Anneke van Baalen, HIDDEN MASCULINITY, Max Weber's historical sociology of bureaucracy. 1994
Chapter 7 The city: new fraternities of patriarchs
123
These dictators were leading communal officials
65
, who 'came to be elected for increasingly
longer periods or even for life'
66
. They were 'the first political power in Western Europe which
based its regime on a rational administration with (increasingly) appointed officials', though
they 'also in most cases retained certain forms of the traditional communal constitution.'
Their offices became inheritable in practice and later legally, while they also expanded their
juridical power until it had developed into a patrimonial rulership.
67
Thus in the Italian cities a
rationalized patrimonialism developed from within, as illegitimate dictators became legitimate
patrimonial lords.
Elsewhere however the city democracy was eliminated from outside by the patrimonial lords,
who were connected with the great dynasties, 'against whose power any uprising of the
burghers would have had no chance of success.'
68
There too 'the historical interlude of urban
autonomy'
69
came to an end.
9. Transformation of patriarchy: from household to enterprise; individualization of family
members
The 'historical interlude' of urban military autonomy, the break with patrimonialism, was
supported by the market economy, which created the possibility of 'the ascent from bondage
to freedom by means of monetary acquisition'
70
. Because the urban citizenry 'usurped the
right to dissolve the bonds of seigneurial domination', in general 'the status differences
disappeared - at least insofar as they signified a differentiation between "free" and "unfree"
men.'
71
'Stadtluft macht frei': the city knows only formally free citizens - who are all of them adult
males. The burgher is a patriarch, the possessor of a house and a household.
72
Consequently, like the free patrimonial subject and the feudal vassal, he needs patriarchal
legitimation; this need counteracts the dissolving effects the market had on the general
patriarchal-patrimonial structure. The 'homo economicus' of economic science, who orients
his actions to his expectations of market processes, remains an sociological abstraction,
because in Weber's description of him the private aspects of his personality - his relationship
to the persons in his household who produce non-market goods and services - have been
split off and subsequently denied. This is why Weber has to conceptualize the social
processes which surround market transactions in a functionalist way - as a virtual 'market
65
Capitano del popolo, podestà della mercadanza, podestà of the commune.
66
ES p. 1318, WG p. 785.
67
'into a general commission (arbitrium generale) to issue all kinds of orders in competition with the council and
the commune, and finally into a rulership (dominium) with the right to govern the city libero arbitrio, to fill the
offices, and to issue decrees which had the power of laws.'
68
ES p. 1320, WG p. 787.
69
ES p. 1352, WG p. 804.
70
'The Occidental city thus was already in Antiquity, just like in Russia, a place where t h e
a s c e n t f r o m b o n d a g e t o f r e e d o m by means of monetary acquisition was possible', ES p. 1238,
WG p. 742.
71
ES p. 1239, WG p. 742/3.
72
See also ES p. 1243, WG p. 745: 'The city became a confederation of the individual burghers heads of
households)'; the German text literally translated says 'housefathers'.
 |
 |
 |