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
33
'There are, furthermore, the authoritarian interests of the political and hierocratic powers, strengthened by the
idea which has become powerful through the very rationalization of life in the contractual society, that is to say,
the idea that the formal integrity of the family is a source of certain vaguely specified irrational values or is the
supporting supra-individual bond for needful and weak individuals. In the last generation all these heterogenous
motives have resulted in a backward movement away from freedom of divorce and in some respects even from
economic freedom within marriage.
'
Weber's treatment of the development of sexual relations in general and of the patriarchal
family in particular precludes any systematic analysis. He only discerns 'heterogenous
motives': motives belonging to the public sphere are not connected to those of the private
sphere.
The result of all these jumbled interests, anyhow, is that the patriarchal family, insofar as it is
based on the restriction of sexual freedom, not only resists freedom of contract, but is also
consolidated by the rationalization process in a paradoxical way: because it is a source of
'vaguely specified irrational values' its integrity is protected.
Weber, however, does not elaborate on the paradoxical connection between rationalization
and the consolidation of irrational family values; the 'freedom of contract' is part of his
analysis of the connections between economy and law, not between legitimate domination
and law in general or family law in particular. The connection of freedom of contract,
however, is explained first from an economic perspective; and then explained from a
psychological and ideological one, old age provisions of married women being the only
economic factor in the collection of 'heterogenous motives'. In his treatment of the history of
the prohibition of the contract of slavery Weber establishes a direct connection with
economic processes when he mentions how indirect coercive methods inherent in the wage
contract were regarded as more effective than the direct ones of slavery. However,
according to him 'for the final and complete elimination of personal servitude' strong
ideological conceptions of natural law were ultimately decisive everywhere.'
108
According to Weber value-rationality therefore played a important role alongside
instrumental rationality; however, he does not mention the equally important role the
'ideological conceptions of natural law' played in the development of the movement to
abolish patriarchy.
109
Weber does not conceptualize the contradiction between the continuing patriarchal
domination of the family on the one hand and legal-rational domination on the other in a
rational way; on the contrary, the patriarchal character of private life is only described
journalistically, and formulated in unscientific terms as 'authoritarian instincts' and 'irrational
values'. The productive character of the household - which can easily be understood
rationally - remains outside his investigation, together with all production.
108
ES p. 692/3, WG p. 415.
109
Often in a direct causal relation, as with the Quaker abolitionist women who, having discovered that they
lacked civil rights as well, formulated the Seneca Falls Declaration in 1848; see Introduction, no 1.
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