Theoria

A ‘short’ extract from a larger piece I’m currently working on. The point of the larger piece is to understand the relation of the social to the political in political sociology. This section, on Max Weber and Carl Schmitt, takes their concept of the political as one of the strongest positions within political sociology. This section attempts to articulate their work on the political and point to reasons why it may be found wanting from the perspective of political sociology.

Subsequent sections will look at Pierre Clastres and Marshall Sahlins on ‘primitive societies’, Cornelius Castoriadis and Claude Lefort on ‘modern societies’, and the final major section will look at how Lefort and Giorgio Agamben draw upon Ernst Kantorowicz’s The King’s Two Bodies.

Some parts of this extract have been previously posted.

[Long: approximately 5000 words.]

A first attempt to understand the central relation of political sociology – that is, the articulation or entanglement of the social and the political – would be to assert that politics is a type of action or a sphere of action that occurs within the social. This suggests that there are a number of other possible spheres or types of action such as the moral, the economic, and the aesthetic.[1] Consequently, from this perspective, one would, first, attempt to ascertain the priority of the social over the other spheres or types of action because it must follow logically that these other types of action or spheres exist within the social. Secondly, one would seek to determine the relative autonomy of one sphere or type of action from the others. Finally, one would seek to discover whether a particular sphere or form of action is determinant of the others.

In terms of thinking of the political as a form or sphere of social action, an ideal starting point would be the dialogue between Max Weber and Carl Schmitt. This dialogue has remained largely unnoticed in Anglo-American scholarship. When the subject is, however, broached, the response is generally in the form of absolutes. Either is continuity between the thought of Weber and Schmitt or there is not. The former results in a questioning of Weber’s sympathy for fascism due only to this relationship with the ‘crown jurist’ or ‘theorist’ of the Reich. The latter results in the safe and simple compartmentalization of Weber as a liberal and the equally simple compartmentalization of Schmitt as a fascist. Wolfgang Mommsen, the Weber scholar, has written the most detailed overview of the reception of the Weber-Schmitt dialogue:

In other words, Wickelmann tried to prove once and for all that Max Weber and Carl Schmitt had nothing in common, and that there was no justification at all for attacking Weber’s notion of constitutional government as merely technological and value-neutral. In fact Wicklemann’s conclusion amounted to a well-intended reinterpretation of Weber in the light of the views prevailing in the Federal Republic at the time; in substance, however, it was simply false. […] Carl Schmitt and Roberto Michels had both taken this course [Weber’s understanding nationalism and charismatic leadership democracy] and had ended up by lending support to National Socialism and Italian fascism respectively. […] More controversial was the question whether Carl Schmitt’s theory of decisionism had to be seen as a direct consequence of Weber’s formalistic theory of democracy. […] Jürgen Habermas, on the other hand, emphasized, to the dismay of the more orthodox of the Weber experts, that Carl Schmitt’s decisionism as well as his theory of plebiscitary rule must indeed be seen as radical consequences following on from Weberian premises, even though Weber himself clearly had not intended ever to go that far.[2]

The debate concerning the Weber/Schmitt dialogue continues to this date, polarized as ever. The ‘discontinuity’ position appears to be dominant and in favour. For instance, not long after the publication of Mommsen’s essay in English, Charles Turner is able to write of “the alleged continuity between his [Schmitt’s] and Weber’s politics.”[3]

As the reader no doubt suspects, I endorse the ‘continuity’ position. Like Habermas, I see a theoretical continuity between Weber and Schmitt and, once again like Habermas, I do not think Weber intended for his work to go in such directions as they were taken by Schmitt, nor do I think Weber would have endorsed fascism. However, unlike many commentators, I am not prepared to dismiss Weber or Schmitt because of an association with fascism. Such dismissals are lazy and, ultimately, unhelpful.

Max Weber’s Economy and Society has become a classic text in sociology and social theory in part because of its genius and in part because its encyclopedic breadth touches upon all parts of the discipline. The core of this work confronts the traditional opposition between structure and agency and the micro and the macro. What unites the various studies – of epistemology and ontology, law and economy, religion and rationalization – is a concern with the political. The over-riding concern is to present an alternative science of society to utilitarian political economy and the radical critique of political economy. Most especially, Weber was concerned with the form of authority proper to the modern industrial state.[4] Carl Schmitt largely follows these Weberian categories and concerns while at the same time providing a response to and an attack on Weber’s politics.[5]

Before proceeding to the theoretical grounds for asserting a continuity between their thought, it is worth raising the question of the historical grounds. Schmitt scholars, especially those who have attempted to make a case for Schmitt’s importance to English language social and political theory, have brought many factual tidbits to our attention that culminate in a strong case for the continuity thesis.[6] First, a passage from Joseph Bendersky’s biography of Schmitt could be cited:

Schmitt’s intellectual re-orientation placed him among that small minority of German scholars – including Max Weber, Ferdinand Tönnies, and Max Scheler – who recognized the importance of sociological and political studies. Schmitt had, in fact, participated in Weber’s seminar at Munich in 1919-20, and he later published sections of Politsche Theologie as his contribution to a Fechtschrift in honor of Weber.[7]

Bendersky provides good reason to see a general influence of Weber on Schmitt, but this does not entail a direct continuity between the two. Perhaps the most instructive evidence comes from another source. John McCormick, in a book on Schmitt, confidently writes, “Throughout this work, however, I make constant reference to a figure who had perhaps the most profound influence on Schmitt and to whom Schmitt referred as that ‘German professor of liberal provenance,’ Max Weber.”[8]

Having determined that there are strong historical reasons to assert a continuity between Weber and Schmitt, it is necessary to turn to the theoretical reasons. Much can (and should) be said about Weber’s central concept of social action. This, however, is not the place to do it. The point that I want to make is that social action is a more general, and therefore encompassing, form of action to the more specific, and therefore encompassed, form of action proper to the political. In other words, ‘the political’ is contained within ‘the social.’ This point follows from Weber’s definitions of ‘action’ and ‘social’:

We shall speak of ‘action’ insofar as the acting individual attaches a subjective meaning to his behavior – be it overt or covert, omission or acquiescence. Action is ‘social’ insofar as its subjective meaning takes into account of the behavior of others and is thereby oriented in its course.[9]

Social action, then, is the most broad form of action and therefore encompasses all other forms of action that ‘take into account the behavior of others.’ All other forms of action are at once social (in their generality) and particular in terms of their specific ends. Thus, economic action is the form of social action that has the profitable as its specific ends. Other forms of action can be similarly delineated: as action, it is social insofar as it takes ‘the behavior of others’ into account, but it is specific insofar as is has ends particular to it.

While is comparatively easy to delineate various specific forms of action (economic, aesthetic, moral) on account of their ends (profitable, beautiful, good), the political presents a problem because, according to Weber, it has no end specific to it. The further one reads Economy and Society, it becomes apparent that Weber thought it was impossible or futile to define the political for two reasons: first, while the political has means specific to it, namely force, it has no ends specific to it; second, because the means of the political constantly calls the political itself into question through legitimacy. It is legitimacy that separates the means of the political (force) from something beyond the political (violence). Anthony Giddens this relationship between force and violence that always calls the political into question:

Weber not only defines the state in terms of control of the means of violence, but does the same for the ‘political’, which is a far wider category. A ‘political’ orgnization, according to Weber, cannot be specified in terms of the ends to which it is devoted. There cannot be a satisfactory ‘substantive’ definition of the political, because political organizations, including states, have been concerned with all sorts of different activities. […] The only feature which all political groups have in common is the means they employ, namely the use of force.[10]

The problem the political presents comes into closer relief: first, anything can be the end of political action; second, the means particular to political action – force – quickly becomes violence. Weber expresses this problem in at least three different formulations in Economy and Society, only coming to a conclusion in the problem in his lecture “Politics as a Vocation”:

(1) It is not possible to define a political organization, including the state, in terms of the end to which action is devoted. All the way from provision for subsistence to the patronage of art, there is no conceivable end which some political association has not at some time pursued. And from the protection of personal security to the administration of justice, there is none which all have recognized. Thus it is possible to define the ‘political’ character of an organization only in terms of the means peculiar to it, the use of force. This means is, however, in the above sense specific, and is indispensable to its character. It is even, under certain circumstances, elevated into an end in itself.[11]
(2) Owing to the drastic nature of its means of control, the political association is particularly capable of arrogating to itself all the possible values toward which associational conduct might be oriented; there is probably nothing in the world which at one time or another has not been an object of social action on the part of some political association.[12]
(3) The political community, furthermore, is one of those communities whose action includes, at least under normal circumstances, coercion through jeopardy and destruction of life and freedom of movement applying to outsiders as well as to the members themselves. The individual is expected ultimately to face death in the group interest.[13]

The solution to the problem of ends (which can be anything) and means (which is force) is to constrain the political, on the one hand, with legitimacy, and, on the other, displace the political into the ethical.[14] This move is most fully explored in “Politics as a Vocation,” which decisively influenced Carl Schmitt.

Approximately halfway through his lecture, Weber declares, “The decisive means for politics is violence.”[15] The question does arise as to the relation between ‘force’ (the word Weber uses in Economy and Society) and ‘violence’ (the word he uses here). Afterall, if the word violence is correct, this presents an entirely new definition of the political. Fortunately, Weber uses the words ‘force’ and ‘violence’ in the same paragraph at the start of lecture, possibly clarifying the matter:

‘Every state is founded on force,’ said Trotsky at Brest-Litovsk. That is indeed right. If no social institutions existed which knew the use of violence, then the concept of ‘state’ would be eliminated, and a condition would emerge that could be designated as ‘anarchy,’ in the specific sense of this word. Of course, force is certainly not the normal or the only means of the state – nobody says that – but force is a means specific to the state. Today the relation between the state and violence is an especially intimate one. In the past, the most varied institutions – beginning with the sib – have known the use of physical force as quite normal. Today, however, we have to say that a state is a human community that (successfully) claims the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force within a giving territory. Note that ‘territory’ is one of the characteristics of the state. Specifically, at the present time, the right to use physical force is ascribed to other institutions or to individuals only to the extent to which the state permits it. The state is considered the sole source of the ‘right’ to use violence. Hence, ‘politics’ for us means striving to share power or striving to influence the distribution of power, either among states or among groups within a state.[16]

The paragraph reveals a consistent elision in terms:

force -> physical force -> violence

The state’s role is rather murky: it ‘claims the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force’ and it is ‘the sole source of the ‘right’ to use violence.’ As arbiter of right and ultimate source of violence, the state becomes the locus of competing interests in the distribution of power, which appears as the ability realize one’s objectives.[17]

The question, then, is as follows: are force, physical force, and violence equivalent? What is the relation between force/violence and legitimacy? The answer, for Weber, can only be found through displacing the political into the ethical.[18] Alongside an argument that proposes ‘leadership democracy,’ the “Politics as a Vocation” also attempts to place the political within the ethical such that the power of a ‘great leader’ would be constrained by a moral imperative. Noting that action can be oriented towards either an ‘ethic of ultimate ends’ or towards an ‘ethic of responsibility,’ Weber states:

No ethics in the world can dodge the fact that in numerous instances the attainment of ‘good’ ends is bound to the fact that one must be willing to pay the price of using morally dubious means or at least dangerous ones – and facing the possibility or even the probability of evil ramifications. From no ethics in the world can it be concluded when and to what extent the ethically good purpose ‘justifies’ the ethically dangerous means and ramifications.[19]

This statement leads directly into passage already cited: ‘The decisive means for politics is violence.’ That violence is the decisive means for politics creates a problem for any attempt to resolve the contradiction between ‘ultimate ends’ and ‘responsibility’: “If one makes any concessions at all to the principle that the end justifies the means, it is not possible to bring an ethic of ultimate ends and an ethic of responsibility under one roof or to decree ethically which end should justify which means.”[20] Anyone who fails to recognize this dilemma is a “political infant.”[21] Thus, politics requires a certain sort person, a “genuine leader,” who can embrace the paradox of politics, ethics and violence.[22] Weber is now prepared to deliver his conclusion:

it is immensely moving when a mature man – no matter whether old or young in years – is aware of a responsibility for the consequences of his conduct and really feels such responsibility with heart and soul. He then acts by following an ethic of responsibility and somewhere reaches the point where he says: ‘Here I stand; I can do no other.’ That is something genuinely human and moving. And everyone of us who is not spiritually dead must realize the possibility of finding himself at some time in that position. In so far as this is true, an ethic of ultimate ends and an ethic of responsibility are not absolute contrasts but rather supplements, which only in unison constitute a genuine man – a man who can have the ‘calling for politics’.[23]

The result of such a movement is that the political is pushed into an ethical paradox caught between responsibility and ends whereby only a ‘great leader’ is able to take on the existential demands of resolving the paradox through the decision. Weber’s endorsement of Luther’s stance at the Diet of Worms is revealing: the consequences of Luther’s stance are enormous.

This decisionistic moment presents an ideal opportunity to turn from Weber to Carl Schmitt. In The Concept of the Political, Schmitt immediately identifies Weber’s problem: the political cannot be defined on the basis of its specific end because the political has taken and will continue to take any end as its own. The political is antagonistic to all the other domains (economic, religious, moral, aesthetic, etc). What Schmitt means by ‘antagonistic’ is that the political is not reducible to any of these domains. Economic competition is not immediately political, although the economic may form the basis of a political struggle; thus, the political is autonomous from the other domains. Schmitt appears to part ways with Weber’s analysis on two points. First, the political cannot be reduced to an ethical decision on the paradox of responsibility and ultimate ends; second, the political can be specified in terms of a specific end. These two points culminate in a complete theory of the political. The first point runs as follows:

A definition of the political can be obtained only discovering and defining the specifically political categories. In contrast to the various relatively independent endeavors of human thought and action, particularly the moral, aesthetic, and economic, the political has its own criteria which express themselves in a characteristic way. The political must therefore rest on its own ultimate distinctions, to which all action with a specifically political meaning can be traced. Let us assume that in the realm of morality the final distinctions are between good and evil, in aesthetics beautiful and ugly, in economics profitable and unprofitable. The question then is whether there is also a special distinction which can serve as a simple criterion of the political and of what it consists. The nature of such a political distinction is surely different from that of those others. It is independent of them and as such can speak clearly for itself.[24]

Put into such a relation, it is clear to Schmitt that each sphere of the social is determined by an irreducible antagonism that constitutes it. We are familiar with the relevant distinctions in all the spheres, with the exception of the political. Schmitt, of course, furnishes us with an answer:

The specific political distinction to which political actions and motives can be reduced is that between friend and enemy. This provides a definition in the sense of a criterion and not as an exhaustive definition or one indicative of substantial content. Insofar as it is not derived from other criteria, the antithesis of friend and enemy corresponds to the relatively independent criteria of other antitheses: good and evil in the moral sphere, beautiful and ugly in the aesthetic sphere, and so on. In any event it is independent, not in the sense of a distinct new domain, but in that it can neither be based on any one antithesis or any combination of other antitheses, nor can it be traced to these. If the antithesis of good and evil is not simply identical with that of beautiful and ugly, profitable and unprofitable, and cannot be directly reduced to the others, then the antithesis of friend and enemy must even less be confused with or mistaken for the others. The distinction of friend and enemy denotes the utmost degree of intensity of a union or separation, of an association or dissociation. It can exist theoretically and practically, without having simultaneously to draw upon all those moral, aesthetic, economic, or other distinctions. The political enemy need not be morally evil or aesthetically ugly; he need not appear as an economic competitor, and it may even be advantageous to engage with him in business transactions. But he is, nevertheless, the other, the stranger; and it is sufficient for his nature that he is, in a specifically intense way, existentially something different and alien, so that in the extreme case conflicts with him are possible. These can neither be decided by a previously determined general norm nor by the judgment of a disinterested and therefore neutral third party.[25]

Having claimed that the political cannot be reduced to an ethical decision and that the political is constituted by the friend/enemy antagonism, we are thus left with the questions of means and ends specific to the political and that form that the political decision takes. With respect to the first answer, the ends of the political are autonomous from the domain itself (anything can be political, but not everything is political) while the means are not to be found in any normative theory (especially in law or morality), but rather in combat, force and violence. To this extent, Schmitt’s concept of the political is identical to Weber’s. The important difference emerges relative to the form of the decision: for Weber it was ethical, for Schmitt it is existential and vital. To determine the enemy is at the same time to determine who will kill and who will be killed. The political decision is a matter of life and death; that is to say, at its extreme, the political is the decision on who lives and dies:

For to the enemy concept belongs the ever present possibility of combat. All peripherals must be left aside from this term, including military details and the development of weapons technology. War is armed combat between organized political entities; civil war is armed combat within an organized unit. A self-laceration endangers the survival of the latter. The essence of a weapon is that it is a means of physically killing human beings. Just as the term enemy, the word combat, too, is to be understood in its original existential sense. It does not mean competition, nor does it mean pure intellectual controversy nor symbolic wrestlings in which, after all, every human being is somehow involved, for it is a fact that the entire life of a human being is a struggle and every human being symbolically a combatant. The friend, enemy, and combat concepts receive their real meaning precisely because they refer to the real possibility of physical killing. War follows from enmity. War is the existential negation of the enemy. It is the most extreme consequence of enmity. It does not have to be common, normal, something ideal, or desirable. But it must nevertheless remain a real possibility for as long as the concept of the enemy remains valid.[26]

Schmitt, then, solves the problem confronting Weber. While violence may be the decisive means of politics, violence is not what gives politics its definition or its meaning. Legitimacy does not fit into the definition of the political. This is telegraphed in the second sentence of the book where Schmitt paraphrases Weber, leaving out one essential element: “According to modern linguistic usage, the state is the political status of an organized people in an enclosed territorial unit.”[27] The claim to the legitimate monopoly of coercive force by the modern state is just that remains nothing but a claim or, perhaps, a mere statement of fact. It is not an essential feature of the modern state. Rather, the essential feature is the relation between the collectivity and territory, which necessarily implies an external relation to other collectivity/territory units. Violence, then, does not fit into the definition of the state, but into the definition of the political. Weber’s inability to separate the state from the political in modernity lead him to an inability to specify the political. The political ceases to be the transition from threat of violence to the exercise of violence. Instead, the political becomes the ever-present possibility of violence.

Finally, we can turn back to the question of political sociology: how successful was Weber and Schmitt’s attempt to define the terrain of political sociology? Approaching Weber and Schmitt from a different angle and degree of abstraction, we might say that Weber and Schmitt present a Kantian schema of the social. What Weber and Schmitt have provided is a transcendental and pre-phenomenological mechanism for the apprehension of the social. For them, all these domains are present and defined in a particular way. These domains generate problems, which are managed through the logic of the relevant antagonism. It isn’t beyond reason to compare these antagonisms to Kant’s antinomies. Actual historical and empirical reality fill the schema with content. Thus, the empirical moment is secondary to the transcendental moment, and one cannot exist without the other. The problem with their position reveals itself: the movement of the system can only appear as the exceptional and irrational. Further, the constitution of the system is trapped within the system itself. The generative principle is already generated; the political is inside the social. Changes to the constitution of the system can only happen outside the system itself.

[1] This is list is not intended to be complete.
[2] Wolfgang J. Mommsen (1989) The Political and Social Theory of Max Weber: Collected Essays, Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 190-2. The “on the other hand” to which Habermas is replying to is Raymond Aron’s “Max Weber and Power Politics”, presented at the same conference. The essay can be found in Otto Stammer (1971) Max Weber and Sociology Today, New York: Harper & Row.
[3] Charles Turner (1992) Modernity and Politics in the Work of Max Weber, London and New York: Routledge, 113. Emphasis added.
[4] Peter Wagner (1990) “Science of Society Lost: On the Failure to Establish Sociology in Europe During the ‘Classical’ Period” in Discourses on Society XV, 230.
[5] That is, ‘politics’ as distinct from ‘the political.’
[6] It is interesting to note the dynamic of the ‘continuity’ thesis as it plays out rhetorically: if Schmitt is in continuity with Weber, then this reflects well on Schmitt and poorly on Weber. Schmitt’s prestige – that is, the degree to which he should be taken seriously, his fascism notwithstanding – increases due to an association with Weber. Weber’s prestige, however, decreases due to an association with Schmitt and, therefore, fascism.
[7] Joseph Bendersky (1983) Carl Schmitt: Theorist for the Reich, Princeton: Princeton UP, 35.
[8] John McCormick (1997) Carl Schmitt’s Critique of Liberalism: Against Politics as Technology, Cambridge, UK: Cambridge UP, 8.
[9] Max Weber, Economy and Society, vol. 1, 4.
[10] Anthony Giddens (1987) The Nation-State and Violence, Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 19.
[11] Weber, Economy and Society, vol. 1, 55.
[12] Weber, Economy and Society, vol. 2, 902.
[13] Weber, Economy and Society, vol. 2, 903.
[14] While certainly not the first to displace the political into the ethical, such a move demonstrates his (much overlooked) contemporaneity.
[15] Max Weber (1958) “Politics as a Vocation” in From Max Weber, H.H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills (eds), Oxford: Oxford UP, 121. Emphasis added.
[16] Weber, “Politics as a Vocation,” 78.
[17] Weber (Economy and Society, vol. 1, 53) distinguishes between power and domination. “‘Power is the probability that one actor within a social relationship will be in a position to carry out his own will despite resistance, regardless of the basis on which this probability rests. ‘Domination’ is the probability that a command with a given specific content will be obeyed by a given group of persons.” The distinction appears to be that power is premised upon the possibility of resistance to its exercise. (Once again, Weber reveals an important contemporaneity.) In this sense, everyone is equally subject to power qua power, but not everyone is equally subject to power qua intensity. Some are more able to control the balance of probabilities than others. This is the ‘legitimate’ face of power. In contrast, domination refers to a situation when one party is able to command another party without reference to the will of the party being commanded. That is, domination introduces a different form of sanction that could possibly draw upon the right to exercise violence. This is the illegitimate face of power as it becomes increasingly polarized.
[18] These are extremely interesting and important questions, but I am forced to set aside the force/violence relationship for reasons of brevity. This problem is not unique to Weber, which is why it cannot be dealt with at this time. Rather, it was a dominant concern for German intellectuals of the Weimar Republic. A full answer would require entering Walter Benjamin into the debate. The relevant texts are Max Weber’s “Politics as a Vocation” (lecture 1918, published 1919), Walter Benjamin’s “Critique of Violence” (1921) and Carl Schmitt’s Political Theology (1922). And, certainly, it is significant that they are, respectively, Protestant, Jewish and Catholic.
[19] Weber, “Politics as a Vocation,” 121.
[20] Weber, “Politics as a Vocation,” 122.
[21] Weber, “Politics as a Vocation,” 123.
[22] Weber, “Politics as a Vocation,” 125.
[23] Weber, “Politics as a Vocation,” 127. Pursuant to my comment regarding Weber’s Protestantism, Weber’s allusion of the words of the ‘mature man’ are to Martin Luther’s statement at the Diet of Worms: “Here I stand, I can do no other, God help me, Amen.” The consequences of Luther’s position are, of course, immense, thus revealing the sort of politics and, therefore, politicians, Weber envisioned. It is no coincidence that Luther figures so prominently here: Luther’s doctrine was central to Weber’s most famous work, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism.
[24] Schmitt, The Concept of the Political, 25-6.
[25] Schmitt, The Concept of the Political, 26-7.
[26] Schmitt, The Concept of the Political, 33.
[27] Schmitt, The Concept of the Political, 19.