Anneke van Baalen, HIDDEN MASCULINITY, Max Weber's historical sociology of bureaucracy. 1994
Chapter 7 The city: new fraternities of patriarchs
124
association', the 'members' of which are said to act as if it really exists, while actually they
orient themselves to goods and their prices, instead of to other human beings. The rationality
by which the market is defined has been cut off from the 'irrationalities' of the households in
which most of these market goods are produced.
Sociologically speaking the freedom of the market and the appearance of the 'homo
economicus' characterize only one, negative, moment of a contradictory process: that of the
burgher trying to liberate himself from patrimonial domination, claiming freedom and equality
for himself. The opposite, positive, moment of this process, which consists of the struggles of
the burgher to maintain his patriarchal domination and thus to deny freedom and equality to
the dependents in his household, remains hidden.
Weber analyzed the appearance of the 'homo economicus' in the chapter on the household I
discussed earlier, where he presented this household as the oldest social formation and as
based on a natural superiority of its male head. He pays no attention to its institution and
maintenance, describing only the process of 'Auflösung'
73
- 'dissolution' - which he locates in
the period of the medieval occidental cities, and especially in the Italian ones.
He presents the dissolution of the 'household' as a general cultural process, correlated to the
growth of economic means:
'In the course of cultural development, the internal and external determinants of the weakening of household gain
ascendancy. Operating from within, and correlated with the quantitative growth of economic means and
resources, is the development and differentiation of abilities and wants. With the multiplication of life chances and
opportunities, the individual becomes less and less content with being bound to rigid and undifferentiated forms
of life prescribed by the group. Increasingly he desires to shape his life as an individual and to enjoy the fruits of
his own abilities and labor as he himself wishes.'
74
After listing some of the external causes of the individualization process within the
household
75
, Weber comes to describe the crucial factor in it, namely the money economy. It
is the money economy which 'makes possible an objective calculation both of the productive
performances and of the consumption' of the individual members of the household and so
'for the first time makes it possible for them to satisfy their wants freely through the indirect
exchange medium of money.'
76
Weber's view of the influence of a money economy on household members implies that the
wish for individual want satisfaction is self-evident; it manifests itself as soon as the money
economy makes its fulfillment possible. According to Weber the human beings who feel this
wish for individualization are male; not only does he designate every child of the household
as 'he', but he also omits to mention the emancipation of married women in trading
communities, a development which plays such an important role in Weber-Schnitger's book.
The need for individualization and emancipation is thus presented by Weber as an innate
male characteristic.
73
WG p. 226; ES p. 375 translates 'disintegration'.
74
ES p. 375, WG p. 226.
75
E.g., fiscal interest in a more intensive exploitation of the individual taxpayer, the development of individualized
agricultural production, the ecological separation of household and occupation, the development of education
outside the household.
76
ES p. 377, WG p. 227.
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