Anneke van Baalen, HIDDEN MASCULINITY, Max Weber's historical sociology of bureaucracy. 1994
Chapter 7 The city: new fraternities of patriarchs
133
I will conceptualize the development from entrepreneur into aristocrat in a direct way, as a
transformation of military masculine values which took place in such a way that masculine
values came to include entrepreneurial success - not only in England, but also on the
continent.
In Weber's view the citizen of occidental Antiquity remained a 'homo politicus'; the medieval
citizen however was transformed into a 'homo economicus', 'homo' indeed meaning
'masculine human being', 'social human male', 'member of confraternization'. The difference
between the commercial activities of Antiquity and those of the Middle Ages lies in the
increasing importance of capital and with it in the increasing degree of accounting work and
therefore of rationalization. The real work in commerce, that of the keeping of the accounts,
was - as in administration - done by specialized clerks, who were recruited from the
propertyless classes and who remained outside of all status organizations of real men. The
activities of the 'entrepreneurs', however, did not consist of routine work; they are a
succession of market transactions, all of which contain both elements of gambling
106
and of
war
107
. The successful gambler is a magic person indeed, who seems to possess
supernatural powers; and the man who succeeds in defeating his financial adversaries is a
hero. In the Homeric epics a hero proves his manhood by being stronger, smarter or more
astute than his adversary. With the advent of commerce, power and shrewdness are
measured in terms of money gains and money losses; manhood can therefore only be
permanently established by membership of the fraternities of the rich, which admit also the
'nouveaux riches' or 'new men'.
The militaristic elements of the fraternities therefore lost their importance; they were only
retained in the symbolized forms of the knightly lifestyle - in the keeping of stables, playing of
games, bearing of decorative weapons, killing of pheasants. The ways in which the several
confraternities celebrated their manhood remained the same; the orgy, the drinking-bout
even furnished a term for the 'guild': 'gelag', 'convivium'
108
.
In Weber's view the nobility was unable to maintain its claims to superiority vis-à-vis the new
money status groups
109
; parts of both status groups however were transformed into a new
one, in which contradictory claims to superiority were reconciled.
106
See ES p. 91 (WG p. 48) on the connection between 'rationalization', 'capital' and gambling: "Capital" is the
money value of the means of profit-making available to the enterprise at the balancing of the books; "profit" and
corresponding "loss", the difference between the initial balance and that drawn at the conclusion of the period.
"Capital risk" is the estimated probability of a loss in this balance. An economic "enterprise" (Unternehmen) is
autonomous action capable of orientation to capital accounting. This orientation takes place by means of
"calculation": ex-ante calculation of the probable risks and chances of profit, ex-post calculation for the
verification of the actual profit or loss resulting.'
107
See ES p. 93: 'Capital accounting in its formally most rational shape thus presupposes the
b a t t l e o f m a n with man', WG p. 49: ...'der K a m p f d e s M e n s c h e n m i t d e m
M e n s c h e n'. This, of course, apart from the physical war and robbery which always have been a
characteristic aspect of trade activities.
108
See ES p. 1264, nt. 36: 'The Danish term for guild was "gelag": drinking bout, feast. In the Latin documents
this was rendered as "convivium".' The 'Richerzeche' in Cologne , which played an important role in the city
administration and the granting of citizen rights (ES p. 1256 and 1258), is the 'Gilde der Reichen' (WG p. 750);
'Zeche' also means 'drinking bout'.
109
According to Weber, ES p. 1333, WG p. 795, the princes later sometimes limited the buying of noble estates
by non-nobles, since they wanted to use the nobles as officers and civil servants. See also ES p. 1101 (WG p.
647): 'In general, the feudal stratum tends to restrict the accumulation of wealth in bourgeois hands or at least to
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