Download Social Science History - Six essays for budding theorists

Social Science History - Six essays for budding theorists
By Andrew Roberts
ESSAY SIX: DURKHEIM AND WEBER'S CONTRASTING
IMAGINATIONS.
Who is the Sociologist?
¶1 This essay is about the imagination of Emile Durkheim and Max Weber, two
theorists that almost everyone now accepts as founders of the science of society
(sociology)—despite the fact that they start from opposing principles. Both are
usually praised for their adherence to facts, and I have no quarrel with this, but I think
that science is just as dependent on imagination. Durkheim points out that whilst
science needs facts, you do not even know what facts are relevant until you have
created the science. We need, therefore, to use our imagination to create a science,
before finding out (as we will) that the science we have created is imperfect
(Durkheim 1893 Preface to the first edition p.37).
¶2 English epistemologists (theorists of knowledge), in the tradition of John Locke,
have more often worried about imagination than welcomed it. Locke argued that
science is about first of all disentangling our empirical observations from the web of
false conclusions that our imagination has caught them in, and then rearranging them
in the order that they exist in the real world. His emphasis was on the importance to
science of careful observation. David Hume suggested that we treat this disentangling
as a mental experiment. One of the most important points about an experiment is that
it can fail to do what your theory expects it to. Experiments that always confirm that
we are right could do wonders for the size of our egos—but would be useless to
science because we would never learn from them. Hume found that his experiments
left him with a big heap of doubts about the possibility of disentangling empirical
observation from imagination. Imagination appeared to enter into the process at
almost every move. To Hume, in his mental experiments, it seemed impossible to
connect most of the empirical observations together by anything but imagination! The
social scientist seemed to be trapped in his or her own mind, with very little to be sure
about. Attempts to rescue us from this pit of sceptism were made by Jean Jacques
Rousseau, Immanuel Kant, Mary Wollstonecraft, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, John
Stuart Mill and many others who insisted on the constructive role that imagination
plays in science. They argued, as I do, that science needs imagination, for what use is
a science that never imagines the world other than we already believe it to be? As
with the always correct experiment, constantly thinking that the world is just as we
always thought it was will just turn us into big headed bores who never discover
anything new!
¶3 Many modern theorists also stress the importance to science of imagination. Julie
Ford, for example, says that composing “fairy tales” about the world is an essential
part of science. When we have imagined our fairy tales we have to find a way of
selecting the ones that are most likely to be true, but you must first make your fairy
tale. She says that “it is through imagination and only through imagination that we
mortals may transcend the worlds of taken-for-granted-thoughts-already-thought”. We
need to “soar away into the freedom of make-believe. For it is there that fairies dwell”
(Ford 1975 p.75). In her glossary she tells us, that fairies are ideas, and a fairy tale is a
“connection of ideas in the form of an explanatory story, or theory.” Julie Ford's
approach is similar to that of Karl Popper (1963). She thinks that science is about
thinking up fairy tales and then testing them to see which are falsified.
¶4 There is a sense in which sociology was invented in France. The name, which
means science of society, was created by August Comte, whose theories were
developed by another Frenchman, Durkheim. They drew on the ideas of Montesquieu,
Rousseau and Saint-Simon, theorists who also wrote in French. German theorists, like
Weber and Karl Marx, have since been called sociologists, but it is not a name they
would have chosen for themselves. The fairy tale that became sociology was first told
in French. (See Giddens, A. 1987 Weber and Durkheim: Coincidence and Divergence
in Mommsen 1987 pp 182-189)
¶5 To many English ears the theories of the French sociologists seem like the dreams
of lunatics. They thought of society in a way that conflicts with our common sense
perception of reality. Durkheim said that society is real: we tend to think that only the
individual is real and that society is no more than what individuals do together.
Durkheim thought that society is so real that suicidogenetic currents can run through
it, like nervous impulses through a human body, inciting individuals to kill themselves
just as nerves incite muscles to move. (I will say more abut this later). We tend to
think of society as put together by individuals. Durkheim claimed that society puts
individuals together. He compared society to a dance. A dance has a form that shapes
the dancers. So society shapes us. Only because the dance exists are any of us able to
modify the dance or create new dances. We tend to think of ourselves as constructing
the dance. Durkheim thinks of us as born into the dance and constructed by it. It is
only because the dance exists that we can modify it. Perhaps you think that there must
have been a time when individuals got together to create the first dance? If so you are
a state of nature or social contract theorist, and your fairy tale is a different one to
Durkheim's, and is a lot closer to Weber's. Weber's theory is a lot closer to English
common sense.
¶6 This essay is about Durkheim's theory of society as a real entity that constructs
individuals, and Weber's theory that individuals are the real entities from whom we
must construct the different kinds of society that exist. Both theories require you to
use your imagination if you are going to understand them.
EMILE DURKHEIM
¶7 The work of Emile Durkheim has one major theme: that society is real and that the
reality of society is the subject matter of sociology. He explores different aspects of
this theme in his different books, as I will try to show in this survey of his major
works. I will start, however, with one of Durkheim's minor works, his essay on
Rousseau.
¶8 Durkheim and Rousseau Quite late in his career Durkheim gave lectures on
Rousseau that show how the science of sociology develops out of philosophy.
Rousseau is a state of nature theorist. Durkheim is not. But Durkheim shows how
Rousseau develops state of nature theory to a point where he can be regarded as a
"forerunner" of sociology. Let us look at what it is about state of nature theory that
Durkheim disapproves of, and what it is about Rousseau's version that he approves of.
¶9 State of nature theorists try to work out what society is about by imagining what
human beings would be like stripped of their social characteristics (in a "state of
nature"). They put forward a picture of individuals in this state and try to show how
the needs of those individuals explain their need for society. Durkheim thinks this is
to start from the wrong point. Human beings, according to Durkheim, are essentially
social beings. If we start with individuals and try to work out how, with their
characteristics, society can be explained, we are very close to arguing that society is
the result of adding individuals together—that society is the sum of its individuals.
Durkheim does not believe this is so. He believes that society is "sui-generis", which
means it is an entity in its own right.
¶10 To some people, common sense says society is not real. Only the individual
people are real—society is just a name for the individuals working together. This is
social atomism: the belief that society is no more than the sum of its parts. Recent
theorists (Popper 1945, Hayek 1952, Watkins 1957) have called it methodological
individualism because its method of science is to theorise from the individual. The
state of nature theory of Thomas Hobbes is atomistic and an example of
methodological individualism. So is the sociology of Weber. John Locke, by contrast,
imagines the state of nature as already a society of sorts. People in the state of nature
already have a law to guide them. This law is reason, a recognition of mutual
responsibilities and an ability to imagine ourself in the other person's position.
¶11 Rousseau attacks Hobbes' theory and, in some ways, his theory is a development
of Locke's. Rousseau's theory starts from individuals who do not have the developed
social faculties that exist in Locke's state of nature, but he ends up with a society that
is more than the individuals added together. Another way of saying this is to say that
society is more than the sum of its parts. This is social holism (whole-ism) as distinct
from social atomism. Rousseau argues that when individuals come together to form
society, something magic happens: a new will is formed which is completely different
from anything that could exist in individuals outside society. This "general will" is not
the sum of individual "particular wills". It is formed by people becoming social;
becoming part of a collective. It is not just all our individual wills put together, but
something distinct in its own right. The general will is formed by society and it is
society (see Rousseau 1762(SC) pp 190-196). Durkheim says that this means
Rousseau sees society as a reality. If society is real, it is possible to have a science of
society (sociology). So Durkheim finds in Rousseau the philosophic origins of
sociology. Quoting Rousseau, Durkheim says that society is: “a moral entity having
specific qualities distinct from those of the individual human beings which compose
it.” For Rousseau, Durkheim says, “society is nothing unless it be one, definite body,
distinct from its parts”. He recognises that the social order is “an order of facts
generically different from purely individual facts”. (Durkheim 1960 p.82)
¶12 The position reached by Rousseau, in the middle of the 18th century, is
something like the position that 20th century American sociologists have described as
the theory of emergent properties (See Parsons 1937 pp 367, 609, 734 etc). This
theory starts with the individual, but differs from Rousseau in that it imagines the
individual in society, not in a state of nature. The individual is, therefore, called a
“social actor”. The theory then argues that when individuals interact “social systems”
come into being that have properties that cannot be reduced to the characteristics of
the individuals. To try to do so is what such theorists call reductionism (See Parsons
1937 p.85). Durkheim (and perhaps Rousseau) went further than this. Durkheim did
not start with individuals. He started with societies and deduced from them the social
properties of individuals. For Durkheim society is really real (sorry!) and not
something that emerges from the interaction of individuals.
¶13 Durkheim and Adam Smith: Division of Labour (1893) and Solidarity In
The Division of Labour Durkheim tried to show that societies are real in the sense of
having similar properties to material objects. The following passage, not completely
clear in some respects, clearly conveys in the word “tissue” the idea of substance
linking people together: “in the same way that an animal colony whose members
embody a continuity of tissue form one individual, every aggregate of individuals
who are in continuous contact form a society. The division of labour can then be
produced only in the midst of a pre-existing society” (Durkheim 1893 pp 276-277).
The last sentence tells us that, in Durkheim's theory, society is an organism before
division of labour takes place. Individual people do not come together to form a
society in which they are the different parts. Instead, pre-existing society develops
parts with distinct functions. The society comes first, the separate parts next.
Durkheim investigates what he calls the “solidarity” of societies. You can imagine
solidarity as a kind of social glue that holds the society together, or as an invisible
tissue linking the members. Its something like the "general will" in Rousseau's state of
nature theory, but it exists from the beginning rather than coming into being when
isolated individuals coalesce.
¶14 It helps us understand Durkheim and Weber, if we look at how their theories
relate to the theories of Adam Smith. Both read Smith's The Wealth of Nations (1776),
and their agreements and disagreements with it throw light on their theories.
Durkheim says that division of labour starts with the differentiation of organisms that
biology studies. Simple organisms are low down the evolutionary tree. The higher up
the tree one ascends, the more complex and differentiated the biological organism
becomes. Durkheim's vision is of the same process continuing in the development of
human societies. “The division of labour is not of recent origin, but it was only at the
end of the eighteenth century that social cognizance was taken of the
principle.Adam Smith was the first to attempt a theory of it.” Durkheim says that
social science was ahead of the natural sciences in this respect, because it was only
after Adam Smith analyzed the division of labour in society that biologists analyzed it
in biological organisms. (Durkheim 1893, Introduction. The Problem).
¶15 According to Smith, individuals are held together by the economic advantages of
the division of labour. We associate because, by each playing different parts in the
production of economic goods, we produce more. He imagines individuals having a
natural propensity to exchange things with one another. “This division of labour, from
which so many advantages are derived,is the necessary, though very slow and
gradual consequence of a certain propensity in human natureto truck, barter, and
exchange one thing for another. Whether this propensity be one of those original
principles in human nature of which no further account can be given; or whether, as
seems more probable, it be the necessary consequence of the faculties of reason and
speech, it belongs not to our present subject to inquire. It is common to all men, and to
be found in no other race of animals” (Smith, A. 1776, chapter 2: Of the principle
which gives occasion to the division of labour)
¶16 Durkheim agrees with Smith that the division of labour comes about by a natural
process (it is not a product of human design). He does not agree that the natural
process is the hidden hand of the market guiding the selfish desires of individuals.
Underneath the self-seeking of individual ends, Durkheim sees a pre-existing unity of
purpose, a bonding of the individuals together into the social organism that pre-dates
the differentiation.
¶17 Mechanical and Organic Solidarity Durkheim views society as having two
types of solidarity: mechanical solidarity, which is the basic solidarity that makes
society an organism rather than just a pile of parts, and organic solidarity, which is the
social glue that comes from the division of labour. There is a paradox in organic
solidarity because the division of labour in society is a separation of its parts, but at
the same time, Durkheim argues it is a strengthening of the bond between them. It is
with this paradox that The Division of Labour in Society started. “Why does the
individual while becoming more autonomous, depend more upon society? How can
he be at once more individual and more solidary? Certainly, these two movements,
contradictory as they appear, develop in parallel fashion.” Durkheim's answer is that
the nature of solidarity is being changed as society becomes more divided (Durkheim
1893 Preface to the first edition, pp 37-38). Individuality and the division of labour is,
in fact, the result of society's need for a new form of solidarity (organic solidarity).
¶18 Durkheim argues that the division of labour within modern society is a much
broader issue than a purely economic issue. “We can observe its growing influence in
the most varied fields of society. The political, administrative, and judicial functions
are growing more and more specialised. It is the same with the aesthetic and scientific
functions. It is long since philosophy reigned as the science unique; it has been broken
into a multitude of special disciplines” (Durkheim 1893, Introduction. The Problem,
p.40). This differentiation of functions is a solidifying agent. That is to say, society is
becoming more and more differentiated (people are specialising more and more), but
as we become more different from one another we grow closer together rather than
further apart.
¶19 In mechanical solidarity, the members of society are held together by common
beliefs and practices. Everyone is much more like everyone else than in organic
solidarity. Historically, organic solidarity develops out of mechanical solidarity. So, in
this sense, we can say that society makes us individuals (with the development of
organic solidarity) rather than individuals making society (as state of nature and
utilitarian theories suggest). So, Durkheim argues, societies are not so much the
product of individuals as individuals are the product of society. In mechanistic
societies human beings were not individualistic in the way they are in organic
societies. The individual has evolved in the course of history. This has not happened
because society has fallen apart, but because individualism provides a new and
powerful way of holding society together.
¶20 Although organic solidarity is a different form from mechanical, Durkheim says
that it cannot exist completely separately: “The division of labour canbe produced
only in the midst of pre-existing societyThere is a social life outside the whole
division of labour, but which the latter presupposes.” (Durkheim 1893 p.277)
Contract, the binding bargain that makes exchange possible, is a derivation of sacred
ritual. If I break a contract: “I am committing sacrilege, because I am breaking an
oath, I am profaning a sacred thing” (Durkheim 1937 p.193, quoted Nisbet 1965,
p.44) Think of the kind of economic exchange you do every time you buy something
in a shop. When you exchange money with a baker for a loaf of bread, both of you
benefit and this binds you together. But it is not all that binds you. Exchange would be
very complicated if we only calculated our advantage and tried to maximize our
individual gain. We would always be calculating what we could get away with.
Everybody would be a shoplifter when the shopkeeper was not looking and the
shopkeeper would never dare turn his or her back on a customer! Economic life would
be impossible. Instead, most of the time, we feel that we are under some obligation to
act honestly. The intensity with which we can react to any slur on our honesty —even
when we have been dishonest—indicates that we have very deep feelings about the
issue that are not based on a calculation of economic gain. These feelings spring,
Durkheim argues, from the mechanical solidarity that underlies the organic solidarity
of exchange. Dishonesty is a betrayal of the community, and the community has a
sacred charge in our emotional life. So we see that the organic solidarity of exchange
is dependent on a more basic mechanical solidarity.
¶21 Common beliefs and practices, which are the characteristic of mechanical
solidarity, are therefore the fundamental glue of all societies. “The totality of beliefs
and sentiments common to average citizens of the same society forms a determinate
system which has its own life; one may call it the collective or common
conscience.It isindependent of the particular conditions in which individuals are
placed; they pass on and it remains it does not change with each generation, but, on
the contrary, it connects successive generations with one another. It is thus an entirely
different thing from particular consciences, although it can be realized only through
them” (Durkheim 1893 Chapter Two: The Causes, Section 4 pp 79-80). This
collective mind, discovered in his analysis of the division of labour, became the
central subject of Durkheim's study of religion (1912).
¶22 Durkheim and the Thing: Rules of Sociological Method (1895) A thing is
something that is real. It can hit you. Try walking into a lamppost as if it was not
there, and you will discover what a thing is. In his Rules of Sociological Method
Durkheim tried to show that sociology is the study of society and that society has real
substance. He said that we should treat social facts as things. They have the same
property as the lamppost, they can hit you hard if you ignore them.
¶23 Durkheim believed that there is a need for a distinct science of society
(sociology). The science of psychology, which was being developed in the
laboratories of Wilhelm Wundt, had shown that we have ideas with a social
orientation. But that, for Durkheim, is not enough. We need a distinct science of
sociology, the central concern of which should be the study of society. Sociology
should concern itself with "social facts". By which he meant that it should concern
itself with the (social) realities external to the individual, that constrain an individual.
“.. we can formulate and delimit in a precise way the domain of sociology. It
comprises only a limited group of phenomena. A social fact is to be
recognized by the power of external coercion which it exercises or is capable
of exercising over individuals, and the presence of this power may be
recognized in its turn either by the existence of some specific sanction or by
the resistance offered against every individual effort that tends to violate it.”
(Durkheim 1895 p.10)
“A social fact is every way of acting, fixed or not, capable of exercising on the
individual an external constraint; or again, every way of acting which is
general throughout a given society, while at the same time existing in its own
right independent of its individual manifestations.” (Durkheim 1895 p.13)
¶24 An example of social facts are the suicidogenetic currents that Durkheim said run
through the body of society. If society has nothing to do with why people commit or
attempt suicide, if it is purely a psychological issue, you might expect the number of
suicides and suicide attempts to vary greatly from year to year according to how many
people just happened to have chosen to attempt suicide. Instead there is a fairly steady
rate from year to year, which varies in relation to economic and social circumstances
and according to the groups that people belong to. (Durkheim 1895 p.10. Quoted
below).
¶25 In Ingmar
Bergman's film, The
Seventh Seal (1956),
people are caught up
in a dance of death
that appears to us as a
Durkheim and the Dance of Death: Suicide (1897)
dance of collective
madness. If you saw the grim reaper, death, leading a conga dance, would you join on
the end of the column? Some people do kill themselves. But we think of this as a very
individual, personal act. If you wanted to know why someone had committed suicide
you would look for the meaning of the act to them. You would look around for a note.
You would ask friends what insight they could give you into the state of mind of that
individual before he or she died. You would not think that the individual had got
caught up in a collective dance of death.
¶26 In his book, Suicide Durkheim tried to show that society is so real that it controls
acts as (apparently) individual as suicide. According to Durkheim, there are “currents
of opinion, with an intensity varying according to the time or place”, which “impel
certain groups either to more marriages, for example, or to more suicides, or to a
higher or lower birth rate”. These currents are examples of what he means by “social
facts”. A marriage, suicide or birth rate "expresses a certain state of the group mind
(l'ame collective)" (Durkheim 1895 p.10).
¶27 Durkheim tries to demonstrate this by examining different sub-groups of society.
One sub-group he chooses are the religious sub-groups. He looks at the suicide rates
for members of the protestant churches and members of the Roman Catholic church.
Generally he finds that church membership protects people against being suicidal, but
that protestants are less protected than catholics. What is the reason for this? It is not
the teachings of the churches. “The beneficent influence of religion is..not due to the
special nature of religious conceptions. If religion protects men against the desire for
self-destruction, it is not that it preaches the respect for his own person to him with
arguments sui generis; but because it is a society. What constitutes the society is the
existence of a certain number of beliefs and practices common to all the faithful,
traditional and thus obligatory” (Durkheim 1897 p.170). Human beings are “double”
because a “social” being superimposes itself on our “physical” being. “Social man
necessarily presupposes a society which he expresses and serves. If this dissolves, if
we no longer feel it in existence and action about and above us, whatever is social in
us is deprived of all objective foundation.. Yet this social is the essence of civilized
man.. Thus we are bereft of reasons for existence; for the only life to which we could
cling no longer corresponds to anything actual; the only existence still based upon
reality no longer meets our needs” (Durkheim 1897 p.213)
“The conclusion from all these facts is that the social suicide-rate can be
explained only sociologically. At any given moment the moral constitution of
society establishes the contingent of voluntary deaths. There is, therefore, for
each people a collective force of a definite amount of energy, impelling men to
self-destruction. The victim's acts which at first seem to express only his
personal temperament are really the supplement and prolongation of a social
condition which they express externally.” “It is not mere metaphor to say of
each human society that it has a greater or lesser aptitude for suicide; the
expression is based on the nature of things. Each social group really has a
collective inclination for the act quite its own, and the source of all individual
inclination, rather than their result” (Durkheim 1897 p.299).
¶28 If being part of a church can protect us against the collective inclination to
suicide, perhaps it is about time that we made a study of religion, to turn from
studying the dance of death, to studying the dance of life. This Durkheim did by
studying the reports of anthropologists on the religious practices of Australian
aborigines.
Durkheim and the Dance of Life: The Elementary Forms of Religious Life (1912)
¶29 Before looking at the detail of what Durkheim says in Elementary Forms of
Religious Life, let us view it from a great height. Hover in your imagination over a
tribe of aborigines in Australia. At some periods of the year you see them scattered in
small groups or alone over a vast area of bushland. They are pursuing the economic
tasks of hunting and gathering on which their material survival depends. In these
periods the animation of their spiritual lives fades because they are separate from the
tribe as a whole and the practice of its collective religion. So, periodically, we see
them leaving the profane tasks of material survival and drawing together for great
tribal meetings which will renew their spirits and give them the inner strength to carry
on. The traditional ceremonies, rituals, dances etc of these meetings are the religion of
the tribe, from the energy of which flows its art and its recreation. Durkheim argues
that the life of the individual depends just as much on this spiritual re-creation as it
does on the material sustenance that is hunted and gathered.
¶30 Durkheim sees this picture as a model for the spiritual life of all societies. The
picture is simple enough for us to grasp it as a whole. The picture is much more
complicated and confused in so called “civilised” societies, but the ability to see the
features of the Australian example should enable us, if we have sufficient
imagination, to trace the same features of the sacred and profane.
¶31 When you eat food it renews your animal energy, when you worship or engage in
recreation or artistic creation, it renews your spiritual energy. Whilst reading the detail
of Durkheim on religion do not lose sight of this image of energy giving activity. The
practices he describes are a collective dance of life, renewing the joy of living.
Durkheim seeks the meaning of those practices, but warns us that they are too full of
life, too creative, to all have an agreed meaning. “The state of effervescence in which
the assembled worshippers find themselves must be translated outwardly by exuberant
movements which are not easily subjected to too carefully defined ends. In part, they
escape aimlessly, they spread themselves for the mere pleasure of so doing, and they
take delight in all sorts of games”. When explaining rites, it is a mistake to believe
“that each gesture has a precise object and a definite reason for its existence. There
are some whichmerely answer the need felt by worshippers for action, motion,
gesticulation. They are to be seen jumping, whirling, dancing, crying and singing,
though it may not always be possible to give a meaning to all this agitation”
(Durkheim 1912 p.381).
¶32 So, we are looking for meaning, but may not always find it, because the
meaningful activities of the collective religion fill us with so much energy that we
create new movements of the dance without thinking of what their significance is. We
can think of a writer, (Mary Shelley, the creator of Frankenstein, for example),
writing a novel out of her imagination, drawing on the collective symbols of her
society, without which her readers would not be able to understand it, but not able to
say what the full significance of her novel is precisely because it is a creation of the
imagination, not a copy of a social ritual. It is the ritual, however, that provides the
creative energy. What is a religion?, Durkheim asks, what is a church? what is god?
He gives some unusual answers. A religion, he says “is a unified system of beliefs and
practices relative to sacred things, that is to say, things set apart and forbidden—
beliefs and practices which unite into one single moral community called a church, all
those who adhere to them” (Durkheim 1912 p.47). It is not just beliefs, it is also
practices, and those practices have to be part of a church: “In all history, we do not
find a single religion without a church”. A church is any “society whose members are
united by the fact that they think in the same way in regard to the sacred world and its
relations with the profane world, and by the fact that they translate these common
ideas to common practices” (Durkheim 1912 p.44). An essential point that Durkheim
is making is that religion has to be collective, and it has to be action (not just belief).
¶33 Not all religions believe in god, although all religions have a force at their centre.
The Australian tribes that Durkheim writes about had totems: animals or plants that
they held sacred. Durkheim comes to the conclusion that “The god of the clan, the
totemic principle” is “the clan itself, personified and represented to the imagination
under the visible form of the animal or vegetable which serves as totem” (Durkheim
1912 p.206). Durkheim concludes that religion is a collective activity in which we
perceive our society. It is a periodic renewal of our social energy, and it is essential to
any society. He even derives the forms of thought that we use to understand the world
from the images generated by the religion, images that reflect the structure of our
society, and which will therefore vary from society to society. This means that
different societies will perceive time and space differently. Just as an illustration we
could say that some societies will think of time and space as having no beginning or
end, whilst others will perceive them both as going round in circles. (Durkheim 1912,
Introduction, Subject of our Study: Religious Knowledge and the Theory of
Knowledge. Section 2. pp 9-20. See extracts)
¶34 If you have fully understood this, you will probably have blown your mind. Lets
hope that you still have a functioning mind left, even at the expense of not fully
understanding Durkheim, and that your mind is critical. Perhaps you want to ask
Durkheim how religion can be essential to society when so few people go to church?
Unfortunately, he is dead, so we will have to question what he wrote. Look at his
definition of a church. Perhaps something else has taken on the role of a church, in
place of the institution we still call church? Is there any activity in our society that
involves all the members of the society in it and which virtually nobody escapes? One
of Durkheim's theoretical predecessors, Edmund Burke thought that the most effective
form a religion could take was drama: the acting out in plays of the consequences of
moral actions (Burke 1790 p.78). But it would be difficult to get everybody in a
society to go to the theatre. What if we could put an electronic theatre in every home?
Would the members of the society switch it on? Could it be, as Polly Toynbee
recently suggested in The Radio Times, that television is "the nation's collective
consciousness"? Are most of us practising members of the orthodox church of
television, with a few non conformists who only use radios? Could our society hold
together without television and radio? Would we have any collective life without
them? Might we even lose interest in living if we could not get our media fix?
MAX WEBER
¶35 The reality of society is the key issue on which we can contrast Durkheim with
Weber: Durkheim believes that society is real—that it is out there—an objective
reality constraining us. He believes it is this external reality that sociology is about.
Weber believes that it is the individual that is real. He thinks society is an abstraction.
He believes sociology is about individual actions that are socially orientated. If you
continue to develop your theories in the company of sociologists you will learn that
sociologists have their own peculiar way of swearing at one another. When a
Durkheimian sociologist wants to be rude about a Weberian she shouts “reductionist”,
which just means that the Weberian wants to reduce society to individuals. The angry
Weberian shouts back “reification” (Latin for “to turn into a thing”), which just means
that the Durkheimian is a lunatic to believe that society is real.
¶36 Do morals have solid substance? Underlying Rousseau and Durkheim's
thought, like that of Kant, is the belief that morals have solid substance. They are not
just what individuals choose to believe in, but have a rational base that is general to
all human beings. In different ways, the writings of Rousseau, Kant and Durkheim are
a search for this general will. Weber, and many other writers from the end of the 19th
century to the present, are disillusioned with this belief in the objectivity of goodness.
A phrase from Thus Spake Zarathustra (1883), by Friedrich Nietzsche is often quoted
as symbolising their disillusionment. The philosophic hero, Zarathustra, meets an
enthusiastic mystic praising God in a forest. He speaks with him, but then hurries
away lest he should deprive the man of his joy. Alone he said to himself “Could it be
possible? This old saint in the forest has not heard anything of this, that God is dead?”
(Nietzsche 1883, Zarathustra's Prologue, end of section 2)
¶37 Weber and Hobbes Weber was very firmly in the disillusioned camp. He did
not believe in general values. Values he thought, are irrational in the sense that they
depend only on what individuals chose to be their values. Because of this, some force
within society has to impose sufficient general agreement for civilisation to exist.
Weber writes on the model of Thomas Hobbes, not that of John Locke or JeanJacques Rousseau. If one's theory of human nature does not allow a concept like
reason as a law of nature (Locke), the general will (Rousseau) or the collective
conscience (Durkheim), but insists that the individuals in society can only have
individual wills, and not a general will, it seems that some kind of domination or
power will be needed to get the individuals to act as a society. Hobbes thought that
sovereign power was necessary even to establish a common language. Weber thought
that human relations are essentially a struggle for domination.
¶38 Power and Legitimacy At the front of Hobbes' Leviathan the two types of
weapon that the state uses are symbolised in a series of matching pictures. On the one
side are the instruments of force (swords, guns, battle flags etc); on the other the
matching symbols of ideas and religion. Weber agreed with Hobbes that it is just as
important for the state to control ideas as it is to control weapons. According to
Weber, all states are founded on political violence, but also on political legitimacy, the
grounds of which vary from society to society and from time to time. The original
meaning of legitimate is lawful. This means that a government has legitimacy if it is
lawful. Political philosophy and sociology, however, have extended the use of the
term. Rousseau said that he could not explain how the state managed to make its
subjects slaves (a figure of speech in this context), but he thought he could explain
what made the slavery legitimate (Rousseau 1762(SC) pp 181-182) But he did not
mean lawful. “The first and most important rule of legitimate or popular government,
that is to say, of government whose object is the good of the people, isto follow in
everything the general will.” (Rousseau 1755(PE) p.135). Weber did not think that
legitimacy depended on the general will of the people. Apart from anything else, he
did not believe in a general will. He did, however, think that if a government is to
survive its use of force must be supported by the beliefs of its people. A government
was, therefore, as much concerned with securing the support of ideas as it was in
securing the support of arms.
¶39 Weber provided matching definitions of state and church that fit neatly with
Hobbes' concept that religion is a force that achieves peace on earth by threatening us
with hell for ever after. “An imperatively coordinated corporate group will be called
`political' if and in so far as the enforcement of its order is carried out continually
within a given territorial area by the application and threat of physical force on the
part of the administrative staff. A compulsory political association with continuous
organizationwill be called a `state' if and in so far as its administrative staff
successfully upholds a claim to the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force in
the enforcement of its order.” “An imperatively coordinated corporate group will be
called a `hierocratic' group [hierocratic means ruled by priests] if and in so far as for
the enforcement of its order it employs `psychic' coercion through the distribution or
denial of religious benefits. A compulsory hierocratic association with continuous
organisation will be called a `church' if and in so far as its administrative staff claims
a monopoly of the legitimate use of hierocratic coercion.” (Weber 1947 p.154)
¶40 Weber and the Modern State We will listen in to part of a long lecture that
Weber gave in 1918 at Munich University. This was published in 1919 as Politics as
a Vocation. In 1918 Germany was in disarray at the end of a war in which its army
was defeated. Parts of the country were under the revolutionary control of soldiers and
workers, some of whom were fired with a vision of a society no longer governed by a
state. It was in this atmosphere that Weber attempted to define what the modern state
is, and what maintains its power. “Sociologically the state cannot be defined in terms
of its ends. There is scarcely any task that some political association has not taken in
hand, and there is no task that one could say has always been exclusive and peculiar
to those associations which are designated as political onesUltimately one can
define the modern state sociologically only in terms of the specific means peculiar to
itnamely the use of political force” (Weber 1919/Politics pp 77-78).
¶41 Weber quotes the leader of the Russian communist army, Leon Trotsky, who had
recently said that “Every state is founded on force”. Weber agreed, and added “if no
social institutions existed which knew the use of violence, the concept of "state"
would be eliminated, and a condition would emerge that could be designated as
"anarchy"”. The condition of anarchy is a condition of society without a state.
Anarchists, following William Godwin, had argued that society is progressing
towards a condition where everybody will be so reasonable that we will not need a
state to force us. Friedrich Engels and Marx developed this idea by saying that the
state is an instrument of force that is only needed when society is built on the conflict
of classes. It is used by the ruling class to repress the ruled. If a classless society
(communism) could be achieved it would not need a state. This was Trotsky's theory.
Unfortunately, Trotsky's communist comrade, Joseph Stalin, arranged a violent death
for Trotsky before the use of violence in society became redundant. This would not
have surprised Weber, who was not convinced that the state would fade away or that
violence would cease in human societies. In fact, he thought the state would continue
to develop indefinitely. He pointed out, however, that violence is not the only means
that the state uses to control its citizens: “Force is certainly not the normal or the only
means of the state but force is a means specific to the state. Today the relation
between the state and violence is an especially intimate one.” In the past, other
institutions, like the church and the family, had their own armies, but the modern state
strictly controls who uses force. “Today, however, we have to say that a state is a
human community that (successfully) claims the monopoly of the legitimate use of
physical force within a given territory.” “The right to use physical force is ascribed to
other institutions or to individuals only to the extent to which the state permits it. The
state is considered the sole source of the "right" to use violence. Hence, "politics" for
us means striving to share power, either among states or among groups within a
state.” Weber says that force is not the only or even the normal means by which a
state maintains its domination. The “inner justifications” provided by the beliefs of
the people are as important, or more important. “The state is a relation of men
dominating men, a relation supported by means of legitimate (i.e. considered to be
legitimate) violence. If the state is to exist, the dominated must obey the authority
claimed by the powers that be. When and why do men obey? Upon what inner
justifications and upon what external means does this domination rest?” (Weber
1919/Politics p.78). In the following part of his lecture Weber explored the types of
idea that lead human beings to obey the state. Weber presents these as what he calls
"ideal types", and I will look at what these are, and at Weber's concept of sociology,
before discussing his types of legitimate authority.
¶42 Weber's concept of sociology Weber believed that the central concern of
sociology should be the a theory of social action. By this he meant that sociology
should start with the subjective meanings that individuals see in what they do.
Sociology should start inside the individual with what his or her actions mean to him
or her, and work outwards to understanding any laws or regularities that govern the
whole of society.
“Sociologyis a science which attempts the interpretive understanding of social
action in order thereby to arrive at a causal explanation of its course and effects. In
"action" is included all human behaviour when and in so far as the acting individual
attaches a subjective meaning to it.” (Weber 1947 p.88)
¶43 Ideal Types: Weber's Toolbox Weber provides us with models of social
actions that are unlikely to be found in a pure form in reality, but help us to analyze
reality. The types of action and types of legitimacy that follow are such ideal types.
Reality is not assumed to correspond to the ideal type, for many reasons, one of which
is that any particular reality will contain elements of different ideal types. Take
Weber's types of action as the example. In any particular action that we take, there
will probably be a mixture of types. The ideal types are tools for discussing the
significance of real actions. They are fictional models that help us to understand the
real world. Another way of thinking about them is to imagine Weber as creating a tool
kit of concepts for you. Weber actually wrote a book that is rather like a tool box of
concepts for our use. Parts of it are arranged like a dictionary or encyclopedia and it
has been suggested that he meant people to look things up in it rather than just read it
straight through. The book is called Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft (Economy and
Society). It was written between 1910 and 1914, but not published until after Weber's
death. It has been translated into English in various parts with different names.
¶44 Was Weber a sociologist? In Economy and Society Weber outlined ideal types
and other concepts in an effort to establish “The Fundamental Concepts of
Sociology”. He was, by this time thinking of sociology as a discipline to which he had
something to contribute. But the title Economy and Society alerts us to the possibility
that his primary interests were not sociological. Weber was an academic lawyer and a
political economist, two disciplines that were closely linked in Germany. Sociology
was a term he used, but was not very happy about. Economist is the description that
fits the way he understood himself, and the way he was understood in Germany at the
time. The reason he wrote so much that we consider sociology, is that political-legaleconomics in Germany tried to be a science of the whole human being. It
distinguished itself from economics in England and France, which it said was
concerned with human beings as if all they were concerned with was the pursuit of
wealth. German economics, by contrast, attempted to create a science that was
political, legal and historical as well. This was why it was quite natural for Weber to
study the economic foundations of world religions.
¶45 Weber and Types of Action: Disagreements with Adam Smith German
economists, from the 1840s, opposed themselves to Adam Smith's free-market and
international economics. In his The National System of Political Economy (1841)
Friedrich List complained that Smith had called his book on economics “The Nature
and the Causes of the Wealth of Nations (i.e. of all nations of the whole human
race)He seeks to prove that `political' or national economy must be replaced by
`cosmopolitical or world-wide economy'”. List and his followers sought to create an
economics that was political in the specific sense that it was concerned with the
nation. Alfred Marshall, the leading English economist contemporary with Weber,
made this summary of the German approach: “The Germans are fond of saying
thatthe school of Adam Smith underrated the importance of national life; that they
tended to sacrifice it on the one hand to a selfish individualism and on the other to a
limp philanthropic cosmopolitanism. They urge that List did great service in
stimulating a feeling of patriotism, which is more generous than that of individualism,
and more sturdy and definite than that of cosmopolitanism. There is no question
that the recent political history of Germany has influenced the tone of her economists
in the direction of nationalism. Surrounded by powerful and aggressive armies
Germany can exist only by the aid of an ardent national feeling; and German writers
have insisted eagerlythat altruistic feelings have a more limited scope in the
economic relations between countries than in those between individuals.” (Marshall
1890/1920. 1966: p.634). Altruism is unselfish concern for the welfare of others.
Marshall means that German economists promoted welfare state policies within
Germany, to strengthen the nation, and an aggressive foreign policy for the same
reason. This was the intellectual discipline to which Weber was introduced as a
university student in 1882.
¶46 As a student there was at least one lecturer that Weber could not understand. The
lecturer talked too fast. But Weber eventually understood him by doing some vacation
reading. He wrote to his father “Now that I have gained a few economic concepts
through studying Adam Smith and others, Knies makes a quite different impression
on me” (Hennis 1987 p.40). This lecturer, Karl Knies, had written a book called
Political Economy from the Historical Point of View (1853). In this he said “The
economic life of a people is so closely interwoven with other areas of its life that any
particular observation can only be made if one keeps in view its relation with the
whole.” If you want to make economic predictions, you can only do so “on the basis
of the entire development of the life of a people”. Economics should not limit itself to
“the elaborations of laws in a world of material goods”. It should treat the life of
people and state as members of a “living body”. (Knies 1853 quoted Hennis 1987
p.34)
¶47 Weber did not use the language that would represent society as a body. He
wanted to explain everything in terms of individual action. The way he represented
the idea that Knies was putting forward was to say that all economic actions had a
“heteronomy of ends” (See Hennis 1987 pp 34 and 55). Heteronomy is a biological
term that refers to the different parts of an organism having different purposes. Weber
was saying that the economic policy of a nation has more than just economic
objectives. It was this broad approach to economics that led him to analyze the
different kinds of social actions that human beings take, and to demonstrate how
many of them are not “rational” in the way that English economic theory understood
rational.
¶48 Weber says that social action can be classified into four types, but that it would
be very unusual to find actions in the real world that contained only one of these ideal
types (Weber 1947 p.116). Nevertheless, I have tried to give real world examples of
each type:
(1) Rational action in relation to a goal [zweckrational or goal-orientated conduct].
This would include actions motivated by self-interest. For example actions with an
economic motive: market place actions like those Adam Smith described. Other
examples that Raymond Aron suggests are “the action of the engineer who is building
a bridge, the speculator at the stock exchange who is trying to make money, the
general who wants to win a victory” (Aron 1967 volume 2 p.186)
(2) Rational action in relation to a value [wertrational or value-related conduct].
Weber says this involves “a conscious belief in the absolute value of some ethical,
aesthetic, religious, or other form of behaviour, entirely for its own sake and
independently of any prospect of external success”. We had an everyday example of
this earlier, in the case of someone adhering to what Durkheim called the “sacred”
value of contract even when he or she could (without risk of punishment) obtain
material advantage by breaking it (See above under Mechanical and Organic
Solidarity). If a shopkeeper gives you too much change and you return the difference,
this is a rational action if financial honesty is one of your values. Aron gives the more
dramatic example of a ship's captain who could save his (her?) life, but chooses to go
down with the sinking ship because this is what he considers honourable (Aron 1967
volume 2 p.187)
(3) Affective or emotional action. Weber says that “Affectually determined behaviour
is the kind which demands the immediate satisfaction of an impulse, regardless of
how sublime or sordid it may be, in order to obtain revenge, sensual gratification,
complete surrender to a person or ideal, blissful contemplation, or finally to release
emotional tensions” (Weber 1962 p.60. Weber 1947 p.116). Aron's examples are a
punch given in a football match by a player who has lost self-control, or a slap by a
parent who feels desperately angry with a child. Another example might be the flag
waving of the audience at the last night of the proms, although this is also traditional.
(4) Traditional action. (Weber 1947 p.115) “The great bulk of all everyday action to
which people have become habitually accustomed” can be considered traditional,
although much of it borders on behaviour rather than meaningful action, because we
do not think about what we are doing. Some of it, however, is consciously explained
in terms of tradition. We say that we do things like putting socks out for Santa Clause
because it is a tradition, and that is how we would explain some people shaking hands
in circumstances where other people would kiss cheeks. In the past, Weber argues,
tradition was the main justification for action.
¶49 Weber's two types of social solidarity: communal and associative As far as I
can tell, Weber did not talk in terms of types of society. There is not a division into
successive stages in his concepts, like the division into mechanical and organic
solidarity that we find in Durkheim. Weber's toolbox does, however, contain two
“types of solidary social relations”, communal and associative, which he relates to
ideal types of society constructed by another German theorist, Ferdinand Tönnies
(Weber 1947 p.136). Tönnies also influenced Durkheim. So we can link Weber to
Durkheim's two types of society (mechanical and organic) if we raid Tönnies tool box
of concepts. An added advantage is that Tönnies' concepts link Weber's theories to
those of Marx and Engels.
¶50 According to Marx and Engels the present stage of society is capitalism or
bourgeois society. In this stage of society social relations are based on exchange.
Power is in the hands of the owners of capital, who purchase labour from the people
who have nothing to exchange but their labour (the workers or proletariate). We can
make a rough and ready approximation of social relations in such a society to those in
the type of society that Durkheim called organic. Marx and Engels thought that the
social relations under capitalism could not last. They argued that the workers were
developing more communal relations (trade unions and cooperatives for example) and
that, eventually, the mass of the people would revolt and establish a communist
society. “In place of the old bourgeois society, with its classes and class antagonisms,
we shall have an association in which the free development of each is the condition
for the free development of all”. (Marx and Engels 1848, end of chapter 2:
Proletarians and Communists)
¶51 The way that Tönnies developed this idea was to argue that capitalism is based
on relations of association (gesellschaft), which have replaced the communal
relations (gemeinschaft) of the agricultural societies that preceded industrialisation.
Geselle is a word that has associations with high society. It is used when you say “to
go into society” and in the construction of words like evening dress. Gemein is
associated with low, vulgar society. It is a closer and warmer word that is used in
relation to shared property and to religious communion. Tönnies thought that
gesellschaft lacked the solidarity needed to hold it together, and that the working class
(common people) would promote a society based on a new form of solidarity. (See
Krüger 1987, in which he discuses Weber and his contemporaries in the Social Policy
Association—Verein für Sozialpolitik, p.74. Tönnies' book Gemeinschaft and
Gesellschaft was published in 1887)
¶52 In his toolbox, Weber divides “types of solidary social relations” into the
communal and the associative, which he associates with Tönnies' gemeinschaft
(communal) and gesellschaft (associative). We can match them to Durkheim's
mechanical (communal, gemeinschaft) societies and organic (associative,
gesellschaft) societies because Durkheim's Division of Labour developed directly out
of his criticisms of Tönnies. Durkheim agreed more or less with Tönnies' picture of
communal society, but thought that associative society had a much firmer solidarity
than Tönnies credited it with (Lukes 1973, Chapter 7, section: Comte, Spencer,
Tönnies).
¶53 Weber, reducing everything to the subjective feelings and thoughts of
individuals, says that communal solidarity is a subjective feeling individuals have of
belonging together. It can be an emotional or a traditional bond. If, however, people
relate only on a rational calculation of what they can get out of the association (like in
Adam Smith), the bond is associative. Tradition is thus linked to the early forms of
society, which were more communal, and rationality to modern society, which is
more calculating. If we now go back to the issue of legitimacy (the kinds of popular
beliefs that support governments) we find that Weber has an ideal type called
traditional authority which is particular useful for analysing the power in early,
communal societies; an ideal type called rational authority which is particular useful
for analysing power in modern associative societies, and an ideal type called
charismatic authority which is particularly useful in explaining how societies change.
¶54 Traditional and Rational/Legal Authority Weber says there are three main
types of legitimacy. “The most universal and most primitive” is “the sanctity of
tradition” (Weber 1947 p.130). This is the authority that I linked to communal society.
It has been the main legitimating factor for the greater part of human history. We see
the vestige of its power in the English Common Law which derives from the time
when, to settle a dispute, manorial courts would enquire into what the established
customs were.
¶55 Rational authority, which I linked to modern associative societies, may have
begun as long ago as the Roman Empire. Weber says “the type case of legitimacy by
virtue of rational belief” is “natural law” (Weber 1947 p.131). He distinguishes this
from revealed law, like the commandment “thou shall not kill” which Jewish society
held to have been revealed by God (Bible 1611 Books of Moses two and five: Exodus
chapter 20 and Deuteronomy chapter 5). For Weber, revealed law would be an
example of charismatic authority, which I discuss below. When the Roman Emperor,
Marcus Aurelius says that “the universe is a kind of Commonwealth” from which “is
derived our mind itself, our reason and our sense of law” (Marcus Aurelius 1961 p.17)
he is saying that there is natural law (Latin: jus naturale) which is distinct and
superior to the laws of nations (Latin: jus gentium), or positive law. This concept of
natural law was a central feature of social theory in Medieval Europe, and Weber may
be suggesting that it was an intermediate form of rational authority (between
traditional and the modern rational authority). (Weber 1947 Chapter 1 The
Fundamental Concepts of Sociology. Section 7: The Bases of Legitimacy of an Order
pp 130-132. See also Russell 1961 pp 275-276)
¶56 Weber says that the modern form of rational/legal authority requires obedience to
a specific type of rational rule. “Today the most usual basis of legitimacy is the belief
in legality, the readiness to conform with rules which are formally correct and have
been imposed by accepted procedure” (Weber 1947 p.131). This rational/legal
authority is associated with bureaucracy, which is hierarchical organization orientated
to a set of rules. “When a civil servant appears in his office at a fixed time” his
behaviour is “not determined by custom or self-interest alone” but “by the validity of
an order (viz, the civil service rules), which he fulfils partly because disobedience
would be disadvantageous to him but also because its violation would be abhorrent to
his sense of duty” (Weber 1968 quoted in Giddens 1971 p.154). Bureaucracy is the
actual apparatus of the modern state, and is found in other organizations of modern
society as well. Weber believes that the rational, bureaucratic state is an essential
technical part of modern society. It is the professional way to obtain certain ends
within large societies and cannot be dispensed with unless we dispense with those
ends. In contrast to Engels, who believed that after the workers' revolution the state
would "wither away" "fall asleep" or "die off" (Engels 1876/1878 & 1880 section 3);
Weber anticipated that a socialist revolution, like that in Russia under Lenin and
Trotsky in 1917, would lead to an increase of state bureaucracy.
¶57 Charisma Weber's analysis allowed his imagination to formulate what he saw
as the problem for modern politics: the problem of leadership. This is associated with
the problem of change in both traditional and modern society and the solution in both
is associated with that magic little word “charisma”. Traditional societies may appear
to stand still. Modern societies may appear to lose direction. In traditional societies
the “eternal yesterday” justifies what happens today so how can there ever be change?
In modern societies the government of rules may mean that no one is able or prepared
to be a real ruler who charts the future of the society, because such a political career
cannot be based on following rules.
¶58 The Greek word charisma means a divine gift. Weber says that charisma means
the “gift of grace” and that he takes the word from the vocabulary of early
Christianity (Weber 1947 p.328). This is clear enough if you know what grace is. In
theology, grace is the unmerited favour of God, it is something that God gives us as
distinct from something we earn. Since Weber wrote, charisma has entered the
English language with two distinct, but related meanings. We say that a politician has
charisma if she has some kind of natural appeal that attracts people. We say that he
lacks charisma if he is dull, even if he is very worthy. You may, for example, hear
people say that John Major lacks Margaret Thatcher's charisma. The second form in
which you may hear the word is in reference to charismatic movements in churches
where God's spirit is believed to inspire people to speak in tongues. The word
charismatic here is close to the early christian roots that Weber spoke of. Nowadays
the speaking in tongues needs translating. The origin, however, is from an account in
the Christian Bible of disciples of Jesus, after his death and ascension into heaven,
being thoroughly dispirited. Suddenly a wind blew through the room, flames of fire
burst out of their heads and they were inspired to preach to the crowds who had
gathered in Jerusalem from all over the world. The disciples only spoke one language.
The people in the crowds spoke many, but each heard the disciples preach in his or
her own language. (Bible 1611, The Acts of the Apostles, chapter 2)
¶59 Each of these meanings of charisma should help you understand what Weber
means. Weber says it is “the absolutely personal devotion and personal confidence in
revelation, heroism, or other qualities of individual leadership.” He gives as examples
of charismatic domination, the power of prophet, an elected war lord, a ruler who
secures absolute rule by plebiscite (popular vote), a great demagogue, or a political
party leader (Weber 1919/Politics p.79). Each of these has charismatic authority if
they secure their power by personal gifts in swaying people's opinions. “The term
`charisma' will be applied to a certain quality of an individual personality by virtue of
which he is set apart from ordinary men and treated as endowed with supernatural,
superhuman, or at least specifically exceptional powers or qualities. These are such as
are not accessible to the ordinary person, but are regarded as of divine origin or as
exemplary, and on the basis of them the individual concerned is treated as a leader.”
[Weber 1947 p.358]
¶60 For Weber, charismatic authority is an innovating and revolutionary force. In
traditional societies it may be the only such force. Weber says that: “Conscious
departures from tradition in the establishment of a new order have originally been due
almost entirely to prophetic oracles or at least to pronouncements which have been
sanctioned as prophetic” (Weber 1947 p.131). In modern societies Weber thought
charisma is essential. This was particularly true of Germany, the modern society to
which, as a nationalist, Weber was committed. Giddens, in a short, succinct booklet
on Politics and Sociology in the Thought of Max Weber (1972) attempts to unravel the
complexities of the whole issue. Here I just try to explain the relation of charisma to
German politics. Germany, as the state that we know today, has only existed since the
1870s. It was put together by war, diplomacy and politics under the leadership of
Bismark. Before the 1870s one could speak of the German nation, in terms of people
with a common language and culture, but not of the German state. A German Empire
was proclaimed at Versailles on January 18th 1871, when Germany won a war it had
engineered with Napoleon 3rd of France. Both Bismark and Napoleon were what
Weber called charismatic leaders—specifically the type who secured absolute rule by
plebiscite, or popular vote. Democracy was not one of Weber's ideals, but he came to
think it necessary as a means for training charismatic leaders. According to Giddens,
Weber saw the likelihood of uncontrolled bureaucratic domination as the greatest
threat facing Germany after Bismark, because there was a lack of political leadership.
Democracy, as a means of choosing a leader, could be the means of rising above a
rule-bound bureaucracy. In the modern world democracy was almost unavoidable. So,
Weber said, “there is only the choice: leadership-democracy (Führerdemokratie)or
leaderless democracy”. Leaderless democracy would be “the domination of
"professional politicians" without a vocation, without the inner charismatic qualities
that alone make a leader” (Weber 1958 p. 532, translated and quoted Giddens 1972
p.19). The German word Führer just means leader, guide or conductor.
¶61 Weber thought that politics, by its nature, is a dirty business, but that it should be
pursued in the cause of worthy cultural ideals. One of the cruelties of history is that a
clause Weber was instrumental in inserting in the German constitution, proved the
way to power for Adolph Hitler, a charismatic leader far nastier than any that Weber
would have supported.
¶62 Integrating Durkheim and Weber In this essay I have contrasted Durkheim
and Weber. I think this is sensible in an introductory essay because the two theorists
start from such different premises. Some commentators have suggested that they
probably would not have thought of themselves as studying the same subject. But that
does not mean that our theories have to be either Weberian or Durkheimian, we can
also attempt to integrate their theories. Like making theories in the first place,
integration is a work of creative imagination. What emerges is something new that
loses some of the old imaginations, and gains something from the imagination of the
person who integrates. After the second world war a new sociology was created in
America based on Talcott Parsons' integration of Durkheim, Weber and other
theorists (Parsons 1937, followed by Parsons 1951). It really was a new sociology. In
the process of integrating, Parsons changed the theories, lost some of their meaning,
and created something new and valuable in its own right. Most of the sociology you
read in text books is written in the light of this integration, and the criticisms that have
been made of it.
¶63 The end of a long essay is not the place to outline the imagination of Talcott
Parsons. Instead I will take a few pages from a book by Frank Pearce which argue that
Weber's concept of charisma can be made more useful if it is integrated with
Durkheim's understanding of society (Pearce 1989, chapter 2, especially pages 29 to
38 Durkheim and the concept of charisma and Politics and Charisma). Pearce draws
out the similarities between charisma and the mana with which, according to
Durkheim, society can imbue individuals. Mana is a polynesian word for an
impersonal spiritual force that results in people having good fortune or magical
powers. “It shows itself inany kind of power or excellence which a man possesses”
(Durkheim 1912 p.194 quoting Codrington, The Melanesians). The similarity with
charisma is very clear, but Durkheim's concept has a richness that Weber's lacks. One
aspect of this is that mana comes from the society. It can sustain someone who has no
real personal gifts. For example, a king might be a very ordinary person if he was not
king, but the role imbues him with character that he actually takes on. Equally,
however, he could be a person with characteristics that particularly suite him to the
social role. Pearce says that for Durkheim “charisma [mana] is a real phenomenon
and a social relationSociety `deifies' a man who personifies its principal
aspirations” (Pearce 1989 p.31). One of the ways in which this enriches the use of
Weber's concept is that it allows one to create theories about the content that society
contributes to a particular charisma. “`Charismatic' qualities are inevitably contextdependent and need to be socially sustained. The appeal of such leaders to their
followers depends upon a shared background of culture—of style, symbols, myths
etc” (Pearce 1989 p.32). In Queen Elizabeth's Silver Jubilee her family was
“represented as the essence, the purest example of the British family”. This, Pearce
suggests, had as much or more to do with qualities projected on the Royal Family by
our society, as it had to do with any intrinsic qualities in the Queen's family. Pearce
links this into concepts of class struggle that he takes from marxism. The family
image identifies the rulers with the ruled. The royal family are portrayed as like
ordinary families and this counters the divisive influences of class conflict. “Thus
charisma can take various forms and it may or may not be stage-managed, but what is
important is that through it individuals should experience themselves as part of a
national collectivity where differences between social ranks are believed to be a
matter of degree rather than signifying irreconcilable antagonistic differences”.
(Pearce 1989 p.38).
¶64 Frank Pearce's fairy tale is not pure Durkheim, pure Weber or pure Marx. It is his
own. But he could not have made it without trying to understand the imagination of
Durkheim, Weber and Marx. Anyone who has reached the end of this essay will have
worked very hard trying to understand Durkheim and Weber. Perhaps it is time to
follow Frank's example and make your own fairy tale? Or perhaps it is time to do
something completely different!
Citation suggestion
Referencing
My referencing suggestion for this page is a bibliography entry:
Roberts, Andrew 1997 Social Science History for Budding Theorists Middlesex
University: London. Available at http://studymore.org.uk/ssh.htm
With references in the text to "(Roberts, A. 1997 ch.6, par. -)"
Remember to print the bibliography to the book as well as the chapters that you want.