Anneke van Baalen, HIDDEN MASCULINITY, Max Weber's historical sociology of bureaucracy. 1994
Chapter 5 Expansion of patriarchy by decentralization and affiliation. Political patrimonialism as
masculine domination by an hierarchy of unfree men
92
The same applies to tributes, taxes, and compulsory services (liturgies). The power of the
ruler can lead to a loss of rights and freedoms of the ruled and so to a loss of the qualitative
difference between free and unfree subjects.
11
The 'power' of the lord is based on his capacity to use violence and thus on an army. The
power of the ruler is greatest when he succeeds in organizing his army in a way which does
not make him dependent on his subjects; this means that he has to find alternatives for the
use of either 'the propertyless or at least nonprivileged masses'- who often have to work on
the land and are therefore unavailable for military training - or the propertied strata, who are
in the habit of turning 'the duty and the honor of carrying arms into a privilege of a dominant
stratum' and are likely to become dangerous competitors.
12
If a money economy exists, the
ruler can hire mercenaries; if he has no money, he can only base his power on armies of
slaves or other household dependents.
13
A too powerful army though is dangerous for the ruler himself, since he may become
dependent on it. Besides, fear of the army on the part of subjects can never be the ruler's
only base for a stable and permanent empire: stability is impossible without legitimacy of the
domination.
Weber nowhere explains how patrimonial rulers achieve this legitimacy; he only labels it as
'traditional'. In his view the 'political subjects' of a ruler are those who believe in his
legitimacy; mostly they do this because they are linked to the political patrimonial ruler
'through a consensual community which also exists apart from his independent military force
and which is rooted in the belief that the ruler's powers are legitimate insofar as they are
traditional.'
14
Weber thus reverts to the first meaning of the concept 'tradition', 'the authority
of what has always been', to explain the expansion of the legitimacy of patrimonial rule.
Political patrimonial power, however, according to Weber is founded on usurpation: on the
denial by the ruler of the rights and freedoms of his subjects. Yet he claims that for the
establishment of its legitimacy and the building of permanent relations of domination, some
'interest in obedience' must be present. To understand the foundation of this interest in
obedience - which Weber leaves unexplained - one has to bear in mind that 'free political
11
'Whereas the old mark of "liberty" is the voluntary material support of the ruler and the absence of any
patrimonial obligation to surrender fixed tributes, a very powerful lord will tend to force even the "free" subjects to
meet the costs of his feuds and of his appropriate upkeep through means of liturgy or taxation. The only
difference between the two categories of subjects consists then regularly in the more narrow definition of these
tributes and in certain legal guarantees for the "free", that means, the merely political subject', ES p. 1014/5, WG
p. 586, and 'However, patrimonial domination inherently tends to force the extrapatrimonial political subjects just
as unconditionally under the ruler's authority as the patrimonial subjects and to regard all powers as personal
property, corresponding to the master's patriarchal power and property', ES p. 1022, WG p. 591. According to
Weber the degree in which the patrimonial ruler succeeds in his effort to appropriate goods, land and people
depends not only on his military power, but 'especially upon the mode and the impact of certain religious
influences, as we will show later.' I think Weber here refers to the domesticating (ES translates 'Domestikation'
with 'pacifying'; yet this is clearly not the meaning Weber intends, since in that case he could have used the word
'Befriedung'; 'domestication' is better because it includes the patriarchal appropriation of women) influences of
religion, and especially of the religious congregations, ES p. 455, WG p. 277.
12
ES p. 1018, WG p. 589.
13
Another possibility is the exchange of seigneurial rights for military services; then patrimonialism is transformed
into feudalism, see the next chapter.
14
Hence we will call "political subjects" those who are in this sense legitimately ruled by a patrimonial prince.' ES
p. 1020, WG p. 590.
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