Weber Seminar paper

The origins of the word bureaucracy are that it is a French word, borrowed into German, to refer to an office/the workings of an office within a government. It is a servant, a means by which the government/monarchy/ruling class asserts itself. The ones who derived the word intended it to mean that the servant was becoming the master. Bureaucracy developed from times in the middle ages where force had to be asserted by the most powerful person directly. Now force is asserted through a chain of command, with messages being relayed to and from the focal point of power. These messages themselves are acted upon because of the “prestige” that the most powerful possess, it is known that to disobey one level of authority you disobey the whole and therefore the punishment would be like you offended the king himself. Weber points out that this bureaucracy has transcended it’s use in politics to be used in a whole manner of ways, for example it’s used in businesses and schools.  He also states that it is a truly pervasive feature in modern societies and that it can only grow in importance. Weber states many points that would make up the perfect bureaucracy. Firstly the economic point is that the bureaucrats within the bureaucracy will have to have a salary. This means that they are separated from property insofar as they are exempt from prebends/beneficiaries. Prebends and beneficiaries are like sources of income that can be derived from something. For example if you inherit a house then the income that you could receive renting it would be a prebend.In Weber’s mind bureaucrats would not be able to own anything like this, they would have to be restricted to the salary that they were given by the government or business or whatever institution they’re employed by. They cannot accept gifts or charge their own price for their business. The thinking behind this is that by having an official source of income they will follow the rules. The modern bureaucrat does not own his job. This is in oppositions to many other lines of work where the worker owns the job, which was common with most army and navy positions in Europe in the late 19^th century. Nor does the bureaucrat own the means of his work, for example they do not own the computers or the furniture that they use in their job, once again this can be related to the army of the 19^th century, where the soldiers were expected to supply their own weapons and food for the campaigns. Weber believed that to be a bureaucrat it had to be a lifetime, lifelong profession. There would have to be absolute dedication so that the best skills would be established. Since the bureaucrats would be staying in the line of work for life they would be the best and therefore most efficient. Here Weber also stresses the importance of good education. The almost overriding feature in Weber’s mind is the impersonality. Everything is done for professional reasons and not for personal reasons, this ties in to the not owning of the means of production because there is no personal attachment and by using the items the bureaucrats feel they owe who they’re working for. Weber narrows down bureaucracy’s into three types:  rational, traditional and charismatic. The charismatic bureaucracy works because there is a personal devotion to the leader. Traditional works because it’s always been and no one thinks to disobey it. Rational works because it’s the rule of law, it takes place in a society that obeys the law because they recognise the moral codes. Weber distinguishes the ‘zweckrationell’ from the ‘wertrationell’, or the goal-rational from the value-rational. The goal rational is when you use whatever course of conduct that will best ensure your ends. The ends always justify the means. Bureaucracy plays the same role in Weber’s account of the development of the modern society, as division of labour does in Adam Smith’s account. Weber’s account is more in depth almost because it shows the entire structure that the division follows, from the top right down to the bottom. Weber views bureaucracy in the same way that Marx views capitalism, as a respected enemy. Weber sees that bureaucracy is everywhere but unlike Marx, Weber does not see an end to bureaucracy, it’s inescapable. Though he did not believe that he would be successful he still rallied against bureaucracy. He compared the role of a bureaucrat with that of a politician. If a bureaucrat is given a task that he morally objects to he can question it with his superior but if his superior insists then the bureaucrat must follow the instruction as if they agreed with it at their most basic moral level. If a politician is told to do something that they morally disagree with then they are expected to sacrifice their jobs to make sure they don’t morally bankrupt themselves.