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POLITICAL CRITIQUES OF MAX WEBER 213

ven in the elites wh o also im pu te cha rismaL the rest of their sod ety . I t canno t dotherwise. It is too important, too serious

matter to do otherwise, even in secularsocieties. Au thority fc to o cru cia l to th ecreation and m ainte nan ce of o rde r to be

able to avoid the sentim ents th at need an dare evoked by order.The consequence is that large modem so-

cieties, even more than the large societies ofthe past, are enmeshed in a pe rpe tua l str ainof competing conceptions about the ultimatelocus of charisma. The disce rners a nd inter-preters of the transcendent order, the agentsof earthly order, a nd th e po pula ce whichwishes to share in these h igher orders an dalready regards itself as sharing in themsufficiently, are bound to be engaged in acontest with each other. The earthly elite isunder pressure from th e charisma of the

transcendent order and from charisma em-bodied in the populace. I t can never avoidits attribution of charisma to its own centralposition but neither can it avoid contention,pressure, an d criticism from the othe r b earersof charismatic qualities. And any improve-

ment in the position of any one of the threecontesta nts is boimd to arouse and streng thenthe affirmation of their own charisma in theother two, while at the same time laying itopen to criticism and refusal.

With these concluding but not definitiveobservations, we come again to Weber'sfamous proposition about the revolutionarycharacter of charisma. As in so much elsethat he said, much truth resides. But thetruth of the matter is more complicated, thephenomenon is more protean, and the dis-tance to be traversed for its imderstandingis still very great.

POLITICAL CRITIQUES OF MAX WEBER:SOME IMPLICATIONS FOR POLITICAL SOCIOLOGY

R O T H

State University of New York, Stony BrookRecent critiques of Weber have come particularly from younger German writers concernedwith a reassessment of thdr country's history. These critiques, how ever, fit into a generalpattern of attacks that dther use a sodological approach for political purposes or denyaltogether the present rationale of political sodology. The major critiques have been under-taken by Marxists, N azis and spokesmen of natural law. The Marxist and N azi views havebeen remarkably similar, and both single out Weber and Thomas Mann as the last greatrepresentatives of the bourgeois era. The natural law critique tends to consider Weber's work,if not all of sodology, as a step toward relativism or nihilism. Th ese attacks raise generalquestions as to the ideological and institutional presupp ositions of political sodology.

COMifEMORATiONS are frequently politeand somewhat stately affairs, but thecentenary of Weber's birth has attested

both to his great influence and to the stillcontroversial character of his work. Weberwas a passionate advoca te of political ratio n-ality and, literally, a "radical" sociologistwith a world-historical v ision : two featu reswhich—in the world as it is—^are boundto engender political and scho larly contro-versy . His case a lso shows, du ly magnified,

* Revised version o f a pap er read at the ann ualmeeting of the American So do log ical Ass ociatio n,

some of the typical tensions between politicalideology and political sociology.* Weber has

and the sequence, of the extant translations. Weber'smajor comparative treatment of forms of domina-tion, Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft, has suffered moston this score. This situation will hopefully beameliorated by my forthcoming complete edition ofEconomy and Sodety, 2 vols ., Totow a: Bed-minster Press, 1966. This edition win also containsome of Weber's political writings, which are stillalmost unknown to most F-nglish readers, with theexception of the widely read 'Tolitics as a Voca-

tion's—a speech addressed to students. On tbedifferential impact of Weber's work on Americansodology, see Guenther Roth and Reinhard Bendix,



214 AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL REVIEW

been a major target for a series of critiquesaimed at political sociology in general, ifnot at most of social science. These critiqueseither use a sociological approach for politi-cal purposes or deny altogether the present

rationale of political sociology and to someextent even the viability of Western pluralistsociety. Because Weber had a highly articu-late view of politics and took his stand onpolitical issues that have remained contro-versial to this day, it is not always easy todistinguish specific critiques of Weber's pol-itics and scholarship from the general im-plications for political sociology. There isconsiderable room for different historical in-terpretations; it is, of course, also possible toput different accents on the definition of pol-itics. At any rate, the major intent of thispresentation is not an historical defense ofWeber but a review of critiques so far asthey seem to bear on the raison d'etre ofpolitical sociology. In my judgment, this ra-tionale is imperiled if Weber's insights intothe nature of politics are denied.

Since sociological analysis properly en-deavors to look at the world dispassionatelyor, more correctly, from a "theoretical" per-spective in the strict contemplative sense of

the word, it must appear relativist and Mach-iavellian to all those who, for ideologicalreasons, cannot recognize any dividing linebetween political sociology and political ide-ology. Weber emphatically insisted on sucha distinction. He always made it clear thathe did not claim scientific support for hispolitical views. Of course, in his politicalwritings he drew on his sociological learn ing;he also put concrete political issues into theuniversal historical context with which his

studies were concerned. But since his criticsrefuse to distinguish between his scholarshipand his politics, they can quote sociologicalstatements—^his or anyone else's—as articu-lations of political views.

WEBER'S SOCIOLOGICAL ETHIC

The vehemence of various critiques mustbe attributed not only to Weber's insistence

by referring to Emile Durkheim. But in the UnitedStates the political implications of his work havenever been an issue, in contrast to France wherethey were clearly perceived by friend and foe ofthe Third Republic. In the thirties and forties, someof the same critiques discussed here were directed

on a scholarly study of power and authority,but also to his own political decision thatpolitics is the art of the possible—a rationalcraft. Here indeed is a connection betweenWeber's sociological work and his political

commitment, which may b e said to imply asociological ethic: it was sociological becausehe considered it em pirically ind isp uta ble thatrecurrent ideological conflict was as basic afact of social life as the impossibility of re-conciling any Is with any Ought, so far aslarge-scale social structures were concemed;it was an ethic because he advocated moralstamina in the face of these "iron" facts'His recognition of the rea lities of power wasnot identical with the glorification of the

state and of Realpolitik by m an y of his con-temporaries. Rather, his views were the secu-lar counterpart of the age-old Christian dual-ism revived as a major lit erary topic byDostevsky and Tolstoy, about whom \^>bfrplanned to write a book.* Those who wouldremain pure and innocent must stay outofpolitics altogether, yet even t hi s is not en-tirely safe, since values may be compromisedby a refusal to act—witness the pacifistswho refuse to fight the enemies of humani-tarianism. Whoever enters politics encoun-ters the need to exercise power, and thi;implies ethical as well as political compromise.

These sociological insights did not shakeWeber's resolve th at man shou ld act decently toward his fellow man, even if therewas no absolute supernatural or scientirV,justification for it. For him this was asimp]-rational affirmation of the humanitarian elcment in Western civilization. He had no illu

3 Th is seems to me r ela ted to w h a t Berriar.vli:Nelson has called the "so da l r ealit y principle," irderivation from Freud ian term inolo gy (see fn. 51,The term "sociological ethic" follows Weber;vocabulary and is gleaned from Carlo Antoni.Fr:

History to Sociology (Hayden V. White, trans),Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1959, p. uiSince Antoni is a follower of Benedetto Croir'idealist intuitionism, the object of his study «,:-

appear to him as "the decline of Germantho, .v

from h istoricism to ty po logi cal sociologjsm" (-his preface of 1939).

*See Weber, "Politics as a Vo cation ," in H. fe'and C. W. Mills (eds,). From Max Weber, rYo rk: Oxford Unive rsity Pres s, 1946, p, i?vMarianne Weber, Max Weber, HeirieHirn,



POLITICAL CRITIQUES OF MAX WEBER 21 5

' us about the d ark side of P rogre ss, an d^ was one reason for his aversion to ab -tract moralizing. He was convinced that re-

L si b le political leadership cannot afford toe to moralistic, legalistic or any other

jynd of ideological ab solut ism , since theseare

inherently self-defeating. His sociologicalethic was thus a la tte r-d ay version of Stoicphilosophy in that virtuous conduct wasmore important tha n any n otion of u ltim atesalvation in a tbis-worldly or other-worldlymillennium—and only in this ethical sense^as Weber a Machiavellian.*^

This anti-ideological insistence onmeasurehas provoked the tru e believe rs in pol iticalpanaceas. Left, R igh t a nd Ce nte r. Accord-ingly, the ideological critiques of Weber havecome mainly from three quarters: Marxism,Nazism and N atur al Law wi th i ts liberaland conservative wings. In the United Sta tes,advocates of moralistic liberalism, which isrooted in a strong na tu ral righ ts trad itio n,have been especially provo ked by W ebe r.Many of the other at ta ck s, how ever, seem atfirst sight to refer to another land and an-other time. Most of the participants in theextended debate were born in Germany;many left invo luntarily, some on the ir owninitiative; some returned; and some merelystudied there. (In the course of this exposi-tion it should become clear th a t more isinvolved than a mere quarrel between Ger-mans, ex-Germans, G erm anophiles an dGermanophobes.)

The three ideologies are substantively op-posed to one another, but they are all in-stances of an "ethic of good intentions" or"ultimate ends" (Gesinnungsethik) and,methodologically, they all resort to historicalreductionism. To be sure, Marxism does notrecognize the existence of absolute values inthe sense of natural rig hts (a self-intereste dbourgeois postulate), but it adheres dog-matically to a correspondence theory of con-cept and object, m aintain ing th at only criti-J^l, dialectical con cepts can express th e"truth." Nazism, in turn, was an "ethic ofgood intentio ns" only in th e m ost forma lsense.

THE MARXIST CRITIQUE

writers who opposed Communist totalitarian-ism from the outside® or who eventuallyclashed with pa rty orthodoxy from the inside.Among the latter, Georg Lukacs was the onlywriter on sodology in the Moscow of theStalinist purges who approached serious

scholarship. At th e time he kep t himself busy—and out of the way—with an attempt toconstrue German intellectual history as aroad to irrationalism leading from Schellingto Hitler via Weber and all other majorGerman sociologists.*^

Despite important political and philosoph-ical differences among these Marxist writers,their views on Weber appear very similar:

(1) Weber refused to accept the dialecti-

cal idea of potentiality—^he studied the factsof social life and tried to extrapolate futuretrends instead of measuring reality against

* Prominent among Western spokesmen for asophisticated "critical theory of sodety" are T. W.Adorno, who called for a critique of Weber'spolitical philosophy in an address as preadent ofthe German Sodological Association at the 1964annual convention in Heidelberg, and Herbert Mar-cuse, who delivered the main attack at the sameoccasion. On Adorno's basic position, see Max

Horkheimer and T. W. Adorno, Die Dialektik derAufkldrung, Amsterdam: Queddo, 1947; specificallyon Weber, see Horkheimer, Eclipse of Reason, NewYork: Oxford University Press, 1947, p. 6. ForMarcuse's critique, see "IndustriaMerung undKapitalismus," Heidelberg address, April, 1964, andthe critical rejoinders by Reinhard Bendix andBenjamin Nelson (forthcoming Proceedings).Marcuse has become tbe best known representativeof "critical sodal theory" in the U.S. through hisbooks Reason and Revolution (1942), Eros andCivilization (1955), and the recentOne-Dimensional

Man (1964).T See Georg Luk acs,Die Zerstorung der Vernunft,

Berlin: Aufbau-Verlag, 1955; on Weber esp. pp.474-88. Lukacs followed the Stalinist line before1953 but joined the intra-party opposition beforethe Hungarian Revolution; after a period of banish-ment he recently emerged again with an appealfor a self-critical Marxism that can even acceptFran2 Elafka's bureaucratic nightmare. Cf. MelvinLasky's perceptive review of two Lukacs trans-lations in the New York Times Book Review,May 10, 1964, p. 4, especially his remarks on the"simple-minded thirties."

Less known in this country is Hans Mayer, whoabandoned bis professorship of modem literatureat the University of Leipzig in 1963 and soughtasylum in Western Germany For Mayer's views on




the great possibilities postulated by Marx'sihdory of human nature.

(2 ) Epistemologically, this was due to thefact that Weber was a Neo-Kantian, adher-ing to the belief that the phenomenal worldcan be conceptualized in many different

(3) Therefore, Weber postulated a uni-verse of confiicting values among which nosdentific choices are possible; this opens theway to irrationalism, leading directly to im-perialism and ultimately to fascism. For ifWeber denies the truth of Marxism and istoo much of a secular relativist to subscribeto outmoded religious metaphysics he mustperforce take the nationalist and militaristnation state as his major political and even

moral reference.(4) Weber's mode of thinking was typi-

cally bourgeois, insensitive to the truth thatc^italism has been the most extreme exploi-tation of man. In class defense, men likeWeber and Georg Simmel—^both capitalistrentiers and parasites, "objectively" speak-ing®—^view social reality in formalizedterms, conceiving of capitalism as a systemof rational calculation based on the abstract

medium of money. Significantly, Weber isalso concerned with the "spirit" {Geist) ofcapitalism and its affinity to the Calvinistethic. But in his most detached scholarlywork. Economy and Society, an "orgy offormalism" in its casuistic definitions oftyp)es of action and of domination, Weber re-veals the depravity, the Ungeist, of capitalistsociety.*

(5 ) W eber's interest in a co mp arativestudy of social structure and ideology "re-flects" the imperialist interests of the capital-ist countries; it is "expansionist" sociology.

M ost of these charges clearly app ly to con-temporary American social sdence as well.In spite of thdr basic optimism, most Ameri-can social sdentists are skeptical of the ideaof potentiality, have been vaguely Neo-Kantian, and have focussed on the methodo-logical and conceptual elaboration of theirdisdplines—Whence have been guilty of "posi-tivistic formalism." Moreover, American so-dal sdence tends to appear as a defensive

Cold War instrument, in view of its increiing interest in newly developing countries

THE NAZI CKITIQXJE

In general, the N azi critique ha s beeneven

less sophisticated than the Marxist critiquebu t there are also some strik ing parallels. Ex

cep tions to the ru le of igno rance and incom.petence were Carl Schmitt, the renowned and

notorious political sdentist and constitu.tional expert, and the forgotten ChristophStedin g, the unfulfilled ho pe of N a a philoso-phy. Both men share two features with theMarx ists men tioned abov e: they held sub-stantially the same opinion of positivisticsodology—except for the race issue—and

they were prominent but politically marginalideologists. I shall limit myself to Steding,who was mo re d irect an d typical than theelusive and more capable Carl Schmitt.^®

Steding made a limited effort to confonnto some of the canons of scholarship in hisPh.D. dissertation of 1932 on "Max Weber'sPolitics and Sdence," in which he assertedtheir identity and found W ebe r's notion ofcharismatic leadership very congenial."Steding 's major concoction, begun on aRockefeller Fo un da tion g rant in the earlythi rtie s, grew in to a violent a ttack on tlie"disease of European culture."^^ Mixing

10 Carl Sc hm itt star ted from an authoritarianCatholic pos ition. H is majo r scholarly work is hisVerfassungslehre, Munich: Duncker und Humblot,1928 (3rd un change d ed., 19 57 ); on Weber, seepp . 286f., 307, 314, 33Sf., 341 and 347. Scholarlyin substance too is his essay Der Begriff desPoUtischen (1 92 7) . See the te xt of 1932 with a

defensive preface (1 96 3) , Ber lin: Duncker undHu mb lot, 1963. Th is essa y contains his famousfrien d-fo e dist incti on as th e bas ic criterion of thepolitic al p roce ss. Th e Na zified editio n of 1933(Hamburg: Hanseatische Verlagsanstalt) difiersonly — but decisively— in ton e, terminology andomis sion. Web er, for w ho m Sch mitt had high re-gard , is no longe r m en tion ed , bu t Franz OppeH'hdmer is suddenly identified as a "Berlin-Frankfurtsod olog ist"— evo king the im age of th e two dtiesas dtadels of libetaKsm-capitalism-bolshevisiii-Judaism-sodologism. Schmitt suffered quick declineafter 1933, but he was one of the most effectiveopponents of the Weimar Republic and of sodologyduring the late twenties.

"Christoph Steding PoUUk und




orical fact and parandd phantasy, hethat this disease originated with the

^^tphalian Peace of 1648 when the W est-ju Eurc^)ean na tion sta tes estab lished abalance of power which made an effectiveReich impossible and hence vitiated a uni-

versalist political and cultural order thatwould have restored philosophic realism. T heage of neutralism arrived and championedthe liberal theory of the laissez-faire sta te ,philosophical nom inalism and value-free

sociology. *In vivid organic imagery, Steding showed

that the "disease carriers" that threatenedthe Reich were located in the Rhein valley;

had suggested that terms like

"nation," "Nationalgefuhl" or "Volk" werenot really applicable to "neutralized" areaslike Switzerland, Alsace-Lorraine, Luxem-burg and Lichtenstein, for which oppositionto "militarist" Germany provided a strongbasis of their sense of political community."The old Calvinist territories of Switzerlandand the Netherlands became the com er-stones of the hostile wall of Rhenish dtieswhich had been Free I m pa ial dt ie s or anti-Prussian court residences. Basle was thepreferred domicile of Jacob Burckhardt andFriedrich Nietzsche, the two m ost formidableintellectual enemies of the Reich in the lastthird of the 19th century; the old univer-sities of Freiburg, Heidelberg and Marburgexcelled in "quasi-Calvinist" and "quasi-Jewish" Neo-Kantlanism; the old court resi-dence Darmstadt was the hom e of severalfigures of the charismatic George d rd e ,which was suspect because of its esthetically

refined vision of a Third Reich;^^

the tradeand university centers of Frankfurt andCologne, which pioneered institutes foreconomic and sodological research, providedthe link to Amsterdam.

^'Cirl Schmitt also construed a theory ofpolitical dedin e from the 16th cen tury to theKbcral-bourgeois age of "neutral** and "unpolitical**attitudes and sodal spheres. See •'Das Zdtalter derNeutralisierungen und Entpolitiderungen*' (1929),reprint«d in Der Begriff des PoUUscken, op, dt.,

1963, pp.79_95."See Weber, Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft (4 th

W-. Johannes Winckehnann, ed .), T ubing en: M ohr,

In this context Max Weber and ThomasMann i^pear as the last two outstanding andpersonally admirable representatives of bour-geois d^dlization in its terminal stage ofdecadence and fatal disease—exactly as theydo for the Marxists.^* Their work is the last

achievement of tbe bourgeois spirit: it iscapitalist, urban, abstract, nominalist, neu-tralist, Neo-Kantian and, for Steding, ofcourse, "Jewish" by assodation.

As in the Marxist perspective, there is nobasic difference between Imperial Germanyand the Weimar Republic: both are capital-ist sodeties. The personnel and the personal-ities are largdy the same: William II andWeber, his stormiest critic, appear akin intheir haste, nervousness and imperialistposturing, lacking a real power-drive. ButWeber and Thomas Mann are also acknowl-edged to have been more perceptive thanmost other members of their class. Theirsupport of parliamentary govemment madethem ideological spokesmen or symbols ofthe Weimar Republic, the spirit of which,alas, was that of Locamo—another "neutral-ist" locality .1

Christoph Steding and his Marxist counter-

parts read their sodologists with nialidouscare so as to use sodological insights aspolitical weapons and turn the tables onWeber, Simmel and other members of theGeneration of 1890. Both Steding and theMarxists adhere to a vulgar sodology ofknowledge, an all too easy and superficial

1* See, for example, H ans Ma yer, Thomas Mann:Werk und Entwicklung, Berlin: Volk und Welt,1950, and "Thomas Manns *Doktor Faustus*:Roman einer Endzeit und Endzeit eines Romans,**in Von Lessing bis Thomas Mann, PfuUigen: Neske,1959, pp. 383-404; Georg Lukacs, Thomas Mann,Berlin: Aufbau-Verlag, 1949; see also Hans Mayer*s"revisionist** review essay, "Georg Lukacs* Grosseund Grenze,** Die Zdt, July 24, 1964, p. 12.

Mann and Weber were impressed with Lukacs*pre-Mandst Theory of the Novel (written in1914/15). The figure of Naphta in the MagicMountain (1924) is said to have drawn onLukacs* personality. On Lukacs* personal acquain-tance with the Webers, see Marianne Weber, op .dt., pp . 5O8f., 511, 533, and his autobiographicalstatement of 1962 in Die Theorie des Romans,Neuwied: Luchterhand, 1963, pp. 5-9.

^^In Locarno (Switzerland) in 1925, Belgium,France England Italy and Germany conduded



21 8 AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL REVIEW

notiiMi of correspondence between ideas andsodal stnicture.^^ The facts are sometimescorrect, but the political conclusions arbi-trary. Thus, Steding points out that Weberbecame interested in Confucianism only afterGermany took over Kiaochow in 1898.Weber wrote Ancient Judaism and some ofhis most passionate political essays in themidst of the turmoil of the First World War,when he felt like a lonely prophet.^® Steding,the proud peasant son, also charged Weberwith the inability of the decadent to finishtheir work and to defend their political in-terests successfully. Yet, ironically, he diedat the age of 35 in 1938, before finishing hislong and rambling work, and the two mostnotorious Nazi henchmen, Himmler and

Heydrich, who considered using his book asa major indoctrination text,^ p>erished withina few years, eliminating for the time beingthis kind of threat to the sodal sdences.

THE NATURAL-RIGHT CRITIQUE

In reaction to the rise of totalitarianNazism and Communism some prominentwriters have urged a return to natural right,

which posits a natural or rational hierarchyof values. Adherents believe that this hier-archy can be discovered by philosophic re-flection or intuition, or that it has beenrevealed to man. But because this latter-dayrevival of natural right is so obviously areactive phenomenon, it has a strong instru-mental or functionalist admixture. Those ofWeber's critics who more or less fall backon natural rights have either stressedphilosophical implications or they have been

18 This intellectual game of arguing by fadle as-sociation or spurious correspondence has infinitevariations. One latter-day version would consistin linking the meetings of the InternationalSociological Association in li^ge, Amsterdam andStresa (where, in 1935, England, France and Italyprotested unsuccessfully against German rearma-ment) to the "neutralist" atmosphere of theselocalities, on the one hand, and the "neutralist"or, if need be, "instrumental" character of sociologyon tbe otber. For tbe 1962 meetings in Washington,

D .C , otber labels could easily be found ("ColdWar stalemate," etc.)." Cf. Steding, Max Weber, op. dt., pp. 108 and

concerned primarily with politicalquences, espedally with the course ofGQman history.

PoUtico-pkUosophical critiques. The attacks on this level have been carried in par.ticu lar by Leo Stra uss an d Eric Voegelin 21Fo r the m, Weber is the greates t and mosttypic al represen tat ive of modem socialsd en ce . "N o one since W ebe r," says Strauss"h as devoted a com parable amoun t of in!telligence, assiduity, and almost fanaticaldevo tion to t he bas ic problem of the sodalsdences. Whatever may have been hiserrors,he is the greatest sodal sdentist ofQ]^century." 22 But Weber he lped lead socialscience into the "morass of rdativism."According to Strauss and Voegelin, scienceshould be understood no longer positivistic-ally , bu t aga in ontolog ically a s the searchfor prima principia. Whoever does not b^lieve in the oneness of truth cannot helpbutsuccumb to a chaos of random values. With-out the acceptance of natural rights, rela-tivism and its dialectical counterpart, totali-tarian absolutism, appear inevitable.

Like the Marxists and Steding, Voegelindevelops a formula identifying the forcesof

evil in his tory. Inste ad of focusing on thecap italist spirit of inhu ma n rationality andneutrality, he attacks the whole "gnosticsearch for a civil theology," for a perfectorde r on earth.^^ Fo r Voegelin, the Nazis'belief in the Third Reich, and the Marxists'hopes for a dassless sodety after the Revolu-tion, are gnostic phantasies about the millen-nium . Their very at tem pt to create totalgoodness by thei r ow n definition is boundto t u m gov em ment i nt o a force of total evilFurthermore, gnosticism is not just a matterof totalitarianism but is typical of Western-izatio n in g eneral, a globa l process that iscontinuing in the United States and WesternEurope .^

Positivistic gnosticism has destroyedpolitical s de nc e p r(^)er: me thods have sub-ord ina ted relevance , useless facts are ac-cum ulated , o bjectivity is equa ted with the

»See Leo Strauss, Natural Right and HistoryCbicago: University of Cbicago Press, 1953, Ch. 2Eric Voegelin, The New Sdence of Fomh




-elusion of value judgments. In this schemeWeber occupies a transitiwial position. HeI s a "positivist w ith regrets," who tabooedl^sic and Christian metaphysics. Voegelinfinds it revealing that Weber neglected thesetffo traditions in his vast comparative

studies of the affinity between status groupsand ethical ideas. If he had not shied awayfrom them he would have discovered there"the belief in a rational sd en ce of humanand sodal order and especially of naturallaw. Moreover, this sdence was not simply abelief, but was actually elaborated as a workof reason." ^^ Weber's positivism made himsee history as a process of rationalization,whereas modern history was actually adownfall from the grace of reason—in thelight of the scientia prima. Because Weberdid not recognize natural right, he had todemonize politics. Only his ethics of re-sponsibility was a rational counterforce.Voegdin concedes that Weber made astronger effort than all other positivists toturn sodal sdence in a meaningful direction,but since Voegelin adopts a Christian dual-ism, he feels compelled to reject Weber in

For Strauss, too, the troubles of recenthistory have been due basically to the denialof natural right. Its rejection is tantamountto nihilism, and in Weber's case it led to"noble nihilism." Since American socialscience largely agrees with Weber's relativ-ism, it has become something of a Germanaberration (says the German philosopher):

It would no t be th e first t im e tha t a nat ion ,defeated on the battlefield and, as it were,annihilated as a political being, has deprivedits conquerors of the m os t su blim e fru it o fvictory by imposing on them the yoke of itsown thought. W ha teve r mig ht be true of thethought of t i e Am erican pe op le , cer ta in lyAnierican social science has adopted the veryattitude towa rd natu ral right w hic h, a gener a-tion ago, could still be d escribed , with so m eplausibility, as characteristic of Germant h h . 2 ' ^

t., p. 20.' As a young man, Voegelin was under Weber's

«PeD and wro te an excellen t an alys is of We ber's

rationalism. In particular, of the difference betweenthe necessary resigna tion of th e resp onsib le po Uticalactivist (Weber's theory) and that of the esthetic

This is an extreme statement, which mayhave been advanced for its shock value. ButStrauss is fair enough to denoimce thereductio ad Hitlerum,^^ the assertion thatWeber's thinking led to Fascism. This kindof reductionism has been typical of the his-

torical critique associated with moralisticliberalism.The critique of moralistic liberalism.

American liberals have traditionally shownexasperation with the reverses of democracyabroad. Moreover, their pragmatist back-ground has made them especially skepticaltoward German idealism and to a lesser ex-tent toward historical materialism, anotherGerman product.^* Times have changed,however, since 1935 when Ellsworth Farisrejected Pareto from implied moral premises,without conceding any utility whatever toPareto's political sodology.^® But manyliberals still tend to distrust the detachedsodological study of power and of non-democratic systems of govemment, exceptCommunism and Nazism—^as the most ex-treme negations of liberalism they fit into amoralistic black-white scheme. Until veryrecently, at least, there were few studies of

the growing number of authoritarian govern-ments not just as variants of Fascism orCommunism but as different types ofdominations, age-old or brand-new. Thistraditional distrust may also explain someof the uneasiness toward Weber's insistenceon the facts of power and toward hisnationalism, which at best is regarded as adiaracteristic that he shared with mostscholars of his generation, espedally Durk-

of the First World War some English scholars feltthat one of its benefits had been liberation fromthe yoke of "German" value-free sdence; seeVoegelin, op. dt., p. 189.

*«See Strauss, op. dt., p. 42 .<* Paradoxically, however, som e liberals hav e been

more S3rmpathetic with the extreme German leftthan with the convinced supporters of parliamentarygovernment in the Sodal Democratic labor move-ment—after both 1918 and 194S—^because theformer seemed to promise a Utopian reconstruc-t ion. Cf. my study. The Social Democrats in Im-perial Germany, Totowa: Bedminster Press, 1963,

pp. 3230. For a recent textbook illustration ofthis moralistic bias, see John E. Rodes, Germany:A History, New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston,




heim. Moreover, the experience of Nazismprovides a powerful moral perspective onGerman history and makes it hard to befair to past generations.

The interest among American social sci-entists, first in Fascism and then in totali-tarianism in general, was shared andstimulated by German political exiles. Inreflecting upon the rise of Nazism, somewriters began to view Weber, not so much asa direct Nazi forerunner, but as a symptomof things to come.'^ This concern has nowbeen taken up by a new generation of Ger-man scholars. Intent on understanding thecauses of the German catastrophe, some ofthem have been so preoccupied with thepolitical interpretation of Weber that theytend to lose sight not only of his scholarlyintentions and achievements but also of therationale of sodology. Weber, a major argu-ment goes, emphasized too strongly the in-strumental instead of the inherent value ofdemocracy—that is, democracy as decreedby natural law. He advocated charismaticleadership in the face of bureaucratization,and therefore favored the direct election ofthe President of the Weimar Republic, a con-stitutional provision that proved fatal in1933. Hence the conclusion: Neither fromthe viewpoint of natural rights nor from thatof pragmatic compromise does Weber's posi-tion provide reliable support for a pluralistsystem in which mundane group interestsmust continually be readjusted, a task thatcan be accomplished best with a minimumof charismatic excitement.^^

Related to these arguments is anoth erkindof historical reductionism, w hich assumes adownfall from the Age of Reason. A numbeiof younger German writers, holding a nat-ural-rights position at least for polemiralpurposes, have construed an ideological lineleading to Nazism which runs, for example.from Kant's formalistic Categorical Imperative, through R anke's view of sta tes a ndpecpies as h istorical ind ividualities, throu gh thelegal positivism since the eighteen-six ties, toWeber's sociological definition of politicsandthe state, and from there to Carl Schmittstheory of politics as friend-foe relations-only one last step removed from Hitler'sviews and crimes.*^ In the same

« i j , P. Mayer, who feels more at home with

Tocqueville's older conservative liberalism, wrotehis reflections on Weber and German politics in the«irly thirties, contemporaneous with the work ofLukacs, Hans Mayer and Steding, and publishedthem in war-time England. J. P. Mayer,Max Weberand German Politics, London: Faber and Faber,1943. Hans Kohn, life-long student of nationalism,recently echoed Mayer and placed Weber squarelyin the ranks of narrow-minded nationalists; see hisThe Mind of Germany, New York: Scribner, 1960,p p . 269, 27&-87.

«* The most impressive study on this score, super-seding J. P. Mayer, is Wolfgang Mommsen's MaxWeber und die deutsche PoUtik, 1890-1920,Tubingen: Mohr, 1959; for Mommsen's implicitnatural rights view, sec p. 407. As a German his-torian Mommsen is of course far removed from

as political ideology. Accordingly he was critid/don both historical and methodological grounds in»symposium by three American (formerly German^social sdentists: Reinhard Bendix, Karl Loewenstein and the late Paul Honigsheim in Kdlr^Zeitschrift fiir Soziologie, 13 (1961), pp, 258S,Mo mm sen replied at len gth aga inst w ha t he calledthe Weber orthodoxy in ibid., 15 (1963), pp. 295-321.

Th e facts on the p residen tial issue ha ve nowbeen uncovered in the excellent study by GerhardSchuk, Zwischen Demokratie und Diktatur: T>f.fassungspolitik und Reichsreform in der WeimamRepubUk, Berlin : Gr uyt er, 1963, I, p p . 114-42.Schulz poi nts out th at far fr om ta ki ng a bluntposition in favor of a "Caesarist" leader, Webergradua lly shifted his opinions in respo nse to thechanging po litical situa tion an d the diversity' oiopinion in com mittee m eetings. Ev en tua lly he cameto favor a p opularly elected presiden t as amediator between the Rdchstag and the States,between the unitary and the federative principle.Cf. Weber, Gesammelte poUtische SchrijUn(Johannes Winckelmann, ed.), Tubingen: Mohr1958, pp . 394-471, 486-89. Schulz also delivered th?commemorative address on **Weber as a Politicai

Critic " before the Friedrich-Naum ann-StiftuiiiHeidelberg, 1964.88 See Wilhelm Hennis, **Zum Problem i,

deutschen Staatsanschauung," Vierteljahrsheftt ji-Zdtgeschichte, 7 (1959), pp. 1-23. For a simikconstruction making Sc hmitt a termin al point ofilong d evelopm ent passing t hro ugh W ebe r, see Heir..Laufer, Das Kriterium poUtischen Handelns: f'Studie zur Freund-Feind-Doktrin von Carl Schmit:,

Mu nich: Inst itut fiir politische Wissenschaften &Unive rsitat M unchen , 1961. Fo r M om mse n's interpretatlo n of S chm itt's "logical" elaboration o:Weber, see Mommsen, op. dt., pp. 379-86. For»jud ido us assessment, in th e waJke of the iv':Heidelb erg conve ntion, of th e link a nd the dijference between W eber a nd Sc hm itt, see Ki'.Loew ith "M ax W eber u nd Carl Sch mitt " a tuB




j]jer writers have tried to trace the rise oftotalitarian democracy from Rousseau's gen-

1 ^ ^ through Saint-Simon's technocraticelite and' Marx's theory of the class struggle,to Lenin's democratic centralism —only onelast step removed from Stalin.**

The tracing of such ideological lineages isa challenging and fascinating task , but i t isalso very difficult, since the scholar must dojustice to the individual's subjective inten-tions and to the com plexities of historicalreality; he must avoid a fadle theory ofantecedents, stepping stones and parallels,since it is in the nature of po litics th at dif-ferences of degree in belief and action arecritical (the rule of the lesser evil). With re-gard to "Max Weber before Fascism," ErnstKolte has brilliantly balanced the account. *

SUBJECTIVE INTENT AND OBJECTIVECONSEQUENCES

There is no effective protection againstthe misuse of ideas, against their deteriora-tion into ideological coins and political weap-ons. The doctrine of natural rights, too, hasbeen susceptible to political misuse, not leastin this century. " Ideas always have un in-tended consequences, and sodology largelylives off this fact. Weber himself showed thepossible relations between the Protestantethic and the spirit of cap italism. But he w asnever concerned with dedaring Calvin orBaxter responsible for the materialism of thecapitalist era, or K arl Marx, for the intransi-gence of the labor movement His grasp of

commemoration of the University of Heidelberg,April, 1964.

"In addition to Eric Voegelin, see Jacob L.Talmon, The Origins of Totalitarian Demo cracy,New York: Praeger, 1960, and PoUtical Messianism:The Romantic Phase, London: Seeker and War-burg, 1960; Georg Iggers, The Cult of Authority:The PoUtical Philosophy of the Saint-Simonians,The Hague: M . Nijhoff, 195 8, an d id . ( e d . ) . Th eDoctrine of SahU-Sim on: An Exp osition, Boston:Beacon Press, 1958, pp . ix- xlv ii. F or a critique ofthis approadi, see A lfred Co bb an , In Search ofHum amty: The Role o f the EnUgh tenment iniiodem History, New York: BraziUer, 1960.

' "Max Weber vor dem Faschismus," Der Staat,2 (1963), pp. 295 -32 1; see also h is major comp ara-uve study of French , Italian an d G erman Fa sd sm ,^^Paschismus in seiner Epoche Munich: Piper

historical reality protected him from sub-scribing to any Devil-theory of history.

Since my main interest is not an historicaldefense of Weber, I shall merely summarizesome of the factors to be taken into consid-eration in this context:

(1 ) Weber insisted on realism in po liticsbecause the politically dominant Right ad-hered to ide^ist and romanticist notions toprovide motive and cover for irresponsiblepower politics.

(2 ) Weber insisted on realistic politics alsobecause for decades the sterile left-wing lib-eral opposition of Imperial Germany stuckto "principles" regardless of political feasi-bility.

(3) He insisted that he was as patrioticas anybody else because (before 1918) hecould not hope to exert any influence at allon the German Establishment unless heturned its own values against it by r^>eat-edly pointing out that Imperial Germanyand its ruling groups violated national idealsand national interests.*''^

(4 ) H e insisted on value-neutrality in thedassroom because the nationalist historianTreitschke and similar "professors" of ideo-

logical creeds indoctrinated students fromthe rostrum.

(5) He insisted it was the universit5r'sbusiness to make the students face the logi-cal consequences of their beliefs becausemost of his listeners were middle- and upper-dass students predisposed to nationalistsentiments.

(6) He insisted, finally, on an ethic ofresponsibility and of the politically possible(while conceding the abstract honorablenessof an ethic of good intentions) because in1919 the ideologists of the Right and theLeft were interested in an3rthing else but thecreation of parliamentary government inGermany.

a7 This is not to deny tha t Weber had a vocifer-ously nationalist phase when he supported theextreme Conservatives, at about the age of 30, buthe quickly moved on to the liberal Left, advocat-ing the integration of the Sodal Democratic labormovement (cf. Roth, op. dt., Chs. 10 and 11).See Weber*s autobiographical statement on hisshift of opinion in the preface to Tarlamoit undR gi g " P Uti h S h ift dt




I t is true that national welfare was We ber'sultimate political yardstick, since he consid-ered himself a political man, not a theologianor philosopher—two very different types,

who are not forced to operate within a givenpolitical unit. Constitutional problems weresecondary to national welfare only in thisabstract regard, not in the realm of practicalpolitics or of sodological analysis. Webergave much more thought to the instrumen-talities of parliamentary government thanalmost anybody else, including the Left,during the last decade of the Empire. Hisonly hope for public effectiveness lay in thepersuasiveness of the technical argumentsfor parliamentary government; the Empire'shistory had proven that ideological appealsfor parliamentarism were in vain.

Weber's references to national welfarewere residual and did not imply any denialof the welfare of other nations.^^ He neveradvocated colonialist or annexionist f)olicies.But he was convinced that a great politicalpower had special obligations—he called it a"miserable duty." He became ever moredoubtful whether Germany was morallyqualified to be a great nation, and he wasprepared to let those obligations fall to theUnited States, where they have been affirmedin general by moralistic liberalism.

SOME IMPLICATIONS

The annual convention of the GermanSociological Association in Heidelberg in

April, 1964—a meeting dedicated to the cen-tenary of Weber's birth—was the largestgathering ever of the German association,but sociological interests were almost com-pletely submerged by a political dispute.**Older Marxists and younger social scientistsjoined in all-out attack on Weber, while gov-emment representatives acknowledged hiscontribution to German democracy."*^ Ameri-

»8 Cf. Nol te, " Max Web er . . . ," op. dt., p. 18.»»Cf. Carl Cerny, "Stonn Over Max Weber,"

Encounter, August 1964, pp. 57-59, and the reportin Kolner Zntschnft fur Sosiologie 16 (1964) pp

can sodolog ists tried to ta lk sociology butwere eventua lly forced to rep ly in a similarvein.

Political critiques of Weber can to some

extent be considered merely the priceascholar must be prepared to pay for enterinothe political arena and exposing himself(othe crude vehemence of political controversyM os t social sc ien tists since Weber's timehave refrained from plajdng the dualrole o!

scholar a nd politica l m an , b ut the critique;reviewed here illustrate that this does notguarantee protection. On the one hand,ad-he rents of M arx ism , N azism and NaturalLaw have not only refused to recognize

anydividing line between ideology andsociolog},but they have also shown a commontendenntoward an historical reductionism which I'a challenge to serious scholarsh ip; on theother, political sociologists are liable to pro-voke political opposition by dealingwith thefacts of national power and domesticgroupinterests. This makes them controversialintheir professional roles and ultimatelymake?it impossible for them to avoid taking Mexplic it po litical stand. Weber's scholar!}canons and his sociological ethic werea m-jo r att em pt to cope with this perennialtension.

The disarmament issue and thetwo Cubar.

crises have recently led a number ofsocialscientists to deal more intensively with\\t^

problems of peace and war, not justin theirroles as private citizens but in guidingjbeiiresearch and in speaking for their^ discipli|«^

to colleagues and the public. This isa j^^-come development as long as it doesnot leato what Weber called an "apolitical eiôf brotherhood." It stands to reason ^^^

the younger generation of American Êurop ea n so dal sc ien tists should a -a rhetoric that might seem to favor i

tionalism at the moment whencooperation inside W estern âcro ss the Atlan tic is in its most se-_

crisis since the Second World War. ^da lly in Raym ond Aron's presentation a ,Heidelberg convention it becameclear^



THE EMPIRICAL STUDY OF VALUES 223

. nationalist rhetoric of de Gaulle and the^jjujan de Gaullists indirectly affected thecourse of the debates, with Weber providinga parable for Aron.*i

Weber's rhetoric is indeed outmoded, sincet refened to the conditions of Imperial Ger-

many, the First World War and the national-ist intransigence of Versailles. But the pres-ent Atlantic crisis seem s to teach withregrettable clarity that nationalism even ofthe older brand is still a potent force, quiteapart from the intemation al Cold War ideol-ogies. Moreover, the dilemmas of Americanforeign policy over Cuba and Vietnam andthe domestic agonies over dvi l rights dailypose the issue of the balance between r e ^ n -sible, effective action and good intentions.

The insights of political sociology can ben-efit both friend and foe of a pluralist so-ciety, but only such a society can providethe requisite freedom of intellectual inquiry.This gives political sociology a vested interest

"See Raymond Aron, "Max Weber et lapolitique de puissance," s^dress before the 1964Heidelberg convention. For Aron's earlier appre-ciation of Weber, see bis German Sodology (M .and T. Bottomore, tran s.), Glenco e: Fr ee Press,19S7, pp. 67-106 (first Frencb edition, 1 936 ).

in its preservation. The growing involvementof p(ditical sodology in problems of political,economic and social development, an involve-ment which appears to opponents as an ex-pr^sion of Yuikee imperialism, neo-colonial-ism or even fasdsm, affirms this int^est.

At the same time the political proiq>ects ofsocial sdence, and especiaUy of political so-ciology, have become less and less hopefulin many of the newly developing or newlyindependent countries. Until a few years agomost American sodal sdentists hoped for thespread of their disdplines to many of thesecountries. But at this point one cannot putmuch faith in the reception of co'tain re-search techniques in Communist countries,particularly the Soviet Union; and recentevents in Cuba,*^ Burma and Africa h ave in -creased the possibility that sodal sdence willremain a Western institution linked to thegeneral fate of the Western world, the uniquehistory and uncertain future of which wereWeber's dominant political and scholarlyconcern.

*2Cf. Heinz Hartmann, "Sodology in Cuba,"American Sodological Review, 28 (Augiist, 1963),pp. 624-28.

A PROPOSAL FOR TH E EMPIRICAL STU DY OF VALUES

HASOLD FAIXOING

Rutgers • The State UniversUy

Confusion persists in the study of values partly because values are made synonymo us withthings valued. But the term should be reserved for satisfactions that are self-sufident. Theseshould be distinguished from instrvmental satisfactions a nd from pleasures, interests, compute

sions and benefits added. Fa rsons' pattern variables refer to the considerations involved inelecting values rather than to values themselves. B ecker's dichotomy of the sacred and secularrefers to the considerations involved in the conservation of values. It is suggested that fivetypes of values can be distinguished, viz. membership, partisanship, ownership, interest andface. Some observations are made on the requirements for their empirical study.

But that is to define the term so broadlythat it loses point, and it does, in fact, con-fuse the whde subject. It is better to restrictthis term in the way Nadd ^ suggested, torefer not to ends of practical or ^)edficutility, but to the more autonomous worth-whileness which is believed to reside in cer-tain dasses of objects, and which conse-

is a value and how is it to berecognized? In view of the centralityof the concept in sodology and the

ease with which theorists, researchers andsocial aiti cs all use it, our inability to answertliis is alarming.

A BIGHT DEFINITION GIVES A BIGHT CHOICE

critics of weber

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