Politics as Vocation - Essay Example

POLITICS AS VOCATION In this famous article, Max Weber explains why he believes politics is the art of the possible. Very few single-issue or ideological people can win top office because politics is largely about building coalitions. If you take power and only respond to a small group of the population and refuse to compromise or be pragmatic whatsoever, it is unlikely you will last very long. Additionally, he writes about the qualities required to be a good stateman. Weber also talks about the state as having a monopoly on the use of force, an idea that comes from Hobbes. We see this as especially true today in police states such as North Korea and Iran. In the course of this essay Weber talks about how a state can control its people. He looks at the mechanism and function of a polity’s administration. Organized domination, which calls for continuous administration, requires that human conduct be conditioned to obedience towards those masters who claim to be the bearers of legitimate power. On the other hand, by virtue of this obedience, organized domination requires the control of those material goods which in a given case are necessary for the use of physical violence (Weber 3). This is part of a great debate in political science: how much control should people cede to their government? How much control should the state take in the best interests of its people? Some people believe in socialism and that everyone must be made equal by the government, the tall cut down and the short pulled up; others believe in a meritocracy where those people who have talent and work hard are rewarded for their labours. Is there a way to combine these two ideas? It might be possible, but it is unlikely that this “best of both worlds” approach would yield a society as productive as one that fully embraced individual freedom and capitalism. Thomas Hobbes, for example, is most famous for his book Leviathan, and he is a writer who Weber relies on for some of his thought about state control and sovereignty. In Leviathan, Hobbes argued that a “war of all against all” existed in nature and that people were mostly motivated by fear and distrust and that peoples’ motivations all conflicted with each other. The only way for order to prevail, Hobbes argued, would be through an absolute sovereign. Only a figure of immense power could guarantee the sorts of contracts people required with one another to live in peace. As Hobbes wrote, “The passions that incline men to peace, are fear of death; desire of such things as are necessary to commodious living; and a hope by their industry to obtain them” (Hobbes, 46). He believed that because people would do everything possible to preserve their lives and maximize their prosperity, there would be a constant battle between conflicting interests. In order to increase the order and prosperity of society as a whole, an absolute sovereign would have to make some minimum guarantees: namely, peace and the upholding of contracts. In this view of the world ethics must be imposed on human beings who are just animals red in tooth and claw and who live lives that are “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.” While there is certainly some truth to what Hobbes says regarding human beings, other political thinkers have questioned elements of his vision. Indeed there are several flaws in this theory, but it shows us that it is not possible for people to effectively work as a commune. That does not mean we need a dictator to control things, but it does mean we need a strong rule of law to protect individual freedoms. The rule of law is effectively the latter-day sovereign. It serves the same purpose: it protects contracts and business and prevents the seizure of power by socialist radicals. This is a point that Weber mostly agrees with, but he focuses a bit more on how the state is administered at the top: does it make a difference, for example, is the top members of the government have a stake in the state or if all power is centralized in the figure of the king or president? There is no easy answer to this question. It is useful to look at Weber’s ideas in practice and in a contemporary context. We can already see the negative effects in the United States under President Obama—who is rapidly increasing the American national debt and indebting future generations to come—of a leader who is centralizing power in his own office and is trying to create a monopoly on the use of force. The United States government today is extremely top-heavy (in part because of the Executivization of the government that occurred under the George W. Bush presidency). It may well become more so under the charismatic leadership of Obama. But the turn away from the traditional structures of the American economy cannot be good. It is very hard to balance social opportunity with the reduction of hierarchical structures. The truth is that some people rise to the top, and some people fail. That is the nature of the world, as unfair as it may sound. A few minor steps can be made to alleviate this unfairness—especially in cases where accidents or acts of a predatory nature have taken place—but wholescale efforts to redistribute wealth or reengineer society are bound to fail. The lessons of communism in eastern Europe and Russian as well as in China should be a great warning to us all. In Cambodia, for example, under the Khymer Rouge, they shot people who wore glasses because they believed they were intellectuals and supposedly of a higher class. In their zeal for radical egalitarianism they would do anything, including cutting off their noses to spite their faces. We must be very cautious of any shift in this general direction. As stated above, there are currently efforts underway in the United States to create a more equal system. By bailing out banks and people who took bad mortgages, ordinary taxpayers are having to foot the bill for the mistakes of other people. I don’t think Weber would agree with this. As seen by recent protest this is making many people very angry. The truth is that this is not the way the Western world operates. The country’s government is gaining too much power; it is becoming too bureacratic. Thanks to the reforms made my Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher among others, we were supposed to operate in a free market place where people can choose whether they want to succeed or to fail. This in turn led to globalization which is spreading wealth and opportunity around the world. People need to remember, now more than ever, that the foundations of Western prosperity lie in personal responsibility, following self-interest, and keeping markets open. Many of President Obama’s policies do not follow these principles and he has often flirted with protectionism, even stating a desire to open up the North America Free Trade Agreement which has proved so beneficial to the United States, Canada, and Mexico, as well as musing about “Buy American” provisions in his new budget. These measures have to be fought if we want to get through this crisis in one piece. Weber was a great and thoughtful man. Many of his political and sociological views continue to influence people to this day. His study of politics and power is especially useful in a day when we see a government power-grab in the United States. Politics, Weber says, is about compromise, not about the massive accumulation of power in one groups’ hands. Sources Hobbes, Thomas. Excerpt from Leviathan. In Pojman, Louis P. The Moral Life: An Introductory Reader in Ethics and Literature. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004. Weber, Max. “Politics as Vocation.” White, Joseph. “Uncle Sam enters the debate.” Wall Street Journal. June 23, 2009. Read More