Anneke van Baalen, HIDDEN MASCULINITY, Max Weber's historical sociology of bureaucracy. 1994
Chapter 8 Connections between formal rationality and patriarchal-patrimonial domination
over and through men
154
European developments. (Weber elsewhere characterizes the Egyptian officials as slaves of
the Pharaoh, 'if not legally, then in fact.'
72
) He appears to be a descendant of the 'working
officials', of the propertyless men who were hired by the official officials, by the members of
status groups with the knightly lifestyle, who were the descendants - often literally - of those
free men who had entered patrimonial service and had liberated it from its demeaning
character. In Weber's view those working officials begin taking over the control of official
activities only under revived patriarchal patrimonialism; in this general portrait of 'the
patrimonial official', however, the subordinates appear to have usurped the official position.
This mentality portrait therefore does not explain the particular character of patrimonial or
modern officials; their 'nobility' is as typical a characteristic as their 'Untertänigkeit'. If Weber,
however, would have included the nobility of officials in his ideal type of the 'patriarchal
patrimonial official' it would not have been 'internally consistent'.
10. 'Staatsraison': the fusion of formal and patriarchal-material rationality into rationalized
patriarchal patrimonialism
The ambiguity I see in the mentality of the patrimonial officials has in my view been caused
by the ambiguity in their relation with the ruler which I sketched earlier: by their wish - a wish
based on the share they have in the power of the ruler, to emancipate themselves from the
patrimonial property relation which depends on their subjection.
In his conceptualization of the beginning of this process Weber represents the contradictory
character of the relation between ruler and officials in the same way; in his typification of the
further development of the patrimonial administration, however, he only makes use of the
separate, opposite concepts of formal and material rationality.
73
The end result, the victory of
formal-rational bureaucracy and with it the eradication of material rationality and the
separation of public and private sphere, is not connected to this development.
Yet the contradictory elements in the relation between patrimonial lord and officials are
retained in the rationalization process. The striving for emancipation of the officials still
expresses itself in the forming of status groups elevated above the population, but their
foundation has changed: they now base their superiority on 'specialized knowledge', on
'expertise', on 'Geheimwissen'. The officials try to emancipate themselves by establishing a
public sphere of bureaus for the creation and application of rules. These bureaus are
separated from the patriarchal household; the officials strive to put them outside of the
control of the patriarch. In them they create an increasingly complicated mass of rules in
which only they themselves know the way. Their knowledge legitimizes their striving for
power, not only in respect to the subjects of their administration, but also in respect to the
ruler himself; lack of such knowledge makes the ruler a 'dilettante', preventing him from
controlling his administration. Nevertheless they also obey, namely to those rules which
define their competence; in this way they form a part of a hierarchy which identifies itself with
the power of the patriarch by subjection.
72
ES p. 967, WG p. 558.
73
See the discussion cited in Ch. 1,1, n. 7, on the question of whether Weber's formal-rational legitimation
presupposes the existence of some degree of value-rationality.
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