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
29
In Weber's view material rationality concerns the fulfillment of human needs, formal
rationality conformity to rules. By defining 'material rationality' in opposition to formal
rationality he implicitly criticizes the latter insofar as it pretends to fulfill human needs; at the
same time he reinforces the legitimatizing power he ascribes to formal rationality by
suggesting that it is 'objective', since it would be independent of value choices. He therefore
defines only private values as 'irrational'; the irrationality of public values remains concealed,
hidden in the concept 'formal'. Criticism can only be private, excluded from the rational,
universalist public sphere.
No rational alternative to bureaucracy can therefore be formulated; only irrational, emotional
remedies can be tried; these, however, will in their turn either be defeated by formal-rational
bureaucracy or become encapsulated within it
95
. Here again Weber presents a paradox:
material rationality can only be furthered by irrational means.
Weber discusses the possibility that material rationality could become the center of action
orientations, social relations or legitimate domination only in his economic chapter, when he
criticizes socialism. His conclusion there is that the allocation and coordination problems of
industrial society can only be solved by formal-rational means; therefore socialism, where
bureaucracy lacks the counter-force of the formal rationality of the market, has to adhere 'to
tradition or to an arbitrary dictatorial regulation which, on whatever basis, lays down the
pattern of consumption and enforces obedience.'
96
In Weber's investigation of material rationality as one of the bases of 'traditional' -
patriarchal-patrimonial - legitimation, however, the problem of the absence of connections
between values and rationality undergoes a shift: revived patriarchal patrimonialism, as we
will see, shows an unexplained alternation of formal-rational and material-rational forms of
legitimation. Since in Weber's view patriarchal patrimonialism was the foundation of the
modern bureaucracy, this historical instance of material rationality therefore is part of the
problem of the meaning and origins of formal rationality.
95
Weber does not use this term, but in 'Ueber einige Kategorien der Verstehenden Soziologie' he analyzed the
process in which non-rational social action is brought under the rule of bureaucracy; see GAzW p. 467.
96
ES p. 104, WG p. 56.
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