Max Weber - Politics as a Vocation

 

Max Weber – Politics as a Vocation

 

Politics as a Vocation describes Weber’s definitions of charisma and leaders, the type of people that fit the bill as a politician and called to the profession of politics.  Weber claims that a politician must make compromises between moral conviction and the ethic of responsibility which is what is required in the day-to-day affairs of government, getting your hands dirty, and to use the means of the state’s force to pursue and preserve the goals of the national interest of the state.  In other parts of the world where capitalism is not practiced today, Weber would counsel politicians to study that nations culture because it is within that context that a nation fails or flourishes. He contends that knowledge is power, and this is how bureaucracy achieves its power.  Therefore, if a nation is looking to change for the better, it is the knowledge of the state that can be far more important than technology, money, and in some instances the change in president or ruler. 

“Politics is made with the head, not with the other parts of body, nor the soul.”

Weber believed that an effective politician is one that can persuade its followers and greatly influence their emotions while governing with cold discipline and reasoning rationally.  He asserts that not all are called to this profession because of their vanity and often make decisions on their follower’s emotional attachments.

“Only the person who is sure that he will not despair when the world, from his standpoint of view, is too simpleminded and wicked to accept what he has to offer, and only the person is able to say ‘in spite of it all’ has the calling for the profession of politics!”

He also claims that the practice of politics is not a task for someone who seeks salvation for their eternal soul through the practice of religions such as Christianity where people seek peace, love, and brotherhood. 

 “The boss has no firm political ‘principles;’ he is completely unprincipled in attitude and asks merely: What will capture votes? Frequently he is a rather poorly educated man. But as a rule, he leads an inoffensive and correct private life. In his political morals, however, he naturally adjusts to the average ethical standards of political conduct, as a great many of us also may have done during the hoarding period in the field of economic ethics. That as a ‘professional’ politician the boss is socially despised does not worry him.”

This quote leads me to reflect on Nietzsche’s writing “He who fights with monsters should be careful lest he thereby become a monster”, where the boss’s way of thinking in his private affairs maintains his or her principal values. However, in his or her political morals, he or she is unprincipled and relinquishes their values to achieve the goals of the national interest of the state.