Max Weber's Vision for Bureaucracy

A Casualty of World War I

Glynn Cochrane

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9783319622897
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Cultural & Social Anthropology
• Index: Social Sciences

This volume examines Max Weber's pre-World War I thinking about bureaucracy. It suggests that Weber's vision shares common components with the highly efficient Prussian General Staff military bureaucracy developed by Clausewitz and Helmuth von Moltke. Weber did not believe that Germany's other major institutions, the Civil Service, industry, or the army could deliver world class performances since he believed that they pursued narrow, selfish interests. However, following Weber's death in 1920, the model published by his wife Marianne contained none of the military material about which Weber had written approvingly in the early chapters of Economy and Society. Glynn Cochrane concludes that Weber's model was unlikely to include military material after the Versailles peace negotiations (in which Weber participated) outlawed the Prussian General Staff in 1919.

© The Author(s) 2018

Glynn CochraneMax Weber's Vision for Bureaucracyhttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-62289-7_1

Begin Abstract

1. Introduction

Glynn Cochrane¹

(1)

School of Social Science, University of Queensland, St. Lucia, Brisbane, Australia

Keywords

Weber’s vision for bureaucracyVon Moltke and Prussia’s General StaffWeber’s military experiencePrussian stereotypesTreaty of VersaillesCultural factorsAncient bureaucracy

End Abstract

Weber is the starting point for most modern thinking about bureaucracy. His vision was that bureaucracy would be adopted by all industrialized countries:

No machinery in the world works as precisely as this human machine (bureaucracy).¹ From a technical and material point of view it is unsurpassable. But here are other than technical yardsticks…however much people may complain about the evils of bureaucracy; it would be sheer illusion to think for a moment that continuous administrative work can be carried out in any field except by means of officials working in offices …. For bureaucratic administration is, other things being equal, always, from a formal point of view, the most rational type. For the needs of mass administration today, it is completely indispensable. The choice is only that between bureaucracy and dilettantism in the field of administration.²

The scale of Weber’s ambition for bureaucracy can be seen in the fact that he thought bureaucracy might defeat capitalism:

Let us imagine that coal, iron, all mining and metallurgic products, in addition to alcoholic products, sugar, tobacco, matches, in short all mass products, today already produced by cartels, taken over by the State or State-owned enterprises, moreover, the State-run controlled big estates multiplied…workshops and cooperatives for the needs of army and State officials also administered by the State, in land and foreign shipping controlled by the State, also all railways etc…and all these enterprises held in bureaucratic order… With regard to our society it is highly probable that bureaucratisation will master capitalism—some time, as it happened in antiquity.³

Weber also said that: ‘From a technical and material point of view, [bureaucracy] is unsurpassable’ and he said that his bureaucratic model worked ‘exactly as does the machine with non-mechanical modes of production.’⁴ He added that, ‘Precision, speed, unambiguity, knowledge of the files, continuity, discretion, unity, strict subordination, reduction of friction and of material and personnel costs—these are raised to the maximum in bureaucratic organizations. Where charismatic rule is incalculable and transitory, and patrimonial rule personal and unpredictable, bureaucratic rule is both calculating and calculable, systematic, a coherent assemblage of parts manned by specialized personnel, ideally adapted to the domination and administration of men and the pursuit of ends through rules applied without regard to persons.’⁵

Weber’s theory of bureaucracy failed to deliver what he had promised. Robert Merton described the performance deficit of the Ideal-Type in a 1949 assessment that is still relevant today,

The very elements which conduce toward efficiency in general produce inefficiency in specific instances...[and] also lead to an over-concern with strict adherence to regulations which induces timidity, conservatism, and technicism. Stress on ‘depersonalisation of relationships’ leads to conflict in relationships with bureaucratic personnel. Specific behavioural orientations often mentioned are ‘buck passing’, ‘red tape’, rigidity and inflexibility, excessive impersonality, oversecretiveness, unwillingness to delegate and reluctance to exercise discretion.⁶

The Prussian Antecedents to Weber’s Vision

Up till a few years before his death in 1920 Max Weber’s thinking about bureaucracy was heavily influenced by the highly successful experience of the Prussian General Staff in response to challenges posed by the Industrial Revolution. In the nineteenth century armies were the largest organizations in Europe and America and the Prussian General Staff was recognized as the most efficient and effective organization in Europe and as an organization which had the best scientific expertise. It possessed all the attributes associated with modern bureaucracy namely, hierarchy, specialization, and action taken on the basis of written rules.⁷ Von Moltke’s military bureaucracy had worked very well; the speed and ease with which victory was achieved in the wars of German unification in the 1860s established the Prussian military bureaucracy as the most efficient and effective organization in Europe and its methods were adopted by all the major European powers.⁸

Helmuth von Moltke’s General Staff had developed the first modern bureaucracy, one that was capable of providing a more comprehensive, more realistic, and more predictably precise administrative performance, and at a much lower human cost than the Ideal-Type. The General Staff was a small, discrete, and highly unusual part of the Prussian army of fewer than 500 officers. For Robert Merton, the military characteristics of reliability of behavior, high conformity of personnel, and prescribed patterns of action are all functions of the bureaucratic discipline at the heart of the military institution. ‘The military serves as the coercive arm of the state, the “users of force” implied in Weber’s definition. Of course, the modern military is itself structured as a bureaucracy, its organizational characteristics of hierarchy, discipline, and conformity rationally designed to increase the effectiveness with which it can defend the state.’⁹

Supporting the idea of Weber’s enthusiasm for von Moltke’s Staff, Weber’s wife Marianne said that the most memorable time in his life was 1870, the year of the Franco-Prussian War when the armies of Helmuth von Moltke, orchestrated by the Prussian General Staff, destroyed the military forces of France.¹⁰ The Prussians shared with Weber a belief in the game-changing ability of an administrative Staff to provide a new way of coordinating and directing the complex administrative arrangements made necessary by the Industrial Revolution . Although Napoleon and Gustavus Adolphus had to be personally present to command their troops, Staff, the new administrative technology developed by the Prussians, enabled its creator and commander von Moltke to destroy his Austrian opponent while he was 200 miles from the front.¹¹ Weber and the Prussians also shared a belief about the importance of scientific expertise, historical analysis, discipline, and the means of compulsion, as well as office holders having a sense of calling.

Max Weber grew up in a country whose citizens enthusiastically supported the army and a growing number of patriotic associations celebrated Prussian military prowess. The Prussians, as was the case with the British and other European nations, had great admiration for all things military; ex-servicemen were accustomed to wearing their army uniforms and medals when they attended civic and family events. The victory over France was celebrated each year on Sedan Day. Reserve Officer army commissions of which there were 120,000 in 1914 were hotly sought after and veterans’ associations had 2.9 million members on the eve of war.

Like young men in many industrialized countries Weber did his national service in the army. In the autumn of 1883, when he was 19 years of age, Weber moved to Strasbourg in order to serve his year in the army. When his time as a recruit was over, he was used to military service, and he displayed more endurance than most one-year men even though he was a failure in the gymnasium. The result of Weber’s military training was admiration for its martial and patriotic mentality and he wanted to lead his own company in the field. Later in his year-long national service Weber became a ​Korporal-schaftsführer (squad leader). The new responsibility took more time and energy. However, a year later, in the Spring of 1885, he returned to Strasbourg for his first officer’s exercise. He began to enjoy military life: ‘My position really is different now from what it used to be, and if, as I confidently hope, I am promoted in two or three weeks, I shall experience the pleasant as well as the useful side of the military establishment.’¹²

During World War I, when Weber was unfit for active service, he became the director of an army hospital in Heidelberg. ‘Despite its hideousness this war is great and wonderful and worth experiencing. It would be even more worthwhile to participate in it, but unfortunately, they cannot use me in the field as they would have used me if it had been waged in time, twenty-five years ago. My brothers are all serving in the field or in garrisons; my brother-in-law Hermann Schaefer fell at Tannenberg.’¹³ Weber, who normally was isolated at his desk, now navigated in the middle of a stream of the most intensive communal labor. He controlled an expanding network, and under his administration nine new hospitals came into being in the town. In the last years of the war Weber served as a Captain in the reserves and was in charge of a number of military hospitals in and around He...