Anneke van Baalen, HIDDEN MASCULINITY, Max Weber's historical sociology of bureaucracy.
Amsterdam 1994. Chapter 2 The Weber's private, sex defined values.
40
would only become more rational and so more unbreakable
31
- in the form of three questions
about the future forms of political organization:
'1. How can one possibly save a n y r e m n a n t s of "individualist" freedom in any sense ? After all, it is a gross
self-deception to believe that without the achievements of the age of the Rights of Man any one of us, including
the most conservative, can go on living his life. But this question shall not concern us here, for there is another
one:
2. In view of the growing indispensability of the state bureaucracy and its corresponding increase in power, how
can there be any guarantee that any powers will remain which can check and effectively control the tremendous
influence of this stratum ? How will democracy even in this limited sense be a t a l l possible ? However, this too
is not the only question with which we are concerned here.
3. A third question, and the most important of all, is raised by a consideration of the inherent limitations of
bureaucracy proper. It can easily be seen that its effectiveness had definite limitations in the public and
governmental realm as well as in the private economy. The "directing mind", the "moving spirit" - that of the
entrepreneur here and of the politician there - differs in substance from the civil-service mentality of the official.
'
32
Weber's political program is a liberal as well as an aristocratic one: beside the human rights -
in particular freedom -, 'entrepreneurship' and 'leadership' appear to be values as well.
33
The
Germans are supposed to need 'a moving spirit', although Weber does not explain what is to
be moved and why. In the same way the liberal belief that bureaucracy crushes freedom
('human rights') is stated without argument; it is illustrated only by the famous passage on
what would happen if under socialism 'the private and public bureaucracies, which now work
next to, and potentially against, each other and hence check one another to a degree, would
be merged into a single hierarchy':
'An inanimate machine is mind objectified. Only this provides it with the power to force men into its service and to
dominate their everyday working life as completely as is actually the case in the factory. Objectified intelligence is
also that animated machine, the bureaucratic organization, with its specialization of trained skills, its division of
jurisdiction, its rules and hierarchical relations of authority. Together with the inanimate machine it is busy
fabricating the shell of bondage which men will perhaps be forced to inhabit some day, as powerless as the
fellahs of ancient Egypt
.'
34
It is only when he deals with the question of which powers could check bureaucracy, that
Weber's solutions appear to be more than only rhetorical in character; then he does come up
with answers that are more than proclamations on leadership in general, and that also
present a statement on where these leaders are to be found.
5. Parliamentary democracy; the superiority of the leadership in England and America
31
ES p. 1402, GPS p. 320
32
ES p. 1403, GPS p. p. 321.
33
See on Weber's position within European liberalism Mommsen (1974) p. 46; according to him Weber is
actually not much interested in a value-rational foundation of democracy, as he considered natural law as
anachronistic; see also p. 48 and 62 and above Ch. 1,7. Weber, though, here clearly wants to reinforce
parliament to protect the human rights, see also Beetham (1974) p. 113-5, who points out, however, that Weber
was most outspoken when he wrote on the lack of human rights in Russia.
34
ES p. 1402, GPS p. 320.
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