignty (territorial changes

or the form of government)

.

In

Max

Weber's time

institutions

of direct democracy were to be found only in Switzerland the federal government, the cantons, and communities

number of

the newer American states.

—and

—

in

in a

Weber may have become

acquainted with these institutions during his stay in the United States.

The

little

air,

and

state

breaking up, such problems were in

Max Weber was

right to consider

though he was quite aware that the new

many would

Weber's time

attention to direct democracy. Nevertheless,

with the authoritarian the

Max

general theory of government in

paid relatively

necessarily diverge sharply

them

—even

political order in

from

Ger-

that of Switzerland,

the indigenous habitat of direct democracy, where conditions

were simpler and

less sophisticated.

34 Pol Scbr., pp. 277 ff -> 8a ff -> 4 6 2 #• 3 85 See, for detailed discussion, Karl Loewenstein,

Volk und Parlament nacb der Staatsauffassung der franzosischen Nationalversammlung von

— THE TECHNIQUES OF DIRECT DEMOCRACY The referendum commended

an unequivocal mani-

itself as

festation of the people's sovereign will.

53

Thus

it

would have a

high educational value for a people unaccustomed to participation in politics. Moreover, tive; it

can also serve as a useful correc-

enables the electorate to keep a check on the party-domi-

nated parliament. But its

it

Weber

importance and regarding

also cautioned against overestimating it

as a universal panacea.

The

tech-

nique of referendum has inherent limits because the people can

answer complex questions only with a yes or no vote. Hence

may

it

prevent the possible and desirable balancing out of interests

and party

attitudes that can take place in parliamentary decisions.

Experience in Switzerland and America has since confirmed

Weber's additional warning that the referendum does not fallibly serve the cause of progress.

On

the contrary,

be a conservating and progress-retarding the milieu where practice has

it

is

in-

tends to

force. 36

referendum also appears to

tional value of the

it

The educadepend much on

practiced. Excessive use leads, as Swiss

shown, to blunting rather than stimulating popular

interest in politics.

On

the other hand, as the example of Switz-

erland has likewise proved, the electorate tends to ignore party

guidance and positions on the subject of the referendum.

Given

dum

all

these problems,

have for

ultima

ratio,

Germany? 37

what usefulness would the

Max Weber

chiefly for constitutional

regarded

it

referen-

as the proper

changes and for cases of

outright conflict between the highest organs in the government

or

what the Constitution of the present Federal Republic

the "supreme federal organs," which

come under the

tion of the Federal Constitutional Court.

Weber wished

serve the initiative for proposals backed by very large

calls

jurisdic-

to re-

numbers

1789 (Miinich: Drei Masken Verlag, 1922; reprinted Aalen, Wurtemberg: Scientia, 1964). 36 Pol. Schr., pp. 462 37 Pol. Schr., p. 388.

f.

— POLITICAL REALITY AFTER

54

of citizens

—he suggested

WORLD WAR

I

one-fifth of the voters. 38

His recom-

mendations were reflected in the Constitution of the Republic (Arts. 72

In his time,

ff.).

Weimar

could not be foreseen

it

that practical application of direct democracy in the milieu of

Weimar would produce nothing

but misfirings. In the light of

Bonn

these failures, the drafters of the

Constitution dispensed

with the institution altogether, except for the special case of territorial

changes. This led to the accusation, not entirely un-

of anti-popular bias and overemphasis on representa-

justified,

tive techniques. Nevertheless, the Federal Constitutional

did not see

fit

to alter the situation, although

it

Court

had the oppor-

tunity.

On

the other hand, the fresh tide of democracy that swept in

after the

Second World

War

referendum into fashion.

has once

It is still

eignty, such as the transition

more brought the popular

employed for

acts

of sover-

from monarchy to republic

(Italy)

or union with a neighboring state (Cameroons in Africa). But in

most new constitutions

of the constitution the constitution. In

many

it is

also prescribed for the adoption

and occasionally for amendments to

itself,

cases the

means by which the

electorate

decides constitutional questions have imperceptively slid over into the plebiscite,

which modern

constitutional theory rightly

distinguished from purely legislative referenda. 39 Plebiscites

manipulated

—on

constitutions

imposed from above, or on the

installation of a dictator as president or chief of state

come indispensable

are equally essential to the

ernments.

management of

The de Gaulle regime

four referenda. as such, but

Two

—

two

were presented

as

have be-

to the repertory of authoritarian states.

They

neo-presidential gov-

has so far held no fewer than

of these concerned constitutional questions

in connection with the Algerian

problem

genuine plebiscites on policy decisions.

38 Pol. Schr., p. 463. 89 See Karl Loewenstein, Political

Power

.

.

.

,

pp. 271

ff.

THE TECHNIQUES OF DIRECT DEMOCRACY

Why

55

have the techniques of direct democracy undergone so

The

surprising a revival?

reasons are not to be found in any

belief in the greater political maturity of the people. In any case,

there

is

no

scientific

evidence for such a belief, methods of direct

democracy having also become commonplace in primitive coun-

emerged from colonialism. Rather, the

rea-

sons must be sought in the Machiavellian attitudes of rulers

who

have

tries that

feel that

just

government control over the mass media permits ma-

nipulation of the popular vote

more

easily

than management of

even the most effectively muzzled parliament which operates publicly.

Another reason for the contemporary ubiquitousness

of the plebiscite

is

fest assent of the

people

its

pseudo-democratic legitimacy. is

supposed to

testify, in

The mani-

the eyes of the

world, to a despotic regime's respectability. Hitler held plebiscites

on the merger of the chancellorship with the presidency

in

and on the annexation of Austria by the Third Reich. Whether he believed in the genuineness of these popular votes

his person

cannot be determined; certainly Goebbels did not believe in

them. is

The

case of de Gaulle

no doubt

differs.

His mystical vein

probably strong enough so that each time he appeals to the

people he regards their vote as a real confirmation of his

and the

fact that the

acts;

government has a vast advantage over the

opposition, in holding a virtual

monopoly of the telecommuni-

cations media, does not diminish his conviction.

Moreover, even

there were complete freedom of opinion,

demonstrations

if

all

of popular sentiment hitherto would have supported him. plausibility of plebiscites, therefore,

stances of the given case;

cratic

ideology.

probably the

first

Despite

depends upon the circum-

under some circumstances the

niques of direct democracy are no all

more than

this,

The

however,

lip service to

tech-

demo-

Max Weber was

to clearly see the alternatives of plebiscitary or

parliamentary methods of selecting political leadership. 40 40 See below, pp. 63

ff.

WORLD WAR

POLITICAL REALITY AFTER

56

I

Political Parties

7.

Max Weber

defines political parties as "in their essence organi-

zations voluntarily created

and based on free recruiting which

must be constantly renewed." 41 A further aspect of such parties is "a permanent cadre of party affiliates organized under a leader or group of notables" which is in charge of party finances, formulation of the program, presentation of candidates for electoral

and the

offices,

and

strategy

party, therefore,

bureaucracy of functionaries for

more,

it is

its

The modern

special purposes. Further-

organized on an oligarchic

party voters have no share at lecting

of party work.

tactics

an apparatus which has created a fully trained

is

candidates,

all

basis.

in framing

The masses its

of the

program or

se-

and party members participate only mar-

ginally.

Edmund Burke

as early as at the

end of the eighteenth century

had pointed out the fundamentally

voluntaristic nature of the

process by which parties are formed. Probably borrowing

M.

Max Weber

Ostrogorski,

a professionally operated organization, tionaries ranging

repeatedly

made

from

extended the definition to include

an apparatus of func-

from party headquarters

to the

ward

clubs.

He

the point that contemporary national parties had

their origin in the English caucus system. 42

Nowadays ditions of

it

may seem

platitudinous to assert that under con-

mass democracy an apparatus of functionaries

dispensable for a political party. Then, however,

it

is

remarkable foresight to thus pass sentence on the parties rected by notables,

which were

still

to be

Europe, though no longer in England. frage, all such parties

and

financial

found everywhere

Due

in-

called for di-

in

to universal suf-

have disappeared. "Bureaucratization of

planning by the parties are the concomitants of

democratization." 43

The

political

41 See Staatssoziologte, pp. 51 42 See, e.g., Pol. Schr., pp. 523 43 Pol. Schr., p. 375.

ff.; ff.

requirements of mass democ-

Pol. Schr., p. 312.

POLITICAL PARTIES with

racy,

its

huge army of

voters, can

57

be met only by a rationally

operated party apparatus, by the party "machine," whose func-

have made

tionaries

Weber

politics their profession.

In this connection, 44

pointed out that legal procedures can determine the com-

position of the "party cadre."

He may

have been referring to

the American technique of using primaries, as they were at that time, for selecting not only candidates for office but also party functionaries, for his

knowledge of American

political life

was

astounding.

Perhaps the lasting value of

was

this subject

Max

the party apparatus and bureaucracy.

more

To Weber

enlargement of

this

was only one

instance of the general tendency toward bureaucratization

which he saw in

of society; 45 for in the mass

all

state, electoral

depends on the rationalization of party recruiting. Effec-

success

tive party

propaganda must be carried on by full-time func-

from the party leadership proper.

Up

Weber's time the technical work of party organization was

car-

who

tionaries,

to

Weber's contributions to

his prediction of the inexorable

are separate

on by notables, more or less as a sideline. Weber foresaw methods would no longer be adequate. The establishment and direction of the party press and the handling of the ried

that such

party finances are part of the job of rationalizing the party

ma-

chinery.

And

decision

on the part of party deputies in the parliaments. In the freedom, deriving from Burke's ideas, had be-

of particular importance

is

eliminating freedom of

liberal era such

come

habitual. Its place has

goals in the

form of

strict

been taken by the submission to party party discipline.

The

process of run-

ning a party also involves the creation of youth organizations, ting tant,

up schools for party cementing

ties

officials

with economic interests friendly to the party.

Examples of the latter are the partnerships, tween

parties

common

and certain economic associations

44 Staatssoziologie, p. 52.

« See Pol.

set-

and speakers, and, most impor-

Schr., pp. 372

ff.

—the

today, besocialists

WORLD WAR

POLITICAL REALITY AFTER

58

with the trade unions,

and the bourgeois

say,

I

parties with the

em-

ployers' organizations.

Although the evolution toward bureaucratization was still in its initial stages in Weber's day, it has since continued and be-

come

he foresaw. Under the im-

fully consolidated, exactly as

pact of universal suffrage, all parties in present-day mass democracy have

become gigantic party machines which function by

own momentum, independent

their

of state regulation.

media

masses of voters swayed by the mass

The

are nothing but a

herd, cannon fodder for the strictly oligarchic party directorates.

— USSR—have

It is true that recent constitutions

Republic, Italy, and the the parties as

official

machinery of

state.

German

those of the

undertaken to recognize

institutions, necessary

components of the

But no country has achieved

lation of the party dynamics.

46

Federal

Even American

real legal regu-

efforts to

impose

internal party democracy by law, as in the above-mentioned pri-

maries, have

chance, as

come

to naught.

M. Duverger

Only the

socialist parties

gree of control over the autonomous party oligarchy by servance of party statutes. struggle for the spoils of ical

formulas.

It

Weber would

real

dynamism of

—

the

in jurid-

anarchic, in a state of unregu-

Max Weber

proved perfectly prescient.

and naturally continue in the European indus-

See Karl Loewenstein,

droit

ob-

also maintained that the multiparty system of his time

necessarily

Parties," in

strict

parties

—cannot be contained

countries of the future. 47 His prediction

trial

46

The

power

must remain

lated liberty. Here, too,

have a

has recently shown, to exert some de-

Ex trait

"The Legal

came

true for all

Institutionalization of Political

des rapports generaux au

Ve

congres international de

compare (Brussels: Etablissements Emile Bruylant, 1959), pp. 743

ff.

47 Pol. Schr., p. 372.

Here Weber

predicts four or five sizable political

with the concomitant need for coalition governments. His prediction proved valid for Weimar and, with certain reservations, for

parties,

Bonn

also.

— POLITICAL PARTIES

European continental

The

states until the eruption

of totalitarianism.

two-party system in Great Britain and the old Dominions

which has recently begun

on altogether

may

59

to break

different traditions

Max

note in passing that

down,

as in

—

Canada

is

based

and national psychologies.

We

Weber's prediction has not been

invalidated by Bonn's apparent approach to the two-party sys-

tem.

The

per cent clause has helped

totally anti-democratic five

to simplify the party structure

by eliminating smaller parties in

Germany; but four larger party combinations have nevertheless survived, just as

Weber

A

foresaw.

genuine party of the right

has not yet arisen, and could only do so at the expense of the

government

CDU, which

party, the

has held power since 1949.

SPD, can be avoided Communist Party is maintained.

Similarly, a split in the Socialist Party, the

only as long as the ban on the

All parties that have once been organized and integrated into political life display

an amazing tenacity of

dom

parties

to

form new

—

change in regime

and

Italy after

as in

1945 —

is

life.

Wherever

free-

restored after a thoroughgoing

Germany

in 191 8

and 1945, France on the scene,

the former parties reappear

often without even troubling to change their personnel or acquire

new

labels. So-called landslides,

elections,

always a possibility in general

have been relatively rare

—examples

are those of the

Nazis in 1930 and of the short-lived Poujadists in France in 1952.

It

remains to be seen whether these principles will prove

true in France

On the

when

the de Gaulle period has

the other hand,

American

velopments.

parties

Max

come

to

its

end.

Weber's notions about patronage

have been largely outmoded by

As we have shown, 48

in

later de-

the introduction of the Civil

Service system for most official positions has strictly limited the

opportunities for patronage available to the victorious

In addition, the two parties have by

now

party.

shed their ideological

differences to such an extent that they appear basically to be the 48 See above, p. 38.

60

POLITICAL REALITY AFTER

WORLD WAR

two wings of a single middle-class

power purely

for political

We

may be

distinction

for

its

engaged in the struggle

party,

own

inclined to question

I

sake. 49

Max

Weber's fundamental

between patronage parties and ideological

parties. 50

All political parties practice patronage insofar as they aim at placing their leading politicians in key government posts. In coalition governments, instead of the victorious party's

oly of offices, there

is

monop-

a distribution of ministerial posts, includ-

among the partners The Bonn government provides a clear,

ing those of the ministerial bureaucracy,

forming the

coalition.

though by no means gratifying, example for All-party

trading.

—

kind of horse-

governments which divide up the

among themselves and politics

this

spoils

thus run counter to the supreme aim of

the struggle for political power

scarcely ever of any degree of

—

are exceptional

and

permanence. The most striking

examples of such are Austria from 1945 to 1966 and Colombia since 1958.

World War, and since transform themselves as much as

Since the Second

gun

to

states, political parties

all

countries have be-

possible into welfare

have everywhere begun to shed the ideo-

At moment, the party programs really differ only over the matter of what share of the economy is to be assigned to the public, what logical differences that previously attracted voters to them.

share to the private sector. Basically, the differences consist in

how much

leeway should be

Catholic parties are

still

left to

the

latter.

ideologically oriented.

To be

sure, the

They have long

been present in Germany, Switzerland, Holland, and Belgium;

and since Weber's time they have the First

World War),

cently in Latin

also

—Argentina,

America

emerged

in Italy (after

in France after the second war,

Chile,

and

re-

and elsewhere. But

49 Max Weber could not, of course, foresee that the Democrats would be split by the Negro question, nor that boss rule of the parties, a factor he often reverted to, has virtually vanished today. so Pol. Schr., pp.

312

f.

— 1

POLITICAL PARTIES

6

thanks to the social philosophy of the Vatican, these parties too

have entered the Elysian parties

of the welfare

no longer make much of

struggle; rivals

fields

the

ideological

state.

their class structure

disagreements

The

socialist

and the

class

with their bourgeois

have been largely abandoned, and they have made rapid

progress in adopting middle-class ways of thinking.

In the place of contrasting party ideologies, a kind of uniform ideology has arisen which no nation and no party can escape including, especially, this: its

two

We

communism.

have already alluded to

cardinal goals are to raise the standard of living for

the masses and to attain a greater degree of social justice for

underprivileged strata of the population. Even the tensions be-

tween West and East ultimately come down to disagreement over the methods by which a higher standard of living for

may be

Max Weber flict

repeatedly insisted that politics amounts to con-

and that the

power.

all

achieved. 51

He

wage

political parties

a struggle for political

has been proved perfectly right. Political parties to-

day are merely bureaucratically administered and rationally conducted organizations fighting for political power. infrastructure that once differentiated

paign promises: each pledges that in

it

In retrospect, his

ideological

them has shrunk to camdo better than the others

will

improving the national standard of

Max Weber seems

The

living.

to

have erred on two counts:

view of the necessarily voluntaristic nature of parties and

his

assumption that the existence of competing parties in a mass state is indispensable

and

inevitable.

These were the ideas of a

liberal still rooted in the nineteenth century.

The

innovation in the political situation of our time state,

which has transformed the

is

revolutionary

the totalitarian

typically liberal party based

on

voluntary adherence into the totalitarian party with compulsory

membership. Freedom of party choice has been replaced by an 51 See above, pp.

9

f.

al-

POLITICAL REALITY AFTER

62

WORLD WAR

I

most military subordination to the commands issued by the party leadership,

which

identical with the leadership of the state.

is

Under pressure of

the mass media, the supposedly free-willed

individual must obey their orders.

Max Weber

found no

his-

torical precedents for the one-party totalitarian state of either the

Communist ways

or Fascist brand. For although despotisms have

existed,

none has been launched and maintained by

al-

a party

—

except for that prototype of the totalitarian party, the Ja-

cobins. Factions lares at the

have always existed: the Optimates and Popu-

end of the Roman Republic, the "circus parties"

in

Byzantium, the Bianchi and Neri in Republican Florence. But

genuine parties are an invention of the nineteenth century, and in particular a product of

One may go

mass democracy

as

it

then took form.

so far as to deny any "party" character to the one-

party state, since the very concept of party government implies the existence of several competing political parties.

could not foresee this turn of

affairs.

He

Max Weber

could not know, and

could scarcely have imagined, the effect upon individual and collective decisions

of propaganda techniques monopolistically

applied through the mass media by a governmental coercive apparatus. This replacement of a constitutional state, based citizen's

ers

on the

voluntary submission to legally constituted power hold-

by a despotic

erless subjects

state, in

—however

which they

rulers

impose

their will

may camouflage

on pow-

the situation by

—was one phe-

pseudo-legitimate techniques of popular support

nomenon

of the present day that could not but escape

Weber's foresight

—and

the possible forms of governmental patterns. 52 52 See below, pp.

88

ff.

Max

therefore left a gap in his typology of

IV. Plebiscitary Mass

Democracy

and Caesarism

The

1.

The

Plebiscitary

Leader

picture of plebiscitary mass democracy as the pattern of po-

litical

organization and the

"Caesaristic"

manner

in

which

it

gives rise to the

leader are central features of the

Max

Weber's

political sociology. 1 Plebiscitary installation of the political leader is

the expected, though not inevitable, consequence of full de-

mocratization through universal

suffrage

—through

which the

people have risen to the position of the power-holder in their

own

right.

In this sense mass democratization brings with

it

a

method of selecting political leaders which is supplementary to and, in some cases, a substitute for the parliamentary designation. attains leadership ... by "The political leader winning the loyalty and confidence of the masses, in his person and his power, by demagogic means addressed to the masses. In the nature of things this means the resort to a Caesaristic method .

.

.

of selecting political leadership." 2 It lished parliament will petition

—

as,

do

its

obvious that an estab-

is

best to fight such dangerous

com-

for example, the French Third Republic success-

fully did in the

Boulanger

crisis

(1889) By .

contrast, the

Fourth

Republic was unable to check de Gaulle's "legal" coup d'etat of 1958. But in the long run parliamentary government cannot hold 1

Pol. Scbr., pp. 381

ff.

2 Pol. Scbr., p. 382.

63

MASS DEMOCRACY AND CAESARISM

64

out against an irresistible tendency. cially istic

must

The

political parties espe-

with the plebiscitary wind; because of the Caesar-

sail

mass democracy, they have no choice but "to

aspects of

cept as leaders persons with real political temperaments gifts as

soon

ac-

and

such persons prove capable of winning the confi-

as

dence of the masses." 3

Such insight indicates

Max

Weber's

uncanny sense for

truly

the shape of things to come. Everywhere in our age of mass de-

mocracy the

political leader

dominates the scene, chosen either

by the legitimate plebiscitary method of the ballot or by "accla-

mation"

as its pseudo-legitimate substitute.

political society

—

There

except, perhaps, for the marginal

—

remnants of traditional rule survive

that

scarcely a

is

few

in

which

has been able to

escape this universal tendency. That applies equally to old-established states to the

which

as yet

have found no stable

new, unstable, developing

states

political

form and

which have turned

to neo-

presidentialism in disguised or undisguised form.

England, 4

among

the older constitutional democracies, has ex-

When

emplified the plebiscitary trend for nearly a century.

the

voter goes to the polls, he hopes to see a particular leading personality

emerge

as victor of the election.

The

voter

is

motivated

primarily by the personal element, and his preference for a particular political party

acknowledged

leader. 5

is

expressed by his vote for

its

publicly

This plebiscitary component in the British

general elections seems to have persisted even during the exist3 Pol. Scbr., p. 391. 4 Pol. Schr., 282

ff. Here, however, Weber judges Gladan electoral campaign of 1879, introduced plebiscitary elements into the English two-party system more favorably than would present-day political scientists. 5 The postponement of long overdue new elections in Great Britain until October, 1964 was dictated by the Conservatives' need to build up the "image" of the new and hitherto unknown Prime Minister, Sir Alec

stone

—who

pp.

Douglas-Home, electorate.

f.

and 522

in the Midlothian,

in

order to

—

make him

attractive to

the mass of the

THE PLEBISCITARY LEADER ence of the three-party system,

between two party Strict

when

there

was no

65

either-or choice

leaders.

parliamentary selection of leaders, then, has been main-

tained only in those old-established parliamentary states in which

the existing multiparty system has necessitated coalition govern-

ments (Belgium, Holland, the Scandinavian countries), and the electorate thus

On

had no

clear choice

among

leader-personalities.

the other hand, in the Federal Republic of

sonal-plebiscitary character of elections held

character

its

In the United

and again been impressed upon the

whose government

States,

mentary, because Congress

is

constitution. Motivations conditioned

candidate are so

abandon

much

not parlia-

built into the

is

by the preference for a spe-

in the ascendancy that

many

of the

their party attachment for the politically

attractive presidential candidate.

This tendency

the fact that the party programs have

guishable from one another.

i960 shaped up

Nixon and only

is

shorn of the power of designating

the president, the plebiscitary nature of elections

voters

skillfully

propaganda) has been founded on the two-party

alternative that has again

cific

the per-

to the present (a

which the government party in particular has

exploited in

voters.

Germany

up

Thus the

as primarily

is

more

reinforced by

become almost

indistin-

presidential election of

a battle between

Kennedy and

secondarily between Democrats and Republicans.

In the presidential campaign of 1964 between Johnson and

Goldwater, the personal-plebiscitary factor shaped the outcome of the election even

more than

in the past, because the Republi-

can Party did not stand united behind

its official

In countries under authoritarian leadership,

ment may

either

candidate. finally,

a parlia-

be kept going for the sake of appearance or

may have been completely

abolished.

plebiscitary choice of leaders has today

Be this as it may, the become altogether indis-

pensable and provides the sole "legitimation" of open or masked dictatorship. Plebiscites

on

dictatorial-authoritarian constitutions,

or to "elect" a dictator already in power, or for similar pur-

MASS DEMOCRACY AND CAESARISM

66

have become the standard pseudo-democratic

poses,

mummery

of contemporary despotism. There can be no question of genuof political leadership in such situations, for

ine "selection"

only a single candidate, supported by the tanks and machine

guns of his praetorian guard,

is

"running" for

office.

The

election

has degenerated to the registering of acclamation. Thus the

must always be a "tribune of the people." 6

plebiscitary leader

Nowadays we have more reason selection of leaders than

to

Max Weber

be skeptical of plebiscitary could possibly be.

As long

as a constitution remains in force, absolute majorities,

happen

at

all

in honest elections,

if

they

are exceedingly rare.

Not

even Hitler attained a majority in the elections of March 1933, which were formally rorism

certainly

ceived only lini's

43.9%

still

the

affected

tolerably honest, although ter-

outcome.

We

of the vote.

Nevertheless,

he

re-

need not speak of Musso-

shameless manipulation of the electoral process.

When

the

among contemporary dictators boast of their famous know that there has been outright falsification of the 99 %> we

small fry

results of the elections. In the primitive milieu of

ing countries, where fraud

do not take

place.

The

is

most develop-

rampant, genuine plebiscites simply of controlling political decisions at

art

the polls also has to be learned, although this

many apt pupils. As Max Weber has shown,

is

a subject which

attracts

tween the

there

an inseparable link be-

is

plebiscitary selection of leaders

and the demagogism

inherent in mass democracy. 7 "Since the establishment of the constitutional state,

and even more so

mocracy, the demagogue the Occident." 8

As

is

since the inauguration of de-

the type of the leading politician in

a sociologist,

Weber had no

mocracy and demagogy belong together. realities

6

Max

of

life

would be

379

p. 513.

ff.,

513

illusions:

ff.

"De-

idealization of the

pointless self-deception."

Weber, however, nowhere employed

t Pol. Schr., pp. 8 Pol. Schr.,

An

And

this expression.

again:

— THE PLEBISCITARY LEADER "The demagogue

rises to

the top, and the successful

67

demagogue

man who is the most unscrupulous in methods of propaganda." 9 Who, reading this sentence today, fails to think of the monster of the recent past who wielded the Big Lie with such daemonic virtuosity that he owed his seizure of power to it? To is

the

Max

Weber, however, the concept of the demagogue was with-

out moral connotation and was

demagogues both the dyer Cleon. 10

our time

—

strictly utilitarian.

and the

would follow

classical

He

classified as

textbook example,

that any plebiscitary leader of

Kennedy, an Adenauer, a de Gaulle

to conduct himself demagogically in order to

to or to stay in

democratic mass

it

It

a Macmillan, a

would have

a

Pericles

come

power in a full democracy. In the present-day state, no leader can rise to the top unless he is

demagogue. 11

But

it is

can

set limits to

This

is

precisely the nature of constitutional democracy that

and neutralize the

tutional democracies such as the legal

effects

of demagoguery.

proved by the examples of England 12 and of other

forms of

United

political life" are able to

States.

The

consti-

"established

minimize the impact of

demagoguery, especially when the leader of the masses moves "within the fixed organization of the parties" and

is

forced to

"school and prove himself by participating in the committee

work of the parliament, regulated as that is by established conThus constitutional democracy is by no means, he

ventions."

holds, at the mercy of demagoguery. course, imagine that the master

9

The two

But Weber could

not, of

demagogues of our times

—the

quotations above are from Pol. Schr., p. 379.

10 Pol. Schr., p. 513. 11 Weber speaks

Max

{Pol. Scbr., p. 392)

of the "present irrational

and suggests he lived, he would have been bitterly disappointed; for both the seizure of power by the Nazis and their subsequent hold was founded upon "rule of the streets" manipulated from above. rule of the streets typical of purely plebiscitary nations"

that his

Germans were immune

12 Pol. Scbr., p. 391.

to this sort of thing.

Had

MASS DEMOCRACY AND CAESARISM

68

—

and their ilk as sworn enemies of parliaon principle abstain from parliamentary dementarism would liberations and would rise solely by demagogic appeals to the Hitlers, Mussolinis

De

masses.

Gaulle, too, belongs to this category of anti-parlia-

mentary demagogues.

2.

The

Caesaristic

Max Weber

Leader

outlined the logical stages by which the plebiscitary

leader becomes transformed into the Caesaristic leader. 13 technical term "Caesarism"

who won

absolute

fatal decline

power

is

in the period of the

by assuming

all

The

derived from Gaius Julius Caesar,

Roman

Republic's

the leading offices in the state, in

defiance of the republican constitution. Caesar persuaded emoto grant

him

these offices beyond the restricted legal term and even for his

life-

tionalized

time.

and largely corrupted popular assemblies

Thus he could aver the legitimacy of

his absolute rule, the

properly constituted organs of the Republic having voted dictatorship.

The

fiction of the lex regis

him

legal

de imperio prevailed

throughout the principate as the basis of the legitimate exercise

The nineteenth century gave a good phenomenon of Caesarism, though it

of power by the princeps. deal of attention to the

went by the name of Bonapartism,

after

its

most recent prece-

dent (Roscher, Treitschke, Bagehot).

The leader

identity lies,

according to

as the basis of tion,

between the plebiscitary and the Caesaristic

power.

Max Weber,

A

but a declaration of

the person

We

who

must

'faith'

no ordinary vote or

elec-

in the vocation for leadership of

claims this acclamation for himself." 14

raise certain objections to

term "Caesarism."

But he

in the use of the plebiscite

plebiscite "is

also applies

He

applies

it

Max

Weber's use of the

rightly to the

two Napoleons.

repeatedly 15 to Bismarck, a

it

13 Pol. Schr., pp. 381 ff. 1 4 Pol. Schr., p. 382. !5 E.g., Pol. Schr., pp.

335, 382.

man

rather of

THE CAESARISTIC LEADER

own

his

stamp, for

whom

he

felt

69

To

an ambivalent love-hatred.

be sure, Bismarck's dominance may have been "Caesaristic" in extent; but

he

rather than to

owed it to the confidence of popular vote. Thus he lacked entirely certainly

Caesaristic legitimation;

In addition,

is

it

its

monarch

his

the typically

he was not the people's choice.

open

to question

whether the plebiscitary

leader always and in all circumstances conducts himself Caesaristically,

that

is,

no

that there are

limits

upon the

exercise of his

power. Since Weber's day, to be sure, a number of

who

ers it

political lead-

achieved power by plebiscitary methods have exercised

absolutely,

without constitutional limitations

Hitler, Mussolini,

—men

such as

Nasser and, with some reservations, General

de Gaulle. But the material for comparative studies has swelled greatly since

and

Weber's day and makes

it

apparent that plebiscitary

Caesaristic leaders are not necessarily identical.

also learned that a leader chosen

techniques

system

—

may

as the

by more or

example of England shows.

D. Roosevelt

certainly

had

power. Yet neither he nor,

new

have

nevertheless be integrated into the parliamentary

Whether a plebiscitary leader in office acts pends on the political milieu in which he came lin

We

less plebiscitary

as a

Caesar de-

to power. Frank-

a strong plebiscitary basis for his

say,

Macmillan,

felt

Caesars. Erlander, the Social Democratic

or behaved like

Prime Minister of

Sweden, has enjoyed steady popular support since 1946; yet there is certainly nothing Caesaristic about his management of Swedish

political life.

In original Caesarism and in

its

subsequent

forms the lack of constitutional counterbalancing factors permitted an unlimited exercise of power. There were no constitutional safeguards of the sort

we

find in the present-day govern-

ments of Great Britain and the United

States,

nor was there any

regular procedure for curbing the Caesars without resorting to force.

As long

as constitutional

democracy

is

really functioning,

the constitution itself presents even the strongest executive with

insurmountable obstacles and prevents

it

from slipping

into

70

MASS DEMOCRACY AND CAESARISM

Caesaristic dictatorship.

Of

the British Constitution,

which are binding on every prime minis-

ter,

no matter how large

also are the checks

such nature are the conventions of

his electoral majority.

and balances

Of

such nature

built into the separation of

powers in the American Constitution.

And

in the political en-

vironments of both countries, the courts are the greatest shield against Caesarism. In the United States, moreover, the Twenty-

Amendment (1951) which

second

terms in

office

president to two

restricts a

has barred any legal perpetuation of presidential

power. 16 Obviously, the core of the whole question

way

a legal

power by

for

removing a

political leader

plebiscitary means, once

the masses, and thus

what Weber

he has

is

whether there

who

has

come

is

to

lost the confidence of

calls his "test"

of legitimacy.

For the essence of Caesarism consists in the impossibility of 16

und

Wolfgang

J.

Mommsen

in his otherwise excellent book,

Max Weber

1890-1920 (Tubingen: Mohr, 1959), several times (e.g., pp. 140, 143, 200 f.) maintains that in advocating a popularly elected president under the Weimar Constitution, Max Weber was exchanging an outmoded form of democracy for the new, plebiscitary "leader democracy" and thus contributed toward "psychologically preparing the German people for acclamation of Adolf Hitler's leadership." This hypothesis completely misreads the position of the president of the die deutsche Politik

Weimar

Republic. In fact, the president was constitutionally so limited (he could even be recalled by the people in conjunction with the parliament) that a "plebiscitary leader-state" could not possibly have arisen

What is more, Mommsen's thesis comWeber's political ethics. Such a distortion could not go unchided (see Karl Loewenstein, "Max Weber als 'Ahnherr' des plebiszitaren Fiihrerstaats," in Kolner Zeitschrift fur Soziologie through any action on

his part.

pletely misunderstands

Max

und

Sozialpolitik, vol. 13 [1961], pp. 275

and unsubstantiated attempt

ff.;

see also

Mommsen's

at a justification, ibid., vol.

feeble

15 [1963], pp.

This perversion of Weber's thought would not be worth menMommsen and others had not repeated the denigration (if newspaper accounts are to be believed; see Suddeutsche Zeitung, No. 107 of May 7, and Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, No. 195 of May 8, 1964) in addressing the Heidelberg congress of sociologists. As Goethe says, "Getretener Quark wird breit, nicht stark," which might be rendered into American: "No matter how you slice it, it's still baloney."

295

ff.).

tioning

if

1

THE CAESARISTIC LEADER putting a legal end to absolute rule.

Max Weber keenly perceived

the crux of the problem and explained

of England: "Parliament

is

7

it

in terms of the

example

the constitutional limiting framework

for the holder of constitutional power, guaranteeing the stability as well as setting the limits for the

He

power.

The

citizens.

machinery of Parliament provides an

internal

form of

'orderly

prime minister's exercise of

cannot infringe upon the guaranteed rights of the

political testing' and,

above

when he

ination of the Caesaristic dictator

all,

peaceful elim-

has lost the confi-

dence of the masses." 17

We cannot,

—provided he

therefore, completely accept really held

ways the Caesaristic

it

—

Max

Weber's opinion

that the plebiscitary leader

is

al-

leader. Nevertheless, the matter involves a

problem of great importance which becomes apparent only in retrospect,

from our present vantage point. How, we must ask, which the established techniques

in a political environment in

who

of constitutional democracy do not operate, can a leader has

come

istically

to

power by

plebiscitary

means and

exercises

it

Caesar-

be unseated? In constitutional democracy, where the po-

litical rules

of the

game

are respected equally by the leaders

and

the led, periodic general elections solve the problem; the plebiscitary call

can be rescinded by plebiscitary

plebiscitary leader has entrenched himself

recall.

But once the

by Caesaristic exercise

of power, the normal constitutional methods of recall do not function

—assuming

that they really exist

and are not

just se-

mantic frauds. The Caesar cannot be deposed by the constitution because he himself

is

The masses of the people him because he consistently

the constitution.

or of the voters do not cling to

proves that he can satisfy their desires or needs. Rather, he and his

henchmen

so completely dominate the coercive apparatus of

the state that the people no longer have the 17 Pol. Schr., p. 383. It is certainly

British is

Prime Minister

means of showing

an exaggeration to characterize the

as a Caesaristic dictator, except in wartime,

what Max Weber may have been thinking of

at that time.

which

72

MASS DEMOCRACY AND CAESARISM

their loss of faith in him.

violence.

They cannot

employs coercion to put across his innovations

"unarmed" one. The crowd

to the

leader must therefore have the it

no longer

vellians

him without

get rid of

Machiavelli foresaw, the "armed prophet"

As

him

believes in

means

—

fickle;

who

wholly superior the Caesaristic

when The new Machiaprescription. The coercive

to force

it

to fidelity

and his mission. 18

have faithfully followed

instruments of the state

is

is

this

either the

armed

forces of the generals

or the leader's praetorians, together with the opinion-forming

—

mass media

are exclusively at the Caesaristic dictator's disposal.

As long as he controls them, he can compel the people to believe in him and his exercise of power remains unassailable. Hence the reign of a Caesaristic dictator can be brought to an end only

by his death, by a revolution which

armed

forces desert him,

is

successful because the

by outside intervention, or by defeat in

war.

We

need only consider the

political situation in

de Gaulle's

France to see a textbook example of the symbiosis between a plebiscitary power-base

and

Caesaristic authority.

The

constitu-

tion provides for strong presidential powers. Traditional liberties

have more or

litical parties

less survived;

but the parliament and the po-

have been so weakened, and the government so

completely controls the vital telecommunications, that an effective 18 The stinging passage from Chapter VI of 11 Principe (Le Opere Maggiori di Niccold Machiavelli, Florence: Sansoni, 1934, pp. 27 f.) is pertinent here for its remarkable contemporaneity: "Di qui nacque che

armati vinsono, e li disarmati ruinorono. Perche, oltre alle cose natura dei populi e varia; ed e facile a persuadere loro una cosa, ma e difficile fermarli in quella persuasione; e pero conviene essere ordinato in modo que quando non credono piu si possa fare creder loro per forza." (Thus it comes about that all armed prophets have conquered and unarmed ones have failed; for besides what has been already said, the character of peoples varies, and it is easy to persuade them of a thing, but difficult to keep them in that persuasion. And so it is necessary to order things so that when they no longer believe, they can be made to believe by force!' (Italics mine.) tutti profeti

dette, la

THE CAESARISTIC LEADER opposition has become virtually impossible

—

at least for the

73 time

being. Paradoxically, this has been proved, rather than disproved,

by the presidential elections of

1965: though President de

late

Gaulle had been forced into a second sition

was not strong enough

Historical studies

authority needs

to

had convinced

more than

combined oppo-

ballot, the

deny him the second term.

Max Weber

a plebiscitary base;

it

that Caesaristic

must control the

coercive apparatus of the state in order to nip all opposition in it

must monopolize the means of influencing pub-

He

could not, however, foresee the potential of the

the bud, and lic

opinion.

mass media for producing unresisting conformity. For Weber, the press and public meetings were

still

the principal means of

shaping public opinion. Today, the electronic mass media, the

most beneficent and most diabolical invention of the

hammer

century,

last half-

the image of the leader into the masses and

overwhelm the appeal of

all

competing

forces. If necessary, the

apparatus of the government party, likewise dominated by the leader, can be pressed into service.

Under

this

coercive

and

the ban

on

government

gime

same heading come

all

those only too well

terroristic techniques of dictatorial

free parties, compulsory

known

regimes such as

membership

in the single

party, repression of all activity regarded

by the

re-

as subversive, penalties for listening to radio broadcasts

and numerous others ad nauseam. To-

hostile to the regime,

gether with the skillful glorification of the leader and his achieve-

ments, these methods create a climate in which neither individual

nor collective rebellion

is

possible as long as the military chiefs

identify with the leader- dictator

—whether

for reasons of class

egoism, class privilege, or patriotism.

This

is

the characteristic development of our time which only

the old-established western democracies (France excepted) have

been able to escape;

it

could not really be foreseen by

Weber, scion of the reason-oriented nineteenth century

Max

that

he

74

MASS DEMOCRACY AND CAESARISM

was.

Time

has invalidated his optimistic view 19 that the tradi-

tional constitutional order

would

and the "firmly organized"

parties

serve to hold in check the plebiscitary leader's Caesaristic

aspirations. Frequently the constitutional order has

been either

eliminated or given a dictatorial twist; and political parties have

been undermined by newly formed "personalistic" revolutionary parties to such a degree that they ing.

And

have been emptied of

has been potential or actual terror. its

"legitimate" investiture in

twentieth with

3.

all

mean-

everywhere the instrument to bring about these changes

The

nineteenth century with

power has been followed by the

illegitimate usurpation.

its

The Charismatic Leader

In the whole of

Max

that, to all intents

Weber's

political sociology, the concepts

and purposes, had the greatest impact on the

thinking of our time are those of charisma and the charismatic leader. 20

The word and

guage of

politics.

the idea have entered the everyday lan-

With Weber we now

recognize three types of rule: legal rule

based on established norms, traditional rule by custom, and charismatic rule based

on devotion

to a leader

his prodigious

knowledge of

mental types, and

this

history to

system of types

whose

gifts are

Max Weber drew upon

considered supernatural and exceptional.

work out

these funda-

rightly considered his

is

essential contribution to political sociology.

Great leaders do, of course, emerge

and by tainly

traditional authority, a fact

mindful

of.

among

which

rulers

Max Weber

by legal

was

But he regards the charismatic type

bodying the leader truly destined to

rule.

as

cer-

em-

Such leaders may ap-

pear as prophets, war heroes, demagogues in the Greek ecclesia,

™Pol. Schr.,p. 391. "Die drei reinen Typen der legitimen Herrschaft,"

20 See

soz'iologie,

pp. 104

ff.

and

Vol. Schr., pp.

495

ff.

in Staats-

THE CHARISMATIC LEADER or in parliaments.

75

"The frame within which authority operates and its members." 21 The followers obey

integrates the society

the leader because of his extraordinary qualities. But the charis-

matic bond between leader and the led endures only as long as the leader's charisma

is

verified

by miracles, successes, material

benefit to his followers or subjects as

he

is

—

in other words, only as long

the ruler "by the grace of God." 22

into the further questions that

We cannot here delve

Max Weber

text: succession in charismatic authority

discusses in this con-

and the "routinization"

of charisma.

In the light of our own, only too often painful experiences since

Weber's day, we must consider how the concepts of pleb-

iscitary, Caesaristic,

thermore,

we must

actually

as

is

One may

and charismatic leaders are

ask whether the category of the charismatic

fundamental start

as

Max Weber

plebiscitary techniques, either

in substance

the people

is

must always come to power by

by free election or by acclamation

tantamount to

election.

The

consensus of

essential for the legitimation of his rule.

is

Caesarism, therefore, ited milieu in

assumed.

out with the observation, contained within the

concept, that a Caesaristic leader

which

interrelated. Fur-

is

True

conceivable only in that historically lim-

which the democratic ideology

is

accepted.

The

ex-

press or implied will of the people alone provide the legitimate

base for a Caesar's rule. Historically, then, the plebiscitary ruler

could come to power only in Greece and ancient Rome, in

Byzantium

(if

we

will accept the Byzantine custom of acclama-

tion by the populace of the capital as manifestation of the popular will)

,

and

finally in the constitutional states

of the

West

after

the Puritan, American, and French revolutions. This localization,

which of course confines the concept within narrow historical limits, is essential. Otherwise, "Caesarism" loses meaning and becomes the label for any kind of absolute 21 Staatssoziologie, p. 104.

™lbid., p. 106.

rule.

MASS DEMOCRACY AND CAESARISM

j6

The

charismatic leader,

power by done

on the other hand, may have come

plebiscitary legitimation, but

of power

so. Plebiscitary acquisition

is,

therefore,

lute prerequisite to charismatic rule. Charismatic

elements

may and

and

no

abso-

plebiscitary

often do cooperate, since the magic the leader

radiates influences his selection

On

to

he does not have to have

and may be translated into

votes.

the other hand, the plebiscitary leader need not possess

charismatic qualities. Should he have them, so

much

the better

for him; they strengthen his claim to popular legitimation.

Furthermore, absolute rule

—

"Caesaristic" only in the figura-

tive sense, according to its effects, but not in the strict sense of

Max

Weber's concept

—can

be attained entirely without pleb-

and above all without charismatic motivaon the part of the ruled. Numerous examples of this can be cited from both past and present. Absolute rule may be won by infiltration and subversion of existing regimes, by coup d'etat from above, by revolution directed from above or arising "sponiscitary legitimation,

tion

taneously," and above all by the use of illegitimate violence.

Under

mon

this last

heading

nowadays. These

may be

fall

the military dictatorships so com-

may be naked

military despotisms, or they

disguised as civilian governments; they

may

resort, after

they have been installed by force, to the formal legitimation of a manipulated plebiscite. to discover in

But

it

would be exceedingly

most of the more recent

genuine plebiscitary legitimation, charismatic motivation.

began

as

movements by

All this comes iscitary rule

let

dictatorial

difficult

regimes any

alone the least trace of

Almost without exception, these regimes a minority.

down

to the fact that neither genuine pleb-

nor a "Caesaristic" regime of absolute force requires

a charismatic infrastructure.

We may even say that the attainment

of rule by virtue of the charisma of a particular aspirant to power represents the exception and, to boot, a rare exception.

follows the necessity to re-examine what

Max Weber

charismatic rule. Undoubtedly, the concept

Hence

meant by

was a great stroke of

THE CHARISMATIC LEADER

77

genius, an event rare indeed in the social sciences. But will the

category withstand It

strict scientific analysis?

seems to us that the terms of

plebiscitary, Caesaristic,

and

The

first

charismatic belong to different conceptual categories.

two denote processes of

statecraft; plebiscitary refers to the at-

tainment of political power, Caesaristic to the exercise of the

power

on the other nowadays called the

attained by plebiscitary means. Charisma,

hand, belongs to the realm of what theory of influence;

it

is

concerns the modes of behavior governing

the mutual relationship of leader and following. Undeniably,

charisma has

But

it

whom tional

its

source in the person of the charismatic leader.

can be effective only it is

directed, that

if it

is,

evokes a response from those to

arouses belief in the leader's excep-

and supernatural mission. Charisma, then,

is

a category be-

longing to the disciplines of mass and social psychology.

What

motivations prompt the masses of the voters to give their legiance to one leader rather than another?

To answer

al-

questions

such as these involves distinguishing the specific mysterious

in-

from other types of socio-psychological

be-

fluence of charisma

havior in the struggle for political power.

What,

then, constitutes the political leader's attractiveness for

his voters or for "the people" in general? Is political opinions

gram"?

Is

it

and intentions

—

it

inherent in his

in other words, in his "pro-

the "magical flow" of his eloquence? His mind, his

knowledge, his experience? His demagogic talents? His identification

with the communis opinio, of which he becomes the

spokesman, or his opposition to

it,

paths? Whichever of these factors

can say

this:

must have

it

he

directs

it

along

new we

present in a given case,

the political leader chosen by plebiscitary means

what we may more bluntly

sex appeal. But popularity in itself does not yet

constitute charisma.

first

is

qualities of popularity, or

call political

distributed

in that

may

On

the contrary, because

interfere with charisma,

—an extremely personal

it

which

interrelationship

is is

so widely

—

at least at

between the leader

MASS DEMOCRACY AND CAESARISM

78

and the to

We

"initiates."

leaders, in addition

No

one would

modern times

—not even

to their popular attractiveness, possess charisma.

claim that a British prime minister of

enormous popularity

Churchill, with his

now

have enough empirical evidence by

assume that very few of the plebiscitary

—has been graced with

genuine charisma. The same can be said of American presidents,

who

undeniably possess plebiscitary legitimation. Certainly a

political leader like

But

date.

Konrad Adenauer held

a plebiscitary

man-

to ascribe the mysterious quality of charisma to

him

would be perverting the very meaning of the word. Naturally,

it

quite often happens that a mediocrity takes

rank in the political

sometimes useful and, on occasion, sary.

In some countries, such as

actually fear brilliance,

image of themselves.

which

We

may be

But there

is

political leader in

mediocre. That

is

Without

list

of British

to confirm this observa-

one quality which must be possessed by the

mass democracy, even personality, the is

if

he

is

intellectually

one great basis for popularity.

by no means equivalent to cha-

positive qualities of personality

politics these days.

even neces-

contrasts too sharply with their

need only run down the

But once again, personality risma.

desirable,

England or America, the masses

prime ministers or American presidents tion.

no one can

rise in

Formerly, in traditional forms of government

where the sovereign's favor decided who would reach the neither personality nor popularity that popularity success,

The

was

essential.

we have come no

stating

political

verbal formulae of "charisma" and "charismatic author-

23 See Pol. Schr., p. 380: "It

without

power."

top,

closer to the essence of charisma.

an "inspiration," that

easy to neglect scientific analysis and use

cian,

But in

and personality are now prerequisites for

ity" are so alluring, represent so original is

first

of a nation. 23 Political mediocrities are

life

intellect

and

it

them where they do

sometimes happens that a mere rhetori-

political character,

acquires strong political

THE CHARISMATIC LEADER not apply.

A

may

felicitous coinage, in this case,

79

well become the

vertu des vices. First of all,

we must keep

in

mind

that the concept of cha-

risma springs originally from the religious realm. freely admits,

24

Rudolf Sohm applied

Weber borrowed

then, the locus of charisma

tally,

ably

the concept to transfer

all creators

and shapers of

some degree: Moses, founders of

sects as

Jesus,

its

mainspring

yond and the

We

religions

cause

charisma.

insist

faith, the conviction

is

in politics; in

of the world be-

here on the distinctions that should be religious charisma

The dichotomy may be

raises the question

leadership

in religion, charisma,

certainty of salvation.

need not

it

in

Calvin and such

from other sources than

is

Fundamen-

had true charisma

Mohammed, even

drawn between the phenomenon of litical

to early Christianity;

to politics.

the world of religion. Prob-

Brigham Young. But

as a gift of grace, flows

religion

is

it it

As Max Weber

useful,

and po-

however, be-

of whether the quality of charismatic

not peculiar, and always has been, to political mi-

lieus conditioned exclusively, or at least to a large extent, by

magical,

or mystically religious elements. If that were

ritualistic,

the case, charisma

would apply

and, nowadays, to

many

chiefly to the pre-Cartesian

parts of Asia

and Africa which

West

in spite

of advancing rationalization only slowly are beginning to break

away from the magico-religious ambiance. This may explain

why

reliable western

observers attribute genuine charisma to

certain African tribal chieftains

who have

risen, as the

former

among Nkrumah, Kenyatta, Nyerere, Kaunda,

colonies have achieved nationhood, to political leadership their peoples:

men

like

Mboya, and Dr. Banda. Their tribal followers regard these men as exceptionally and supernaturally gifted. This charisma is sustained essentially by the mystical and magical climate of the nonwestern environment.

We may recall the position of the Japanese

24 Staatssoziologie, p. 104.

80

MASS DEMOCRACY AND CAESARISM

Tenno before 1945; leader.

simulated that of a charismatic

religious tradition,

ritualistic,

Western

stemming from a magical,

his prestige,

countries, however,

have been subjected to the

on which Max Weber laid so much be that in them the transference of the

process of rationalization stress. It

may, therefore,

originally religious category of charisma to the political plane

encountered far greater

difficulties

than in regions which, to use

Kant's term, have not yet awakened from the "slumber of

dogma." All these matters

When we

call for a careful investigation.

an important methodological problem

In addition,

ascribe charisma to a political figure,

arises.

we must

dis-

tinguish between historical and contemporary examples. In re-

gard to the great

political leaders of the past

—

who

supposedly

were gifted with charisma Caesar, Augustus, Charlemagne, Cromwell, Gustavus Adolphus, Napoleon I, to name only a few

—we of

the present generation are dependent for our knowledge

of their charismatic qualities upon the accounts of their contemporaries. really

in

But what do we know

actually about Caesar?

exude that supernatural magic, that

Max

Weber's terms

authority?

—but

Perhaps

tifically; certainly

and

which

constitutes the essence of charismatic

the matter cannot be proved scien-

Shakespeare

lack all standards

Did he

gift of grace,

is

no unimpeachable

criteria for

witness.

an objective judgment.

We We

must not confound Caesar's timeless glory as one of the great political leaders with his immediate effect upon his contemporaries.

And

let

us not forget that he was assassinated. Or, to

mention Napoleon commonplace,

I

certainly

(the third Napoleon, though far from

had no charisma)

:

we know

infinitely

more about Napoleon than we do about Caesar. In the years of his rise to power he surely seems to have had all the ingredients of charisma: the magic that emanated from him, the exceptional qualities that commanded utter devotion, his talent for projecting himself as an embodiment of idea and will. But after he became Emperor of the French, the

office

he held also exerted

its

in-

1

THE CHARISMATIC LEADER upon people

fluence

connected with that

—Goethe

charismatic effect. Yet

not excluded

may have

office

we must

how

else explain the

he confronted and

won

the

power

diluted the purity of the

when aging and

grant that even

defeated he seems to have had

magic;

—and

8

command

of some of the old

memorable scene

when

after Elba,

over the troops that had been sent out

him?

to arrest

Such examples might be multiplied

without securing

at will,

There

a better insight into the essence of charisma.

is

also a

need for distinguishing between the daemonic and the

charis-

matic.

Max Weber

does not set up any category sui generis for

the daemonic; he apparently includes

two need not be

we

identical;

it

within charisma. Yet the

can well conceive of effective cha-

risma devoid of any dose of the daemonic element. It is evident,

we

then, that

can best detect and analyze the

who

elements of true charisma in political leaders

our

own

time.

this angle,

we

But

we survey modern and

if

are closer to

recent history

will discover scarcely any political figure to

from

whom

the concept of charisma can be fully or even partially applied.

That may come

as a great surprise if

the persuasive influence of non-political realm,

make

that

be

one happens

to

be under

Weber's terminology. In the

noted, the tensions and crosscurrents

for charisma are by

George, for example, thority;

it

Max

may

but in keeping with

no means impossible. Stefan

well have possessed charismatic au-

Max

Weber's definition

it

was con-

fined to the narrow circle of his "disciples," and outside that circle

it

faded away without leaving any

traces.

His charisma was

altogether non-political and strictly personalized.

Among existed in

our contemporaries, charismatic magic appears to have its

strongest and purest

form

According to reliable accounts, no one could

resist his spell.

But

in a non-western milieu,

in

Mahatma Gandhi. near him

who came

in the first place, his charisma operated

and in the second place

it

was primarily

MASS DEMOCRACY AND CAESARISM

82

religious in nature; the political influence associated

a side effect of the religious element.

with

And Gandhi was

was

it

assassi-

nated.

Perhaps

we ought

also

consider his

to

Jawaharlal Nehru. In his best years

comprehensible quality that

is

called charisma. It

not only by his fellow countrymen but also by

met him. But ligious

Nehru,

in

secular

successor,

Nehru may have had

as well as

was

that in-

attested to

westerners

all

who

Gandhi, the traditional

and mystical elements were powerful

re-

allies in creating

charismatic authority.

To

pursue

matter further: Bismarck had the tremendous

this

personality of the political leader, but certainly

Abraham Lincoln

is

no charisma.

so surrounded by legends that today

scarcely possible to restore his original image. But there to suggest that

the

hand of an

closer to

he possessed charisma, and he, assassin.

Franklin D. Roosevelt

Weber's concept, but he

mune

to his spell.

John

under

may have come

did not really

still

Moreover, he had masses of enemies

is

much

is

too, fell

it

who were

fulfill

it.

altogether im-

Kennedy, removed prematurely from

F.

the political stage, undoubtedly had great personal charm and

knew how his

young

to kindle a high degree of personal devotion

among

who

followers. But the majority of the Americans

voted for him would be amazed to be told that he had charisma. Personality and

charm no more

constitute charisma than does

popularity.

To round

off this discussion

with two

ing which everyone can form his tainly be regarded as a textbook

who had come

to

power by

raise the objection that

elections

tioned,

of

own

final

examples concern-

opinion. Hitler

example of a

plebiscitary means.

may

cer-

Caesaristic leader,

Only pedants

will

he could not achieve a majority in the

March 1933

—which,

as

we have

already

men-

were tolerably honest although held under conditions of

mass terrorism. But did he also have what

Max Weber would

THE CHARISMATIC LEADER call

charisma?

were present

Many

of Weber's

tests

25

83

of the charismatic ruler

in the case of Hitler: the fanaticism

he aroused in

his adherents throughout his political career; the leader-follower

relationship; authentication by "proofs"; selection of administrative staff

on the

basis of personal devotion, irrespective of tech-

nical qualifications or objective standards;

and

last

but not least

the demagogic mastery with which he proclaimed a nationalistic

and

racist

ideology as a "revolutionary natural law." But did the

man who embodied the "dictatorship of the Weber predicted26 also have the exceptional uine charisma? After

it

was

over, a

all

corporals" that

Max

qualification of gen-

good many persons spoke

of the magnetism of his deep blue eyes. But quite a few of those

who knew him the kind.

personally maintain that they noticed nothing of

Whether or not

ample of charisma must,

Hitler represented an authentic ex-

open question un-

therefore, remain an

we have some scientifically verifiable standards for that quality. To conclude this discussion with the contemporary, General de Gaulle. As far as can be surmised ex post facto, Max Weber

til

would have respected de Gaulle as a patriot and courageous soldier but would have been repelled by his anachronistic pose of republican monarch and would have objected to his rank violations of the

French constitution. Undoubtedly de Gaulle em-

bodies the type of genuine plebiscitary leader, who, like a

new

Antaeus, has his legitimation confirmed by reiterated plebiscites

and acclamations. Undoubtedly

hold on power and his con-

his

duct of government are genuinely Caesaristic.

with which he stration of that.

treats his

He

own

constitution

gift of political leadership.

attribute the quality of charisma to

him? Does

his subservient subordinates

upon the notoriously 25 Ibid., p. 105. 26 Pol. Schr., p. 280.

The

lordliness

one prime demon-

towers above everyone around him, and no

one would deny him the

beyond

is

his

and aides and

cynical French people? Far

But can we

magic extend cast its spell

from

it.

The

— 84

MASS DEMOCRACY AND CAESARISM

most malicious and biting jokes about him

Gandhi have become the butt of popular

Could

circulate.

derision?

De

Gaulle

is

useful to the French in these times, perhaps even indispensable.

But

with

their national pride,

tionality,

its

coloration of Cartesian ra-

would probably keep them from ever equating

his

No

one familiar

with the mechanism of his plebiscites will have

much doubt

prestige with charisma in

that

Max

Weber's

sense.

what zealous legend-builders may represent

as charisma is

actually the result of extremely skillful manipulation of propa-

ganda techniques. Not charisma, but a profound understanding of mass psychology and of

all

the tricks of demagoguery,

is

the

de Gaulle's popularity.

basis of

We must

therefore ask whether

charismatic leader

is

manently valid type.

perhaps not Is

and milieus? Or to put

it

Max at

Weber's category of the

all

a universal and per-

possibly confined to certain periods

this another

way: in present-day tech-

nological mass society, in which the rules of democracy are consciously followed or at least acknowledged,

of political rule at

all

is

possible and effective?

ratization has strengthened

beyond

all

a charismatic basis

To be

democ-

sure,

expectation the plebiscitary

components in the power process; but

at the

same time

it

has

decidedly diminished the chances for the development and operation of true charisma.

In earlier times, particularly before the invention of the printing press and before newspapers had become general instruments of opinion building, the personal magnetism of a political leader

could be communicated only to the relatively limited number of persons with

whom

Hohenstaufen

he came in

(whom

mundi) a Cromwell, or a Louis ,

direct contact.

A

Frederick II of

contemporaries significantly called stupor

XIV

were

really

known

the relatively restricted group of their advisers, courtiers,

only to

officials,

and soldiery. In their effect upon the masses of the people, the communication of the magical force of their personalities charisma in the broader sense was dependent upon transmis-

—

— THE CHARISMATIC LEADER sion

from mouth

85

mouth, which more often than not amounted

to

to deliberate propagandizing

from above. Very few They knew the

ever seen their ruler face to face.

had

subjects

leader's cha-

risma only by repute and not by experience.

In the age of mass propaganda, in which the many media operate with the entire arsenal of subliminal psychology, the situ-

ation has

changed fundamentally. Undoubtedly radio can

force the personal magnetism of the

make an enormous

and thus

political leader

contribution to his popularity, since only his

—

eloquence, the quality of his voice is

rein-

Roosevelt's secret

weapon

presented to the public. In television, on the other hand, his

image

is

projected

on the screen

in every living room. Telecom-

munications, therefore, can give the personality of a leader an

unprecedented mass effectiveness.

Where

the influence

masses depends on genuine charisma, radio and

convey and solidify tory. Paradoxically,

upon the

television can

unknown in all previous hishowever, modern mass technology diminishes to an extent

it

rather than increases the spell of charisma. In technological mass society, litical

with

power

visual

its is

and ruled closer together than ever before.

tion that brings rulers

But the leader Orwell's 1984 is

not seen at

and auditory propaganda techniques, po-

subjected to an irresistible process of personaliza-

who shows

—

is

all,

less

—

himself daily

like

Big Brother in

magical and magnetic than the leader

or only rarely

on occasions

who

especially favorable

from reinforcing charisma and spreading its magic wider context, the mass media in an open society act as dis-

to him. Far

in a

enchantments; this holds true not only for the skeptical lectuals but for the

masses as well.

No

one

who

intel-

lived in the

United States during the so-called McCarthy era27 will ever get

how

rapidly the all-powerful Senator

erals like schoolboys,

who had

his fifth

who

dressed

column

down

for-

gen-

in all the offices

of the government, whose demagoguery reduced the administra27 See Karl Loewenstein, Verfassungsrecht Vereinigten Staaten, pp. 532 ff.

und Verfassungspraxis der

MASS DEMOCRACY AND CAESARISM

86

tion to helplessness,

When

was toppled overnight.

the coura-

geous director of a television network brought his behavior as

chairman of a Senatorial investigating committee before the eyes of millions of viewers, the nightmare collapsed overnight.

The

intimidated Senate was finally emboldened to censure McCarthy severely,

and thus put an end to his

Such an

political career.

only to an open society in

effect applies, it is true,

which skepticism,

criticism,

and opposition function normally.

In a closed and authority-directed

society, in

which the organs of

propaganda are controlled by the supposed holder of charisma and his subservient following, the mass media can produce a reenforcement and deepening of an originally spurious but ficially

promoted charisma attributed to the

when communications were

times,

to be genuine to

have lasting

advanced, charisma had

less

effects.

But those

effects

be conjured up by technological, rational methods, apparatus of coercion and propaganda that end.

would appear

It

rulership, has

become

last analysis, as a basis

to put

it

it

visualized in

Max

modern technology. In the is

a phe-

the pre-Cartesian world. it

doubtful that the mysterious

which unites the true charismatic leader with the

him can develop at all in the present-day poenvironment. By no means, however, is this to imply that

group devoted litical

the state

possesses a historical reality. Or,

These observations, then, make fluid

now

an independent substratum of

as

a victim of

of rule,

if

can

deliberately applied to

differently: charismatic authority in politics

nomenon of vital

is

that charisma,

Weber's system of categories

arti-

In earlier

ruler.

to

charisma as a socio-psychological category of behavior and teraction does not exist.

The

force of political charisma

been weakened in present-day mass dicated;

society, for the reasons in-

but the reality of charisma as a

phenomenon cannot be outweighs

scientific

in-

may have

denied. Here,

human and

social

once again, experience

skepticism. Limits have been set to their

political effectiveness;

but charismatic personalities have always

THE CHARISMATIC LEADER and will always

existed

exist.

Indeed,

stricted to political figures, they is

To who

self possessed to a

the category

occur

not

is

re-

more frequently than

have met such personalities

generally assumed.

fortune to everyone

may

if

87

has the experience.

is

a rare

Max Weber

him-

high degree that exceptional gift of grace in

which mind, knowledge, and character are united. Those of us whose path he crossed all became his "disciples" and suc-

cumbed

to his "magic."

He

himself was the charismatic

man he

described.

To adduce

another and more familiar example from our

own

times, of a person whose effectiveness in breadth and depth every

professional politician

would envy: Arturo Toscanini,

ductor perhaps the greatest musical

as a con-

of this century, em-

artist

bodied charisma to a perfection attained by no other contem-

Ode

porary personality. In the language of the

to Joy that

he

performed so often and so magnificently, his magic united what under his baton

stern fashion parted;

all

men became

brothers:

the musicians of the orchestra he conducted, the soloists

who

shared the platform with him, and the countless millions of the public

who saw him

the radio or

on

musical and

human

face to face or partook of his perfect art

records.

No

on

one could escape the magic of his

personality.

He

was the charismatic person

par excellence. But then, he was not a politician.

Yet another unique

case

comes to mind by which we are able

to evaluate the genuineness of the charismatic phenomenon in

the light of our living experience without having to rely on historical reports

of

its efficacy.

Our

—lamentably

generation was blessed by the

presence in our midst

short as

it

—

turned out

of the

saintly figure of Pope John XXIII. From his person a spell radiated of a purity of goodwill to all men and of humaneness that

was

felt

spontaneously and deeply by the world far beyond the

ecclesiastic

oekumene. The impact was

since, stripped of all theological doctrine,

language of the

common man. But

all it

perhaps

the

was it is

more

universal

articulated in the just this last ex-

MASS DEMOCRACY AND CAESARISM

88

ample that could induce us to do some rethinking on the entire complex of the charismatic. What the Holy Father incarnated in word and deed was simply human kindness in its ultimate perfection,

devoid of any daemonic ingredients or even overtones

that are

commonly

ascribed to the charismatic.

Could

it

be that

the charismatic, rather than being a category sui generis, identical with,

sentially

qualities that denote the great

4.

is

es-

or emanating from, those mysterious

human

personality?

The Typology of Legitimate Authority

Max

Weber's elaboration of the three pure types of legitimate

authority 28 ciology.

As

is

held to be his greatest achievement in political so-

historical categorization

it

has not lost

its

validity. If

measured, however, both in terms of things to come and things that

have come to pass,

it

seems to be the

least satisfactory for-

mulation of his socio-political frames, and the one that stands

most in need of rethinking. Corresponding of knowledge in the nineteenth century,

we have

facts of the twentieth century as

Traditional rule, the

on the

first

in

Weber's

belief in the sanctity of

as

it is

it

does to the state

challenged by the

experienced them.

classical trinity, "resting

immemorial arrangements and

the submission to existing rule," has today, in this era of continuous world revolution, with

its

political values, survived in only a

globe.

From is

all social

and

few regions of our shrunken

the point of view of constitutionalism, these regions

must be regarded thority

revaluation of

as marginal.

on the wane. The

last

And

even there, traditional au-

bulwark

fell

with the collapse of

—we

Imperial Japan. This holds for both purely patriarchal rule

need only consider the breakdown of primitive peoples

—and

tribal organizations

among

for the feudal structure of separate or-

ders of society. Scarcely any traces of genuine political feudalism

remain.

The

year 1789 was the watershed.

28 Staatssoziologie, pp.

99

ff.

The fading

of politi-

THE TYPOLOGY OF LEGITIMATE AUTHORITY cal authority, incidentally, as

clearly perceived, 29

Weber

with the disappearance of the aristocracy as a ruling Authority by established norms the constitutional state

—was

is

89

linked

class.

—what we would

call

today

century man-

in the nineteenth

kind's best hope for freedom and free fulfillment of the indi-

vidual in a moral world-order. But in this twentieth century of

has been forced on the

illegal violence, the constitutional state

World War

defensive. After the First

many

tarianism in

countries.

ground before the tion.

the

This

is

But now

it

wave of

has again lost

tide of social revolution

con-

calls

that

conform

new

to the pattern

democratic gouvernee.

much

and counterrevolu-

evidenced by the upsurge of those

Communist sphere

Burdeau

a sweeping

democracy overcame and replaced traditional authori-

stitutional

states

within

which Georges

likewise proved by the

It is

military dictatorships, whether those that present a makeshift

framework of

social progressiveness, or those that are entirely

without ideology, or those that are civilian despotisms based on support of the military. Only in the traditionally libertarian constitutional democracies of the

and

European West, in North America,

in the sphere of influence of British political ideas, has the

constitutional state

been able to maintain

strongly integrated.

may be

The

and become more Germany and Japan

itself

Federal Republic of

included in this group. Most of the states created since

the Second

World War

accept only the

democracy; very few of them practice

shadow of its

constitutional

substance. This

is

not

to say, of course, that the present state of affairs need be a per-

manent condition of mankind. On the contrary, one may have reason to hope that the frontiers of the democratic constitutional state will

advance further into the

political

no-man's-land of

wave of nationalism has ebbed and an encompassing organization of the world will permit a more

dictatorship, once the latest

just distribution of

28 Pol. Scbr., pp.

economic resources among the needy devel-

258

ff.

MASS DEMOCRACY AND CAESARISM

90

oping nations. Moreover, the signs that the Communist nations are

moving toward

looked. But

may

tion

take;

constitutionality are too plain to

impossible to predict

it is

for despotism,

remarkable tenacity once

As

it is

how

be over-

long such an evolu-

no matter what

its

has

guise,

established in power.

for charismatic authority,

we have

already expressed our

doubts about the continuing validity of the category in the age of technological mass democracy. It

seems, therefore, that

Max

Weber's typology of the patterns

of rule needs to be expanded and complemented

legitimate authority, his a

new

category of illegitimate violence, since this

A

Max Weber

might have been able

type of organization. 30

is

to include

no

less a

keen historian

like

to trace the lineage of this

Or one might

gain insight into the

category of illegitimate violence by using Guglielmo Fer-

rero's

distinction

cratic)

(monarchic or demo-

between "legitimate" rule. 31

and "revolutionary"

The

salient characteristic of

present-day tyranny or revolutionary authority that the rulers have seized their position

and

the

dealt only with

framework must be extended

type of rule than the legitimate patterns.

new new

if it is to fit

Weber

contemporary experience. However, since

total

power by force

by monopolizing the

is

much

not so

as that they sustain

state apparatus of coercion

propaganda. Such an extension of

Max

Weber's

typol-

who

ogy would, however, have to be undertaken by a scholar equalled ativeness.

Max Weber

in historical

knowledge and original

Given the uniqueness of

shall probably

Max

have to wait a long time,

Weber's genius,

if

cre-

we

not in vain, for the

appearance of such a successor. 30 In connection Italian

city-states,

with tyranny

Max Weber

in the Hellenic stresses

world and the medieval

the illegitimacy of tyrannical

W.u.G., vol. II, pp. 787 ff. and 792 ff. Guglielmo Ferrero, The Principles of Power Putnam's Sons, 1942), pp. 187 ff.

rule, see 31 See

(New York:

G. P.

Epilogue Personal Recollections of

Max Weber* Your Magnificence! My colleague, the Honorable Minister Dr. Maunz! Fellow students! Ladies and Gentlemen! stand here as the representative of others

I

who

should rather

have been called upon to deliver a memorial address on

Weber.

First

among

these

I

Max

should mention your never-to-be-

forgotten former President, Theodor Heuss; or the famous Ger-

man

philosopher

who now

lives in Basel,

Karl Jaspers; or Georg

Lukacs, the important Marxist philosopher,

But since both the

gary.

latter,

who

lives in

Hun-

because of age and other reasons,

could not be asked here, the task of speaking to you today has fallen I

upon my

frail shoulders.

should begin by making certain reservations. Personally,

have tried to lead the talk about himself.

He

life

I

of a scholar, and a scholar does not

disappears behind his work. But

it is

in

the nature of personal recollections that they must be presented in the first person singular.

My

second reservation concerns the length of time that has

elapsed since

I

first

met

Max Weber. On

June 14 of

this year,

forty-four years will have passed since his death. Forty-four years is

a long time in the life of a man,

a long period in history.

mine not excluded.

Those among you who

measure the passage of time in terms of *

An

historical eras

address delivered at the University of

may wish

Munich on June

on the occasion of the one hundredth anniversary of

91

It is also

are prepared to

Max

3,

1964,

Weber's

birth.

EPILOGUE

92

to reflect that forty-four years is longer than the period

the storming of the Bastille in July

between

1789 and the July Revolution

of 1830; or, to choose an example closer to your

own

experience,

German Reich in 1871 World War. These are long spans

the period from the founding of the

to

the outbreak of the First

of

and you must bear with the

time,

my

inevitable fallibility of

memory. You must also consider that I saw Max Weber when I was twenty, with the eyes and the idealism of youth. My image of Weber is a young man's image.

How

did

I

come

to meet

him? The year was 191 2.

I

had

just

passed the Bavarian intermediate state examination in law and

had come

to Heidelberg with the pride of that achievement and armed with a recommendation from the distinguished philologist Crusius, who was later to become president of the Bavarian

Academy of

Sciences

Before

visitor.

and in whose home

left for

I

I

had been a frequent

me

Heidelberg, he asked

should like to meet Marianne Weber. She was, the leading proponents of

women's

rights in

moreover, something of a beauty. That was

I

whether

I

knew, one of

Germany

sufficient

and,

tempta-

me to take up the offer gladly. The stupid young student was knew nothing of the existence of a husband named

tion for that I

Max Weber.

My

first

weeks in Heidelberg were taken up with adjustment

and with availing myself of the incredible opportunities for tending the lectures by the great scholars of those days.

I

at-

may

mention only Fritz Fleiner in constitutional law; Gustav Radbruch in criminal law; Ernst Troltsch in the philosophy of ligion;

Hermann Oncken,

philosopher; and last but not

Max and

and then it

at the

re-

the historian; Windelband, the great least,

Alfred Weber, brother of

height of his fame. Several weeks passed,

was about the beginning of June, the afternoon of a beau-

tiful day,

when

I

presented myself, introductory note in hand,

at

the house on the Ziegelhauser Landstrasse to pay

to

Marianne Weber.

my

respects

PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF MAX WEBER

93

—she was the Webers' maid and ministering who spent her whole with them and remained with Marianne Max Weber's death—informed me the Frau Professor Kea

spirit,

life

that

after

was not

in.

Then, seeing

my

disappointment, she offered the

consolation: "But if you like, you can see the

Since

I

had come so

far anyway, I thought I

take a look at Herr Professor Weber.

Kea

Herr Professor."

might

led

me

just as well

into the gar-

den. There, under the rose arbor, at a table heaped with books, sat sit

Max Weber. He rose, greeted me, graciously invited me to down, and asked me a few of the usual questions. During our

chat he must have noticed that I was interested in music, and what followed in the course of this first encounter with him was

a wonderful and, for me, decisive revelation. For he began to

block out a sociology of music for

my

benefit

—

this

being a

theme he was currently concerned with. I had thought that music flows from emotional and esthetic sources; and I now drank in his words as he explained that music, too, has rational and sociological foundations.

He

pointed out that the competition of

the private capellas of princes and prelates in Italy, France, and

Germany

in the fourteenth

distinct influence just

upon

and

fifteenth centuries

tonality; that

hollow

fifths,

had had a which were

then being heard again in Puccini's early operas, had been

banished from music by the deliberate edict of a college of musicians in Florence; that the construction of musical instruments

had influenced sonority and tonality; and, pering of the scale that was undertaken seventeenth centuries his

—

the tem-

in the sixteenth

and

for example by Johann Sebastian Bach in

Well-tempered Clavichord

—had had

cal motivations,

and was not

principles. I

recall his explaining to

still

finally, that

just the

rational

and

sociologi-

consequence of esthetic

me

the influence of the

Greek modes, the Lydian, Phrygian, and Aeolian. Afterwards, whenever I heard the Lydian mode in one of the last Beethoven quartets, I

thought of that

Max Weber.

first

revelation

I

had received from

EPILOGUE

94

must have

I

the midst of

sat

with him for more than two hours.

work on the

subject

and obviously

felt

He was

in

the need to

some of his thoughts. When at last I took my leave and went out on the road into one of those glorious Heidelberg June evenings, I was literally drunk. I was at a turning point in my life. From that moment on, I had taken the oath of fealty to articulate

him;

I

had become

Perhaps

I

his vassal.

should say something about his appearance.

He

was

a head taller than I am, with heavy hair. His beard, already

tall,

graying,

covered two great dueling

spiritualized

—

scars.

His forehead was

can think of no other expression for

I

voice was a beautifully modulated baritone. eyes that could be kindly

complete the picture

I

and

critical

must add

He had

it.

His

a pair of

almost simultaneously.

that his nose

was of the

To

variety

known as a pug nose. His speech was the most exquisite German I had ever heard up to that time, clear and measured,

rudely

and

entirely different

from

his writing style.

For in writing the

prodigality of his ideas repeatedly shattered the framework; he

had more Before

to say than I left,

he could

held every Sunday at his

me

really

put into words.

come to from four house

he invited

to

the at-homes that were o'clock on. I

made use

of that permission, both during that semester at Heidelberg and afterwards, for the at-homes

drew me

like a

magnet back

to

The jours, as the Webers called them, took place in the stately room on the second floor of the old house which had a ramp lined with vases of flowers leading up to it. Through

Heidelberg.

the

windows you looked

its

red sandstone buildings. In the big

replica

across over the river at the Schloss with

room stood a life-size of the Charioteer from Delphi, and on the rear wall hung

a magnificent painting by Karl Morgenstern, the father of the

poet Christian Morgenstern.

and

it

Its

subject

was the Gulf of Naples,

lent a touch of southern brightness to the rather

somber

room.

At my

first

of these jours,

I

met Marianne Weber. She was

PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF MAX WEBER

95

the soul of the circle, imperceptibly guiding, directing, balancing.

A

also ters.

me

was to link

lifelong friendship

Weber's death

with her. After

visited her frequently in Heidelberg,

I

had the honor

to be her legal adviser in a

After the

world war, when

last

military government, I

I

Max and

I

number of mat-

served in the American

saw her repeatedly

again.

She was a won-

derful person, and the very partner that a great, volcanic, passionate

man like Weber needed

Among

in daily life.

the regular visitors to those Sunday at-homes were

some of the foremost men in German intellectual life. But there were three who were Max Weber's real interlocutors, to whom he listened and with whom he had a genuine exchange of ideas. These were Karl Jaspers, Georg von Lukacs, and Friedrich Gundolf. In the ritual that gradually developed on these Sunday afternoons, these three in particular played the part of Weber's friendly antagonists.

When,

after a while, the individual con-

had died down and we all gathered around Max Weber, we would hear from his lips penetrating analyses of all current events, questhe subjects that concerned him and us versations

—

tions of history

and economics, philosophy, methodology, and

great deal more.

I

do not think

I

am

intellectual level of this select circle

a

mistaken in saying that the

would have matched

that of

the great salons toward the end of the Ancien Regime, or the

famous Berlin salons

Among

the beginning of the nineteenth century.

those Sunday gatherings, one has remained in

memory with

peculiar force, that of July 26,

gloriously lovely Serbia. It

at

had not

summer

day. Austria

yet been decided

had

just

my

was a declared war on 191 4.

It

whether Germany would enter

of us knew that nemesis was moving irresistibly Our whole circle was there. Even those who attended infrequently had gathered to hear what Max Weber had to

the war. But

down upon

all

us.

war and the prospects for the future. I remember the whole scene as if it were yesterday. Weber was profoundly pessimistic. He did not believe that the war would say about the possibility of

EPILOGUE

96 be

won "by

the time the leaves fall," as the Kaiser shortly after-

wards proclaimed

rashly.

words: "The war will

He

told us,

and

remember

I

his exact

long time; Prussian militarism

last a

exceedingly tough." In this prediction he was of the same as three professionals; these Star!

von Moltke, a born

Commander, a born

optimist;

Supreme

and British Field Marshal Lord

better than

anyone

else

and foresaw

Germans would fight to the last breath. Kitchener time was counting on a war of some three years. Listening that the

conversation that Sunday, heart of

had the feeling

I

that I

Germany was beating. not say much more about subsequent meetings

Max Weber.

ticularly

loved.

In 191 2 he came to Munich, the

Together

Mozart performances

we heard one

at the

to the

was where the

I shall

with

mind

were Chief of the German General

pessimist; Jofire, the French

who knew war

Kitchener,

is

city

I

had

he par-

of those enchanting

in the Residenztheater, Cos} fan tutte with

Ivogiin and Erb, conducted by

Bruno Walter. Weber loved the

Munich, the atmosphere of easygoing comfort and

cityscape of

intellectual sprightliness;

understanding of the

and he had a humorous and smiling

district called

Schwabing, the Greenwich

Village of Munich, which at that time was no geographical concept, but a spiritual

whet each I also

no-man's-land where minds could meet and

other.

want

to say a

few words about

Max

Weber's return to

the lecture platform as a university professor and praeceptor

Germaniae. severe

When

illness.

I

met him

in 191 2

he was recovering from a

In those days, no one was allowed to

the evenings, and he imposed the strictest regimen

But he

visibly improved, so

war

in 191 4

He

was

garrison,

had been

much

visit

upon

him

in

himself.

so that at the outbreak of the

he was able to do garrison duty

as a reserve captain.

also appointed disciplinary officer of the Heidelberg

and afterwards he would often speak of to

how

painful

it

have to send poor devils into the military stockade.

6

PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF MAX WEBER

97

In the long run, such duties were not for him, and ultimately he returned to civilian and public recall, in this

I

life.

connection, a

volved around this time.

I

little

plot in which

had suggested

I

was

to Professor

in-

Georg

Hohmann, chairman of the Munich Progressive People's Party, that Max Weber be invited for a public lecture. Marianne Weber

me

wrote to

He was

that her

husband would do

his utmost to

afraid of addressing a large audience, for

still

beg

off.

he had not

delivered any public lectures for the past nineteen years. Mari-

anne implored

him

me

him

to hold

Herr Hohmann and

I

commitment and force would at last be broken.

fast to the

to speak, so that the spell of silence

then informed

Max Weber

that cancella-

was altogether impossible, and that he must deliver the

tion

As

Max Weber

Mathaserbrau to give his

appeared on October 27, 191 Munich intellectual life called the lecture. The title was "Germany and

World Powers";

has been reprinted in his Politische

lecture.

that

at

the

a result,

venerable

Schriften.

He

hand

at the

keep

it.

It

site

of

it

used only a single sheet of notes;

time but,

alas,

could not prevail

I

held

on him

it

in

to let

my me

consisted of an outline, in his tiny, illegible hand-

d); and he followed this was one of the most magnificent adhave ever been privileged to hear. He was a most

writing, with 1, 2, 3

and

4; a), b), c),

outline with exactitude. It dresses I

powerful speaker,

as great or

perhaps even greater than such

celebrated academic lecturers of his time as Lujo Brentano or

Ernst Troltsch or Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorf

.

He spoke

extemporaneously, merely using this brief outline; and for more

than two hours he held the whole audience spellbound. I

should like to read a brief passage that

—

next day

man.

I

I

I

entered in

my

diary

ask forbearance for the clumsy prose of a young

wrote:

"He

has become a

little

grayer; in his beard the

gray predominates. His hair, which

sits

his intellectualized brow,

and abundant. His eyes are

deeper-set.

When

is still

thick

so handsomely around

he ponders, his face contracts

like the sky be-

EPILOGUE

98

fore a thunderstorm.

It is

word

less it all

in

its

manly

face;

something elemental,

He

speaks freely in

using a magnificently controlled German,

his resonant voice,

every

a

emanates from him.

at times actually titanic,

proper relation to the context, and neverthe-

sounded improvised. His volcanic temperament erupts

again and again. But he can also be jocular and turn sardonically

humorous. At times,

too, there

was a surprising

coarseness, a hail

of words like 'outrageous,' 'shameless,' 'incredible.'

was more

It

of a political sermon than a learned discourse, coming straight

from a great, overflowing heart and sustained by a breadth of knowledge and thought that again and again gave something new to us by the very context in which it all was placed. For we are always too

much

the prey of stale political commonplaces and

routine thinking. For

two hours

a sold-out house listened in

breathless suspense."

Those who have not heard him speak cannot imagine the power and expressiveness of his language. I had the good fortune to hear other speeches of his, and especially remember those he delivered in

November 191 8 during

the upheaval in Bavaria

(which has been wrongly called a revolution) Again in one of the .

beerhalls in

Munich, standing before a raging crowd, he heaped

scorn

upon the

knew

full well that they

political literati

who were

present,

though he

were the incendiaries of revolution

who

had already applied the fuse to the powder keg. That was one of moments, for he loved to face down opposition. That, too, was the time he drew his famous parallel between the flight

his great

of James II from England in 1685 and the undignified flight of the

German

Kaiser to Holland.

For the Kaiser he had nothing but burning hatred.

I

would personally

twist the bungling fool's

I

myself

me at neck." He

heard him say several times: "If they would only

let

him, con-

sidered the Kaiser one of the greatest of Germany's misfortunes in the days of the

There

are

Second Empire.

two more of

his lectures that I

wish to

recall.

These

PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF MAX WEBER were the

on "Scholarship

lectures

191 9-1 920. Today these must be

strasse in the winter of

the classic examples of eloquence of the

and the German tongue.

young people

in the lecture

my

fate

on "Scholarship

and the

finding the correct interpretation. sion

is

German mind

as a Profession":

while true

And

Only one who has

it is

art is

this obses-

that scholarship

after five, ten, at

most

is

fifty years,

never surpassed and therefore never outmoded.

in the lecture

with unsparing

outmoded

knew

passage

little

world depend on

fate of the

a born scholar." But he also

ephemeral, that

set

shall never forget his saying to us

I

"Everything depends on the interpretation of this

from Thucydides;

"Politics

Hall on Adalbert-

as a Profession," presented in the Steinicke

among

and

as a Profession"

99

on

"Politics as a Profession,"

he vividly and

who were

presented to us,

clarity

youthful sense of the endless potentialities of a

filled

new

with a

age, the

thorny road of the politician.

After his health had that

mended

still

and

further,

he was once more available for academic

whole sheaf of

offers.

life,

it

was known

he received a

Curiously enough, he accepted the

call to

Vienna, where his success was absolutely sensational. Hours be-

would

fore his lectures, the audiences at

Vienna University.

a student in Paris, at

It

reminded

me

fill

of

the largest auditorium

my own

experiences as

where we would go to the College de France

nine o'clock in order to hear Henri Bergson at eleven; from

nine to ten a valetudinarian lectured on Old Persian, and from ten to eleven

someone held forth on

Sanscrit

—but none of us

paid the slightest attention to what they lectured on.

Max Weber

used to

tell

a pretty

little

anecdote about his

Vienna period. One day three very spruce and

young men came officers

to his hotel

and introduced themselves

of a feudal student association.

follows:

"Herr Professor,

we

is

The

as the

conversation went as

hear that you are delivering a

course of lectures with great success

Weber: "That

correctly dressed

at the University."

correct." First officer:

"Would

it

Max

be possible

— EPILOGUE

100

for you to repeat the lectures at our fraternity house if

we

paid

you double the honorarium that the Austrian government pays

Max Weber,

for lecturing at the University?"

brows in astonishment: "But, hear

me

to

is

come

to

my

my

dear

sirs, all

You

lectures.

raising his eye-

you need

could be sure of

do

to

students you have priority." First officer: "Herr Professor,

Members of our

are you thinking of.

to

seats; as

what

corps can't possibly go to

lectures at the University."

A that

Max

few words about

was both kindly and

critical.

Weber's

attitude

He

toward youth.

We learned an expression from him

none of us has ever forgotten:

intellectual honesty. It

meant

not going about things with the fuss and to-do of a dilettante.

It

meant attacking all studies with seriousness, conscientiousness, and pride. It implied the famous three maxims which he left to us and which I should like to recommend to the present younger generation.

Number

i

"Crack tough nuts." Anyone can crack the

:

man who has any pride in himself will try tough nuts. Number 2: "Be able to meet your

thin-shelled nuts; but a to crack only the

routine responsibilities." It esting things in

life,

is

easy to

do the exciting and

requirements of everyday things that are incumbent upon us.

And Number

3:

he himself could do In

all

intensity

and

least

of I

all.

keep

He

silent."

That was what

could not hold his peace.

knew him, he was forever involved which he waged with implacable

and in which he often

made him

to

of

all

political feuds

He had

did not warrant. that

"Know how

the eight years that

in scholarly

inter-

but extremely hard to submit to the dreary

fired broadsides that the target

an innate and inflexible sense of

take the side of anyone

whom

justice

he thought was

being unjustly dealt with. Let

me

finally

attempt a sketch, inadequate though

it

must

be,

of his personality and a profile of his mind. First of

all,

he was a

totally unsentimental person.

mentality was deeply repugnant to him.

mune

to

ideologies.

Consequently,

He

was

also a

Senti-

man

im-

he regarded ideologies

PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF MAX WEBER which were then

more or less by no means

He

rampant

—

as they are today

as

nothing but

accidental facts of a given sociological milieu as

permanent phenomena or metaphysical

was against

creatures"

as

101

hero-worship; he called

all

—today —and

personality"

suppose

I

we would

it

and

absolutes.

"idolization of

use the term "cult of

be intolerable. Yet back of his gen-

felt it to

he had a profound feeling for true loved and absorbed beauty in life, music,

erally rationalistic attitude

cultural values.

He

literature, art, architecture, travel, cities,

He was is

a

German

criticized for

patriot.

What

and landscapes.

else could

he be? Today he

attachment to the Machtstaat, the power-state.

was indeed attached

to

it.

At

He

the time he saw no other choice. In

the years before 191 4 and until after the end of the First

World

War, there were no effective idealistic pacifists or internationalists in Germany or elsewhere in Europe. Max Weber was committed he believed that the Ger-

to the idea of the Machtstaat because

man

people and

German

were worth preserving

civilization

against the rising Slavic tide.

He

was concerned for what he be-

lieved to be Germany's cultural mission in the world. His sup-

port of the power-state was not for the benefit of any privileged class.

He

hated the satiated bourgeoisie.

he also had very

little

He

reaucratization of the proletarian leaders.

whole represented a real value to him. lieving in

power for

its

own

To

charge

is

He

as

him with

to misunderstand

But he was also a "European" and, in

his time.

and bu-

But Germany

a

be-

sake, or with being a forerunner of

the horrors of the recent past, pletely.

hated the Junkers;

respect for the bourgeoisization

him com-

this, far

ahead of

regarded the example of England, in particular, as

the political, social, and societal ideal, the "ideal type" toward

which the Germans should Secondly,

in routine matters, there

about him. erupt.

strive

Max Weber was You

He was

never

with a

all their

might.

daemonic personality. Even

was something

knew when

a foe of all conformity.

incalculable, explosive

the inner volcano would

He was

utterly fearless

and

EPILOGUE

102

possessed "civilian courage," as the to a degree that I

made

very qualities

significantly call

the party bosses wary, and

that instead of being

bly in

Germans

it is

no accident

nominated to the German National Assem-

Weimar, he was passed over

We,

significant party hack.

in 191 9 in favor of

if

Max Weber

believed that his exclusion from active politics

greatest mischance that could have befallen

Given

see the matter differently.

edge, he

would probably have

but he would have offended so

And

created hosts of enemies.

Weimar, the

his

it

At the was the

Germany. Today

temperament and

I

knowl-

his

cut a great figure in political life,

many people

that

he would have under

as for the course of affairs

he would probably have

tragic course of affairs,

been unable to check

in-

had ob-

tained the leading position that his personality deserved.

we

an

have often wondered

his friends,

what might have become of Germany time

it,

have never seen in any other German. These

in any way.

In conclusion: he was not only an unsentimental and daemonic personality; scribed.

he was also the charismatic

He had

His

disciples

versaries paid

Then

May

him

and

at his

No

one

who knew him

his friends paid

I

saw him

home on

last

upon

escaped the

him homage. His

then just beginning to

rise;

already forgotten. That

brilliant conversation.

on an evening

Seestrasse in

Marianne and Emil Ludwig and

is

he himself de-

ad-

respect.

the end came.

1920,

that

that exceptional gift of casting his spell

everyone he encountered. spell.

man

in April or

Munich, together with

his wife

—Ludwig's

star

was

today, for the younger generation,

he

was a highly memorable evening of

In June

I

heard he had fallen

ill.

It

was

pneumonia, caused by the wave of influenza that swept over the

world

at that

itself.

Toward

time and took almost as five o'clock

many

victims as the

one dreary, rainy afternoon

I

war

went

to

the house to ask

how he

was. Marianne, exhausted from the

strain of nursing,

had

gone

just

to rest,

and Kea took

me up

to

PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF MAX WEBER his room,

where he

103

lay struggling with death like Jacob with the

angel.

During the he was the

World War

First

first I

saw dying

had seen many men

I

whom

titanic struggle. I stood there for

I

knew

die,

perhaps ten or fifteen minutes,

watching and listening as he fought the Angel of Death. so far as

know, the

I

had

shortly after I yet awake. desire,

me

On

person to see him

last

him;

left

I

but

was a

intimately. It

alive.

I

was,

He

died

do not believe that Marianne was

he looked transfigured, emptied of

his deathbed

noble as a Hohenstaufen emperor. Later, Marianne sent

a photograph of

him on

his deathbed. It has

hung above my

desk for more than forty years.

Then came was

the funeral service at the Schwabing cemetery.

I

Handel aria to organ accompaniment. Rothenbucher moving funeral address; Marianne herself spoke; and

to sing a

delivered a

von Kapherr, talked about the three

his favorite pupil, Jorg

maxims which

I

mentioned before

meeting routine

nuts,

as his legacy: cracking

responsibilities,

tough

and knowing how to keep

silent.

my remarks. In a long life that has me through many lands, I have known only two human beings whom I should like to call great. One of them was Max have come to the end of

I

taken

Weber, the other Harlan Fiske Stone, Chief States

—whom, however,

I

knew

Justice of the

United

far less well than I did

Max

Weber. Aside from him, among thousands of encounters, I have never met another who could compare or in any way come up to

Max Weber. Some time in

today's

ago, before

celebration,

American magazine

I

I

received the invitation to participate

read the statement in

a

respected

that our age has been shaped by the

minds

of four men, namely Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud, Albert Einstein,

and

Max Weber.

sprang from the in the

German

It

is

German

an interesting reflection that cultural sphere

language. There

is

and spoke

no need

to say

all

four

to the

world

much

about

EPILOGUE

104

Karl Marx. banner.

A

third of humanity has been enrolled under his

Of Sigmund

Freud,

we now know

that

he opened a new

dimension to the individual, a new insight into the kind of self-knowledge.

But

ing.

I

Of

self,

a

new

Albert Einstein I understand noth-

have been told that without him the technological age

would be impossible, that he is ultimately responsible for the atomic and electronic age. I think, however, that I do know something about Max Weber. What Freud did for the individual,

Max Weber

did for the collective.

He

afforded us insights into

the nature, the functioning, and the conduct of those collectivities

we

call state, city, party, class,

we had

us things elucidated,

He

revealed to

not seen before in such contexts.

what he

and parcel of our

and status-group.

left to us as his legacy,

political, social,

greater extent than

we

and

What he

has today become part

scientific

thinking to a far

ourselves could possibly have realized half

a century ago.

When

I

think of

Max Weber,

I like to

apply to him the words

that Cicero used, I believe, of his friend Atticus. said,

He

had, Cicero

four qualities: auctoritas, urbanitas, labor, and industria.

Freely translated,

these qualities are:

great stature,

heartfelt

courtesy, incessant effort, unremitting work.

As

I

have

said,

Max Weber could escape the me and many others he repre-

no one who met

impact of his personality. For

sented the decisive influence in the formation of our mind. I

am

grateful for this occasion to pay tribute to this great man,

and so make Let

me

my own

minute contribution

close with the

He

to his fame.

words of Goethe on

Schiller:

shines before us like a comet fleeting,

Infinitudes of light with his light meeting.

About the Author

Karl Loewenstein has lived and taught in the United States for

more than fields

and

thirty years,

is

an expert of international rank in the

of comparative law and political history.

He was

born in

Munich in 1891, and worked as an attorney-at-law in his home city from 1919 to 1933. At the University of Munich he taught public and international law, and general political theory from

1931 to 1933. In the

latter year

he emigrated to the United

States,

spent some years as associate professor of Government at Yale

1936 was called to Amherst College. There Mr. Loewenstein held the William Nelson Cromwell Chair of Jurisprudence and Political Science for twenty-five years, until his retirement in 1961. During these years he was also visiting pro-

University, and in

(Berkeley),

of Colorado, California

fessor at the Universities

Harvard, Yale, Massachusetts, and others. During the

last

war

he was Special Assistant to the Attorney General in Washington,

D. C, and was delegated by the U.

S.

Government

to serve as

Director of Legislation with an international committee in Uru-

war he served for extended periods as Legal AdAmerican military government in Germany.

guay. After the visor to the

Karl Loewenstein

is

articles in the fields

the author of

published in six languages.

(New and

York, 1939),

Political

1956).

Of

some

fifteen

books and ninety

of comparative public law and jurisprudence

Among them

are Hitler's

Political Reconstruction

Power and

(New

the Governmental Process

the last work, containing the

summa

Germany

York, 1946, (Chicago,

of Professor

Loewenstein's lifelong experience with the governmental structure of the past

and the present, translations have been published

German, Spanish and Japanese. A number of his articles written in German were collected in the volume, Beitrage zur in

Stoats soziologie scale treatise press.

(Contributions to Political Sociology).

on British constitutional law and practice

A is

large in the

Boston Public Library Copley Square

General Library JN3952 .L613

U>^3492U The Date Due Card

in the pocket indi-

which this book should be returned to the Library. cates the date on or before

Please do not remove cards from this pocket.

Max Weber's political ideas in

the perspective of our time

Karl Loewenstein recommended

"This book

is

Weber

stimulating commentary on

as a

political writings.

.

.

to students of his

Loewenstein contributes

.

both to the understanding of Weber's political

writings and to

making them more

relevant for subsequent developments"

American

Sociological Review

"Valuable both for graduates and undergraduates, not as an original source of

Weber's

political ideas,

but

as

the universality of his ideas"

an exercise in Choice

"This book argues that Weber's analysis of

German

the problems of

reconstruction

is

relevant to understanding political organiza-

tion in the

whole Western world, and

that,

viewed in the context of developments since he wrote, his ideas can

own governmental and

our

problems"

The Journal of

"The author of fill

offer

this

much

constitutional Politics

book has undertaken

a lacuna in the scholarship

Max Weber, and

insight into

of the

to

work of

he succeeds admirably"

Ethics

The

Printed

University of Massachusetts Press

in

U.S.A.

$2.00