The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Politics (290 page)

(1859–1947)
, and
(1858–1943)
Fabian socialists, who married in 1892, and pursued a life of research and political activity together. Their published works included lengthy studies of the trade union movement and local government. Sidney Webb was active on the London County Council (LCC) from 1892 to 1910, and in the first two Labour Governments, ending his career as Lord Passfield.
For the Webbs, socialism was the most efficient possible social system rather than an end to be valued in itself. Sidney was a ‘Progressive’ (Liberal-Labour) on the LCC, and their first attempts at influence were on the Liberal Party. Their outlook combined a very British empiricism which insisted that ideas could only advance on a basis of massive detail with a stolid utilitarianism. The result was an outlook which perceived capitalism as wasteful and inefficient rather than as morally wrong or necessarily outdated. Disillusioned by the collapse of the Labour Government in 1931, they became interested in, and attracted by, the Soviet Union, publishing
Soviet Communism: A New Civilization?
in 1935. (The question mark was removed in the 1936 edition.)
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(1864–1920)
German sociologist; one of the most influential figures in the history of the discipline. Born whilst his father was a magistrate in Erfurt, and moving to Berlin in 1869, Weber grew up in a prosperous household intimately connected with the academic and political life of Bismarckian Germany. His father, a worldly politician, became a member of the Reichstag whilst his mother was guided by a strong sense of religious duty. Weber read law, history, economics, and philosophy at the universities of Heidelberg, Göttingen, and Berlin, also attending seminars at Strasbourg during his military service. In 1886 he qualified as a junior barrister whilst working towards the first of his doctoral theses on the legal and economic history of medieval trading companies, awarded in 1889, and followed two years later by his ‘habilitation’ thesis on the agrarian history of Rome. Weber took up a professorship of economics at Freiburg after some teaching in Berlin. A chair in politics at Heidelberg (1896) marked a high point in his teaching career. The following year saw a quarrel with his father (mainly over the latter's treatment of Weber's mother) who died unreconciled to his son. This conflict seems to have precipitated the psychological and physical breakdown of Weber's health. He did not return to teaching until towards the end of his life when he held professorships in Vienna and Munich.
Prior to his breakdown Weber had written on the stock exchange and ‘traditionalism’ amongst farm workers; topics which gave some impetus to later works. He became active in nationalist politics, joined the Pan-German League but withdrew on health grounds and because of disagreements over policy. After several years of illness a new phase of productivity began in the period 1902–4 when he took an honorary professorship at Heidelberg; worked on a series of methodological essays; and began his study of the formation of the modern world order, the first fruit of which was
The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism
. Thereafter Weber expanded his interests into a comparative study of the ‘economic ethics of the world religions’ which, when combined with the studies of Rome and the Middle Ages, provided an analysis of cultures on an unmatched scale. Even so he would be the first to admit that they were incomplete. Such incompleteness was both a practical matter and an issue of epistemological principle: all knowledge was necessarily partial. The last years of his life were mainly devoted to drawing together these strands in
Economy and Society: An Outline of Interpretative Sociology
( see also General Economic History). Like
Marx's
Capital
, Weber's
Economy and Society
is a vast, complex, but ultimately incomplete text.
During the First World War Weber worked on the organization of military hospitals; he was a member of the German Delegation to the 1919 Versailles Conference; became a member of the executive of the German Democratic Party and, in that year, commenced his teaching at the University of Munich. After a short illness he died of pneumonia on 14 June 1920.
An outline of Weber's work can best set out from the philosophical, methodological, and ethical outlook which colours so much else. Epistemologically speaking, the essential antinomy is that between the infinite complexity of the potentially knowable and our finite capacity to know. For Weber, reality cannot be reduced to a set of brute facts; knowledge of that reality is formed by the interdependence of ‘fact’ and ‘theory’. The central issue is the understanding and explanation of action. This focus was (and is) often misinterpreted as a will to believe in our psychological capacity to rethink or relive the actor's thoughts and to be incongruously matched to a model of explanation drawn from the natural sciences. Neither point does justice to Weber's methodology. The capacity to understand rests, not on psychological insights, but upon historical scholarship, empirical research, and ultimately upon the humanist assumption that actor's intentions are in principle accessible, however difficult such access may, in practice, prove to be. Similarly the model of explanation is rooted, not in natural science, but in jurisprudence and legal theories of causality.
Weber's anti-empiricist stance rules out the possibility of direct observation of social life. His concepts or ‘ideal types’ are abstract exaggerations of phenomena which, in their pure form, cannot be found in reality. Idealizations of this kind (e.g. ‘class’, ‘status’, ‘party’, ‘power’, ‘charisma’, ‘feudalism’, ‘sect’, and so on) are, for Weber, not the main goal of sociological analysis but they do assist the understanding of the complexities of social phenomena. The very unreality of the ideal types highlights the empirical details, contradictions, and ambiguities of the subject-matter. Precisely because ideal types can be constructed from varying points of view, analysis knows no final resting point.
The analysis of power and domination illustrates something of Weber's approach. ‘Power’ is defined as any situation in which actors can realize their ends despite the resistance of others. ‘Domination’ is more specific, referring to the exercise of power through a command and the probability that such commands will be obeyed. Here the assumption is that power will normally be exercised through an administrative staff. The most enduring forms of domination are those to which, on whatever basis, ‘legitimacy’ is ascribed by the participants. Thus Weber seeks to develop a set of ideal types of legitimate domination through which the historical and contemporary variety of political arrangements might be analysed. These types are belief in legitimacy grounded in ‘traditional’ (an immemorial order), ‘charismatic’ (the special qualities—often divinely ordained—of the leader), or ‘legal’ (the due process of law) criteria.
A number of points arise here. First, there is a clear link between Weber's analysis and his methodology. The idea of legitimacy rests upon the actor's subjective belief (or lack of it) in the system—an orientation which blends with the focus on the ‘meaningful’. Secondly, Weber does not confuse these idealized forms with reality. A conceptual framework structured around an actor's subjective beliefs in legitimacy does not require acceptance of the claim that such legitimation actually exists. Nothing could be further from Weber's view of the political order as an arena of conflict—largely between classes, status groups, and parties, all of which are phenomena of the distribution of power. Finally, the typology of domination is not a portrayal of specific political structures but is, rather, a range of concepts through which a system can be analysed. The point being that the existence of all forms of domination is a contingent matter and this contingency rules out a deterministic progression from one form to another. Certainly legal and bureaucratic elements are very strongly present in Weber's view of the modern order but there is no neat development from, say, charisma to traditionalism to legality. Quite to the contrary, Weber saw, even in the modern world, the possibility of charismatic leadership as a source of revolutionary breakthroughs. Viewed in this light, his work does not provide an easy target for critiques of the grand theories which post-modernists see as a weakness in social and political theory.
The analysis of domination forms a considerable part of Weber's sociology but it would be wrong to restrict the ‘political’ to this area. The social implications of religions are, for example, a theme to which he frequently returns. The concept of legitimacy resonates with theological issues—justification, salvation doctrines, and theodicies. Those having the good things in life wish to legitimate their holdings and one of the most powerful roots of such legitimation is a belief in divine approval of the existing arrangements. These observations raise the question of the relationship between morality, politics, and science. Weber's underlying premiss is that actors have a will to believe in the ‘meaningful’ nature of their endeavours and that social science must explore this. Such exploration confronts the world of values head on.
There are a number of strands to this confrontation. Weber had no intentions of rejecting the world of values in the search for scientific analysis. Often the aims of investigation included the desire to force both analyst and audience to face moral and political issues as well as the pursuit of knowledge. However, Weber found it both logically untenable and morally repugnant to claim that research could underpin questions of ultimate value. Science could not tell us how to live or what to do, but this prohibition did not prevent him from a vigorous advocacy of German national interests. Of course Weber never thought that these views could masquerade as science. The latter provided clarity, analysed means to ends, and indicated the possible consequences of action. None of these achievements replace the obligation to make political and moral choices. To live for science and for politics are, to Weber, matters of intense commitment (in contrast to the lack of passion in Nietzche's ‘last men’) the poignancy of which was heightened by the ‘polar night of icy darkness and hardness’ confronting post-1918 Germany. The politician confronts this darkness through the ‘ethic of responsibility’: that is, one in which responsibility for the consequences of action is ever at hand. Weber contrasts this with an ‘ethic of conviction’ rooted in absolute and ultimate ends which leave aside worldly consideration of the consequences of that action.
This concern with the demands of the day is rooted in Weber's analysis of the development of rationalization and of
capitalism
in both its ‘adventure’ or ‘booty’ form and as the distinctive characteristic of the modern economic order. In this order, formally rational bourgeois capitalism and bureaucracy proceeded apace—although the growth of bureaucracy is, for Weber, by no means restricted to capitalism. He sees socialism as at least an equal contributor to this growth.
There are many views on the significance of Weber, and deep divisions remain as to the interpretation of his work. Criticisms include the ‘unreality’ of ideal types and, frequently, a rejection of his views on the separation of facts and values. Nevertheless, few would doubt his place as a thinker of the first rank. In methodology, comparative sociology, economic history, and the sociologies of law, religion, and politics, he left an enduring legacy. Three broad strands can be identified. (1) A refusal to confuse scientific and moral propositions whilst maintaining an awareness of their complex relationships. (2) The production of a multilayered, multicausal, and self-consciously incomplete picture of the social world. Here explanation is frustratingly elusive and stands apart from closed meta-narratives based upon ‘laws’, ‘structures’, and the ‘logic of history’. (3) An important perspective upon the great transformation to modernity.
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