Interpretations of Weber's liberalism
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Max Weber's sociological achievements are well known. Weber is today widely considered as an eminent founder of modern social science, rivaled only by the figures of Emile Durkheim and Karl Marx. Students of Weberian thought have paid less attention to Weber's extensive and often passionate engagement with the politics of his day. This is especially so in the United States, where most of Weber's voluminous political writings have not been published in translation, or have been translated only recently in a piecemeal form. European intellectuals have given more attention to his political thought.
Weber's political ideas have inspired controversy in Germany for decades. His conception of democracy has been the subject of particularly heated debate. Weber's rejection of the Wilhelmine regime's authoritarian political structure and his advocacy of parliamentary and democratic reform have led many scholars to consider him as a liberal. Compared to most of his contemporaries in the late-Wilhelmine era, he was. There is, still, a problematic aspect to this characterization. Raymond Aron writes:
"He was not a liberal in the American sense. He was not even, strictly speaking, a democrat in the sense that the French, the English, or the Americans gave the term. He placed the glory of the nation and the power of the state above all else."
There is no doubt that Weber wished to preserve many freedoms championed in the "age of the Rights of Man." It is also certain that he rejected the philosophical basis for most Western formulations of Enlightenment liberalism. Weber conceived "parliamentarization" primarily for selecting leaders who could increase the power of the German nation.
Wolfgang J. Mommsen initiated an intense debate by arguing this in the 1959 German publication of Max Weber and German Politics 1890-1920. Mommsen exposed themes in Weber's thought that marred the sociologist's liberal reputation. Weber had been an extreme nationalist, and in his early career had called "in almost violent language for a hard-headed policy of imperialist expansionism." His sociological idea of charismatic authority was evident in his political views, and "appeared to be disturbingly close to fascist notions of plebiscitary leadership." Even his theory of "leader-democracy" seemed flawed, as it "lent itself all too readily to an authoritarian reinterpretation"
"...one will have to admit in all honesty that Weber's teachings concerning charismatic leadership domination coupled with the radical formulation of the meaning of democratic institutions, have contributed their share to making the German people inwardly ready to acclaim the leadership position of Adolf Hitler."
Max Weber's call for the democratic reform of the Wilhelmine state, and his involvement in the drafting of the Weimar constitution, had led German intellectuals in the 1950's to consider him as an authority who could justify the democratic character of the new Federal Republic. Mommsen's thesis, that Max Weber supported parliamentary democracy as a means to serve the power interests of the German nation-state, met a sharp response. In Raymond Aron's words, this removed "the new German democracy of a 'founding father, a glorious ancestor, and a spokesman of genius."
The uniqueness of the German post-war context does much to explain the relative lack of attention received by Jacob Peter Mayer's scathing 1944 critique of Max Weber, Max Weber and German Politics: a study in political sociology. First published in England, this work never appeared in German translation. Mayer had been an archivist for the Social Democratic Party and the primary book reviewer for the Vorworts, the SPD party paper. Such activities made him a target of Nazi persecution, from which he escaped to England. There he became involved with the Labour Party and was a member of the faculty at the London School of Economics during the last part of the war.
Mayer labelled Weber's philosophy the "new Machiavellianism of the steel age." The conception of the state that Weber supported was identified as a middle phase in the destructive tradition of German realpolitik - a tradition that extended from Bismarck to Hitler. Mayer drew attention to the "tragic" satisfaction with which Weber embraced "the empty character" of Heinrich Rickert's neo-Kantian philosophy of value. Weber's value theory was thus indicted as a nihilistic contribution to the rise of National Socialism. Britain's experience with the Second World War may partly explain why Mayer's study failed to raise as much controversy there as did Mommsen's work in post-war Germany.
Weber's political views have been considered to threaten the reputation of his sociology. Guenther Roth, Reinhard Bendix, and Karl Loewenstein have defended Weberian sociology by arguing that it stands separate from his political convictions. They consider Weber's famous distinction between scientific value-neutrality and evaluative politics to support this claim. In their view, Weber's politics are insignificant to the interpretation of his sociology. This position was rejected by Mommsen.
Mommsen established continuities between Weber's "value-neutral" sociology and his "evaluative" politics. The second edition of Max Weber and German Politics 1890-1920 argued that "values and science, in Weber's thought, were interdependent." Critics were dismissed as attempting "to shield Max Weber's sociological works against any possible criticism based on political aspects." Guenther Roth responded in a 1965 American sociological journal:
"Weber has been a major target for a series of critiques aimed at political sociology in general, if not at most of social science...As a German historian, Mommsen is, of course, far removed from the interest of American sociologists in Weber, but his treatment becomes questionable to them the moment he interprets Weber's sociological analysis as political ideology..."
Roth claimed that his "major intent" was "not to provide an historical defense of Weber but a review of critiques as they seem to bear on the raison d'etre of political sociology." He claimed that Weber:
"...must appear relativist and Machiavellian to all those who, for ideological reasons, cannot recognize any dividing line between political sociology and political ideology...Weber emphatically insisted on such a distinction...his critics refuse to distinguish between his scholarship and his politics."
Weber's sociological writings are, in Roth's view, divorced from his political ones. Raymond Aron has argued the opposite position. Aron does not consider Weber's sociology to stand above politics:
"Weber, both as a politician and sociologist, is a typical 'power-politician.' He belongs to the posterity of Machiavelli as much as to the contemporaries of Nietzsche...The struggle for power between classes and individuals seemed to him the essence...of politics. A people or a person without the will to power was, according to him, outside the sphere of politics."
[edit] Notes and reference
↑ Aron, Main Currents in Sociological Thought, v.2., translated by Richard Howard and Helen Weaver, Basic Books Inc., New York, 1967, p. 242
↑ cf. Weber, "Parliament and Government in a Reconstructed Germany," Economy and Society, v. 2, edited by Guenther Roth and Claus Wittich, University of California Press, Berkeley, 1978, p. 1403.
↑ Turner and Factor, Max Weber and the Dispute over Reason and Value, Routledge and Kegan Paul, Boston, 1984, pp.18, 66, 73; Mommsen, Max Weber and German Politics: 1890-1920; University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1984, p. 392; Weber, Economy and Society , v. 1, Roth and Wittich, eds., University of California Press, Berkeley, 1978, p. 6
↑ Marianne Weber, Max Weber: A Biography, translated by Harry Zorn, John Wiley & Sons, New York, 1975, p. 586
↑ Aron, Main Currents in Sociological Thought, v.2., translated by Richard Howard and Helen Weaver, Basic Books Inc., New York, 1967, p. 242
↑ Mommsen, Max Weber und die Deutsche Politik 1890- 1920, J.C.B. Mohr, Tubingen. 1959,
↑ Mommsen, The Political and Social Theory of Max Weber, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1989, p. 191
↑ Weber's ideas have been historically linked to the fascist theories of Carl Schmidt and Roberto Michels. Mommsen, The Political and Social Theory of Max Weber: Collected Essays , University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1989, pp. 42-3,191,193
↑ Mommsen, Max Weber und die Deutsche Politik 1890- 1920, J.C.B. Mohr, Tubingen. 1959, p. 410. The second edition deemphasized Weber's ideological link to fascism. Stephen P. Turner and Regis A. Factor consider Mommsen's revision as an attempt to defuse Herbert Marcuse's neo-Marxist thesis that Weber's bourgeois "concept of reason" necessarily terminates in the "irrational charisma" of fascist dictatorship. Turner and Factor, Max Weber and the dispute over reason and value, Routledge and Kegan Paul, Boston, 1984, p. 208; cf. Mommsen, Max Weber and German Politics 1890-1920, 2nd edition, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1984, p. 433
↑ Mommsen, Max Weber and German Politics: 1890-1920, 2nd edition, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1984, p. 416
↑ Aron, Main Currents in Sociological Thought, v.2, translated by Howard and Weaver, Basic Books Inc., New York, 1967, p. 248
↑ Mommsen, Max Weber and German Politics: 1890-1920, 2nd edition, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1984, p. 417; Mayer, Max Weber and German Politics: A study in political sociology, Faber and Faber Limited, London, 1944
↑ Turner and Factor, Max Weber and the dispute over reason and value, Routledge and Kegan Paul, Boston, 1984, p. 158
↑ Mommsen, Max Weber and German Politics: 1890-1920, 2nd edition, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1984, p. 417; Mayer, Max Weber and German Politics: A study in political sociology, Faber and Faber Limited, London, 1944, pp. 83, 89-91
↑ Mayer, Max Weber and German Politics: A study in political sociology, Faber and Faber Limited, London, 1944, pp. 30,91-90
↑ Mommsen, The Political and Social Thought of Max Weber, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1989, p. 3; Mommsen, Max Weber and German Politics: 1890-1920, 2nd edition, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1984, pp. 418-9; Turner and Factor, Max Weber and the dispute over reason and value, Routledge and Kegan Paul, Boston, 1984, p. 180; David Beetham also supports this distinction, though less emphatically, in Max Weber and the Theory of Modern Politics, Polity Press, Cambridge, 1985, p. 30
↑ Mommsen, Max Weber and German Politics: 1890-1920, 2nd edition, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1984, p. 419
↑ Roth, Guenther, "Political Critiques of Max Weber: Some Implications for Political Sociology" American Sociological Review, April 1965, v. 30, no. 2, pp. 214, 220n
↑ Ibid., p. 214
