Politics as a Vocation

2. Politics as a Vocation • (Lecture based on different translation, but page numbers refer to class text) • Based on lecture delivered before Free Students Society at Munich University, January 1919 • The Revolution of 1918-19 • Spartacus League, Rosa Luxemburg & Karl Liebknecht murdered • “Vocation”

3. “The lecture, which I give at your request, will necessarily frustrate you in a number of ways. You will naturally expect me to take a position on the actual problems of the day. [...] such questions have nothing to do with the general question of what politics as a vocation means and what it can mean.” (77) • ‘in response to your wishes’ • Objectivity in the social sciences

4. What is politics? • “The concept is extremely broad and includes every kind of independent leadership activity.” (77) • Politics is about leadership • But in the modern era, the definitive political organization is the state. • “Like the political organizations that preceded it historically, the state represents a relationship in which people rule over other people.” (78) • People rule over other people.

5. What is the state? • “[The] state is the form of human community that (successfully) lays claim to the monopoly of legitimate physical violence within a given territory.” (78) • Violence by groups and individuals is legitimate if and only if they are authorized by the state, and only insofar as it permits them to do so. • “Violence is, of course, not the normal or only means available to the state. That is undeniable. But it is the means specific to the state.” (78)

6. “Hence, what ‘politics’ means for us is to strive for a share of power or to influence the distribution of power, whether between states or between the groups of people contained within a state.” (78) • Who is ‘us’?

7. Legitimacy • “If the state is to survive, those who are ruled over must always acquiesce that is claimed by the rulers of the day. When do they do so and why?” (78) • The ruled must acknowledge the right of the ruler to rule • Power + legitimacy = authority • 3 kinds: Traditional, charismatic, rational/legal

8. Traditional • “The authority of the ‘eternal past,’ of custom, sanctified by a validity that extends back into the mists of time and is perpetuated by habit. This is ‘traditional’ rule, as exercised by patriarchs and patriarchal rulers of the old style.” (78) • We do this because we have always done this. We do this because this is who we are.

9. Charismatic • “Second, there is the authority of the extraordinary, personal gift of grace or charisma, that is, the wholly personal devotion to, and a personal trust in, the revelations, heroism, or other leadership qualities of an individual.” This is ‘charismatic’ rule of the kind practiced by prophets or—in the political sphere—the elected warlord or the ruler chosen by a popular vote, the great demagogue, and the leaders of political parties.” (79)

10. Charismatic • “Charisma knows only inner determination and inner restraint. The holder of charisma seizes the task that is adequate for him and demands obedience and a following by virtue of his mission. His success determines whether he finds them. His charismatic claim breaks down if his mission is not recgnized by those to whom he has been sent. If they recognize him, he is their master—so long as he knows how to maintain recognition through ‘proving’ himself.” • He does not have a legal ‘right’ to rule, rather, “it is the duty of those to whom he addresses his mission to recognize him as their charismatically qualified leader.” (247)

11. Charismatic • “Genuine charismatic domination therefore knows of no abstract legal codes and statutes and no ‘formal’ way of adjudication. Its ‘objective’ law emanates concretely from the highly personal experience of heavenly grace and from the god-like strength of the hero.” (250) • “The genuinely charismatic ruler is responsible precisely to those whom he rules. He is responsible for but one thing, that he personally and actually be God-willed master.” (249) • Only to those whom he rules. • Charismatic authority exists only for those by whom it is recognized

12. Charismatic • “Charismatic domination means a rejection of all ties to any external order in favor of the exclusive glorification of the genuine mentality of the prophet and hero. Hence, its attitude is revolutionary and transvalues everything; it makes a sovereign break with all tradition or rational norms: ‘It is written, but I say unto you.’” (250) • Charisma is what makes people obey at these times • Charismatic authority lives in, not off, this world • Often shuns money • Supported by gifts or war booty, not taxes • Routinization • Prophets  priests, war lords  kings (246-252)

13. Rational/legal • “Finally, there is domination by the virtue of ‘legality,’ by virtue of the belief in legal statutes and practical ‘competence’ based on rationally created rules. This type of rule is based on a person’s willingness to carry out statutory rules obediently.” (79) • Obedience: the experience of obeying as personal will • “Rule of this kind is to be found in the modern ‘servant of the state’”, the bureaucrat

14. 2 Types of Ruling Apparatus • 1. The apparatus is owned by the agents of the ruler (81-82) • Military, administrative, communications • Aristocratic • Personal fealty • Decentralized, highly political • Politics as a sphere of human freedom

15. 2 Types of Ruling Apparatus • 2. The agents of the ruler are alienated from the apparatus of rule. • Proletarianization of rule • Centralized (in whom?) • In the modern state, “the ‘separation’ of the administrative staff, that is, of officials and employees, from the material resources of administration, has been accomplished.” (82-83)

16. Bureaucracy • Purely rational basis of administration • Official and private duties distinct • Hierarchically ordered • Each official has a distinct set of responsibilities • Cash payment, a career in the hierarchy • Example: Tax farming • Old tax collectors owned their offices as property. Thus, the amount of taxes they collected, and the amount that they kept for themselves, varied, resulting in unreliable income for central government. • Employed tax collectors have an incentive to follow orders or the lose their position. Thus, they tend to be dutiful, obedient, and rule-abiding, resulting in an increased and more reliable income for the central gov’t (206) • “The reduction of modern office management to rules is deeply embedded in its very nature.” (198) • Rules, not ruling, administering, not governing

17. Bureaucracy • Thus, the trend of history has been away from politics and toward bureaucracy. • This is especially true in Germany, but is true even in America. • There, the bureaucracy had been entirely ‘political’ (spoils system), but the demands of an increasingly complex political world led to increased bureaucratic professionalization (civil service exams) (88)

18. Leadership and Democracy, Conflict and Freedom • “It has to be clearly realized that the plebiscitarian leadership of parties entails the ‘soulnessness’ of the following, their intellectual proletarianization, one might say.” • Machine democracy • A stark choice exists between “a democracy with a leader together with a ‘machine’ or a leaderless democracy, in other words, the rule of the ‘professional politicians’ who have no vocation and who lack the inner, charismatic qualities that turn a man into a leader... ‘the rule of the clique.’” (75) • Recall: Politics is the rule of people by people. The legitimacy of bureaucratic government is contingent on people’s obedience of rules. It it the rule of humans by things. • Political appointees come and go, but professional bureaucrats are permanent.

19. Leadership and Democracy, Conflict and Freedom • The bureaucrat “should not be politically active but, above all else, should ‘administer,’ impartially.” (95) • Not politics, but administration • Not struggle, but obedience • Not leadership in a cause, but service to the law • “[T]the bureaucratic apparatus functions more assuredly than any legal enslavement of functionaries. [...] The purely impersonal character of office work, with its principled separation of the private sphere of the official from that of the office, facilitates the official’s integration into the given functional conditions of a fixed mechanism based upon discipline.” (208) • Dehumanization

20. Leadership and Democracy, Conflict and Freedom • “[The bureaucrat] should therefore abstain from doing what politicians, the leaders as well as the followers, must always necessarily do, namely, to fight. For taking sides, struggle, passion—ira et studium—are the politician’s element, especially the political leader’s.” (95) • Anger and partiality

21. Leadership and Democracy, Conflict and Freedom • “His activity is subject to an entirely different principle of responsibility, in fact, the very opposite principle to that of the official.” (95) • The official is responsible, in his office, to obey, regardless of whether the command seems right or wrong. Without this high level of ethical discipline and self-denial, the entire apparatus of rule would collapse. • The discipline of the official is necessary

22. Leadership and Democracy, Conflict and Freedom • “The honor of the political leader, of the leading statesman, however, lies precisely in an eclusie personal responsibility for what he does, a responsibility he cannot and must not transfer.” (95) • An elected official chosen by the governed is likely less competent than a bureaucratic appointee (judges), but “has an autonomous position opposite the superordinate official. The elected official does not derive his position ‘from above’ but ‘from below’” (201) • Not dependent on bureaucrats for power, not responsible to them, but for himself

23. Politics as a Vocation • “To ask what kind of human being one must be to have the right to grasp the spokes of the wheel of history is to ask an ethical question.” (115)