Growing Bureaucracy
On Tuesday, we discussed religion and the role of religion in science fiction almost exclusively. I felt that this emphasis ignored many of the issues involved in “Politics as a Vocation.” Although there were certainly angles of Weber’s analysis that had religious overtones, it was by no means a religious text. By discussing it solely in a religious context, we lost sight of many of the interesting discussion points the essay might have elicited.
One of these was the idea of living “for” or “from” politics that some people brought up in class. However, one I found even more fascinating was the development of the “bureaucratic” system of government. For those of us living in the United States today, the idea of feudal style government is entirely unimaginable. We are fully adjusted to the idea of civil servants who run government programs that they have no personal stake in. In fact, we are used to the idea that the administrators of many federal programs may actually have less material wealth than those they are administering too (excepting welfare program administrators, of course).
In our minds, bureaucratic and feudal systems are completely dissociated. One is the current norm, while the other is an outmoded system abandoned in the Middle Ages. What Weber wants us to see, is that the transition from feudal to bureaucratic government was actually gradual, the latter grew out of the former. Initially, in order to consolidate and maintain their power, lords hired people who were without personal property under the feudal system and paid them directly from their personal treasury in order to create a class of servants loyal solely to them.
This class of loyal servants slowly transformed into the bureaucrats that we know and love. The entire development of bureaucratic government is an important part of Weber’s essay, and relates both to his concept of living “from” politics, and, in great measure to the role of religious figures in politics (many of the original bureaucrats were religious officials), but it was entirely ignored in our class. I understand that we were talking about religion and politics, and especially messiahs, but these are still important ideas, and they deserve to be looked at.
posted by lennearb @ 12:36 AM
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