Max Weber Domination Summary

Essay on the subject of power and way of thinking with refrences to the essays titled ;

Both men mention that the leaders must have good reasons for what they are doing. Because the good reasons, ruler can dominate people easily. For example, if the prince had used punishment to people without any reasons,

Weber mentions that “Domination was defined above as the probability that certain specific commands (or all commands will be obeyed by a given group of persons…Domination in this sense may be based on the most diverse motives of compliance” (Weber:112). To explain, Weber believes that this legitimate domination can be habitually following orders from leaders such as the Narrator following company policies and, most importantly, his manager while at work. Weber says this behavior originates from the “uncritical, unresisting masses” (Weber:113); or humans who simply consent to all authority without thought or care. On the other hand, Weber also says that legitimate domination can be in the form of calculated ulterior motives for following someone’s orders. For example, Project Mayhem follow the orders of Tyler Durden with the expectation that their efforts will be noticed and they will advance in

The essays that comprise Traditional Classics on Leadership present varying notions of authority and of challenging authority. This is largely due to the fact that this manuscript is comprised of essays from 31 contributors, ranging from well-known political theorists to some of the more salient voices for individuality that the world has known. Still, there are some points of commonalities in these essays that present a synthesized viewpoint of the concept of challenging authority.

My understanding of the Matrix of Domination is that it’s the intersectionality of social factors such as gender, class, and race, and their cumulative impact on a person's life. This relates to C Wright Mills’ “Sociological Imagination”, the relationship between personal troubles and societal issues,

A professional is a person who relates to a job that requires special education, training, or skill. Max Weber, in his theories believed that there was set qualifications that allowed a specific person to be regarded as a so called professional. When comparing 19th century baseball players to Weber’s ideals, this specific criterion which includes qualifications such as, full time occupation, clientele, promotions, power and doctrine, and vocational qualifications among many others help to decide whether these players can be considered professionals. According to Weber’s theory, baseball players mainly were not professionalized because they mainly lacked power, clientele, and salaries.

Modern day power originates from the mind in that we give certain figures power based upon man-made forms of value or worth like money. The definition of power has fluctuated throughout time, and while the past may have emphasized the more violent aspects, today, we have shifted towards a more control based interpretation. Both Michael Foucault and John Berger delve into the idea of power and its functionality. Based on their texts, in our current socio-cultural setting, power is best exploited when the concept behind the power is deindividualized for many purposes, internalized by the people, and integrated throughout society to the point that its origins is mystified.

He made us aware on how so many individuals knowingly participated in the atrocious acts of violence against humanity and without much hesitance. He provided us the formula and a clear explanation on Max Weber views and how it was all possible for the bureaucratic domination of Germany, and the consequences of such power. Max Weber “was convinced that political domination would rest with whoever controlled the bureaucratic apparatus because of its indisputable superiority as an instrument for the organization of human action”. (Rubenstein, 23) Nazi Germany mastered the use of power and the management principles, this can be observed in Hitler’s organization of the concentration camps. Hitler replaced the existence camps with a more impersonal, systematized terror” camps. (Rubenstein, 24) Hitler and Nazi Germany established order in the camps, by applying bureaucracy principles. They established specialization, providing a meaning of set task and responsibilities each office and individual will handle and follow, making their job simpler and more efficient in following directions. They appointed individuals to ensure the written rules and regulations installed were being followed. This assured that individuals knew their responsibilities and made it easier for their assigned task to be completed. This also created recordkeeping of the rules, procedures and disciplinary actions.

The purpose of this essay is to analyse Weber’s theory of authority and power in order to establish its role in the modern contemporary world today. Weber, in his most acclaimed writings, discusses his three ideal types of authority being outlined as traditional, charismatic and rational-legal authority. He believes that in order for any political leader or political establishment to hold legitimate authority over its peoples, they must have either one of these types of authority. All of these types of power and authority can be referred to in some way in today’s contemporary world using examples of differing political leaders and systems. However, Weber’s writings were conducted in 1922 and may be considered as out-dated, and not as relevant as they were at his time of writing. Also, many dispute that Weber’s types of authority were perhaps not entirely relatable and Martin Spencer, like many other critics of Weber’s work in fact argue that there should have been four types of authority. Hence why these issues must be discussed in order to conclude whether Weber’s ideal types of authority are representative of political leaders and governments, and whether or not they can be associated with the contemporary world we live in today.

One way in particular that the authority can ensure that this power over all maintained, is by creating a system of differentiation amongst different groups; giving one group more significance than the other; as a way to gain unifying support from the preferred group. This is what we see with the totalitarian regime of the Nazi party, where the Jews were made out to be the inferior group. By successfully creating an enemy out of the Jews, Germans could now unify themselves in eliminating this common enemy. This according to Hayek is a necessary for a dictator in maintaining his power over the rest, meanwhile the rest are made to believe that their common hatred for Jews was necessary for the good of the whole. According to Hayek, “That the desire to organize social life according to a unitary plan itself springs largely from a desire for power. It is even more the outcome of the fact that, to achieve their end, collectivists must create power-power over men wielded by other men-of a magnitude never before know, and that their success will depend on the extent to which they achieve such power (165). Essentially, what is seen here is this relationship between unlimited state power over the individual and of

In class, we talked about discrimination in society through economic inequality with Marx, and then with Durkheim. We discussed the positive viewing of individualism in society through inequality. Max Weber is comparable to Karl Marx because they both focus on inequality and capitalism. However, unlike Marx, Weber views the uneconomic actions in society. He has an interpretive view, and as an interpretive sociologist, this means he focuses on the concerns of the society itself and not the people

For weber power is determined as something that when imposed, then a person has to follow it. For Weber domination is the probability that persons will obey commands. Weber mentioned power as being ‘ sociologically amorphous’. (Roth and Wittich, 1968) The probability of a command being accepted mainly relates to the surroundings of domination. An example of this is that, a supervisor could expect his colleague to obey his sayings but when they meet outside the business then the supervisor is unlikely to have such an expectation (Watson, 2003).

A world of system designed to keep people in unjust and unequal positions is held in place by several interrelated expression of "power over": political power, economic power, physical force, and ideological power (Bishop, 1994: 36). So, we can say power is defined as a possession of control, authority or influence over others. In terms of power of dominant groups over subordinate groups, we define power as domination of one group of people over another in major important spheres of life. Power inequities have been in existence throughout the history of humanity and the ways of manifestation evolved from extreme overt oppression to subtle, covert oppression. Three major forms of power inequalities discussed in this paper are

Though such institutions are capable of reaffirming certain statements of power, hegemony itself is, as Raymond Williams states, "a whole body of practices and expectations...our ordinary understanding of the nature of man and his world...a sense of reality...a sense of absolute" (4).

The article presents Weber’s argument regarding social stratification in contrast to Marx’s. In his discussion of his theory of social stratification, he outlines three ways in which society is divided: by class (economically), status (socially) and by party (ideologically). He argues that the individual identity is not determined by the class identity, and that status and party identities often cross class divisions.