Politics as a Vocation

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Politics as a Vocation (Politik als Beruf) was a lecture given by Max Weber, a German economist and sociologist to the students of the Munich University in January 1919 but only published in October of the same year. The original edition was published in German, but various translations to English exist.

In this essay Weber states the definition of the state that has become so pivotal to Western social thought: that the state is that entity which claims a monopoly on the legitimate use of physical force, which it may nonetheless elect to delegate as it sees fit. Politics is to be understood as any activity in which the state might engage itself in order to influence the relative distribution of force. Politics thus comes to obtain two power-based concepts, to be understood as deriving of power. A politician must also not be a man of the "true Christian ethic" (understood by Weber as being the "Ethic of the Sermon of the Mount" - that is to say, the heeding of the injunction to turn the other cheek). An adherent of such an ethic ought be understood to be a saint (for it is only a saint, according to Weber, that should find such an ethic a rewarding one). The political realm is no realm for saints. A politician ought marry the ethic of ultimate ends and the ethic of responsibility, and must possess both passion for his avocation and the capacity to distance himself from the subject of his exertions (the governed).