Politics as a Vocation is based on a lecture Weber gave in 1919 (the eighth year of Taisho in Japan), in Germany, shaken by defeat in the First World War and by revolution. The word “vocation” here means not only a job by which one earns a living but also a “calling” to which one devotes oneself as a mission. Analyzing how politics works, Weber asks what qualities and what ethics are required of those who carry it out.
First, politics is the activity of directing the management of a state, or of seeking to influence that direction. The state cannot be defined by its purposes, such as education or welfare, because in history there have been groups other than the state that performed those functions. What is peculiar to the state is that, within a given territory, it holds a monopoly on the use of physical force recognized as legitimate. This is not a claim that state violence is unconditionally right; it is an analysis showing that rule holds only when that authority is accepted as legitimate.
Weber divides the grounds of legitimacy on which people obey authority into three: “traditional authority,” obedience to long-standing custom; “charismatic authority,” belief in a leader’s heroism or extraordinary qualities; and “legal authority” (the rule of law, as we would say), obedience to law and to the powers grounded in it. In real politics these are mixed together. In the modern state, rule by law and by a specialized bureaucracy develops especially strongly.
Among those involved in politics, some take part only occasionally, through voting and the like, while others make politics their occupation. What matters for professional politicians is the distinction between living “for” politics and living “off” politics. The former means finding meaning in life in politics; the latter means earning a continuing income from it. (This is the difference between a statesman and a mere political operator, one might say.) The two are compatible. Earning income from politics is not in itself ignoble. If politics were left only to those who can devote themselves to it unpaid, it could become the monopoly of the wealthy. The problem is whether politics is made a means of private gain or a service to the cause one pursues.
Modern politics requires party organizations, election campaigns, newspapers, political funds, and the like. Hence there appear specialists who organize supporters, and politicians who sustain their organizations by distributing posts and positions. Democratic politics, too, is not simply a mechanism by which the will of the people is realized as it stands; it needs leaders and organizations. Politicians are therefore required to have the ability to win mass support, together with the judgment not to be buried in the interests of the organization.
Weber also distinguishes the duties of officials from those of politicians. Officials need expertise, accuracy, and impartiality in the performance of their duties. If an order is maintained in the end even after they have voiced objections, it is a point of professional honor to carry it out faithfully as the judgment of the person responsible. A politician, by contrast, chooses a course and must personally bear responsibility for the result. Having been ordered from above is no excuse. Being an excellent official is not the same as being an excellent political leader.
The qualities listed as necessary for a politician are passion, a sense of responsibility, and judgment. Passion means not excitement or self-intoxication but devotion to a cause. A sense of responsibility means bearing the consequences of the actions that realize that cause. Judgment means the ability to keep a distance from people and from reality and to assess them calmly. Neither zeal alone nor cold calculation alone is enough. Vanity in particular turns power from a means of achieving one’s aims into a tool of self-display, and leads judgment astray.
The core of the book lies in the distinction between the “ethic of conviction” and the “ethic of responsibility.” The ethic of conviction values staying true to one’s beliefs. The ethic of responsibility, by contrast, takes responsibility for the foreseeable consequences of one’s actions. Even a policy that starts from good intentions can lead to a terrible outcome. Politicians must factor human weakness and conflicts of interest into the conditions of reality, and must not blame the results solely on the ill will of others.
But the ethic of responsibility is not a license to do anything for the sake of a goal. In politics, even the pursuit of a worthy end may entail dangerous means and undesirable side effects. Because they handle power backed by violence, politicians cannot escape this ethical tension. Weber does not end by treating the ethic of conviction and the ethic of responsibility as a simple opposition; he calls for a maturity that holds both conviction and responsibility for consequences.
The politics portrayed in the conclusion is work like slowly and tenaciously boring through hard boards, using passion and judgment. Without the will to attempt the impossible, even what is possible cannot be achieved. Yet one needs the strength to keep working even when the world does not respond to one’s ideals and one meets setbacks and disappointment. Aptitude for politics cannot be measured by the strength to crave power alone. Can one face reality, hold to one’s convictions, and bear responsibility for the results, and still keep at it? Therein lies the condition for those who make politics their calling.
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