Anneke van Baalen, HIDDEN MASCULINITY, Max Weber's historical sociology of bureaucracy. 1994
Chapter 5 Expansion of patriarchy by decentralization and affiliation. Political patrimonialism as
masculine domination by an hierarchy of unfree men
90
which are recognized by custom.¹ They have to render 'compulsory labor ('Fronden') and
services, honorary gifts, regularly and irregularly levied taxes', while all the time their master
remains free too expropriate them at will.² But since the wants of the master are 'not directed
toward monetary acquisition and are only quantitatively different from that of his subjects,'³
he can restrain himself in the exploitation of them and so retain their loyalty and support,
which according to custom has to be the maximum available, especially in war.
4
As Weber
formulates it:
'Patrimonial domination is thus a special case of patriarchal domination - domestic authority decentralized
through assignment of land and sometimes of equipment to sons of the house or other dependents
.'
5
For the first time men can dominate 'households' as 'patriarchs', without having to be
members of a routinized charismatic consociation of reborn heroes; their 'patriarchy' is a
derived one. I will call these men 'quasi-patriarchs'. They are 'men' in relation to their own
dependents, but in relation to the patrimonial master they are children: they owe him the
piety of children or servants.
6
Yet together with other unfree men they can gain some
customary 'rights' and thus protect themselves against the power of the patriarchal lord,
which formally is still total.
2. Political domination: the patrimonial state and the affiliation of free men
The second step in Weber's construction of 'political domination' is the expansion of
patrimonial domination by political domination of free men: by their 'affiliation' to patrimonial
power. The result of this development is Weber's patrimonial state, which according to him is
the normal form of government for all great continental empires until and even after the
beginning of modern times.
7
1
'At first it is only a decentralization of the household when the lord settles dependents (including young men
regarded as family members) on plots within his extended land-holdings, with a house and family of their own,
and provides them with animals (therefore: 'peculium') and equipment. But this simple development of an 'oikos'
leads inevitably to an attenuation of full patriarchal power. Since there are originally no consociations in the form
of binding contracts between masters and dependents - in all civilized countries it is even today legally impossible
to contractually modify the legal content of paternal authority -, the psychological and formal relations between
master and subject are here too regulated merely in accordance with the master's interest and the distribution of
power.' ES p. 1010, WG 583.
2
'formally according to the master's need and discretion, in fact according to established custom'; 'and custom
too takes it originally for granted that the master can freely dispose of persons and possessions left behind at the
retainer's death.' ES p. 1011, WG p. 584.
3
'given the absence of a qualitative expansion of needs which is in principle limitless', ES 1010/1, WG p. 583;
this is the difference with capitalist exploitation.
4
ES p.1011, WG p. 583; these dependents form the 'appropriated traditional military associates (Genossen)
from Weber's second outline of the 'military status groups', see Ch. 4,7.
5
Patrimonialism can develop into 'a strongly tradition-bound structure of domination', 'the m a n o r ('seigneurie'),
joining lord and manorial dependent with ties that cannot be dissolved unilaterally', when the master wants 'to
formalize this traditional order as a manorial and service r e g l e m e n t'. 'For every such order turns a mere
interest group into a privileged group ( Rechtsgenossen) - whether or not in the strictly legal sense -, increases
the member's knowledge of the common nature of their interests and thus the inclination and ability to look after
them; eventually the subjects confront the master, at first only occasionally, then regularly, as a closed unit.' (ES
p. 1012, WG p. 584).
6
Which are often designated with the same word, cf. Old Dutch 'knechtje'.
7
ES p. 1013, WG p. 585.
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