Ethics and Economics

Max Weber: Politics as a vocation - Critical appraisal

The lecture Max Weber gave about “Politics as a vocation” highlights various ideas when it
comes to politics, the choice of having a career in politics, and the various types of leaders in
the political world. Besides that, Weber discussed the two ways of making politics: one either
lives for politics or one lives off politics.

According to Webber, a thought that I considered strong was regarding the three ways that
power may be justified. In fact, a leader can be able to perfectly justify their position of
authority concerning the three classifications well highlighted by Weber: Traditional,
Charismatic and Legal. As a matter of fact, the traditional authority may be a way of justifying
the authority, as the hereditary succession of power in the case of monarchies, or even as the
case of patriarchs and patrimonial rulers may serve as an example. Also, the personal gift of
grace or the charismatic style is most representative of a politician who embodies leadership
traits in a most straightforward way, since they are enthusiastic and self-confident individuals
who easily motivate and inspire people, as seen in the case of Dalai Lama and Martin Luther
King, for example. The third classification is indeed domination by virtue of legality which is
characterized as the power that is legally linked to a certain status.

Webber defines the state as a “human community that (successfully) claims the monopoly of
the legitimate use of physical force within a given territory”. In the past, I believe that every
state’s power was mostly defined by its force or violence, but it can’t be a fundamental
requirement needed for a state to have political legitimacy and not collapse. Certainly, the use
of violence must not be the element which prevails in a state and not be in an intimate
correlation every time, since joint population’s decision and consequent peace must be
achieved in order to disagreements, frustration and protests be avoided. Thus, we can
conclude that Webber has an extremely negative outlook on the definition of politics and he
doesn’t offer any other solution to the requirements of an emerging state. Also, another weak
argument that I found was the long historical explanations of how politics arose, using too
many historical examples of Germany, the United States, Great Britain, France, etc.

Despite having a complete explanation of his understanding of various concepts regarding

sociology and politics, Webber limited his view of both space and time.

Mariana Lemos