Who was Max Weber?
Max Weber was born in Erfurt, in Prussia, in 1864. His family was wealthy and close to politics. He held professorships at Freiburg and Heidelberg, but a mental collapse in 1903 pulled him out of normal teaching until 1919. His writing, among it The Protestant Ethic and the lecture Politics as a Vocation, laid the ground for modern sociology. At the start of World War I he backed Germany, but he later became a sharp critic of the Kaiser's rule. He helped found the liberal German Democratic Party in 1918, gave advice at Versailles and on the Weimar Constitution, and died of pneumonia in Munich in 1920.
Political views
- His famous definition says the state is the organization that alone may legitimately use force within its territory.Source: plato.stanford.edu
- He sorted legitimate rule into three types: the charismatic, the traditional and the legal-rational.Source: plato.stanford.edu
- He worried that bureaucracy brings efficiency but can trap people in an 'iron cage' where freedom wastes away.Source: plato.stanford.edu
- He said a responsible politician needs two things: firm convictions and a sense of duty for what actions lead to.Source: en.wikipedia.org
- In wartime Germany he called for more democracy, votes for all and a stronger parliament, and he backed a powerful president elected by the people.Source: en.wikipedia.org
- He opposed the 1918 revolution and the Treaty of Versailles, and he denied that Germany alone was guilty of starting the war.Source: plato.stanford.edu
Legacy
Weber ranks among the founders of sociology, and political scientists still use his ideas about bureaucracy, charisma, legitimacy and the state. Liberals admire the way he defended individual freedom against the machinery of administration, and the hard-headed way he described leaders who must compromise. Critics point to his fierce nationalism, his early hostility toward Polish immigrants and his love of national power. Jürgen Habermas and others say his picture of leader democracy, with a strong president, fed authoritarian currents in Weimar Germany. His defenders answer that he always wanted leaders held to account by voters. Many people still read Politics as a Vocation for its guidance on ethics in leadership.