Anneke van Baalen, HIDDEN MASCULINITY, Max Weber's historical sociology of bureaucracy. 1994
Chapter 10 Hidden Masculinity: impersonal bureaucracy as a result of the unsolvable conflict between
fraternity and patriarchy
173
Chapter 10. Hidden masculinity: impersonal bureaucracy as a result of the unsolvable
conflict between fraternity and patriarchy
1. The revolutionary origins of bureaucracy: liberty, equality, fraternity and plebiscitary
dictatorship - 173
2. 'Impersonality' as a result of the insolvable contradiction of the personal patriarchal
and fraternal relations between men - 175
3. The limits of interpretive sociology. Repression from consciousness: Weber's
'unconscious rationality' as a paradoxical connection between formal and material
rationality - 176
4. The return of the repressed consciousness of the sex-defined character of modern
relations in the public sphere: the struggle against the entrance of women and non-white
men in bureaucratic position which threatens to break the identity of positions of authority
and proofs of manhood - 179
1. The revolutionary origins of bureaucracy: liberty, equality, fraternity and plebiscitary
dictatorship
The connections between charisma and formal rationality I discussed in Ch. 9 form important
elements of Weber's conceptualization of the history of the European bureaucracy. I will now
continue with the treatment of the important role city and state dictators in particular have
played in the creation of modern formal-rational mass democracy by transforming their
charismatic followers into disciplined party machines.
The administration In France, for instance, was rationalized by a plebiscitary dictator, after
revolution had eliminated Estate power as well as the patriarchal-patrimonial ruler. Before
the revolution the victory of the patrimonial rulers over the estates had not been total: the
Estates had lost their power politically, but had retained it socially.
Estate patrimonialism threatens the unity of the ruler's patrimonium, since his dependents
make their offices their own property. Feudal lords and knightly prebendaries are themselves
patrimonial lords, who often depend on the patrimonial ruler only for the legitimation of their
own patrimonium. They obey the ruler only if and insofar this is in their own interest; their
office is a source of honor and income; they can hire others to perform the work. Therefore,
although Weber views the transition between patriarchal patrimonialism and estate
patrimonialism as a fluent one, the contrast between these forms of patrimonialism is
fundamental - as fundamental as the difference between formally free and formally unfree
men, no matter how many transitions between freedom and unfreedom there can be in
practice.
The 'estate' form, in which domination through and over free men is negotiated, is the basis
for modern domination; the patriarchal form, which existed everywhere in the world, never
succeeded in binding its officials
permanently to the rulership by means of that special combination of loyalty and status
honor that was a common characteristic of both the Occidental ministeriales and the English
gentlemen of the squirearchy.
Weber does not give much information on the situation in France before the revolution. He
mentions only that the sale of offices was an indispensable source of income for the
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