Translation:Politics as a Vocation

The lecture, which I have to fulfill at your request, will necessarily disappoint you in different directions. In a speech about politics as a profession you will involuntarily expect an opinion on current issues of the day. But this will only happen in a purely formal way at the end, on the basis of certain questions of the significance of political action within the whole life-style. Must be switched off completely, however in today's presentation all questions relating to: what policies to drive that content, it means that you give his political action should. Because that has to do with the general question: what is politics as a profession and can mean to do nothing. - With it to the point!

What do we mean by politics? The term is extraordinarily wide and includes every kind of independent executive activity. One speaks of the foreign exchange policy of the banks, of the discount policy of the Reichsbank, of the politics of a union in a strike, one can speak of the school policy of a city or village municipality, of the policy of an association executive committee in its direction, and finally of the politics of one smart woman who seeks to direct her husband. Of course, such a broader concept is not based on our considerations of this evening. Today we only want to understand this as the management or influence of the leadership of a political association, today of a state.

But what is a "political" association from the point of view of sociological analysis? What is a "state"? He too can not be sociologically defined from the content of what he does. There is almost no task that a political organization would not have taken in hand here and there, nor any of which one could say that at any time, completely: that it is always exclusive to those associations that are considered political, today: as states, designated, or which historically were the ancestors of the modern state, would have been proper. One can rather be the modern one In the end, sociological state can only be defined from a specific means that suits it, like any political association: physical violence. "Every state is founded on violence," said Trozky in Brest-Litovsk. That's right, in fact. If there were only social structures to which violence was unknown as a means, then the term "state" would have fallen away, thenIt would have been what one would call "anarchy" in this special sense of the word. Of course, violence is not the normal or the only means of the state: there is no question of that, but it is the specific one. Especially today the relationship of the state to violence is especially intimate. In the past, all sorts of associations - started by the clan - have known physical violence as a normal means. Today, on the other hand, we shall have to say that the state is that human community that within a certain area-this is the "territory," is characteristic of the monopoly of legitimate physical violenceclaimed for itself (with success). For the specificity of the present is that one ascribes to all other associations or individuals the right to physical violence only to the extent that the state permits them from their side: he is regarded as the sole source of the "right" for violence. For us, "politics" would mean striving for a share of power or for influencing the distribution of power, be it between states, be it within a state between the human groups that it encloses.

Every power which requires continuous administration requires on the one hand the attitude of human action towards obedience to those gentlemen who claim to be the bearers of legitimate power, and on the other hand, by means of this obedience, the disposition of those goods which may be used for the physical exercise of force necessary: ​​the personal administrative staff and the administrative tools.

This essentially corresponds to the language usage. If one says of a question, she is a "political" Question, by a minister or official: he was a "political" official, of a decision: he was "political" conditioned, it is always meant: power distribution, power maintenance or power shift interests are decisive for the answer to that question or condition this decision or determine the sphere of activity of the official concerned. - Who drives politics, strives for power, - Power either as a means in the service of other goals - ideal or selfish - or power "for its own sake": to enjoy the prestige feeling that gives them.

The state, like the political organizations that preceded it historically, is a rule of domination of people over people based on the means of legitimate (that is, legitimate) violence. So that he insists, the ruled people must submit to the claimed authority of the ruling ones. When and why do you do that? On which inner justifications and on what external means does this rule rest?

There are, in principle, three inner justifications, that is, the legitimacy of a rule - to begin with them. Once the authority of the "eternally yesterday": the custom sanctified by their unrestrained validity and habitual attitude to their observance : "traditional" rule, as practiced by the patriarch and the patrician prince of the old school. Then: the authority of the extra-ordinary personal gift of grace(Charisma), the very personal devotion and the personal confidence in revelation, heroism or other leadership qualities of a single: "charismatic" rule, as the prophet or - in the field of the political - the crowned warlord or the plebiscitary ruler, the great demagogue and exercise political party leaders. Finally: rule by virtue of "legality", by virtue of the belief in the validity of legal statutes and the substantive "competence" established by rationally created rules, ie: the attitude to obedience in the fulfillment of statutory obligations: one Domination, as practiced by the modern "civil servant" and all those bearers of power that resemble him in this regard. - It is understood that in reality extremely massive motives of fear and hope - fear of the revenge of magical powers or of the ruler, hope for otherworldly or salaried wages - and, in addition, interests of various kinds, cause compliance. Of it immediately. But if you ask for the "legitimacy" of this docility, then you come across these three "pure" types. And these ideas of legitimacy and their inner justification are of very considerable importance to the structure of domination. To be sure, the pure types are rarely found in reality. But it can be today on the most intricate modifications, Transitions and combinations of these pure types are not dealt with: this is part of the problem of "general political science". Above all, we are interested in the second of those types: domination by virtue of the obedience of the obedient to the purely personal "charisma" of the "leader". Because here the idea of ​​the Professional in its highest form. The dedication to the charism of the prophet or the leader in the war or of the great demagogue in the Ecclesia or in the parliament means that he is personally considered the internally "appointed" leader of men, that they do not submit to him by custom or statute but because they believe in him. He himself lives his cause, "seeks his work," when he is more than a narrow and vain upstart of the moment. His person and his qualities, however, are subject to the devotion of his followers: discipleship, followers, and wholly personal partisanship. In the two most important figures in the past: the magician and prophet on the one hand, the warlord of war, gang leader, condottiere on the other, Leadership has occurred in all areas and historical periods. What is peculiar to the Occident, however, is what concerns us more closely: the political leadership in the guise of first of the free "demagogue", who on the ground of only the Occident, especially the medieval culture, own City state, and then the parliamentary "party leader" who has grown on the bottom of the constitutional state, which is also native to the West.

These politicians by virtue of "occupation" in the literal meaning of the word are nowhere, of course, the only authoritative figures in the transmission of the political power struggle. The most important thing is the type of resources available to them. How do the political rulers begin to assert themselves in their rule? The question applies to every kind of rule, including political rule in all its forms: traditional, legal and charismatic.

The administrative staff, which represents the political power as any other enterprise in its outward appearance, is now, of course, chained to obedience to the ruler, not only by the conception of legitimacy that has just been mentioned. But by two means, which appeal to the personal interest: material remuneration and social honor. Fiefs of the vassals, benefactors of the patrimonial officials, salaries of modern civil servants, - knight honor, estates privileges, civil servants honor pay, and the fear of losing them, the last decisive basis for the solidarity of the administrative staff with the ruler. Also for the charismatic leader rule this applies: War honor and booty for the warlike, the "spoils"Exploitation of the ruled by office monopoly, political profits and vanity bonuses for the demagogic following.

Maintaining every violent rule requires certain material external goods, much like an economic operation. All state orders can now be subdivided according to whether they rest on the principle that that staff of men: - officials or who they are otherwise - on whose obedience the ruler must be able to count, in their own possession of the administrative means, may they insist Money, buildings, war material, car parks, Horses, or whatever else they are, or whether the administrative staff is "separate" from the administrative resources, in the same sense that today the employee and proletarians within the capitalist enterprise are "separated" from the material means of production. So whether the ruler has the administration in his own organized by the direction and can be managed by personal servants or salaried officials or personal minions and confidants who are not owners: owners of their own right, the material resources, but are directed by the Lord, or whether the opposite is the case. The difference goes through all administrative organizations of the past.

We want to call a political association, in which the material administrative means are wholly or partly in the power of the dependent administrative staff, a " ständisch " structured association. The vassal z. In the Lehnsverband, for example, the administration and administration of justice of the district, which had been given to him, denied it out of their own pockets, equipping and providing themselves for the war. his undervasions did the same. This, of course, had consequences for the position of power of the Lord, which rested only on the personal loyalty and on the fact that the feudal property and the social honor of the vassal derived their "legitimacy" from the Lord.

But everywhere, even back to the earliest political formations, we also find the Lord's own direction: through his personal dependents: slaves, domestic servants, servants, personal "minions" and benefactors borrowed from his storehouses with natural and money deposits he seeks the To get the administration into his own hands, to pay for the funds out of his own pocket, out of the profits of his patrimony, to create an army that depends purely on him personally, because he has equipped and stockpiled his army out of his stores, magazines and armories. While in the "ständischen" association the master rules with the help of an independent "aristocracy", thus shares with it the rule, he relies here either on Haushörige or on Plebejer: propertyless, the own social honor depleting layers, the material are completely chained to him and have no competing own power under their feet. All forms of patriarchal and patrimonial rule, sultanistic despotism and bureaucratic state order belong to this type. In particular: the bureaucratic state order, that is, in its most rational form, also characteristic of the modern state.

Everywhere the development of the modern state comes into flux, in that on the part of the prince the expropriation of the independent "private" bearers of administrative power, those owners of administrative and war resources, financial resources and politically usable goods of all kinds, is initiated becomes. The whole process is a complete parallel to the development of capitalist operation through the gradual expropriation of independent producers. In the end, we see that in the modern state, in a single spike, in fact, disposition over all political resources converges, not a single official is the personal owner of the money he spends, or the buildings, supplies, tools, war machines, over the he disposes. Completely carried out is thus in today's "state" - that is essential for him conceptually - the "separation" of the administrative staff: the administrative officials and administrative workers, from the factual resources. This is where the most modern development comes in and tries before our eyes to initiate the expropriation of this expropriator of political means and thus political power. The revolution has done so at least to the extent that leaders have taken the place of the appointed authorities, who by usurpation or election have taken control of the political staff and equipment and derive their legitimacy, no matter how right, from the will of the ruled, Another question is