Читать книгу Liberalism and Capitalism Today - Paul-Jacques Lehmann - Страница 23

Weber was very interested in the concept of domination, which is one of the characteristics of any society. Ever since they were formed into groups, whatever their nature, people have been constantly tearing each other apart. In any human community, domination reflects the existence of the roles of the dominant and of the dominated. Weber explained that the dominated accept the orders of the dominant because of the consideration of the legitimacy of the latter. “The most decisive factor that determines obedience is the belief in the legitimacy of dominance”.

The Austrian author presented three forms of legitimate domination, which each stem from three causes. The first is charismatic: one follows the personality of a leader whose exceptional qualities are admired and who is obeyed according to the prestige they exercise over other people who show devotion to them, sometimes even to the point of sacrifice. The second is traditional: one obeys injunctions that one is accustomed to accept. The third is traditional-legal, regulatory and rational: one follows impersonal hierarchical orders.

Weber’s great contribution to this question was to analyze the transition of societies from an organization based on traditional legitimacy to societies where authority is imposed either by the influence of the charisma of individuals who exercise power, or through the exercise of reason which becomes the driving force of individual and collective action, by the process of rationalization of social activities, with people and societies being within the framework of this rationality, guided either by objectives or by values.

For a long time, domination was patrimonial. In modern capitalism, it was legal-rational domination with perfectly defined codes and rules that would impose itself in the hands of the state, allowing it to hold the monopoly of legitimate constraint under the influence of the bureaucracy whose meaning is difficult to define. Indeed, for many liberals, bureaucracy corresponds to the socialist ideal of socialism, whereas in reality, this notion seems to mean an attack on individual initiative. In any case, the people in charge of state bureaucracy saw the nature of their activities change. It must be determined whether the advantages of these new activities outweigh their disadvantages.