Last post I discussed Weber\u2019s attempts to develop a taxonomy of communities and cultures in terms of the distinctions which each community draws between legitimate\/righteous dominion and illegitimate\/unrighteous dominion. The ways in which righteous dominion is set apart from unrighteous dominion are not at all limited to intellectual playthings or logical puzzles to be toyed with, since such standards strongly constrain the ways in which we understand and organize our social behavior.\u00a0 Why should we obey what social services or medical professionals tell us? When is a command issued by a priesthood leader – or God Himself – to sacrifice all that I have or am an (il)legitimate command (one thinks of Abraham\u2019s son)? By what standards do we tell others that they should or should not obey even their own commands within their own lives (a very modern idea that wasn\u2019t at all obvious until rather recently)?<\/p>\n
The standards by which obedience or any such command is legitimated vary widely across time and space, but Weber does not attempt any such fine-grained analysis. Rather, he is mostly concerned about the three broad categories in terms of which commands are (de)legitimized across the entirety of world history: rational, traditional and charisma dominion:<\/p>\n
\u201cThe \u2018validity\u2019 of a power of command may be expressed, first, in a system of consciously made rational<\/em><\/strong> rules (which may be either agreed upon or imposed from above), which meet with obedience as generally binding norms whenever such obedience is claimed by him whom the rule designates. In that case every single bearer of powers of command is legitimated by that system of rational norms, and his power is legitimate insofar as it corresponds with the norm. Obedience is thus given to the norms rather than to the person.
\n\u201cThe validity of a power of command can also rest, however, upon personal authority.
\n\u201cSuch personal authority can, in turn, be founded upon the sacredness of tradition<\/em><\/strong>, i.e. of that which is customary and has always been so and prescribes obedience to some particular person.
\n\u201cOr, personal authority can have its source in the very opposite, viz., the surrender to the extraordinary, the belief in charisma<\/em><\/strong>, i.e., actual revelation or grace resting in such a person as a savior, a prophet, or a hero\u2026
\n\u201cThe forms of domination occurring in historical reality constitute combinations, mixtures, adaptations, or modifications of these \u2018pure\u2019 types.
\n\u201cRationally<\/em><\/strong> regulated association within a structure of domination finds its typical expression in bureaucracy. Traditionally<\/em><\/strong> prescribed social action is typically represented by patriarchalism. The charismatic<\/em><\/strong> structure of domination rests upon individual authority which is based neither upon rational rules nor upon tradition.\u201d (Pg: 953-4; All quotes from Economy and Society.<\/em> All emphases are mine.)<\/p><\/blockquote>\nWeber\u2019s understanding of history can thus be juxtaposed with that of Marx.\u00a0 The latter saw history as a progressive development within modes and relations of economic production that would finally culminate in a classless and communistic society. Socialism is basically an attempt to either transition to or approximate as much as possible this final, classless society. Weber, in contrast, held that the major historical transition that was underway was that from traditional to rational modes of dominion \u2013 a transition about which he was very<\/em> ambivalent.\u00a0 The main point to grasp is that even if modern day socialists were to completely do away with the property relations that define capitalist society, this would do nothing whatsoever to loosen the \u201ciron cage\u201d of rational administration and bureaucracy within which we are progressively binding ourselves.<\/p>\n
We can use Marx\u2019s concept of alienation to approach this issue from a different angle.\u00a0 The early Marx had emphasized how raw materials and factories (in short, economic capital) had become external to the worker\u2019s existence since all such property was owned by somebody else.\u00a0 The only thing which a laborer truly owned was his labor which he was forced, for the sake of his own survival, to sell by creating products that at no time belong to him. Thus, the raw materials, the factory and its machines and the material goods produced therein come to determine and control the worker\u2019s life, rather than the other way around. Weber\u2019s argument is that the rationalized structure of the modern day bureaucracy accomplishes the exact same thing \u2013 and it is because of this that a dissolution of property relations will do very little to give us the meaningful and unalienated freedom that Marx longed for:<\/p>\n
\u201cAn inanimate machine is mind objectified. Only this provides it with the power to force men into its service and to dominate their everyday working life as completely as is actually the case in the factory. Objectified intelligence is also that animated machine, the bureaucratic organization, with its specialization of trained skills, its division of jurisdiction, its rules and hierarchical relations of authority. Together with the inanimate machine it is busy fabricating the shell of bondage which men will perhaps be forced to inhabit some day.\u201d (Pg. 1402)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Most relevant to the LDS context in which most of my readers find themselves, Weber believes that the modern rationalization of society not only replaces traditional modes of dominion, but practically excludes all forms of personal authority, including that of charisma. In what we would call pre-modern times, traditional dominion was occasionally challenged 1) externally by a different tradition or 2) internally by a charismatic leader which would (if successful) become routinized as a new tradition:<\/p>\n
\u201cIn prerationalistic periods, tradition and charisma between them have almost exhausted the whole of the orientation of action.\u201d (Pg. 245)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Rationalization, according to Weber, is the process by which both natural and (especially) social phenomena become domesticated, calculable or, at the very least, predictable. To do this, actions and legitimating authority must become depersonalized and, if possible, dehumanized. One\u2019s gender, race, sexual orientation, family relations, charm, cultural refinement, etc. become irrelevant as all come to stand as uniform \u201cequals\u201d under the rule of an abstract and impersonal law. Human actions and policy in general thus become calculated optimizations in the face of external constraints \u2013 the very definition of heteronomy.<\/p>\n
As society becomes so rationalized, the very nature of education is transformed as \u201cspecialized expertise\u201d comes to replace \u201ccultivation\u201d as its primary end:<\/p>\n
\u201cExpressed in slogans, the \u2018cultivated man,\u2019 rather than the \u2018specialist,\u2019 was the end sought by education and the basis of social esteem in the feudal, theocratic, and patrimonial structures of domination\u2026
\n\u201cAs \u2026 the patent of education requires considerable expenses and a long period of gestation, this striving implies a repression of talent (of the \u2018charisma\u2019).\u201d (pg. 1000, 1001)<\/p><\/blockquote>\nWhereas genuine charismatic authority was once a total break with, if not transcendence of both traditional and rational constraints\/structures, this gift is watered down within the rationalized society where it is perceived as an intuitive grasp of the heretofore unarticulated inconsistencies, implications, or some unique optimization within a system of impersonal rules.\u00a0 Like Nietzsche, Weber objects to any such rational domestication of the charismatic who is largely defined by his\/her violation of traditional and rational constraints.<\/p>\n
[A rationalized, bureaucratic] \u201capparatus makes \u2018revolution,\u2019 in the sense of the forceful creation of entirely new formations of authority, more and more impossible.\u201d (pg. 989)<\/p>\n
\u201cAs the satisfaction of political and economic needs is increasingly rationalized, the spread of discipline advances inexorably; this universal phenomenon more and more restricts the importance of charisma and of individually differentiated action.\u201d (pg. 1156)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
This rationalization of traditional authority, to the exclusion of the charismatic has rather predictable implications for religion:<\/p>\n
\u201c[T]he bishop, the priest and the preacher are in fact no longer, as in early Christian times, carriers of a purely personal charisma, which offers other-worldly sacred values under the personal mandate of a master, and in principle responsible only to him, to everybody who appears worthy of them and asks for them.\u201d (pg. 959)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n