POLITICS AS A VOCATION

by Max Weber

'Politik als Beruf,' Gesammelte Politische Schriften (Muenchen, 1921), pp.

396-450. Originally a speech at Munich University, 1918, published in 19l9

by Duncker & Humblodt, Munich.

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This lecture, which I give at your request, will necessarily disappoint you

in a number of ways. You will naturally expect me to take a position on

actual problems of the day. But that will be the case only in a purely

formal way and toward the end, when I shall raise certain questions

concerning the significance of political action in the whole way of life. In

today's lecture, all questions that refer to what policy and what content

one should give one's political activity must be eliminated. For such

questions have nothing to do with the general question of what politics as a

vocation means and what it can mean. Now to our subject matter.

What do we understand by politics? The concept is extremely broad and

comprises any kind of independent leadership in actions. One speaks of the

currency policy of the banks, of the discounting policy of the Reichsbank,

of the strike policy of a trade union; one may speak of the educational

policy of a municipality or a township, of the policy of the president of a

voluntary association, and, finally, even of the policy of a prudent wife

who seeks to guide her husband. Tonight, our reflections are, of course, not

based upon such a broad concept. We wish to understand by politics only the

leadership, or the influencing of the leadership, of a political

association, hence today, of a state.

But what is a 'political' association from the sociological point of view?

What is a 'state'? Sociologically, the state cannot be defined in terms of

its ends. There is scarcely any task that some political association has not

taken in hand, and there is no task that one could say has always been

exclusive and peculiar to those associations-which are designated as

political ones: today the state, or historically, those associations which

have been the predecessors of the modern state. Ultimately, one can define

the modern state sociologically only in terms of the specific means peculiar

to it, as to every political association, namely, the use of physical force.

'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 given 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.

This corresponds essentially to ordinary usage. When a question is said to

be a 'political' question, when a cabinet minister or an official is said to

be a 'political' official, or when a decision is said to be 'politically'

determined, what is always meant is that interests in the distribution,

maintenance, or transfer of power are decisive for answering the questions

and determining the decision or the official's sphere of activity. He who is

active in politics strives for power either as a means in serving other

aims, ideal or egoistic, or as 'power for power's sake,' that is, in order

to enjoy the prestige-feeling that power gives.

Like the political institutions historically preceding it, the state is a

relation of men dominating men, a relation supported by means of legitimate

(i.e. considered to be legitimate) violence. If the state is to exist, the

dominated must obey the authority claimed by the powers that be. When and

why do men obey? Upon what inner justifications and upon what external means

does this domination rest?

To begin with, in principle, there are three inner justifications, hence

basic legitimations of domination.

First, the authority of the 'eternal yesterday,' i.e. of the mores

sanctified through the unimaginably ancient recognition and habitual

orientation to conform. This is 'traditional' domination exercised by the

patriarch and the patrimonial prince of yore.

There is the authority of the extraordinary and personal gift of grace

(charisma), the absolutely personal devotion and personal confidence in

revelation, heroism, or other qualities of individual leadership. This is

'charismatic' domination, as exercised by the prophet or--in the field of

politics--by the elected war lord, the plebiscitarian ruler, the great

demagogue, or the political party leader.

Finally, there is domination by virtue of 'legality,' by virtue of the

belief in the validity of legal statute and functional 'competence' based on

rationally created rules. In this case, obedience is expected in discharging

statutory obligations. This is domination as exercised by the modern

'servant of the state' and by all those bearers of power who in this respect

resemble him.

It is understood that, in reality, obedience is determined by highly robust

motives of fear and hope--fear of the vengeance of magical powers or of the

power-holder, hope for reward in this world or in the beyond--and besides

all this, by interests of the most varied sort. Of this we shall speak

presently. However, in asking for the 'legitimations' of this obedience, one

meets with these three 'pure' types: 'traditional,' 'charismatic,' and

'legal.'

These conceptions of legitimacy and their inner justifications are of very

great significance for the structure of domination. To be sure, the pure

types are rarely found in reality. But today we cannot deal with the highly

complex variants, transitions, and combinations of these pure types, which

problems belong to 'political science.' Here we are interested above all in

the second of these types: domination by virtue of the devotion of those who

obey the purely personal 'charisma' of the 'leader.' For this is the root of

the idea of a calling in its highest expression.

Devotion to the charisma of the prophet, or the leader in war, or to the

great demagogue in the ecclesia or in parliament, means that the leader is

personally recognized as the innerly 'called' leader of men. Men do not obey

him by virtue of tradition or statute, but because they believe in him. If

he is more than a narrow and vain upstart of the moment, the leader lives

for his cause and 'strives for his work.' The devotion of his disciples, his

followers, his personal party friends is oriented to his person and to its

qualities.

Charismatic leadership has emerged in all places and in all historical

epochs. Most importantly in the past, it has emerged in the two figures of

the magician and the prophet on the one hand, and in the elected war lord,

the gang leader and condotierre on the other hand. Political leadership in

the form of the free 'demagogue' who grew from the soil of the city state is

of greater concern to us; like the city state, the demagogue is peculiar to

the Occident and especially to Mediterranean culture. Furthermore, political

leadership in the form of the parliamentary 'party leader' has grown on the

soil of the constitutional state, which is also indigenous only to the

Occident.

These politicians by virtue of a 'calling,' in the most genuine sense of the

word, are of course nowhere the only decisive figures in the crosscurrents

of the political struggle for power. The sort of auxiliary means that are at

their disposal is also highly decisive. How do the politically dominant

powers manage to maintain their domination? The question pertains to any

kind of domination, hence also to political domination in all its forms,

traditional as well as legal and charismatic.

Organized domination, which calls for continuous administration, requires

that human conduct be conditioned to obedience towards those masters who

claim to be the bearers of legitimate power. On the other hand, by virtue of

this obedience, organized domination requires the control of those material

goods which in a given case are necessary for the use of physical violence.

Thus, organized domination requires control of the personal executive staff

and the material implements of administration.

The administrative staff, which externally represents the organization of

political domination, is, of course, like any other organization, bound by

obedience to the power-holder and not alone by the concept of legitimacy, of

which we have just spoken. There are two other means, both of which appeal

to personal interests: material reward and social honor. The fiefs of

vassals, the prebends of patrimonial officials, the salaries of modern civil

servants, the honor of knights, the privileges of estates, and the honor of

the civil servant comprise their respective wages. The fear of losing them

is the final and decisive basis for solidarity between the executive staff

and the power-holder. There is honor and booty for the followers in war; for

the demagogue's following, there are 'spoils'--that is, exploitation of the

dominated through the monopolization of office--and there are politically

determined profits and premiums of vanity. All of these rewards are also

derived from the domination exercised by a charismatic leader.

To maintain a dominion by force, certain material goods are required, just

as with an economic organization. All states may be classified according to

whether they rest on the principle that the staff of men themselves own the

administrative means, or whether the staff is 'separated' from these means

of administration. This distinction holds in the same sense in which today

we say that the salaried employee and the proletarian in the capitalistic

enterprise are 'separated' from the material means of production. The

power-holder must be able to count on the obedience of the staff members,

officials, or whoever else they may be. The administrative means may consist

of money, building, war material, vehicles, horses, or whatnot. The question

is whether or not the powerholder himself directs and organizes the

administration while delegating executive power to personal servants, hired

officials, or personal favorites and confidants, who are non-owners, i.e.

who do not use the material means of administration in their own right but

are directed by the lord. The distinction runs through all administrative

organizations of the past.

These political associations in which the material means of administration

are autonomously controlled, wholly or partly, by the dependent

administrative staff may be called associations organized in ' estates.' The

vassal in the feudal association, for instance, paid out of his own pocket

for the administration and judicature of the district enfeoffed to him. He

supplied his own equipment and provisions for war, and his subvassals did

likewise. Of course, this had consequences for the lord's position of power,

which only rested upon a relation of personal faith and upon the fact that

the legitimacy of his possession of the fief and the social honor of the

vassal were derived from the overlord.

However, everywhere, reaching back to the earliest political formations, we

also find the lord himself directing the administration. He seeks to take

the administration into his own hands by having men personally dependent

upon him: slaves, household officials, attendants, personal 'favorites,' and

prebendaries enfeoffed in kind or in money from his magazines. He seeks to

defray the expenses from his own pocket, from the revenues of his

patrimonium; and he seeks to create an army which is dependent upon him

personally because it is equipped and provisioned out of his granaries,

magazines, and armories. In the association of 'estates,' the lord rules

with the aid of an autonomous 'aristocracy' and hence shares his domination

with it; the lord who personally administers is supported either by members

of his household or by plebeians. These are propertyless strata having no

social honor of their own; materially, they are completely chained to him

and are not backed up by any competing power of their own. All forms of

patriarchal and patrimonial domination, Sultanist despotism, arid

bureaucratic states belong to this latter type. The bureaucratic state order

is especially important; in its most rational development, it is precisely

characteristic of the modern state.

Everywhere the development of the modern state is initiated through the

action of the prince. He paves the way for the expropriation of the

autonomous and 'private' bearers of executive power who stand beside him, of

those who in their own right possess the means of administration, warfare,

and financial organization, as well as politically usable goods of all

sorts. The whole process is a complete parallel to the development of the

capitalist enterprise through gradual expropriation of the independent

producers. In the end, the modern state controls the total means of

political organization, which actually come together under a single head. No

single official personally owns the money he pays out, or the buildings,

stores, tools, and war machines he controls. In the contemporary

'state'--and this is essential for the concept of state--the 'separation' of

the administrative staff, of the administrative officials, and of the

workers from the material means of administrative organization is completed.

Here the most modern development begins, and we see with our own eyes the

attempt to inaugurate the expropriation of this expropriator of the

political means, and therewith of political power.

The revolution [of Germany, 1918] has accomplished, at least in so far as

leaders have taken the place of the statutory authorities, this much: the

leaders, through usurpation or election, have attained control over the

political staff and the apparatus of material goods; and they deduce their

legitimacy--no matter with what right--from the will of the governed.

Whether the leaders, on the basis of this at least apparent success, can

rightfully entertain the hope of also carrying through the expropriation

within the capitalist enterprises is a different question. The direction of

capitalist enterprises, despite far-reaching analogies, follows quite

different laws than those of political administration.

Today we do not take a stand on this question. I state only the purely

conceptual aspect for our consideration: the modern state is a compulsory

association which organizes domination. It has been successful in seeking to

monopolize the legitimate use of physical force as a means of domination

within a territory. To this end the state has combined the material means of

organization in the hands of its leaders, and it has expropriated all

autonomous functionaries of estates who formerly controlled these means in

their own right. The state has taken their positions and now stands in the

top place.

During this process of political expropriation, which has occurred with

varying success in all countries on earth, 'professional politicians' in

another sense have emerged. They arose first in the service of a prince.

They have been men who, unlike the charismatic leader, have not wished to be

lords themselves, but who have entered the service of political lords. In

the struggle of expropriation, they placed themselves at the princes'

disposal and by managing the princes' politics they earned, on the one hand,

a living and, on the other hand, an ideal content of life. Again, it is only

in the Occident that we find this kind of professional politician in the

service of powers other than the princes. In the past, they have been the

most important power instrument of the prince and his instrument of

political expropriation.

Before discussing 'professional politicians' in detail, let us clarify in

all its aspects the state of affairs their existence presents. Politics,

just as economic pursuits, may be a man's avocation or his vocation. One may

engage in politics, and hence seek to influence the distribution of power

within and between political structures, as an 'occasional' politician. We

are all 'occasional' politicians when we cast our ballot or consummate a

similar expression of intention, such as applauding or protesting in a

'political' meeting, or delivering a 'political' speech, etc. The whole

relation of many people to politics is restricted to this. Politics as an

avocation is today practiced by all those party agents and heads of

voluntary political associations who, as a rule, are politically active only

in case of need and for whom politics is, neither materially nor ideally,

'their life' in the first place. The same holds for those members of state

counsels and similar deliberative bodies that function only when summoned.

It also holds for rather broad strata of our members of parliament who are

politically active only during sessions. In the past, such strata were found

especially among the estates. Proprietors of military implements in their

own right, or proprietors of goods important for the administration, or

proprietors of personal prerogatives may be called 'estates.' A large

portion of them were far from giving their lives wholly, or merely

preferentially, or more than occasionally, to the service of politics.

Rather, they exploited their prerogatives in the interest of gaining rent or

even profits; and they became active in the service of political

associations only when the overlord of their status-equals especially

demanded it. It was not different in the case of some of the auxiliary

forces which the prince drew into the struggle for the creation of a

political organization to be exclusively at his disposal. This was the

nature of the Rate von Haus aus [councilors] and, still further back, of a

considerable part of the councilors assembling in the 'Curia' and other

deliberating bodies of the princes. But these merely occasional auxiliary

forces engaging in politics on the side were naturally not sufficient for

the prince. Of necessity, the prince sought to create a staff of helpers

dedicated wholly and exclusively to serving him, hence making this their

major vocation. The structure of the emerging dynastic political

organization, and not only this but the whole articulation of the culture,

depended to a considerable degree upon the question of where the prince

recruited agents.

A staff was also necessary for those political associations whose members

constituted themselves politically as (so-called) 'free' communes under the

complete abolition or the fargoing restriction of princely power.

They were 'free' not in the sense of freedom from domination by force, but

in the sense that princely power legitimized by tradition (mostly

religiously sanctified) as the exclusive source of all authority was absent.

These communities have their historical home in the Occident. Their nucleus

was the city as a body politic, the form in which the city first emerged in

the Mediterranean culture area. In all these cases, what did the politicians

who made politics their major vocation look like?

There are two ways of making politics one's vocation: Either one lives 'for'

politics or one lives 'off' politics. By no means is this contrast an

exclusive one. The rule is, rather, that man does both, at least in thought,

and certainly he also does both in practice. He who lives 'for' politics

makes politics his life, in an internal sense. Either he enjoys the naked

possession of the power he exerts, or he nourishes his inner balance and

self-feeling by the consciousness that his life has meaning in the service

of a 'cause.' In this internal sense, every sincere man who lives for a

cause also lives off this cause. The distinction hence refers to a much more

substantial aspect of the matter, namely, to the economic. He who strives to

make politics a permanent source of income lives 'off' politics as a

vocation, whereas he who does not do this lives 'for' politics. Under the

dominance of the private property order, some--if you wish--very trivial

preconditions must exist in order for a person to be able to live 'for'

politics in this economic sense. Under normal conditions, the politician

must be economically independent of the income politics can bring him. This

means, quite simply, that the politician must be wealthy or must have a

personal position in life which yields a sufficient income.

This is the case, at least in normal circumstances. The war lord's following

is just as little concerned about the conditions of a normal economy as is

the street crowd following of the revolutionary hero. Both live off booty,

plunder, confiscations, contributions, and the imposition of worthless and

compulsory means of tender, which in essence amounts to the same thing. But

necessarily, these are extraordinary phenomena. In everyday economic life,

only some wealth serves the purpose of making a man economically

independent. Yet this alone does not suffice. The professional politician

must also be economically 'dispensable,' that is, his income must not depend

upon the fact that he constantly and personally places his ability and

thinking entirely, or at least by far predominantly, in the service of

economic acquisition. In the most unconditional way, the rentier is

dispensable in this sense. Hence, he is a man who receives completely

unearned income. He may be the territorial lord of the past or the large

landowner and aristocrat of the present who receives ground rent. In

Antiquity and the Middle Ages they who received slave or serf rents or in

modern times rents from shares or bonds or similar sources--these are

rentiers.

Neither the worker nor--and this has to be noted well--the entrepreneur,

especially the modern, large-scale entrepreneur, is economically dispensable

in this sense. For it is precisely the entrepreneur who is tied to his

enterprise and is therefore not dispensable. This holds for the entrepreneur

in industry far more than for the entrepreneur in agriculture, considering

the seasonal character of agriculture. In the main, it is very difficult for

the entrepreneur to be represented in his enterprise by someone else, even

temporarily. He is as little dispensable as is the medical doctor, and the

more eminent and busy he is the less dispensable he is. For purely

organizational reasons, it is easier for the lawyer to be dispensable; and

therefore the lawyer has played an incomparably greater, and often even a

dominant, role as a professional politician. We shall not continue in this

classification; rather let us clarify some of its ramifications.

The leadership of a state or of a party by men who (in the economic sense of

the word) live exclusively for politics and not off politics means

necessarily a 'plutocratic' recruitment of the leading political strata. To

be sure, this does not mean that such plutocratic leadership signifies at

the same time that the politically dominant strata will not also seek to

live 'off' politics, and hence that the dominant stratum will not usually

exploit their political domination in their own economic interest. All that

is unquestionable, of course. There has never been such a stratum that has

not somehow lived 'off' politics. Only this is meant: that the professional

politician need not seek remuneration directly for his political work,

whereas every politician without means must absolutely claim this. On the

other hand, we do not mean to say that the propertyless politician will

pursue private economic advantages through politics, exclusively, or even

predominantly. Nor do we mean that he will not think, in the first place, of

'the subject matter.' Nothing would be more incorrect. According to all

experience, a care for the economic 'security' of his existence is

consciously or unconsciously a cardinal point in the whole life orientation

of the wealthy man. A quite reckless and unreserved political idealism is

found if not exclusively at least predominantly among those strata who by

virtue of their propertylessness stand entirely outside of the strata who

are interested in maintaining the economic order of a given society. This

holds especially for extraordinary and hence revolutionary epochs. A

non-plutocratic recruitment of interested politicians, of leadership and

following, is geared to the self-understood precondition that regular and

reliable income will accrue to those who manage politics.

Either politics can be conducted 'honorifically' and then, as one usually

says, by Independent,' that is, by wealthy, men, and especially by rentiers.

Or, political leadership is made accessible to propertyless men who must

then be rewarded. The professional politician who lives 'off' politics may

be a pure 'prebendary' or a salaried 'official.' Then the politician

receives either income from fees and perquisites for specific services--tips

and bribes are only an irregular and formally illegal variant of this

category of income--or a fixed income in kind, a money salary, or both. He

may assume the character of an 'entrepreneur,' like the condottiere or the

holder of a farmed-out or purchased office, or like the American boss who

considers his costs a capital investment which he brings to fruition through

exploitation of his influence. Again, he may receive a fixed wage, like a

journalist, a party secretary, a modern cabinet minister, or a political

official. Feudal fiefs, land grants, and prebends of all sorts have been

typical, in the past. With the development of the money economy, perquisites

and prebends especially are the typical rewards for the following of

princes, victorious conquerors, or successful party chiefs. For loyal

services today, party leaders give offices of all sorts--in parties,

newspapers, co-operative societies, health insurance, municipalities, as

well as in the state. All party struggles are struggles for the patronage of

office, as well as struggles for objective goals.

In Germany, all struggles between the proponents of local and of central

government are focused upon the question of which powers shall control the

patronage of office, whether they are of Berlin, Munich, Karlsruhe, or

Dresden. Setbacks in participating in offices are felt more severely by

parties than is action against their objective goals. In France, a turnover

of prefects because of party politics has always been considered a greater

transformation and has always caused a greater uproar than a modification in

the government's program--the latter almost having the significance of mere

verbiage. Some parties, especially those in America since the disappearance

of the old conflicts concerning the interpretation of the constitution, have

become pure patronage parties handing out jobs and changing their material

program according to the chances of grabbing votes.

In Spain, up to recent years, the two great parties, in a conventionally

fixed manner, took turns in office by means of 'elections,' fabricated from

above, in order to provide their followers with offices. In the Spanish

colonial territories, in the so-called 'elections,' as well as in the

so-called 'revolutions,' what was at stake was always the state bread-basket

from which the victors wished to be fed.

In Switzerland, the parties peacefully divided the offices among themselves

proportionately, and some of our 'revolutionary' constitutional drafts, for

instance the first draft of the Badenian constitution, sought to extend this

system to ministerial positions. Thus, the state and state offices were

considered as pure institutions for the provision of spoilsmen.

Above all, the Catholic Center party was enthusiastically for this draft. In

Badenia, the party, as part of the party platform, made the distribution of

offices proportional to confessions and hence without regard to achievement.

This tendency becomes stronger for all parties when the number of offices

increase as a result of general bureaucratization and when the demand for

offices increases because they represent specifically secure livelihoods.

For their followings, the parties become more and more a means to the end of

being provided for in this manner. The development of modern officialdom

into a highly qualified, professional labor force, specialized in expertness

through long years of preparatory training, stands opposed to all these

arrangements. Modern bureaucracy in the interest of integrity has developed

a high sense of status honor; without this sense the danger of an awful

corruption and a vulgar Philistinism threatens fatally. And without such

integrity, even the purely technical functions of the state apparatus would

be endangered. The significance of the state apparatus for the economy has

been steadily rising, especially with increasing socialization, and its

significance will be further augmented.

In the United States, amateur administration through booty politicians in

accordance with the outcome of presidential elections resulted in the

exchange of hundreds of thousands of officials, even down to the mail

carrier. The administration knew nothing of the professional civil

servant-for-life, but this amateur administration has long since been

punctured by the Civil Service Reform. Purely technical, irrefragable needs

of the administration have determined this development.

In Europe, expert officialdom, based on the division of labor, has emerged

in a gradual development of half a thousand years. The Italian cities and

seigniories were the beginning, among the monarchies, and the states of the

Norman conquerors. But the decisive step was taken in connection with the

administration of the finances of the prince. With the administrative

reforms of Emperor Max, it can be seen how hard it was for the officials to

depose successfully of the prince in this field, even under the pressure of

extreme emergency and of Turkish rule. The sphere of finance could afford

least of all a ruler's dilettantism--a ruler who at that time was still

above all a knight. The development of war technique called forth the expert

and specialized officer; the differentiation of legal procedure called forth

the trained jurist. In these three areas--finance, war, and law--expert

officialdom in the more advanced states was definitely triumphant during the

sixteenth century. With the ascendancy of princely absolutism over the

estates, there was simultaneously a gradual abdication of the prince's

autocratic rule in favor of an expert officialdom. These very officials had

only facilitated the prince's victory over the estates.

The development of the 'leading politicians' was realized along with the

ascendancy of the specially trained officialdom, even if in far less

noticeable transitions. Of course, such really decisive advisers of the

princes have existed at all times and all over the world. In the Orient, the

need for relieving the Sultan as far as possible from personal

responsibility for the success of the government has created the typical

figure of the 'Grand Vizier.' In the Occident, influenced above all by the

reports of the Venetian legates, diplomacy first became a consciously

cultivated art in the age of Charles V, in Machiavelli's time. The reports

of the Venetian legates were read with passionate zeal in expert diplomatic

circles. The adepts of this art, who were in the main educated

humanistically, treated one another as trained initiates, similar to the

humanist Chinese statesmen in the last period of the warring states. The

necessity of a formally unified guidance of the whole policy, including that

of home affairs, by a leading statesman finally and compellingly arose only

through constitutional development. Of course, individual personalities,

such as advisers of the princes, or rather, in fact, leaders, had again and

again existed before then. But the organization of administrative agencies

even in the most advanced states first proceeded along other avenues. Top

collegial administrative agencies had emerged. In theory, and to a gradually

decreasing extent in fact, they met under the personal chairmanship of the

prince who rendered the decision. This collegial system led to memoranda,

counter-memoranda, and reasoned votes of the majority and the minority. In

addition to the official and highest authorities, the prince surrounded

himself with purely personal confidants--the 'cabinet'--and through them

rendered his decisions, after considering the resolutions of the state

counsel, or whatever else the highest state agency was called. The prince,

coming more and more into the position of a dilettante, sought to extricate

himself from the unavoidably increasing weight of the expertly trained

officials through the collegial system and the cabinet. He sought to retain

the highest leadership in his own hands. This latent struggle between expert

officialdom and autocratic rule existed everywhere. Only in the face of

parliaments and the power aspirations of party leaders did the situation

change. Very different conditions led to the externally identical result,

though to be sure with certain differences. Wherever the dynasties retained

actual power in their hands--as was especially the case in Germany--the

interests of the prince were joined with those of officialdom against

parliament and its claims for power. The officials were also interested in

having leading positions, that is, ministerial positions, occupied by their

own ranks, thus making these positions an object of the official career. The

monarch, on his part, was interested in being able to appoint the ministers

from the ranks of devoted officials according to his own discretion. Both

parties, however, were interested in seeing the political leadership

confront parliament in a unified and solidary fashion, and hence in seeing

the collegial system replaced by a single cabinet head. Furthermore, in

order to be removed in a purely formal way from the struggle of parties and

from party attacks, the monarch needed a single personality to cover him and

to assume responsibility, that is, to answer to parliament and to negotiate

with the parties. All these interests worked together and in the same

direction: a minister emerged to direct the officialdom in a unified way.

Where parliament gained supremacy over the monarch--as in England--the

development of parliamentary power worked even more strongly in the

direction of a unification of the state apparatus. In England, the

'cabinet,' with the single head of Parliament as its 'leader,' developed as

a committee of the party which at the time controlled the majority. This

party power was ignored by official law but, in fact, it alone was

politically decisive. The official collegial bodies as such were not organs

of the actual ruling power, the party, and hence could not be the bearers of

real government. The ruling party required an ever-ready organization

composed only of its actually leading men, who would confidentially discuss

matters in order to maintain power within and be capable of engaging in

grand politics outside. The cabinet is simply this organization. However, in

relation to the public, especially the parliamentary public, the party

needed a leader responsible for all decisions--the cabinet head. The English

system has been taken over on the Continent in the form of parliamentary

ministries. In America alone, and in the democracies influenced by America,

a quite heterogeneous system was placed into opposition with this system.

The American system placed the directly and popularly elected leader of the

victorious party at the head of the apparatus of officials appointed by him

and bound him to the consent of 'parliament' only in budgetary and

legislative matters.

The development of politics into an organization which demanded training in

the struggle for power, and in the methods of this struggle as developed by

modern party policies, determined the separation of public functionaries

into two categories, which, however, are by no means rigidly but

nevertheless distinctly separated. These categories are 'administrative'

officials on the one hand, and 'political' officials on the other. The

'political' officials, in the genuine sense of the word, can regularly and

externally be recognized by the fact that they can be transferred any time

at will, that they can be dismissed, or at least temporarily withdrawn. They

are like the French prefects and the comparable officials of other

countries, and this is in sharp contrast to the 'independence' of officials

with judicial functions. In England, officials who, according to fixed

convention, retire from office when there is a change in the parliamentary

majority, and hence a change in the cabinet, belong to this category. There

are usually among them some whose competence includes the management of the

general 'inner administration.' The political element consists, above all,

in the task of maintaining 'law and order' in the country, hence maintaining

the existing power relations. In Prussia these officials, in accordance with

Puttkamer's decree and in order to,avoid censure, were obliged to 'represent

the policy of the government.' And, like the prefects in France, they were

used as an official apparatus for influencing elections. Most of the

'political' officials of the German system--in contrast to other

countries--were equally qualified in so far as access to these offices

required a university education, special examinations, and special

preparatory service. In Germany, only the heads of the political apparatus,

the ministers, lack this specific characteristic of modern civil service.

Even under the old regime, one could be the Prussian minister of education

without ever having attended an institution of higher learning; whereas one

could become Vortragender Rat, in principle, only on the basis of a

prescribed examination. The specialist and trained Dezernent and

Vortragender Rat were of course infinitely better informed about the real

technical problems of the division than was their respective chief--for

instance, under Althoff in the Prussian ministry of education. In England it

was not different. Consequently, in all routine demands the divisional head

was more powerful than the minister, which was not without reason. The

minister was simply the representative of the political power constellation;

he had to represent these powerful political staffs and he had to take

measure of the proposals of his subordinate expert officials or give them

directive orders of a political nature.

After all, things in a private economic enterprise are quite similar: the

real 'sovereign,' the assembled shareholders, is just as little influential

in the business management as is a 'people' ruled by expert officials. And

the personages who decide the policy of the enterprise, the bank-controlled

'directorate,' give only directive economic orders and select persons for

the management without themselves being capable of technically directing the

enterprise. Thus the present structure of the revolutionary state signifies

nothing new in principle. It places power over the administration into the

hands of absolute dilettantes, who, by virtue of their control of the

machine-guns, would like to use expert officials only as executive heads and

hands. The difficulties of the present system lie elsewhere than here, but

today these difficulties shall not concern us. We shall, rather, ask for the

typical peculiarity of the professional politicians, of the 'leaders' as

well as their followings. Their nature has changed and today varies greatly

from one case to another.

We have seen that in the past 'professional politicians' developed through

the struggle of the princes with the estates and that they served the

princes. Let us briefly review the major types of these professional

politicians.

Confronting the estates, the prince found support in politically exploitable

strata outside of the order of the estates. Among the latter, there was,

first, the clergy in Western and Eastern India, in Buddhist China and Japan,

and in Lamaist Mongolia, just as in the Christian territories of the Middle

Ages. The clergy were technically useful because they were literate. The

importation of Brahmins, Buddhist priests, Lamas, and the employment of

bishops and priests as political counselors, occurred with an eye to

obtaining administrative forces who could read and write and who could be

used in the struggle of the emperor, prince, or Khan against the

aristocracy. Unlike the vassal who confronted his overlord, the cleric,

especially the celibate cleric, stood outside the machinery of normal

political and economic interests and was not tempted by the struggle for

political power, for himself or for his descendants. By virtue of his own

status, the cleric was 'separated' from the managerial implements of

princely administration.

The humanistically educated literati comprised a second such stratum. There

was a time when one learned to produce Latin speeches and Greek verses in

order to become a political adviser to a prince and, above all things, to

become a memorialist. This was the time of the first flowering of the

humanist schools and of the princely foundations of professorships for

'poetics.' This was for us a transitory epoch, which has had a quite

persistent influence upon our educational system, yet no deeper results

politically. In East Asia, it has been different. The Chinese mandarin is,

or rather originally was, what the humanist of our Renaissance period

approximately was: a literator humanistically trained and tested in the

language monuments of the remote past. When you read the diaries of Li Hung

Chang you will find that he is most proud of having composed poems and of

being a good calligrapher. This stratum, with its conventions developed and

modeled after Chinese Antiquity, has determined the whole destiny of China;

and perhaps our fate would have been similar if the humanists in their time

had had the slightest chance of gaining a similar influence.

The third stratum was the court nobility. After the princes had succeeded in

expropriating political power from the nobility as an estate, they drew the

nobles to the court and used them in their political and diplomatic service.

The transformation of our educational system in the seventeenth century was

partly determined by the fact that court nobles as professional politicians

displaced the humanist literati and entered the service of the princes.

The fourth category was a specifically English institution. A patrician

stratum developed there which was comprised of the petty nobility and the

urban rentiers; technically they are called the 'gentry.' The English gentry

represents a stratum that the prince originally attracted in order to

counter the barons. The prince placed the stratum in possession of the

offices of 'self-government,' and later he himself became increasingly

dependent upon them. The gentry maintained the possession of all offices of

local administration by taking them over without compensation in the

interest of their own social power. The gentry has saved England from the

bureaucratization which has been the fate of all continental states.

A fifth stratum, the university-trained jurist, is peculiar to the Occident,

especially to the European continent, and has been of decisive significance

for the Continent's whole political structure. The tremendous after-effect

of Roman law, as transformed by the late Roman bureaucratic state, stands

out in nothing more clearly than the fact that everywhere the revolution of

political management in the direction of the evolving rational state has

been borne by trained jurists. This also occurred in England, although there

the great national guilds of jurists hindered the reception of Roman law.

There is no analogy to this process to be found in any area of the world.

All beginnings of rational juristic thinking in the Indian Mimamsa School

and all further cultivation of the ancient juristic thinking in Islam have

been unable to prevent the idea of rational law from being overgrown by

theological forms of thought. Above all, legal trial procedure has not been

fully rationalized in the cases of India and of Islamism. Such

rationalization has been brought about on the Continent only through the

borrowing of ancient Roman jurisprudence by the Italian jurists. Roman

jurisprudence is the product of a political structure arising from the city

state to world domination--a product of quite unique nature. The usus

modernus of the late medieval pandect jurists and canonists was blended with

theories of natural law, which were born from juristic and Christian thought

and which were later secularized. This juristic rationalism has had its

great representatives among the Italian Podesta, the French crown jurists

(who created the formal means for the undermining of the rule of seigneurs

by royal power), among the canonists and the theologians of the ecclesiastic

councils (thinking in terms of natural law), among the court jurists and

academic judges of the continental princes, among the Netherland teachers of

natural law and the monarchomachists, among the English crown and

parliamentary jurists, among the noblesse de robe of the French Parliament,

and finally, among the lawyers of the age of the French Revolution.

Without this juristic rationalism, the rise of the absolute state is just as

little imaginable as is the Revolution. If you look through the

remonstrances of the French Parliaments or through the cahiers of the French

Estates-General from the sixteenth century to the year 1789 you will find

everywhere the spirit of the jurists. And if you go over the occupational

composition of the members of the French Assembly, you will find

there--although the members of the Assembly were elected through equal

franchise--a single proletarian, very few bourgeois enterprisers, but

jurists of all sorts, en masse. Without them, the specific mentality that

inspired these radical intellectuals and their projects would be quite

inconceivable. Since the French Revolution, the modern lawyer and modern

democracy absolutely belong together. And lawyers, in our sense of an

independent status group, also exist only in the Occident. They have

developed since the Middle Ages from the Fursprech of the formalistic

Germanic legal procedure under the impact of the rationalization of the

trial.

The significance of the lawyer in Occidental politics since the rise of

parties is not accidental. The management of politics through parties simply

means management through interest groups. We shall soon see what that means.

The craft of the trained lawyer is to plead effectively the cause of

interested clients. In this, the lawyer is superior to any 'official,' as

the superiority of enemy propaganda [Allied propaganda 1914-18] could teach

us. Certainly he can advocate and win a cause supported by logically weak

arguments and one which, in this sense, is a 'weak' cause. Yet he wins it

because technically he makes a 'strong case' for it. But only the lawyer

successfully pleads a cause that can be supported by logically strong

arguments, thus handling a 'good' cause 'well.' All too often the civil

servant as a politician turns a cause that is good in every sense into a

'weak' cause, through technically 'weak' pleading. This is what we have had

to experience. To an outstanding degree, politics today is in fact conducted

in public by means of the spoken or written word. To weigh the effect of the

word properly falls within the range of the lawyer's tasks; but not at all

into that of the civil servant. The latter is no demagogue, nor is it his

purpose to be one. If he nevertheless tries to become a demagogue, he

usually becomes a very poor one.

According to his proper vocation, the genuine official--and this is decisive

for the evaluation of our former regime--will not engage in politics.

Rather, he should engage in impartial 'administration.' This also holds for

the so-called 'political' administrator, at least officially, in so far as

the raison d'etat, that is, the vital interests of the ruling order, are not

in question. Sine ira et studio, 'without scorn and bias,' he shall

administer his office. Hence, he shall not do precisely what the politician,

the leader as well as his following, must always and necessarily do, namely,

fight.

To take a stand, to be passionate-- ira et stadium--is the politician's

element, and above all the element of the political leader. His conduct is

subject to quite a different, indeed, exactly the opposite, principle of

responsibility from that of the civil servant. The honor of the civil

servant is vested in his ability to execute conscientiously the order of the

superior authorities, exactly as if the order agreed with his own

conviction. This holds even if the order appears wrong to him and if,

despite the civil servant's remonstrances, the authority insists on the

order. Without this moral discipline and self-denial, in the highest sense,

the whole apparatus would fall to pieces. The honor of the political leader,

of the leading statesman, however, lies precisely in an exclusive personal

responsibility for what he does, a responsibility he cannot and must not

reject or transfer. It is in the nature of officials of high moral standing

to be poor politicians, and above all, in the political sense of the word,

to be irresponsible politicians. In this sense, they are politicians of low

moral standing, such as we unfortunately have had again and again in leading

positions. This is what we have called Beamtenherrschaft [civil-service

rule], and truly no spot soils the honor of our officialdom if we reveal

what is politically wrong with the system from the standpoint of success.

But let us return once more to the types of political figures.

Since the time of the constitutional state, and definitely since democracy

has been established, the 'demagogue' has been the typical political leader

in the Occident. The distasteful flavor of the word must not make us forget

that not Cleon but Pericles was the first to bear the name of demagogue. In

contrast to the offices of ancient democracy that were filled by lot,

Pericles led the sovereign Ecclesia of the demos of Athens as a supreme

strategist holding the only elective office or without holding any office at

all. Modern demagoguery also makes use of oratory, even to a tremendous

extent, if one considers the election speeches a modern candidate has to

deliver. But the use of the printed word is more enduring. The political

publicist, and above all the journalist, is nowadays the most important

representative of the demagogic species.

Within the limits of this lecture, it is quite impossible even to sketch the

sociology of modern political journalism, which in every respect constitutes

a chapter in itself. Certainly, only a few things concerning it are in place

here. In common with all demagogues and, by the way, with the lawyer (and

the artist), the journalist shares the fate of lacking a fixed social

classification. At least, this is the case on the Continent, in contrast to

the English, and, by the way, also to former conditions in Prussia. The

journalist belongs to a sort of pariah caste, which is always estimated by

'society' in terms of its ethically lowest representative. Hence, the

strangest notions about journalists and their work are abroad. Not everybody

realizes that a really good journalistic accomplishment requires at least as

much 'genius'4 as any scholarly accomplishment, especially because of the

necessity of producing at once and 'on order,' and because of the necessity

of being effective, to be sure, under quite different conditions of

production. It is almost never acknowledged that the responsibility of the

journalist is far greater, and that the sense of responsibility of every

honorable journalist is, on the average, not a bit lower than that of the

scholar, but rather, as the war has shown, higher. This is because, in the

very nature of the case, irresponsible journalistic accomplishments and

their often terrible effects are remembered.

Nobody believes that the discretion of any able journalist ranks above the

average of other people, and yet that is the case. The quite incomparably

graver temptations, and the other conditions that accompany journalistic

work at the present time, produce those results which have conditioned the

public to regard the press with a mixture of disdain and pitiful cowardice.

Today we cannot discuss what is to be done. Here we are interested in the

question of the occupational destiny of the political journalist and of his

chance to attain a position of political leadership. Thus far, the

journalist has had favorable chances only in the Social Democratic party.

Within the party, editorial positions have been predominantly in the nature

of official positions, but editorial positions have not been the basis for

positions of leadership.

In the bourgeois parties, on the whole, the chances for ascent to political

power along this avenue have rather become worse, as compared with those of

the previous generation. Naturally every politician of consequence has

needed influence over the press and hence has needed relations with the

press. But that party leaders would emerge from the ranks of the press has

been an absolute exception and one should not have expected it. The reason

for this lies in the strongly increased 'indispensability' of the

journalist, above all, of the propertyless and hence professionally bound

journalist, an indispensability which is determined by the tremendously

increased intensity and tempo of journalistic operations. The necessity of

gaining one's livelihood by the writing of daily or at least weekly articles

is like lead on the feet of the politicians. I know of cases in which

natural leaders have been permanently paralyzed in their ascent to power,

externally and above all internally, by this compulsion. The relations of

the press to the ruling powers in the state and in the parties, under the

old regime [of the Kaiser], were as detrimental as they could be to the

level of journalism; but that is a chapter in itself. These conditions were

different in the countries of our opponents [the Allies]. But there also,

and for all modern states, apparently the journalist worker gains less and

less as the capitalist lord of the press, of the sort of 'Lord' Northcliffe,

for instance, gains more and more political influence.

Thus far, however, our great capitalist newspaper concerns, which attained

control, especially over the 'chain newspapers,' with 'want ads,' have been

regularly and typically the breeders of political indifference. For no

profits could be made in an independent policy; especially no profitable

benevolence of the politically dominant powers could be obtained. The

advertising business is also the avenue along which, during the war, the

attempt was made to influence the press politically in a grand style--an

attempt which apparently it is regarded as desirable to continue now.

Although one may expect the great papers to escape this pressure, the

situation of the small ones will be far more difficult. In any case, for the

time being, the journalist career is not among us, a normal avenue for the

ascent of political leaders, whatever attraction journalism may otherwise

have and whatever measure of influence, range of activity, and especially

political responsibility it may yield. One has to wait and see. Perhaps

journalism does not have this function any longer, or perhaps journalism

does not yet have it. Whether the renunciation of the principle of anonymity

would mean a change in this is difficult to say. Some journalists--not

all--believe in dropping principled anonymity. What we have experieni e d

during the war in the German press, and in the 'management' of newspapers by

especially hired personages and talented writers who always expressly

figured under their names, has unfortunately shown, in some of the better

known cases, that an increased awareness of responsibility is not so certain

to be bred as might be believed. Some of the papers were, without regard to

party, precisely the notoriously worst boulevard sheets; by dropping

anonymity they strove for and attained greater sales. The publishers as well

as the journalists of sensationalism have gained fortunes but certainly not

honor. Nothing is here being said against the principle of promoting sales;

the question is indeed an intricate one, and the phenomenon of irresponsible

sensationalism does not hold in general. But thus far, sensationalism has

not been the road to genuine leadership or to the responsible management of

politics. How conditions will further develop remains to be seen. Yet the

journalist career remains under all circumstances one of the most important

avenues of professional political activity. It is not a road for everybody,

least of all for weak characters, especially for people who can maintain

their inner balance only with a secure status position. If the life of a

young scholar is a gamble, still he is walled in by firm status conventions,

which prevent him from slipping. But the journalist's life is an absolute

gamble in every respect and under conditions that test one's inner security

in a way that scarcely occurs in any other situation. The often bitter

experiences in occupational life are perhaps not even the worst. The inner

demands that are directed precisely at the successful journalist are

especially difficult. It is, indeed, no small matter to frequent the salons

of the powerful on this earth on a seemingly equal footing and often to be

flattered by all because one is feared, yet knowing all the time that having

hardly closed the door the host has perhaps to justify before his guests his

association with the 'scavengers from the press.' Moreover, it is no small

matter that one must express oneself promptly and convincingly about this

and that, on all conceivable problems of life--whatever the 'market' happens

to demand--and this without becoming absolutely shallow and above all

without losing one's dignity by baring oneself, a thing which has merciless

results. It is not astonishing that there are many journalists who have

become human failures and worthless men. Rather, it is astonishing that,

despite all this, this very stratum includes such a great number of valuable

and quite genuine men, a fact that outsiders would not so easily guess.

If the journalist as a type of professional politician harks back to a

rather considerable past, the figure of the party official belongs only to

the development of the last decades and, in part, only to recent years. In

order to comprehend the position of this figure in historical evolution, we

shall have to turn to a consideration of parties and party organizations.

In all political associations which are somehow extensive, that is,

associations going beyond the sphere and range of the tasks of small rural

districts where power-holders are periodically elected, political

organization is necessarily managed by men interested in the management of

politics. This is to say that a relatively small number of men are primarily

interested in political life and hence interested in sharing political

power. They provide themselves with a following through free recruitment,

present themselves or their proteges as candidates for election, collect the

financial means, and go out for vote-grabbing. It is unimaginable how in

large associations elections could function at all without this managerial

pattern. In practice this means the division of the citizens with the right

to vote into politically active and politically passive elements. This

difference is based on voluntary attitudes, hence it cannot be abolished

through measures like obligatory voting, or 'occupational status group'

representation, or similar measures that are expressly or actually directed

against this state of affairs and the rule of professional politicians. The

active leadership and their freely recruited following are the necessary

elements in the life of any party. The following, and through it the passive

electorate, are necessary for the election of the leader. But the structure

of parties varies. For instance, the 'parties' of the medieval cities, such

as those of the Guelfs and the Ghibellines, were purely personal followings.

If one considers various things about these medieval parties, one is

reminded of Bolshevism and its Soviets. Consider the Statuta delta perta

Guelfa, the confiscations of the Nobili's estates--which originally meant

all those families who lived a chivalrous life and who thus qualified for

fiefs--consider the exclusion from office-holding and the denial of the

right to vote, the inter-local party committees, the

strictly military organizations and the premiums for informers. Then

consider Bolshevism with its strictly sieved military and, in Russia

especially, informer organizations, the disarmament and denial of the

political rights of the 'bourgeois,' that is, of the entrepreneur, trader,

rentier, clergyman, descendants of the dynasty, police agents, as well as

the confiscation policy.

This analogy is still more striking when one considers that, on the one

hand, the military organization of the medieval party constituted a pure

army of knights organized on the basis of the registered feudal estates and

that nobles occupied almost all leading positions, and, on the other hand,

that the Soviets have preserved, or rather reintroduced, the highly paid

enterprises, the group wage, the Taylor system, military and workshop

discipline, and a search for foreign capital. Hence, in a word, the Soviets

have had to accept again absolutely all the things that Bolshevism had been

fighting as bourgeois class institutions. They have had to do this in order

to keep the state and the economy going at all. Moreover, the Soviets have

reinstituted the agents of the former Ochrana [Tsarist Secret Police] as the

main instrument of their state power. But here we do not have to deal with

such organizations for violence, but rather with professional politicians

who strive for power through sober and 'peaceful' party campaigns in the

market of election votes.

Parties, in the sense usual with us, were at first, for instance in England,

pure followings of the aristocracy. If, for any reason whatever, a peer

changed his party, everybody dependent upon him likewise changed. Up to the

Reform Bill [of 1832], the great noble families and, last but not least, the

king controlled the patronage of an immense number of election boroughs.

Close to these aristocratic parties were the parties of notables, which

develop everywhere with the rising power of the bourgeois. Under the

spiritual leadership of the typical intellectual strata of the Occident, the

propertied and cultured circles differentiated themselves into parties and

followed them. These parties were formed partly according to class interest,

partly according to family traditions, and partly for ideological reasons.

Clergymen, teachers, professors, lawyers, doctors, apothecaries, prosperous

farmers, manufacturers--in England the whole stratum that considered itself

as belonging to the class of gentlemen--formed, at first, occasional

associations at most local political clubs. In times of unrest the petty

bourgeoisie raised its voice, and once in a while the proletariat, if

leaders arose who, however, as a rule did not stem from their midst. In this

phase, parties organized as permanent associations between localities do not

yet exist in the open country. Only the parliamentary delegates create the

cohesion; and the local notables are decisive for the selection of

candidates. The election programs originate partly in the election appeals

of the candidates and partly in the meetings of the notables; or, they

originate as resolutions of the parliamentary party. Leadership of the clubs

is an avocation and an honorific pursuit, as demanded by the occasion.

Where clubs are absent (as is mostly the case), the quite formless

management of politics in normal times lies in the hands of the few people

constantly interested in it. Only the journalist is a paid professional

politician; only the management of the newspaper is a continuous political

organization. Besides the newspaper, there is only the parliamentary

session. The parliamentary delegates and the parliamentary party leaders

know to which local notables one turns if a political action seems

desirable. But permanent associations of the parties exist only in the large

cities with moderate contributions of the members and periodical conferences

and public meetings where the delegate gives account of the parliamentary

activities. The party is alive only during election periods.

The members of parliament are interested in the possibility of interlocal

electoral compromises, in vigorous and unified programs endorsed by broad

circles and in a unified agitation throughout the country. In general these

interests form the driving force of a party organization which becomes more

and more strict. In principle, however, the nature of a party apparatus as

an association of notables remains unchanged. This is so, even though a

network of local party affiliations and agents is spread over the whole

country, including middle-sized cities. A member of the parliamentary party

acts as the leader of the central party office and maintains constant

correspondence with the local organizations. Outside of the central bureau,

paid officials are still absent; thoroughly 'respectable' people head the

local organizations for the sake of the deference which they enjoy anyway.

They form the extra-parliamentary 'notables' who exert influence alongside

the stratum of political notables who happen to sit in parliament. However,

the party correspondence, edited by the party, increasingly provides

intellectual nourishment for the press and for the local meetings. Regular

contributions of the members become indispensable; a part of these must

cover the expenses of headquarters.

Not so long ago most of the German party organizations were still in this

stage of development. In France, the first stage of party development was,

at least in part, still predominant, and the organization of the members of

parliament was quite unstable. In the open country, we find a small number

of local notables and programs drafted by the candidates or set up for them

by their patrons in specific campaigns for office. To be sure, these

platforms constitute more or less local adaptations to the resolutions and

programs of the members of parliament. This system was only partially

punctured. The number of full-time professional politicians was small,

consisting in the main of the elected deputies, the few employees of

headquarters, and the journalists. In France, the system has also included

those job hunters who held 'political office' or, at the moment, strove for

one. Politics was formally and by far predominantly an avocation. The number

of delegates qualifying for ministerial office was also very restricted and,

because of their position as notables, so was the number of election

candidates.

However, the number of those who indirectly had a stake in the management of

politics, especially a material one, was very large. For, all administrative

measures of a ministerial department, and especially all decisions in

matters of personnel, were made partly with a view to their influence upon

electoral chances. The realization of each and every kind of wish was sought

through the local delegate's mediation. For better or for worse the minister

had to lend his ear to this delegate, especially if the delegate belonged to

the minister's majority. Hence everybody strove for such influence. The

single deputy controlled the patronage of office and, in general, any kind

of patronage in his election district. In order to be re-elected the deputy,

in turn, maintained connections with the local notables.

Now then, the most modern forms of party organizations stand in sharp

contrast to this idyllic state in which circles of notables and, above all,

members of parliament rule. These modern forms are the children of

democracy, of mass franchise, of the necessity to woo and organize the

masses, and develop the utmost unity of direction and the strictest

discipline. The rule of notables and guidance by members of parliament

ceases. 'Professional' politicians outside the parliaments take the

organization in hand. They do so either as 'entrepreneurs'--the American

boss and the English election agent are, in fact, such entrepreneurs--or as

officials with a fixed salary. Formally, a fargoing democratization takes

place. The parliamentary party no longer creates the authoritative programs,

and the local notables no longer decide the selection of candidates. Rather

assemblies of the organized party members select the candidates and delegate

members to the assemblies of a higher order. Possibly there are several such

conventions leading up to the national convention of the party. Naturally

power actually rests in the hands of those who, within the organization,

handle the work continuously. Otherwise, power rests in the hands of those

on whom the organization in its processes depends financially or

personally--for instance, on the Maecenases or the directors of powerful

political clubs of interested persons (Tammany Hall). It is decisive that

this whole apparatus of people--characteristically called a 'machine' in

Anglo-Saxon countries--or rather those who direct the machine, keep the

members of the parliament in check. They are in a position to impose their

will to a rather far-reaching extent, and that is of special significance

for the selection of the party leader. The man whom the machine follows now

becomes the leader, even over the head of the parliamentary party. In other

words, the creation of such machines signifies the advent of plebiscitarian

democracy.

The party following, above all the party official and party entrepreneur,

naturally expect personal compensation from the victory of their

leader--that is, offices or other advantages. It is decisive that they

expect such advantages from their leader and not merely from the individual

member of parliament. They expect that the demagogic effect of the leader's

personality during the election fight of the party will increase votes and

mandates and thereby power, and, thereby, as far as possible, will extend

opportunities to their followers to find the compensation for which they

hope. Ideally, one of their mainsprings is the satisfaction of working with

loyal personal devotion for a man, and not merely for an abstract program of

a party consisting of mediocrities. In this respect, the 'charismatic'

element of all leadership is at work in the party system.

In very different degrees this system made headway, although it was in

constant, latent struggle with local notables and the members of parliament

who wrangled for influence. This was the case in the bourgeois parties,

first, in the United States, and, then, in the Social Democratic party,

especially of Germany. Constant setbacks occur as soon as no generally

recognized leader exists, and, even when he is found, concessions of all

sorts must be made to the vanity and the personal interest of the party

notables. The machine may also be brought under the domination of the party

officials in whose hands the regular business rests. According to the view

of some Social Democratic circles, their party had succumbed to this

'bureaucratization.' But 'officials' submit relatively easily to a leader's

personality if it has a strong demagogic appeal. The material and the ideal

interests of the officials are intimately connected with the effects of

party power which are expected from the leader's appeal, and besides,

inwardly it is per se more satisfying to work for a leader. The ascent of

leaders is far more difficult where the notables, along with the officials,

control the party, as is usually the case in the bourgeois parties. For

ideally the notables make 'their way of life' out of the petty chairmanships

or committee memberships they hold. Resentment against the demagogue as a

homo novus, the conviction of the superiority of political party

'experience' (which, as a matter of fact, actually is of considerable

importance), and the ideological concern for the crumbling of the old party

traditions--these factors determine the conduct of the notables. They can

count on all the traditionalist elements within the party. Above all, the

rural but also the petty bourgeois voter looks for the name of the notable

familiar to him. He distrusts the man who is unknown to him. However, once

this man has become successful, he clings to him the more unwaveringly. Let

us now consider, by some major examples, the struggle of the two structural

forms--of the notables and of the party--and especially let us consider the

ascendancy of the plebiscitarian form as described by Ostrogorsky.

First England: there until 1868 the party organization was almost purely an

organization of notables. The Tories in the country found support, for

instance, from the Anglican parson, and from the schoolmaster, and above all

from the large landlords of the respective county. The Whigs found support

mostly from such people as the nonconformist preacher (when there was one),

the postmaster, the blacksmith, the tailor, the ropemaker--that is, from

such artisans who could disseminate political influence because they could

chat with people most frequently. In the city the parties differed, partly

according to economics, partly according to religion, and partly simply

according to the party opinions handed down in the families. But always the

notables were the pillars of the political organization.

Above all these arrangements stood Parliament, the parties with the cabinet,

and the 'leader,' who was the chairman of the council of ministers or the

leader of the opposition. This leader had beside him the 'whip'--the most

important professional politician of the party organization. Patronage of

office was vested in the hands of the 'whip'; thus the job hunter had to

turn to him and he arranged an understanding with the deputies of the

individual election boroughs. A stratum of professional politicians

gradually began to develop in the boroughs. At first the locally recruited

agents were not paid; they occupied approximately the same position as our

Vertrauensmanner. However, along with them, a capitalist entrepreneurial

type developed in the boroughs. This was the 'election agent,' whose

existence was unavoidable under England's modern legislation which

guaranteed fair elections.

This legislation aimed at controlling the campaign costs of elections and

sought to check the power of money by making it obligatory for the candidate

to state the costs of his campaign. For in England, the candidate, besides

straining his voice--far more so than was formerly the case with us [in

Germany]--enjoyed stretching his purse. The election agent made the

candidate pay a lump sum, which usually meant a good deal for the agent. In

the distribution of power in Parliament and the country between the 'leader'

and the party notables, the leader in England used to hold a very eminent

position. This position was based on the compelling fact of making possible

a grand, and thereby steady, political strategy. Nevertheless the influence

of the parliamentary party and of party notables was still considerable.

That is about what the old party organization looked like. It was half an

affair of notables and half an entrepreneurial organization with salaried

employees. Since 1868, however, the 'caucus' system developed, first for

local elections in Birmingham, then all over the country. A nonconformist

parson and along with him Joseph Chamberlain brought this system to life.

The occasion for this development was the democratization of the franchise.

In order to win the masses it became necessary to call into being a

tremendous apparatus of apparently democratic associations. An electoral

association had to be formed in every city district to help keep the

organization incessantly in motion and to bureaucratize everything rigidly.

Hence, hired and paid officials of the local electoral committees increased

numerically; and, on the whole, perhaps IO per cent of the voters were

organized in these local committees. The elected party managers had the

right to co-opt others and were the formal bearers of party politics. The

driving force was the local circle, which was, above all, composed of those

interested in municipal politics--from which the fattest material

opportunities always spring. These local circles were also first to call

upon the world of finance. This newly emerging machine, which was no longer

led by members of Parliament, very soon had to struggle with the previous

power-holders, above all, with the 'whip.' Being supported by locally

interested persons, the machine came out of the fight so victoriously that

the whip had to submit and compromise with the machine. The result was a

centralization of all power in the hands of the few and, ultimately, of the

one person who stood at the top of the party. The whole system had arisen in

the Liberal party in connection with Gladstone's ascent to power. What

brought this machine to such swift triumph over the notables was the

fascination of Gladstone's 'grand' demagogy, the firm belief of the masses

in the ethical substance of his policy, and, above all, their belief in the

ethical character of his personality. It soon became obvious that a

Caesarist plebiscitarian element in politics--the dictator of the

battlefield of elections--had appeared on the plain. In 1877 the caucus

became active for the first time in national elections, and with brilliant

success, for the result was Disraeli's fall at the height of his great

achievements. In 1866, the machine was already so completely oriented to the

charismatic personality that when the question of home rule was raised the

whole apparatus from top to bottom did not question whether it actually

stood on Gladstone's ground; it simply, on his word, fell in line with him:

they said, Gladstone right or wrong, we follow him. And thus the machine

deserted its own creator, Chamberlain.

Such machinery requires a considerable personnel. In England there are about

2,000 persons who live directly off party politics. To be sure, those who

are active in politics purely as job seekers or as interested persons are

far more numerous, especially in municipal politics. In addition to economic

opportunities, for the useful caucus politician, there are the opportunities

to satisfy his vanity. To become 'J.P.' or even 'M.P.' is, of course, in

line with the greatest (and normal) ambition; and such people, who are of

demonstrably good breeding, that is, 'gentlemen,' attain their goal. The

highest goal is, of course, a peerage, especially for the great financial

Maecenases. About 50 per cent of the finances of the party depend on

contributions of donors who remained anonymous.

Now then, what has been the effect of this whole system? Nowadays the

members of Parliament, with the exception of the few cabinet members (and a

few insurgents), are normally nothing better than well-disciplined 'yes'

men. With us, in the Reichstag, one used at least to take care of one's

private correspondence on his desk, thus indicating that one was active in

the weal of the country. Such gestures are not demanded in England; the

member of Parliament must only vote, not commit party treason. He must

appear when the whips call him, and do what the cabinet or the leader of the

opposition orders. The caucus machine in the open country is almost

completely unprincipled if a strong leader exists who has the machine

absolutely in hand. Therewith the plebiscitarian dictator actually stands

above Parliament. He brings the masses behind him by means of the machine

and the members of Parliament are for him merely political spoilsmen

enrolled in his following.

How does the selection of these strong leaders take place? First, in terms

of what ability are they selected? Next to the qualities of will--decisive

all over the world--naturally the force of demagogic speech is above all

decisive. Its character has changed since the time speakers like Cobden

addressed themselves to the intellect, and Gladstone who mastered the

technique of apparently 'letting sober facts speak for themselves.' At the

present time often purely emotional means are used--the means the Salvation

Army also exploits in order to set the masses in motion. One may call the

existing state of affairs a 'dictatorship resting on the exploitation of

mass emotionality.' Yet, the highly developed system of committee work in

the English Parliament makes it possible and compelling for every politician

who counts on a share in leadership to cooperate in committee work. All

important ministers of recent decades have this very real and effective

work-training as a background. The practice of committee reports and public

criticism of these deliberations is a condition for training, for really

selecting leaders and eliminating mere demagogues.

Thus it is in England. The caucus system there, however, has been a weak

form, compared with the American party organization, which brought the

plebiscitarian principle to an especially early and an especially pure

expression.

According to Washington's idea, America was to be a commonwealth

administered by 'gentlemen.' In his time, in America, a gentleman was also a

landlord, or a man with a college education--this was the case at first. In

the beginning, when parties began to organize, the members of the House of

Representatives claimed to be leaders, just as in England at the time when

notables ruled. The party organization was quite loose and continued to be

until 1824. In some communities, where modern development first took place,

the party machine was in the making even before the eighteen-twenties. But

when Andrew Jackson was first elected President--the election of the western

farmers' candidate--the old traditions were overthrown. Formal party

leadership by leading members of Congress came to an end soon after 1840

when the great parliamentarians, Calhoun and Webster, retired from political

life because Congress had lost almost all of its power to the party machine

in the open country. That the plebiscitarian 'machine' has developed so

early in America is due to the fact that there, and there alone, the

executive--this is what mattered--the chief of office-patronage, was a

President elected by plebiscite. By virtue of the 'separation of powers' he

was almost independent of parliament in his conduct of office. Hence, as the

price of victory, the true booty object of the office-prebend was held out

precisely at the presidential election. Through Andrew Jackson the 'spoils

system' was quite systematically raised to a principle and the conclusions

were drawn.

What does this spoils system, the turning over of federal offices to the

following of the victorious candidate, mean for the party formations of

today? It means that quite unprincipled parties oppose one another; they are

purely organizations of job hunters drafting their changing platforms

according to the chances of vote grabbing changing their colors to a degree

which, despite all analogies, is not yet to be found elsewhere. The parties

are simply and absolutely fashioned for the election campaign that is most

important for office patronage: the fight for the presidency and for the

governorships of the separate states. Platforms and candidates are selected

at the national conventions of the parties without intervention by

congressmen. Hence they emerge from party conventions, the delegates of

which are formally, very democratically elected. These delegates are

determined by meetings of other delegates, who, in turn, owe their mandate

to the 'primaries,' the assembling of the direct voters of the party. In the

primaries the delegates are already elected in the name of the candidate for

the nation's leadership. Within the parties the most embittered fight rages

about the question of 'nomination.' After all, 300,000 to 400,000 official

appointments lie in the hands of the President, appointments which are

executed by him only with the approval of the senators from the separate

states. Hence the senators are powerful politicians. By comparison, however,

the House of Representatives is, politically, quite impotent, because

patronage of office is removed from it and because the cabinet members,

simply assistants to the President, can conduct office apart from the

confidence or lack of confidence of the people. The President, who is

legitimatized by the people, confronts everybody, even Congress; this is a

result of 'the separation of powers.'

In America, the spoils system, supported in this fashion, has been

technically possible because American culture with its youth could afford

purely dilettante management. With 300,000 to 400,000 such party men who

have no qualifications to their credit other than the fact of having

performed good services for their party, this state of affairs of course

could not exist without enormous evils. A corruption and wastefulness second

to none could be tolerated only by a country with as yet unlimited economic

opportunities.

Now then, the boss is the figure who appears in the picture of this system

of the plebiscitarian party machine. Who is the boss? He is a political

capitalist entrepreneur who on his own account and at his own risk provides

votes. He may have established his first relations as a lawyer or a

saloonkeeper or as a proprietor of similar establishments, or perhaps as a

creditor. From here he spins his threads out until he is able to 'control' a

certain number of votes. When he has come this far he establishes contact

with the neighboring bosses, and through zeal, skill, and above all

discretion, he attracts the attention of those who have already further

advanced in the career, and then he climbs. The boss is indispensable to the

organization of the party and the organization is centralized in his hands.

He substantially provides the financial means. How does he get them ? Well,

partly by the contributions of the members, and especially by taxing the

salaries of those officials who came into office through him and his party.

Furthermore, there are bribes and tips. He who wishes to trespass with

impunity one of the many laws needs the boss's connivance and must pay for

it; or else he will get into trouble. But this alone is not enough to

accumulate the necessary capital for political enterprises. The boss is

indispensable as the direct recipient of the money of great financial

magnates, who would not entrust their money for election purposes to a paid

party official, or to anyone else giving public account of his affairs. The

boss, with his judicious discretion in financial matters, is the natural man

for those capitalist circles who finance the election. The typical boss is

an absolutely sober man. He does not seek social honor; the 'professional'

is despised in 'respectable society.' He seeks power alone, power as a

source of money, but also power for power's sake. In contrast to the English

leader, the American boss works in the dark. He is not heard speaking in

public; he suggests to the speakers what they must say in expedient fashion.

He himself, however, keeps silent. As a rule he accepts no office, except

that of senator. For, since the senators, by virtue of the Constitution,

participate in office patronage, the leading bosses often sit in person in

this body. The distribution of offices is carried out, in the first place,

according to services done for the party. But, also, auctioning offices on

financial bids often occurs and there are certain rates for individual

offices; hence, a system of selling offices exists which, after all, has

often been known also to the monarchies, the church-state included, of the

seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

The boss has no firm political 'principles'; he is completely unprincipled

in attitude and asks merely: What will capture votes? Frequently he is a

rather poorly educated man. But as a rule he leads an inoffensive and

correct private life. In his political morals, however, he naturally adjusts

to the average ethical standards of political conduct, as a great many of us

also may have done during the hoarding period in the field of economic

ethics. That as a 'professional' politician the boss is socially despised

does not worry him. That he personally does not attain high federal offices,

and does not wish to do so, has the frequent advantage that extra-party

intellects, thus notables, may come into candidacy when the bosses believe

they will have great appeal value at the polls. Hence the same old party

notables do not run again and again, as is the case in Germany. Thus the

structure of these unprincipled parties with their socially despised

power-holders has aided able men to attain the presidency--men who with us

never would have come to the top. To be sure, the bosses resist an outsider

who might jeopardize their sources of money and power. Yet in the

competitive struggle to win the favor of the voters, the bosses frequently

have had to condescend and accept candidates known to be opponents of

corruption.

Thus there exists a strong capitalist party machine, strictly and thoroughly

organized from top to bottom, and supported by clubs of extraordinary

stability. These clubs, such as Tammany Hall, are like Knight orders. They

seek profits solely through political control, especially of the municipal

government, which is the most important object of booty. This structure of

party life was made possible by the high degree of democracy in the United

States--a 'New Country.' This connection, in turn, is the basis for the fact

that the system is gradually dying out. America can no longer be governed

only by dilettantes. Scarcely fifteen years ago, when American workers were

asked why they allowed themselves to be governed by politicians whom they

admitted they despised, the answer was: 'We prefer having people in office

whom we can spit upon, rather than a caste of officials who spit upon us, as

is the case with you.' This was the old point of view of American

'democracy.' Even then, the socialists had entirely different ideas and now

the situation is no longer bearable. The dilettante administration does not

suffice and the Civil Service Reform establishes an ever-increasing number

of positions for life with pension rights. The reform works out in such a

way that university-trained officials, just as incorruptible and quite as

capable as our officials, get into office. Even now about 100,000 offices

have ceased being objects of booty to be turned over after elections.

Rather, the offices qualify their holders for pensions, and are based upon

tested qualifications. The spoils system will thus gradually recede into the

background and the nature of party leadership is then likely to be

transformed also but as yet, we do not know in what way.

In Germany, until now, the decisive conditions of political management have

been in essence as follows:

First, the parliaments have been impotent. The result has been that no man

with the qualities of a leader would enter Parliament permanently. If one

wished to enter Parliament, what could one achieve there? When a chancellery

position was open, one could tell the administrative chief: 'I have a very

able man in my election district who would be suitable; take him.' And he

would have concurred with pleasure; but that was about all that a German

member of Parliament could do to satisfy his instincts for power--if he

possessed any.

To this must be added the tremendous importance of the trained expert

officialdom in Germany. This factor determined the impotence of Parliament.

Our officialdom was second to none in the world. This importance of the

officialdom was accompanied by the fact that the officials claimed not only

official positions but also cabinet positions for themselves. In the

Bavarian state legislature, when the introduction of parliamentary

government was debated last year, it was said that if members of the

legislature were to be placed in cabinet positions talented people would no

longer seek official careers. Moreover, the civil-service administration

systematically escaped such control as is signified by the English committee

discussions. The administration thus made it impossible for

parliaments--with a few exceptions--to train really useful administrative

chiefs from their own ranks.

A third factor is that in Germany, in contrast to America, we have had

parties with principled political views who have maintained that their

members, at least subjectively, represented bona-fide Weltanschauungen. Now

then, the two most important of these parties, the Catholic Centre Party and

the Social Democratic party, have, from their inceptions, been minority

parties and have meant to be minority parties. The leading circles of the

Centre party in the Reich have never concealed their opposition to

parliamentarian democracy, because of fear of remaining in the minority and

thus facing great difficulties in placing their job hunters in office as

they have done by exerting pressure on the government. The Social Democratic

party was a principled minority party and a handicap to the introduction of

parliamentary government because the party did not wish to stain itself by

participating in the existing bourgeois political order. The fact that both

parties dissociated themselves from the parliamentary system made

parliamentary government impossible.

Considering all this, what then became of the professional politicians in

Germany? They have had no power, no responsibility, and could play only a

rather subordinate role as notables. In consequence, they have been animated

anew by the guild instincts, which are typical everywhere. It has been

impossible for a man who was not of their hue to climb high in the circle of

those notables who made their petty positions their lives. I could mention

many names from every party, the Social Democratic party, of course, not

excepted, that spell tragedies of political careers because the persons had

leadership qualities, and precisely because of these qualities were not

tolerated by the notables. All our parties have taken this course of

development and have become guilds of notables. Bebel, for instance, was

still a leader through temperament and purity of character, however modest

his intellect. The fact that he was a martyr, that he never betrayed

confidence in the eyes of the masses, resulted in his having the masses

absolutely behind him. There was no power in the party that could have

seriously challenged him. Such leadership came to an end, after his death,

and the rule of officials began. Trade-union officials, party secretaries,

and journalists came to the top. The instincts of officialdom dominated the

party--a highly respectable officialdom, of rare respectability one may say,

compared to conditions in other countries, especially the often corruptible

trade-union officials in America. But the results of control by officialdom,

which we discussed above, also began in the party.

Since the eighteen-eighties the bourgeois parties have completely become

guilds of notables. To be sure, occasionally the parties had to draw on

extra-party intellects for advertising purposes, so that they could say, 'We

have such and such names.' So far as possible, they avoided letting these

names run for election; only when it was unavoidable and the person insisted

could he run for election. The same spirit prevailed in Parliament. Our

parliamentary parties were and are guilds. Every speech delivered from the

floor of the Reichstag is thoroughly censored in the party before it is

delivered. This is obvious from their unheard-of boredom. Only he who is

summoned to speak can have the word. One can hardly conceive of a stronger

contrast to the English, and also--for quite opposite reasons--the French

usage.

Now, in consequence of the enormous collapse, which is customarily called

the Revolution, perhaps a transformation is under way. Perhaps--but not for

certain. In the beginning there were new kinds of party apparatuses

emerging. First, there were amateur apparatuses. They are especially often

represented by students of the various universities, who tell a man to whom

they ascribe leadership qualities: we want to do the necessary work for you;

carry it out. Secondly, there are apparatuses of businessmen. It happened

that men to whom leadership qualities were ascribed were approached by

people willing to take over the propaganda, at fixed rates for every vote.

If you were to ask me honestly which of these two apparatuses I think the

more reliable, from the purely technical-political point of view, I believe

I would prefer the latter. But both apparatuses were fast-emerging bubbles,

which swiftly vanished again. The existing apparatuses transformed

themselves, but they continued to work. The phenomena are only symptoms of

the fact that new apparatuses would come about if there were only leaders.

But even the technical peculiarity of proportionate representation precluded

their ascendancy. Only a few dictators of the street crowds arose and fell

again. And only the following of a mob dictatorship is organized in a

strictly disciplined fashion: whence the power of these vanishing

minorities.

Let us assume that all this were to change; then, after what has been said

above, it has to be clearly realized that the plebiscitarian leadership of

parties entails the 'soullessness' of the following, their intellectual

proletarianization, one might say. In order to be a useful apparatus, a

machine in the American sense--undisturbed either by the vanity of notables

or pretensions to independent views--the following of such a leader must

obey him blindly. Lincoln's election was possible only through this

character of party organization, and with Gladstone, as mentioned before,

the same happened in the caucus. This is simply the price paid for guidance

by leaders. However, there is only the choice between leadership democracy

with a 'machine' and leaderless democracy, namely, the rule of professional

politicians without a calling, without the inner charismatic qualities that

make a leader, and this means what the party insurgents in the situation

usually designate as 'the rule of the clique For the time being we in

Germany have only the latter. For the future, the permanence of this

situation, at least in the Reich, is primarily facilitated by the fact that

the Bundesrat will rise again and will of necessity restrict the power of

the Reichstag and therewith its significance as a selective agency of

leaders. Moreover, in its present form, proportional representation is a

typical phenomenon of leaderless democracy. This is the case not only

because it facilitates the horse-trading of the notables for placement on

the ticket, but also because in the future it will give organized interest

groups the possibility of compelling parties to include their officials in

the list of candidates, thus creating an unpolitical Parliament in which

genuine leadership finds no place. Only the President of the Reich could

become the safety-valve of the demand for leadership if he were elected in a

plebiscitarian way and not by Parliament. Leadership on the basis of proved

work could emerge and selection could take place, especially if, in great

municipalities, the plebiscitarian city-manager were to appear on the scene

with the right to organize his bureaus independently. Such is the case in

the U.S.A. whenever one wishes to tackle corruption seriously. It requires a

party organization fashioned for such elections. But the very

petty-bourgeois hostility of all parties to leaders, the Social Democratic

party certainly included, leaves the future formation of parties and all

these chances still completely in the dark.

Therefore, today, one cannot yet see in any way how the management of

politics as a 'vocation' will shape itself. Even less can one see along what

avenue opportunities are opening to which political talents can be put for

satisfactory political tasks. He who by his material circumstances is

compelled to live 'off' politics will almost always have to consider the

alternative positions of the journalist or the party official as the typical

direct avenues. Or, he must consider a position as representative of

interest groups--such as a trade union, a chamber of commerce, a farm

bureau, a craft association, a labor board, an employer's association, et

cetera, or else a suitable municipal position. Nothing more than this can be

said about this external aspect: in common with the journalist, the party

official bears the odium of being declasse. 'Wage writer' or 'wage speaker'

will unfortunately always resound in his ears, even though the words remain

unexpressed. He who is inwardly defenseless and unable to find the proper

answer for himself had better stay away from this career. For in any case,

besides grave temptations, it is an avenue that may constantly lead to

disappointments. Now then, what inner enjoyments can this career offer and

what personal conditions are presupposed for one who enters this avenue?

Well, first of all the career of politics grants a feeling of power. The

knowledge of influencing men, of participating in power over them, and above

all, the feeling of holding in one's hands a nerve fiber of historically

important events can elevate the professional politician above everyday

routine even when he is placed in formally modest positions. But now the

question for him is: Through what qualities can I hope to do justice to this

power (however narrowly circumscribed it may be in the individual case) ?

How can he hope to do justice to the responsibility that power imposes upon

him? With this we enter the field of ethical questions, for that is where

the problem belongs: What kind of a man must one be if he is to be allowed

to put his hand on the wheel of history?

One can say that three pre-eminent qualities are decisive for the

politician: passion, a feeling of responsibility, and a sense of proportion.

This means passion in the sense of matter-of-factness, of passionate

devotion to a 'cause,' to the god or demon who is its overlord. It is not

passion in the sense of that inner bearing which my late friend, Georg

Simmel, used to designate as 'sterile excitation,' and which was peculiar

especially to a certain type of Russian intellectual (by no means all of

them!). It is an excitation that plays so great a part with our

intellectuals in this carnival we decorate with the proud name of

'revolution.' It is a 'romanticism of the intellectually interesting,'

running into emptiness devoid of all feeling of objective responsibility.

To be sure, mere passion, however genuinely felt, is not enough. It does not

make a politician, unless passion as devotion to a 'cause' also makes

responsibility to this cause the guiding star of action. And for this, a

sense of proportion is needed. This is the decisive psychological quality of

the politician: his ability to let realities work upon him with inner

concentration and calmness. Hence his distance to things and men. 'Lack of

distance' per se is one of the deadly sins of every politician. It is one of

those qualities the breeding of which will condemn the progeny of our

intellectuals to political incapacity. For the problem is simply how can

warm passion and a cool sense of proportion be forged together in one and

the same soul? Politics is made with the head, not with other parts of the

body or soul. And yet devotion to politics, if it is not to be frivolous

intellectual play but rather genuinely human conduct, can be born and

nourished from passion alone. However, that firm taming of the soul, which

distinguishes the passionate politician and differentiates him from the

'sterilely excited' and mere political dilettante, is possible only through

habituation to detachment in every sense of the word. The 'strength' of a

political 'personality' means, in the first place, the possession of these

qualities of passion, responsibility, and proportion.

Therefore, daily and hourly, the politician inwardly has to overcome a quite

trivial and all-too-human enemy: a quite vulgar vanity, the deadly enemy of

all matter-of-fact devotion to a cause, and of all distance, in this case,

of distance towards one's self.

Vanity is a very widespread quality and perhaps nobody is entirely free from

it. In academic arid scholarly circles, vanity is a sort of occupational

disease, but precisely with the scholar, vanity--however disagreeably It may

express itself--is relatively harmless; in the sense that as a rule it does

not disturb scientific enterprise. With the politician the case is quite

different. He works with the striving for power as an unavoidable means.

Therefore, 'power instinct,' as is usually said, belongs indeed to his

normal qualities. The sin against the lofty spirit of his vocation, however,

begins where this striving for power ceases to be objective and becomes

purely personal self-intoxication, instead of exclusively entering the

service of 'the cause.' For ultimately there are only two kinds of deadly

sins in the field of politics: lack of objectivity and--often but not always

identical with it--irresponsibility. Vanity, the need personally to stand in

the foreground as clearly as possible, strongly tempts the politician to

commit one or both of these sins. This is more truly the case as the

demagogue is compelled to count upon 'effect.' He therefore is constantly in

danger of becoming an actor as well as taking lightly the responsibility for

the outcome of his actions and of being concerned merely with the

'impression' he makes. His lack of objectivity tempts him to strive for the

glamorous semblance of power rather than for actual power. His

irresponsibility, however, suggests that he enjoy power merely for power's

sake without a substantive purpose. Although, or rather just because, power

is the unavoidable means, and striving for power is one of the driving

forces of all politics, there is no more harmful distortion of political

force than the parvenu-like braggart with power, and the vain

self-reflection in the feeling of power, and in general every worship of

power per se. The mere 'power politician' may get strong effects, but

actually his work leads nowhere and is senseless. (Among us, too, an

ardently promoted cult seeks to glorify him.) In this, the critics of 'power

politics' are absolutely right. From the sudden inner collapse of typical

representatives of this mentality, we can see what inner weakness and

impotence hides behind this boastful but entirely empty gesture. It is a

product of a shoddy and superficially blase attitude towards the meaning of

human conduct; and it has no relation whatsoever to the knowledge of tragedy

with which all action, but especially political action, is truly interwoven.

The final result of political action often, no, even regularly, stands in

completely inadequate and often even paradoxical relation to its original

meaning. This is fundamental to all history, a point not to be proved in

detail here. But because of this fact, the serving of a cause must not be

absent if action is to have inner strength. Exactly what the cause, in the

service of which the politician strives for power and uses power; looks like

is a matter of faith. The politician may serve national, humanitarian,

social, ethical, cultural, worldly, or religious ends. The politician may be

sustained by a strong belief in 'progress'--no matter in which sense--or he

may coolly reject this kind of belief. He may claim to stand in the service

of an 'idea' or, rejecting this in principle, he may want to serve external

ends of everyday life. However, some kind of faith must always exist.

Otherwise, it is absolutely true that the curse of the creature's

worthlessness overshadows even the externally strongest political successes.

With the statement above we are already engaged in discussing the last

problem that concerns us tonight: the ethos of politics as a 'cause.' What

calling can politics fulfil quite independently of its goals within the

total ethical economy of human conduct--which is, so to speak, the ethical

locus where politics is at home? Here, to be sure, ultimate Weltanschauungen

clash, world views among which in the end one has to make a choice. Let us

resolutely tackle this problem, which recently has been opened again, in my

view in a very wrong way.

But first, let us free ourselves from a quite trivial falsification: namely,

that ethics may first appear in a morally highly compromised role. Let us

consider examples. Rarely will you find that a man whose love turns from one

woman to another feels no need to legitimate this before himself by saying:

she was not worthy of my love, or, she has disappointed me, or whatever

other like 'reasons' exist. This is an attitude that, with a profound lack

of chivalry, adds a fancied 'legitimacy' to the plain fact that he no longer

loves her and that the woman has to bear it. By virtue of this

'legitimation,' the man claims a right for himself and besides causing the

misfortune seeks to put her in the wrong. The successful amatory competitor

proceeds exactly in the same way: namely, the opponent must be less worthy,

otherwise he would not have lost outs

It is no different, of course, if after a victorious war the victor in

undignified self-righteousness claims, 'I have won because I was right.' Or,

if somebody under the frightfulness of war collapses psychologically, and

instead of simply saying it was just too much, he feels the need of

legitimizing his war weariness to himself by substituting the feeling, 'I

could not bear it because I had to fight for a morally bad cause.' And

likewise with the defeated in war. Instead of searching like old women for

the 'guilty one' after the war--in a situation in which the structure of

society produced the war--everyone with a manly and controlled attitude

would tell the enemy, 'We lost the war. You have won it. That is now all

over. Now let us discuss what conclusions must be drawn according to the

objective interests that came into play and what is the main thing in view

of the responsibility towards the future which above all burdens the

victor.' Anything else is undignified and will become a boomerang. A nation

forgives if its interests have been damaged, but no nation forgives if its

honor has been offended, especially by a bigoted self-righteousness. Every

new document that comes to light after decades revives the undignified

lamentations, the hatred and scorn, instead of allowing the war at its end

to be buried, at least morally. This is possible only through objectivity

and chivalry and above all only through dignity. But never is it possible

through an 'ethic,' which in truth signifies a lack of dignity on both

sides. Instead of being concerned about what the politician is interested

in, the future and the responsibility towards the future, this ethic is

concerned about politically sterile questions of past guilt, which are not

to be settled politically. To act in this way is politically guilty, if such

guilt exists at all. And it overlooks the unavoidable falsification of the

whole problem, through very material interests: namely, the victor's

interest in the greatest possible moral and material gain; the hopes of the

defeated to trade in advantages through confessions of guilt. If anything is

'vulgar,' then, this is, and it is the result of this fashion of exploiting

'ethics' as a means of 'being in the right.'

Now then, what relations do ethics and politics actually have? Have the two

nothing whatever to do with one another, as has occasionally been said? Or,

is the reverse true: that the ethic of political conduct is identical with

that of any other conduct? Occasionally an exclusive choice has been

believed to exist between the two propositions--either the one or the other

proposition must be correct. But is it true that any ethic of the world

could establish commandments of identical content for erotic, business,

familial, and official relations; for the relations to one's wife, to the

greengrocer, the son, the competitor, the friend, the defendant? Should it

really matter so little for the ethical demands on politics that politics

operates with very special means, namely, power backed up by violence? Do we

not see that the Bolshevik and the Spartacist ideologists bring about

exactly the same results as any militaristic dictator just because they use

this political means? In what but the persons of the power-holders and their

dilettantism does the rule of the workers' and soldiers' councils differ

from the rule of any power-holder of the old regime? In what way does the

polemic of most representatives of the presumably new ethic differ from that

of the opponents which they criticized, or the ethic of any other

demagogues? In their noble intention, people will say. Good! But it is the

means about which we speak here, and the adversaries, in complete subjective

sincerity, claim, in the very same way, that their ultimate intentions are

of lofty character. 'All they that take the sword shall perish with the

sword' and fighting is everywhere fighting. Hence, the ethic of the Sermon

on the Mount.

By the Sermon on the Mount, we mean the absolute ethic of the gospel, which

is a more serious matter than those who are fond of quoting these

commandments today believe. This ethic is no joking matter. The same holds

for this ethic as has been said of causality in science: it is not a cab,

which one can have stopped at one's pleasure; it is all or nothing. This is

precisely the meaning of the gospel, if trivialities are not to result.

Hence, for instance, it was said of the wealthy young man, 'He went away

sorrowful: for he had great possessions.' The evangelist commandment,

however, is unconditional and unambiguous: give what thou hast--absolutely

everything. The politician will say that this is a socially senseless

imposition as long as it is not carried out everywhere. Thus the politician

upholds taxation, confiscatory taxation, outright confiscation; in a word,

compulsion and regulation for all. The ethical commandment, however, is not

at all concerned about that, and this unconcern is its essence. Or, take the

example, 'turn the other cheek': This command is unconditional and does not

question the source of the other's authority to strike. Except for a saint

it is an ethic of indignity. This is it: one must be saintly in everything;

at least in intention, one must live like Jesus, the apostles, St. Francis,

and their like. Then this ethic makes sense and expresses a kind of dignity;

otherwise it does not. For if it is said, in line with the acosmic ethic of

love, 'Resist not him that is evil with force,' for the politician the

reverse proposition holds, 'thou shalt resist evil by force,' or else you

are responsible for the evil winning out. He who wishes to follow the ethic

of the gospel should abstain from strikes, for strikes mean compulsion; he

may join the company unions. Above all things, he should not talk of

'revolution.' After all, the ethic of the gospel does not wish to teach that

civil war is the only legitimate war. The pacifist who follows the gospel

will refuse to bear arms or will throw them down; in Germany this was the

recommended ethical duty to end the war and therewith all wars. The

politician would say the only sure means to discredit the war for all

foreseeable time would have been a status quo peace. Then the nations would

have questioned, what was this war for? And then the war would have been

argued ad absurdum, which is now impossible. For the victors, at least for

part of them, the war will have been politically profitable. And the

responsibility for this rests on behavior that made all resistance

impossible for us. Now, as a result of the ethics of absolutism, when the

period of exhaustion will have passed, the peace will be discredited, not

the war.

Finally, let us consider the duty of truthfulness. For the absolute ethic it

holds unconditionally. Hence the conclusion was reached to publish all

documents, especially those placing blame on one's own country. On the basis

of these one-sided publications the confessions of guilt followed--and they

were one-sided, unconditional, and without regard to consequences. The

politician will find that as a result truth will not be furthered but

certainly obscured through abuse and unleashing of passion; only an

all-round methodical investigation by non-partisans could bear fruit; any

other procedure may have consequences for a nation that cannot be remedied

for decades. But the absolute ethic just does not ask for 'consequences.'

That is the decisive point.

We must be clear about the fact that all ethically oriented conduct may be

guided by one of two fundamentally differing and irreconcilably opposed

maxims: conduct can be oriented to an 'ethic of ultimate ends' or to an

'ethic of responsibility.' This is not to say that an ethic of ultimate ends

is identical with irresponsibility, or that an ethic of responsibility is

identical with unprincipled opportunism. Naturally nobody says that.

However, there is an abysmal contrast between conduct that follows the maxim

of an ethic of ultimate ends--that is, in religious terms, 'The Christian

does rightly and leaves the results with the Lord'--and conduct that follows

the maxim of an ethic of responsibility, in which case one has to give an

account of the foreseeable results of one's action. You may demonstrate to a

convinced syndicalist, believing in an ethic of ultimate ends, that his

action will result in increasing the opportunities of reaction, in

increasing the oppression of his class, and obstructing its ascent--and you

will not make the slightest impression upon him. If an action of good intent

leads to bad results, then, in the actor's eyes, not he but the world, or

the stupidity of other men, or God's will who made them thus, is responsible

for the evil. However a man who believes in an ethic of responsibility takes

account of precisely the average deficiencies of people; as Fichte has

correctly said, he does not even have the right to presuppose their goodness

and perfection. He does not feel in a position to burden others with the

results of his own actions so far as he was able to foresee them; he will

say: these results are ascribed to my action. The believer in an ethic of

ultimate ends feels 'responsible' only for seeing to it that the flame of

pure intentions is not quelched: for example, the flame of protesting

against the injustice of the social order. To rekindle the flame ever anew

is the purpose of his quite irrational deeds, judged in view of their

possible success. They are acts that can and shall have only exemplary

value.

But even herewith the problem is not yet exhausted. 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.

The decisive means for politics is violence. You may see the extent of the

tension between means and ends, when viewed ethically, from the following:

as is generally known, even during the war the revolutionary socialists

(Zimmerwald faction) professed a principle that one might strikingly

formulate: 'If we face the choice either of some more years of war and then

revolution, or peace now and no revolution, we choose--some more years of

war!' Upon the further question: 'What can this revolution bring about?'

every scientifically trained socialist would have had the answer: One cannot

speak of a transition to an economy that in our sense could be called

socialist; a bourgeois economy will re-emerge, merely stripped of the feudal

elements and the dynastic vestiges. For this very modest result, they are

willing to face 'some more years of war.' One may well say that even with a

very robust socialist conviction one might reject a purpose that demands

such means. With Bolshevism and Spartacism, and, in general, with any kind

of revolutionary socialism, it is precisely the same thing. It is of course

utterly ridiculous if the power politicians of the old regime are morally

denounced for their use of the same means, however justified the rejection

of their aims may be.

The ethic of ultimate ends apparently must go to pieces on the problem of

the justification of means by ends. As a matter of fact, logically it has

only the possibility of rejecting all action that employs morally dangerous

means--in theory! In the world of realities, as a rule, we encounter the

ever-renewed experience that the adherent of an ethic of ultimate ends

suddenly turns into a chiliastic prophet. Those, for example, who have just

preached 'love against violence' now call for the use of force for the last

violent deed, which would then lead to a state of affairs in which all

violence is annihilated. In the same manner, our officers told the soldiers

before every offensive: 'This will be the last one; this one will bring

victory and therewith peace.' The proponent of an ethic of absolute ends

cannot stand up under the ethical irrationality of the world. He is a

cosmic-ethical 'rationalist.' Those of you who know Dostoievski will

remember the scene of the 'Grand Inquisitor,' where the problem is

poignantly unfolded. 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.

My colleague, Mr. F. W. Forster, whom personally I highly esteem for his

undoubted sincerity, but whom I reject unreservedly as a politician,

believes it is possible to get around this difficulty by the simple thesis:

'from good comes only good; but from evil only evil follows.' In that case

this whole complex of questions would not exist. But it is rather

astonishing that such a thesis could come to light two thousand five hundred

years after the Upanishads. Not only the whole course of world history, but

every frank examination of everyday experience points to the very opposite.

The development of religions all over the world is determined by the fact

that the opposite is true. The age-old problem of theodicy consists of the

very question of how it is that a power which is said to be at once

omnipotent and kind could have created such an irrational world of

undeserved suffering, unpunished injustice, and hopeless stupidity. Either

this power is not omnipotent or not kind, or, entirely different principles

of compensation and reward govern our life--principles we may interpret

metaphysically, or even principles that forever escape our comprehension.

This problem--the experience of the irrationality of the world--has been the

driving force of all religious evolution. The Indian doctrine of karma,

Persian dualism, the doctrine of original sin, predestination and the deus

absconditus, all these have grown out of this experience. Also the early

Christians knew full well the world is governed by demons and that he who

lets himself in for politics, that is, for power and force as means,

contracts with diabolical powers and for his action it is not true that good

can follow only from good and evil only from evil, but that often the

opposite is true. Anyone who fails to see this is, indeed, a political

infant.

We are placed into various life-spheres, each of which is governed by

different laws. Religious ethics have settled with this fact in different

ways. Hellenic polytheism made sacrifices to Aphrodite and Hera alike, to

Dionysus and to Apollo, and knew these gods were frequently in conflict with

one another. The Hindu order of life made each of the different occupations

an object of a specific ethical code, a Dharma, and forever segregated one

from the other as castes, thereby placing them into a fixed hierarchy of

rank. For the man born into it, there was no escape from it, lest he be

twice-born in another life. The occupations were thus placed at varying

distances from the highest religious goods of salvation. In this way, the

caste order allowed for the possibility of fashioning the Dharma of each

single caste, from those of the ascetics and Brahmins to those of the rogues

and harlots, in accordance with the immanent and autonomous laws of their

respective occupations. War and politics were also included. You will find

war integrated into the totality of life-spheres in the Bhagavad-Gita, in

the conversation between Krishna and Arduna. 'Do what must be done,' i.e. do

that work which, according to the Dharma of the warrior caste and its rules,

is obligatory and which, according to the purpose of the war, is objectively

necessary. Hinduism believes that such conduct does not damage religious

salvation but, rather, promotes it. When he faced the hero's death, the

Indian warrior was always sure of Indra's heaven, just as was the Teuton

warrior of Valhalla. The Indian hero would have despised Nirvana just as

much as the Teuton would have sneered at the Christian paradise with its

angels' choirs. This specialization of ethics allowed for the Indian ethic's

quite unbroken treatment of politics by following politics' own laws and

even radically enhancing this royal art.

A really radical 'Machiavellianism,' in the popular sense of this word, is

classically represented in Indian literature, in the Kautaliya Arthasastra

(long before Christ, allegedly dating from Chandragupta's time). In contrast

with this document Machiavelli's Principe is harmless. As is known in

Catholic ethics--to which otherwise Professor Forster stands close--the

consilia evangelica are a special ethic for those endowed with the charisma

of a holy life. There stands the monk who must not shed blood or strive for

gain, and beside him stand the pious knight and the burgher, who are allowed

to do so, the one to shed blood, the other to pursue gain. The gradation of

ethics and its organic integration into the doctrine of salvation is less

consistent than in India. According to the presuppositions of Christian

faith, this could and had to be the case. The wickedness of the world

stemming from original sin allowed with relative ease the integration of

violence into ethics as a disciplinary means against sin and against the

heretics who endangered the soul. However, the demands of the Sermon on the

Mount, an acosmic ethic of ultimate ends, implied a natural law of absolute

imperatives based upon religion. These absolute imperatives retained their

revolutionizing force and they came upon the scene with elemental vigor

during almost all periods of social upheaval. They produced especially the

radical pacifist sects, one of which in Pennsylvania experimented in

establishing a polity that renounced violence towards the outside. This

experiment took a tragic course, inasmuch as with the outbreak of the War of

Independence the Quakers could not stand up arms-in-hand for their ideals,

which were those of the war.

Normally, Protestantism, however, absolutely legitimated the state as a

divine institution and hence violence as a means. Protestantism, especially,

legitimated the authoritarian state. Luther relieved the individual of the

ethical responsibility for war and transferred it to the authorities. To

obey the authorities in matters other than those of faith could never

constitute guilt. Calvinism in turn knew principled violence as a means of

defending the faith; thus Calvinism knew the crusade, which was for Islam an

element of life from the beginning. One sees that it is by no means a modern

disbelief born from the hero worship of the Renaissance which poses the

problem of political ethics. All religions have wrestled with it, with

highly differing success, and after what has been said it could not be

otherwise. It is the specific means of legitimate violence as such in the

hand of human associations which determines the peculiarity of all ethical

problems of politics.

Whosoever contracts with violent means for whatever ends--and every

politician does--is exposed to its specific consequences. This holds

especially for the crusader, religious and revolutionary alike. Let us

confidently take the present as an example. He who wants to establish

absolute justice on earth by force requires a following, a human 'machine.'

He must hold out the necessary internal and external premiums, heavenly or

worldly reward, to this 'machine' or else the machine will not function.

Under the conditions of the modern class struggle, the internal premiums

consist of the satisfying of hatred and the craving for revenge; above all,

resentment and the need for pseudo-ethical self-righteousness: the opponents

must be slandered and accused of heresy. The external rewards are adventure,

victory, booty, power, and spoils. The leader and his success are completely

dependent upon the functioning of his machine and hence not on his own

motives. Therefore he also depends upon whether or not the premiums can be

permanently granted to the following, that is, to the Red Guard, the

informers, the agitators, whom he needs. What he actually attains under the

conditions of his work is therefore not in his hand, but is prescribed to

him by the following's motives, which, if viewed ethically, are

predominantly base. The following can be harnessed only so long as an honest

belief in his person and his cause inspires at least part of the following,

probably never on earth even the majority. This belief, even when

subjectively sincere, is in a very great number of cases really no more than

an ethical 'legitimation' of cravings for revenge, power, booty, and spoils.

We shall not be deceived about this by verbiage; the materialist

interpretation of history is no cab to be taken at will; it does not stop

short of the promoters of revolutions. Emotional Evolutionism is followed by

the traditionalist routine of everyday life; the crusading leader and the

faith itself fade away, or, what is even more effective, the faith becomes

part of the conventional phraseology of political Philistines and banausic

technicians. This development is especially rapid with struggles of faith

because they are usually led or inspired by genuine leaders, that is,

prophets of revolution. For here, as with every leader's machine, one of the

conditions for success is the depersonalization and routinization, in short,

the psychic proletarianization, in the interests of discipline. After coming

to power the following of a crusader usually degenerates very easily into a

quite common stratum of spoilsmen.

Whoever wants to engage in politics at all, and especially in politics as a

vocation, has to realize these ethical paradoxes. He must know that he is

responsible for what may become of himself under the impact of these

paradoxes. I repeat, he lets himself in for the diabolic forces lurking in

all violence. The great virtuosi of acosmic love of humanity and goodness,

whether stemming from Nazareth or Assisi or from Indian royal castles, have

not operated with the political means of violence. Their kingdom was 'not of

this world' and yet they worked and still work in this world. The figures of

Platon Karatajev and the saints of Dostoievski still remain their most

adequate reconstructions. He who seeks the salvation of the soul, of his own

and of others, should not seek it along the avenue of politics, for the

quite different tasks of politics can only be solved by violence. The genius

or demon of politics lives in an inner tension with the god of love, as well

as with the Christian God as expressed by the church. This tension can at

any time lead to an irreconcilable conflict. Men knew this even in the times

of church rule. Time and again the papal interdict was placed upon Florence

and at the time it meant a far more robust power for men and their salvation

of soul than (to speak with Fichte) the 'cool approbation' of the Kantian

ethical judgment. The burghers, however, fought the church-state. And it is

with reference to such situations that Machiavelli in a beautiful passage,

if I am not mistaken, of the History of Florence, has one of his heroes

praise those citizens who deemed the greatness of their native city higher

than the salvation of their souls.

If one says 'the future of socialism' or 'international peace,' instead of

native city or 'fatherland' (which at present may be a dubious value to

some), then you face the problem as it stands now. Everything that is

striven for through political action operating with violent means and

following an ethic of responsibility endangers the 'salvation of the soul.'

If, however, one chases after the ultimate good in a war of beliefs,

following a pure ethic of absolute ends, then the goals may be damaged and

discredited for generations, because responsibility for consequences is

lacking, and two diabolic forces which enter the play remain unknown to the

actor. These are inexorable and produce consequences for his action and even

for his inner self, to which he must helplessly submit, unless he perceives

them. The sentence: 'The devil is old; grow old to understand him!' does not

refer to age in terms of chronological years. I have never permitted myself

to lose out in a discussion through a reference to a date registered on a

birth certificate; but the mere fact that someone is twenty years of age and

that I am over fifty is no cause for me to think that this alone is an

achievement before which I am overawed. Age is not decisive; what is

decisive is the trained relentlessness in viewing the realities of life, and

the ability to face such realities and to measure up to them inwardly.

Surely, politics is made with the head, but it is certainly not made with

the head alone. In this the proponents of an ethic of ultimate ends are

right. One cannot prescribe to anyone whether he should follow an ethic of

absolute ends or an ethic of responsibility, or when the one and when the

other. One can say only this much: If in these times, which, in your

opinion, are not times of 'sterile' excitation--excitation is not, after

all, genuine passion--if now suddenly the Weltanschauungs-politicians crop

up en masse and pass the watchword, 'The world is stupid and base, not I,'

'The responsibility for the consequences does not fall upon me but upon the

others whom I serve and whose stupidity or baseness I shall eradicate,' then

I declare frankly that I would first inquire into the degree of inner poise

backing this ethic of ultimate ends. I am under the impression that in nine

out of ten cases I deal with windbags who do not fully realize what they

take upon themselves but who intoxicate themselves with romantic sensations.

From a human point of view this is not very interesting to me, nor does it

move me profoundly. However, 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

he reaches the point where he says: 'Here I stand; I can do no other.' That

is something genuinely human and moving. And every one 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.'

Now then, ladies and gentlemen, let us debate this matter once more ten

years from now. Unfortunately, for a whole series of reasons, I fear that by

then the period of reaction will have long since broken over us. It is very

probable that little of what many of you, and (I candidly confess) I too,

have wished and hoped for will be fulfilled; little--perhaps not exactly

nothing, but what to us at least seems little. This will not crush me, but

surely it is an inner burden to realize it. Then, I wish I could see what

has become of those of you who now feel yourselves to be genuinely

'principled' politicians and who share in the intoxication signified by this

revolution. It would be nice if matters turned out in such a way that

Shakespeare's Sonnet 102 should hold true:

Our love was new, and then but in the spring,

When I was wont to greet it with my lays;

As Philomel in summer's front doth sing,

And stops her pipe in growth of riper days.

But such is not the case. Not summer's bloom lies ahead of us, but rather a

polar night of icy darkness and hardness, no matter which group may triumph

externally now. Where there is nothing, not only the Kaiser but also the

proletarian has lost his rights. When this night shall have slowly receded,

who of those for whom spring apparently has bloomed so luxuriously will be

alive? And what will have become of all of you by then? Will you be bitter

or banausic? Will you simply and dully accept world and occupation? Or will

the third and by no means the least frequent possibility be your lot: mystic

flight from reality for those who are gifted for it, or--as is both frequent

and unpleasant--for those who belabor themselves to follow this fashion? In

every one of such cases, I shall draw the conclusion that they have not

measured up to their own doings. They have not measured up to the world as

it really is in its everyday routine. Objectively and actually, they have

not experienced the vocation for politics in its deepest meaning, which they

thought they had. They would have done better in simply cultivating plain

brotherliness in personal relations. And for the rest--they should have gone

soberly about their daily work.

Politics is a strong and slow boring of hard boards. It takes both passion

and perspective. Certainly all historical experience confirms the

truth--that man would not have attained the possible unless time and again

he had reached out for the impossible. But to do that a man must be a

leader, and not only a leader but a hero as well, in a very sober sense of

the word. And even those who are neither leaders nor heroes must arm

themselves with that steadfastness of heart which can brave even the

crumbling of all hopes. This is necessary right now, or else men will not be

able to attain even that which is possible today. Only he has the calling

for politics who is sure that he shall not crumble when the world from his

point of view is too stupid or too base for what he wants to offer. Only he

who in the face of all this can say 'In spite of all!' has the calling for

politics.

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Tim Fackler

Last modified: Fri Oct 20 20:14:53 CDT 1995