Anneke van Baalen, HIDDEN MASCULINITY, Max Weber's historical sociology of bureaucracy. 1994
Chapter 9 Connections between formal rationality and charismatic domination over and through free
men: the continuing role of magic in the construction of impersonal patriarchal fraternities; from
Ständestaat to revolution
170
Discipline is not used only for war and religion, but also for work. According to Weber,
however, ethical and emotional means to extract obedience are not used on slave plantations
and in other forms of forced labor of unfree persons; there 'the only effective element is indeed
the mechanized drill and the individual's integration into an inescapable, inexorable
mechanism, which forces the team member to go along'. This drill, however, is also part of the
disciplining of formally free persons in the large-scale economic organization.
58
Weber provides a detailed analysis of the way in which the calculated discipline of 'scientific
management' transforms men into machines:
'With the help of suitable methods of measurement, the optimum profitability of the individual worker is calculated
like that of any material means of production. On this basis, the American system of "scientific management"
triumphantly proceeds with its rational conditioning and training of work performances, thus drawing the ultimate
conclusions from the mechanization and discipline of the plant. The psycho-physical apparatus of man is completely
adjusted to the demands of the outer world, the tools, the machines - in short, it is functionalized, and the individual
is shorn of his natural rhythm as determined by his organism; in line with the demands of the work procedure, he is
attuned to a new rhythm through the functional specialization of muscles and through the creation of an optimal
economy of physical effort. This whole process of rationalization, in the factory as elsewhere, and especially in the
bureaucratic state machine, parallels the centralization of the material implements of organization in the hand of the
master. Thus, discipline inexorably takes over ever larger areas as the satisfaction of political and economic needs
is increasingly rationalized. This universal phenomenon more and more restricts the importance of charisma and of
individually differentiated conduct
.'
59
The formal 'freedoms' guaranteed by law may lose their meaning: the coercive situations the
market produces, 'in the impersonal form of the inevitability of adaptation to the purely
economic "laws" of the market', rob formal freedom and equality of their content. The final
sanction of coercion by the market is 'the very loss of one's economic existence.' Even the
'personal and authoritarian-hierarchical relations which actually exist in the capitalistic
enterprise' are transformed into impersonal 'labor market transactions' and are thus 'drained of
all normal *emotional (gefühlsmäßig) content'. Coercion, though, does not stop here; when
capitalism expands, it can even increase quantitatively and qualitatively.
60
58
'The l a r g e - s c a l e e c o n o m i c o r g a n i z a t i o n is the second great agency which trains men for
discipline.' ES p. 1156, WG p. 686.
59
In 1908 Weber made a study of scientific management, criticizing its pretensions with regard to the
establishment of rational selection criteria on the basis of innate characteristics, see also Ch. 1,4.
60
'Formally, the market community does not recognize direct coercion on the basis of personal authority. It
produces in its stead a special kind of coercive situation which, as a general principle, applies without any
discrimination to workers, enterprisers, producers and consumers, viz., in the impersonal form of the inevitability
of adaptation to the purely economic "laws" of the market. The sanctions consist in the loss or decrease of
economic power and, under certain conditions, in the very loss of one's economic existence.' 'The private
enterprise system transforms into objects of even those personal and authoritarian-hierarchical relations which
actually exist in the capitalistic enterprise. While the authoritarian relationships are thus drained of all normal
*emotional (gefühlsmäßig) content, authoritarian constraint not only continues but, at least under certain
circumstances, even increases. The more comprehensive the realm of structures whose existence depends in a
specific way on "discipline" - that of capitalist commercial establishments - the more relentlessly can authoritarian
constraint be exercised within them, and the smaller will be the circle of those in whose hands the power to use
this type of constraint is concentrated and who also hold the power to have such authority guaranteed to them by
the legal order. A legal order which contains ever so few mandatory and prohibitory norms and ever so many
"freedoms" and "empowerments" can nonetheless in its practical effects facilitate a quantitative and qualitative
increase not only of coercion in general but quite specifically of authoritarian coercion.' ES p. 731, WG p. 440.
 |
 |
 |