Max Weber was largely unknown during his lifetime, but his fame has grown ever since because he originated some key ideas with which to understand the workings of Capitalism.
Born in Erfurt in Germany in 1864, Weber grew up to see his country altered by the dramatic changes ushered in by the Industrial Revolution. Cities were booming, vast companies were forming and a new managerial elite was replacing the planter aristocracy.
Weber was a German philosopher and his work is known for being a major influence on modern sociology, particularity in the field of organizational theory. But more importantly, he concerned himself with how to understand complex historical institutions. He was obsessed by power; where it originates and how it can be made into a legitimate force of coercion.
Legitimate power
Weber proposed three areas for claiming legitimacy:
The first; traditional authority, which was prevalent in pre-modern societies, is based on respect for tradition; superstition, religion and ceremony. Power was obtained and secured through inheritance.
This type of power is regarded as legitimate because in societies where it existed, it had always been obeyed and so there was no reason to challenge it, especially when there was no serious alternative. It is not codified in specific rules but puts power in the the hands of particular people who may either inherit it or be invested with it by a higher authority; the divine right of kings for example.
The second, was that authority may be based on rational grounds and anchored in rules that have been established by contract, favoured by Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau. This is known as rational-legal authority, the most common type used in legal systems in modern society, based upon distinctive written rules that no single person is an exception from.
And charismatic authority, which rests on the appeal of leaders which springs from their ‘exception personality’ or ‘abilities’. They may be religious leaders, warriors, or seemingly ordinary individuals with great talent or instinct. In this type, power comes directly from the personal charisma of the individual leader.
Charismatic leaders want to be seen as a revolutionary force, and often arise from revolution, however, upon their death this usually evolves into traditional authority as new leadership seeks to maintain the rule of the former leader, e.g. Stalin after Lenin, Muhammad’s descendants, and Alexander the Great’s three heirs. This power soon becomes unstable as is it no longer seen as legitimate by all the followers of the former leader.
This type of power tends to be incompatible with rational authority because having generally formed through a revolt against rules and law, under charismatic authority the only rule is through sheer force of personality, and is subject only to the leader. The leader makes laws, but is not subject to them. Mussolini is an excellent example, who’s fascist doctrine was extremely incoherent, designed to accommodate polar opposite supporters.
Bureaucracy
Weber argues that modern states need to mobilise and centralise resources of legitimate political power in order to govern. It’s not as easy in the modern age to govern through force alone; in order to rule effectively, governments need bureaucracy.
Bureau is French for desk, and cracy is Greek for power or rule; so the word is roughly ‘rule from the desk’.
Historically, imperial nations in the early 19th century needed to centralise power in order to control their rapidly expanding territories, such as the United States, Russia and Italy. But Weber’s views were most influenced by the upstart Prussian empire and the bureaucracy that it formed. Weber witnessed how an efficient and organised bureaucracy led to a few weak fragmented states; becoming briefly the most powerful nation in Europe.
Originally, bureaucracy developed as a reaction against the subjugation of early administrative systems, where many countries were governed by dictatorships or monarchies which imposed their will on others. And because birth-rite was the sole determinate of who could next occupy these positions, important factors such as education, skills and experience were ignored. The spoils system in post-Civil War America is an example of this, whereby each new President would bring in his own people to administer the law. Naturally, they were all part of the same party, owing their posts solely to political ties. This system resulted in massive corruption, fraud and embezzlement.
It is because of this, Max Weber created the concept of bureaucratic management. The foundation ideal is based on rational-legal authority, which states that rules and other controls are more effective than managing based upon subjective criteria such as favouritism or nepotism.
Weber points out five characteristics that in a true perfect state, these attributes would allow to bureaucracy to function as a well-oiled machine.
The division of labour assigns workers to specific specialised tasks – while all would work together for bureaucracy to functions properly, each worker would have their own job to do. This shows who is responsible for and ultimately, who has authority in each section of the bureaucracy.
Rules and regulations guide the actions of workers and ensure tasks are performed uniformly and optimally. These rules were to be codified to ensure that they could not be misinterpreted.
A managerial hierarchy with a clear chain of command that trickles down to the lowest levels. From those who make and change decisions to those who implement them. There is a clear separation of spheres of responsibility where the power is distributed. Bureaucrats/public officials will have specialised training in certain areas in order to hold certain positions, but no single sphere will have too much power.
Training and qualifications and other formal selections are an essential component of a smooth functioning bureaucracy – meritocracy, not aristocracy. Employees should be hired and promoted based upon merit.
And impersonality or blind justice. Acting impersonally avoids the consideration of personal preferences when deciding how to administer certain rules. Rules should be administered without fear or favour.
Bureaucracies are organized according to rational principles. This bureaucratic coordination of the actions of large numbers of people has become the dominant structural feature of modern forms of organization. Weber considered this as the most efficient method of organization. However, he concluded that bureaucracy also contains several disadvantages.
Cons
Modern bureaucratized systems of law implement laws according to general principles, regardless of unique events or individuals, and in these scenarios, no negotiation is possible. The “modern judge,” Weber stated, “is a vending machine into which the pleadings are inserted together with the fee and which then disgorges the judgement together with the reasons mechanically derived from the Code.”
Bureaucracies can easily evolve into oligarchy, the very system it is supposed to protect against.
Due to the division of labour in a bureaucracy, no one can be ultimately held responsible for the end result of many decisions taken by multiple people. And even if the administrators knew what they where doing, would they still enforce the law even if it is a bad law? If abhorrent regime took power, they would have the infrastructure to implement their will on the masses, because the administrators are just following their orders to the letter, basic moral questions are not asked. So the great advantage of the bureaucratic state, in that the law is applied fairly and effectively, is also its gravest weakness. Laws that oppress the population can still be carried out fairly and effectively, irrelevant of its immoral nature.
Despite detailing strong cases for and against bureaucratic management, Weber argued that this has led to the world’s depersonalization, and further bureaucratization seemed to Weber inevitable.
Similarity with Marx
Weber’s views have similarities to Marx’s theory of alienation. Both men agree that modern means of organization have increased the efficiency of production and organization and have allowed domination of man over the world of nature. But Weber disagrees with Marx who sees alienation as only a transitional stage on the road to man’s true freedom. Even though he hoped that some charismatic leader might arise to deliver mankind to salvation, he thought it more likely that the future would be an “iron cage” rather than a Garden of Eden.
On economics, Marx had documented how the capitalist industrial organization led to exploitation of the worker and removed him from his means of production; how the industrial worker, in contrast to the artisan, did not own his own tools and so was forced to sell his labour to those who controlled him. Agreeing with most of this analysis, Weber countered that this was an inescapable result of any system of centrally planned production, rather than being a consequence of capitalism, and this would characterize a socialist system of production just as much as it would the capitalist form.
Weber also argued that this was only a single case of a general phenomenon in modern society where scientists are expropriated from the means of research, administrators from the means of administration, and soldiers from the means of violence. In all areas of modern society, men could no longer engage in significant actions unless they joined a large-scale organization, in which they were allocated specific tasks and they sacrificed their personal desires to the impersonal goals that governed the whole body, for the greater good.
Fin
Only through the use of bureaucratic management has large-scale planning for the modern state and the modern economy, become possible. Only through it could political leaders mobilize resources, which in feudal times, for example, had been widely decentralised and dispersed. Bureaucratic organization is to Weber the instrument that has shaped modern politics, the modern economy, and modern technology.
The Uncreative Journalist 