Anneke van Baalen, HIDDEN MASCULINITY, Max Weber's historical sociology of bureaucracy.
Amsterdam 1994 Dissertation University of Amsterdam. Chapter 1. Max Weber's universalist
sociology of bureaucracy: the contradiction between public rationalism and private masculinism
27
conceptualizations of 'irrational' social relations; therefore they had to refill the emptied
theory with concepts of irrational relations, such as that of 'informal organization'
86
.
Weber's conceptualization of 'modern bureaucracy' came to be interpreted as a definitive
result of developments, as a description of modern society, instead of a means to compare
rational and non-rational aspects of modern society.
87
Weber's use of the concept of 'formal rationality' or 'bureaucracy' as a means of comparison,
however, has been a complicated one because of his desire to construct a process of
'rationalization' as well. Weber views this process as the most important characteristic of
Western developments; in his view it seals the rationalization process, locking modern
Western economy, domination, administration, war and religion inside a self-reinforcing
process of modernization, of which the results are 'Entzäuberung der Welt'
('disenchantment
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of the world'), expansion and intensification of domination and discipline,
and finally the trapping of the individual in an 'eiserne Gehäuse der Hörigkeit', an 'iron cage
of bondage'.
For those who consider 'rationality' a way to improve human life, Weber has constructed a
concept which is opposite to modern, empty 'formal rationality': 'material rationality'. Its
position in science and society, however, is rather marginal. In his economic chapter in ES
Weber defines 'material rationality' as intelligent production without the use of accounting, its
only irrational aspect being its value-orientation:
'The term "formal rationality of economic action" will be used to designate the extent of quantitative calculation or
accounting which is technically possible and which is actually applied. The "substantive rationality", on the other
hand, is the degree to which the provisioning of given groups of persons no matter how delimited) with goods is
shaped by economically oriented social action under some criterion (past, present, or potential) of ultimate values
('wertende Postulate'), regardless of the nature of those ends. These may be of a great variety.
'
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In Weber's
view value and rationality cannot be unified; an economy planned with the intention to realize
material rationality, must necessarily suffer some loss of rationality:
'This fundamental and, in the last analysis, unavoidable element of irrationality in economic systems is one of the
important sources of all "social" problems, and above all, of the problems of socialism
.'
90
Through the concept of 'material rationality' therefore, and through that of 'value rationality',
Weber tries to bridge the modern separation between 'public' and 'private' spheres; but, as
he has made this separation a foundation of his science, 'material rationality' remains a
contradiction in terms,
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since it can not be defined with the aid of an impersonal, objective
86
See Merton (1968).
87
Such a view of bureaucracy as identical with modern social reality, however, is reinforced by Weber's political
writings. In these texts Weber does not present rationalization or bureaucratization as a means to understand
and change the irrational aspects of German society, but as a real and existing rational domination that has to be
fought in the interests of German greatness, individual freedom and the survival of capitalism, see below Ch. 2.
88
Erickson (1993) p. 102, n. 3 follows the suggestion of Wolfgang Schluchter and uses the term
'demagicalization'.
89
ES p 85, WuG p. 44.
90
ES p. 111
91
I will show later (Ch. 9) that formal rationality is a contradictio in terms as well: for its 'formal' aspect is not
rational at all, being based on a magic belief in 'formula's' and ceremonies. Weber, though, did not analyze the
implications of this formal element for his interpretation of modern legitimate domination; he only states that e v e
r y 'legitimacy' of domination - thus also that of formal rationality - is founded on 'belief'; he did not, however,
connect his analysis of magic to that of bureaucracy in a non-ironical way.
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