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
32
In Weber's view patriarchal marital power is kept in check by the restrictions of the freedom
of sexual contract - the patriarch for instance is not allowed to have concubines - but not
abolished by it. Weber does not mention the possibility that women would want to diminish
or to abolish marital patriarchal power; he only discusses the possibility that they would want
a 'return to freedom of sexual contract'. Alas, this aspect of patriarchal freedom
106
seems to
be lost forever:
'Today the chances of a return to freedom of sexual contract are more remote than ever. The great mass of
women would be opposed to sexual competition for the males which, as we can conclude from the Egyptian
sources, strongly increases the economic opportunities of the women of superior sex appeal at the expense of
the less attractive; it would also be opposed by all traditional ethical powers, especially the churches.'
Weber, however, comes up with a different solution:
'Yet, while such absolute freedom seems impossible, a similar state of affairs may be produced within the
framework of legitimate marriage by a system of easy or completely free divorce combined with a system
whereby the position of the wife remains both free and secure with respect to property law.'
Weber mentions late Roman, Islamic, Jewish, as well as modern American law as
examples
107
; only in Ancient Rome and in the U.S. had a high divorce rate occurred for a
time:
'As once in Rome, both economic freedom and freedom of divorce are strongly desired by the women in the
United States where their position in the home as well as in society has come to be secure.'
Italian women, however, fear the resulting increase of competition for the male and 'do not
wish to jeopardize their economic security, especially in old age, just as an aging worker
would be afraid of losing his daily bread.'
Weber, by emphasizing the sexual freedom women enjoy in formally rigid marriages,
presents his 19th century 'double standard' in a sophisticated form:
'Generally both men and women seem to favor a formally rigid or even indissoluble type of marriage where loose
sexual *conduct is regarded as permissible for the members of one's own sex; men may also be content with
such *a kind of marriage where, because of weakness or opportunism, they are apt to condone a certain female
license.'
Nevertheless, the repudiation by both bourgeois men and women of the freedom to divorce,
because of 'the real or imagined danger to the children's educational chances' it involves,
appears to be connected with the interest of (bourgeois) men in maintaining patriarchal
power:
'besides, authoritarian instincts on the part of the men have also played their part, especially where women have
become economically emancipated to such a degree that the men are concerned about their position in the
family and their male vanity is thus aroused.
'
Besides a psychological cause for the supposed wish of (bourgeois) men to maintain the
restrictions of the freedom of sexual contract, Weber also finds general ideological interests
which support male authoritarian instincts:
106
See on Weber's extramarital adventures and his wife's reactions to them Green (1974); in the last chapter of
her biography of her husband, however, Marianne Weber-Schnitger gives us a more acute insight in the way she
distanced herself from him.
107
ES p. 691, WG p. 414: 'Such relative freedom has obtained, in varying degrees, in late Roman, Islamic,
Jewish, as well as modern American law; it also obtained, though only for a limited period, in those legislations of
the eighteenth century which were influenced not only by the contract theory of the rationalist Natural Law but
also by considerations of population policy.' According to the translators this happened under the Prussian Code
of 1794, note 78 p. 743.
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