Max Weber: Bureaucracy

Max Weber (1864-1920)

Weber was a German and political economist. He was interested in Germany and how the state worked, he particularly looked at social research.

Weber is often linked with Emile Durkheim and Karl Marx, as one of the three principal founders of modern social science.

After the Paris commune in 1871, the German states authority raised and so did social democracy.

England, France and the USA copied this modern bureaucracy idea that Germany had created, known as Keynesianism economics. And then leading onto the first world war.

After the Paris Commune Germany had become the first modern Bureaucratic state. A bureaucracy is an organisation of non-elected officials of a government or organisation who implement the rules and laws of their institution.

-Bureau (Office), Cracy (democracy)

Military Bureaucracy- The Prussian army was well drilled and trained. They were at the core of this 'bureaucratic state.'

All the office workers had bureaucratic jobs- The rise of the middle class. Everyday people were starting to have ownership of the capitalist system, for example like the company shares in Apple.

Kyle Marx hadn't noticed this before the idea that anyone could have the rights to power.

And by 1890 the German state idealised around poor people. Trade unions and schools were created, this is an example of a modern bureaucratic state.

Weber and Marx were Kantian's, they followed the same ideas that Kant had speculated about ' the truth'. Weber would say that humans do not know the objects in themselves, there is no absolute reality, we only have a mental picture.

There is no absolute truth as a Journalist but you can be honest.

Weber was very much anti-political, he just wanted to see what people got up to in the bureaucracy.

He was interested in power and why we follow rules set out by certain people. He looked at social actions,

"an Action is 'social' if the acting individual takes account of the behaviour of others and is thereby oriented in its course"

He said that there was four types of social action: 

1. Instrumental- rational action ( Security and social status)
2. Value- rational action, for example I felt like it was a 'good thing to do.'
3. Affectual- emotional affirmation/ dis-affirmation, if you 'like someone'
4. Traditional- rational inheritance

Weber believed that the exercise of authority is a universal phenomenon and that there are three types of domination that characterise authority relationships: charismatic, traditional, and legal domination.

These types indicate the relationships between a supreme ruler (eg: parliament) an administrative body ( eg: royal servants, or officials) and the masses of the ruled (e.g: followers and citizens).

Types of social authority

1. Traditional ' we have always done it this way'
2. Charismatic - magical powers and religion.
3. Legal - rational- rule of the law

Whats wrong with the Bureaucratic state? - Cultural exhaustion, the rationalism of religion. Work is de-skiling over the years, it would be impossible to build something like Winchester cathedral now.

' In the modern world nobody lives outside of the state'