Weber On City PDF

Northeastern Political Science Association
Communitarian Citizenship: Marx &Weber on the City Author(s): Nancy L. Schwartz Source: Polity, Vol. 17, No. 3 (Spring, 1985), pp. 530-548 Published by: Palgrave Macmillan Journals Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3234657 . Accessed: 05/06/2013 21:31
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Communitarian Citizenship: Marx&Weberon the City* Nancy L. Schwartz

WesleyanUniversity
The idea of citizenship once referred, amongotherthings,to thesense a personfelt towardhis city. More recently,the of commitment ratherthanthe city, has beenthe one to claimthatcommitnation-state, ment. Yet, in manya state,citizensin substantial are unwilling numbers to give it theirloyalty.Professor asks if the experience Schwartz of the city couldinstructus in the essentials of citizenship. Takingherinquiry the relevantwritings through of Marxand Weber,she proposesa conin whichthe citizen'srelationto the polityis one of cept of citizenship bothappropriation andassociation, in whichthepolityis a publicpossessionandfellowcitizensare one'sown. is AssistantProfessor at Wesleyan NancyL. Schwartz of Government She the is author articles in numerous University. of professional journals.
from at-largeor The relativemeritsof choosingpoliticalrepresentatives in cases been debated member districts have single recently geographical of pobefore the United States SupremeCourt.Beyond considerations on litical historyand constitutional precedent,the issue mightturn one's conceptionof citizenship.For differentconceptionsof citizenshipentail A view of citizenshipprimarilyas the differentpolitical arrangements. of privaterightsagainstthe state and againstothercitizens" "possession will, for example, call for differentinstitutionsfrom those requiredby a view that regardsthe citizenas a person"whosharesthe obligationto
* I am grateful to David Titus and Donald Moon at Wesleyan, and to Robert PeppermanTaylor of Rutgers, for their most helpful comments on an earlier draft of this essay.
Nancy L. Schwartz 531
govern." 1 The recurring fiscal and social crises of American cities have induced some observers to assert that the city is primarily a market place and others to reassert that it is a polity. I will explore the idea of the city as a communitarian polity, a political community. Citizenship was first an idea of the city. Classical western political theory arose out of city-states in ancient Greece, and treated citizenship as a status, a relationship, and an activity that could only occur in a certain setting.2 That setting was bounded by size-larger than the household, smaller than an empire; from a hill one had to be able to take in the city with one view.3 There was also another more stringent requirement-that the city be a self-sufficient unity, containing within itself the possibilities for a varied life.4 In his analysis of constitutional balancing, Aristotle assumed that a city would be a manifold of social interests and divisions existing in society at the time.5 Political life would then involve an ongoing contest between the claims (such as wealth, birth, number, merit) of different groups; it would also, if the earlier more heroic mode of Homer and Plato is retained, involve the service and claims of exceptional individuals. But that persons would make their claims in the spirit of citizenship, and not civil war, required two social preconditions: that the city be small enough so that one could come to know the political elite at first hand; and the city be diverse enough to constitute a social totality, so that the decisions taken there would be considered important and the place deemed worth preserving. Social preconditions alone, however, do not make a city. Citizenship
1. Dennis Hale, "WhatWas Citizenship,"in "AmericanPolitical Science and the Meaning of Citizenship" (Ph.D. diss., City University of New York, 1977), ch. 1, pp. 21, 11, 29, 33. See also his essay, "The City as Polity and Economy," Polity (Winter 1984). 2. The root for the words city and citizen is the Latin civitas, as developed in Roman law. The ideas of the city and citizen are of earlier origin, in the polis and polites of ancient Greece. The Roman conception leads towards the liberal idea of citizenship as the possession of civil rights by an individual against the state (and potentially as part of a universal society). The Greek conception is more communitarian,stressingcollective membershipand individual participationin political office. See A. E. Zimmern, The Greek Commonwealth, 3rd. ed. rev. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1922); Raphael Sealey, A History of the Greek City States (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976); H. Mark Roelofs, The Tension of Citizenship (New York: Rinehart & Co., 1957), ch. 3, esp. pp. 120-133; and Michael Walzer, "The Problem of Citizenship,"in Obligations (New York: Simon &Schuster, 1970), pp. 205-206, 210. 3. Plato, The Laws. Robert Dahl and Edward Tufte, Size and Democracy (Stanford: StanfordUniversity Press, 1973), pp. 13-15. 4. Aristotle, Politics, I, 1252b;VII, 1326b. 5. Ibid., III, 1280a-1283b.
532 Marx&Weberon the City is basically a political relationship,requiringa specific attitudeand a specific role. Plato's political philosophysought to instill in people a consciousnessof being responsibleto a polity. Membersof each social stratumhad to learn to train their privatewants on to public objects: the lower classes, from mere carnalappetiteon to willingness to adhere to the communaldivision of labor; the upper classes, from the private desire for wealth or fame on to the militaryand civic glory of the city. The attitudeof citizenshipincludeda disciplining of desire and redirectof affectionfor one'sfellows ing its energytowardthe polis; a cultivation as citizens. WhereasPlato's main institutionalization of these attitudes is a thoroughgoing system of educationor paideia,Aristotle'sconstitutional theory capturesthe specificallypolitical dimensionof a citizen's in rulingand beingruled."6 The citizenreceivesboth role, "participation the honor and the burdenof servingon public bodies: the juries, law courts, deliberativeassemblies,and the military.The particularallocation of these privilegesand burdens,and the principles by whichgroups and individualswithin the city settle it, concernthe ongoingmatterof justice.But once people have agreedto debatethat questionas citizens, justice'sprior politicalconditionhas been met: the city exists. Such cities have indeed existed, even if briefly, in ancient Greece, medievalnorthern Europe,earlyrenaissance Italy, andcolonialAmerica. But more often cities have been absorbedinto largersocial systems,or ruled by more powerfulpolitical systems, or, they have simply disappeared. Citizenshipitself was not an issue throughmuch of history.In the last three and a half centuries,it has been an issue at the national level-contested, soughtafter,yearnedfor.7Yet, of late, the nation-state has been encountering in retaining difficulties the loyaltiesof its citizens. While the nation as a politicalsociety remainscrucialfor certainkinds of militaryand administrative action,it may well be that the nation-state is no longerthe appropriate locus for the rangeof activitieswe call citiour politicalinstizenship.If this is the case, we may have to reevaluate tutions.We should then ask whetherthe politicalexperienceof the city can tell us anythinguseful regardingthe conditionsand essentialelementsof citizenship.
6. Plato, The Republic; Aristotle, Politics, III, 1277a-b. Dennis Hale, op. cit., intro. and ch. 1, pp. 1-7, 8-80. 7. Since the English Civil War. Michael Walzer, The Revolution of the Saints (New York: Atheneum, 1970); C. B. Macpherson, The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism (London: Oxford University Press, 1962), ch. III; A. S. P. Woodhouse, ed., Puritanism and Liberty (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1951).
Nancy L. Schwartz 533 I. PoliticalFreedomand SocialNecessityin the City of politics and society, and The questionwe ask lies at the intersection to see what the two mainpoliticalsociologists so it shouldbe instructive of the past century-Karl Marx and Max Weber-have to say about the matter.While the bulk of both men'swritingsis devotedto explaining the dynamicsof historicalchangein social and politicalsystems,they relate these accounts to certain normativeassumptionsabout what it means to be fully human.And while neitherposes this issue in termsof about humanfreedomthat citizenship,each makes certainassumptions are relevantto our inquiryhere. Whether a study of Marx and Weber with referenceto citizenship ultimatelyresults in a contrastor a synthesisis an open and exciting question.It has often been said that they representtwo fundamentally opposed schools of thoughtin modem social science;a rathersimplistic versionbeing that Marx is a materialistand Weberan idealist.This is dialectical for Marxis at least a Hegelian-inspired obviouslyinadequate, materialist,and Weber is as immersedin historicalsociology as he is influencedby Kant. Their avowed methodologiesare, indeed, very different. Yet, at a generallevel of theory,they are askingthe same question: what are the possibilities for free and/or virtuousaction, and how are these related to the more determinedaspects of our lives, to the of the world?Hence severalrecenthistoriansand actualsocial structure social theoristshave tried to reconcilethem. For instance,E. J. Hobsbawm, agreeingwith George Lichtheim,writes that "the sociological theoriesof Max Weber-on religionor capitalismor orientalsocietyto Marx. They are either anticipated are not alternatives by him or can 8 GeorgLukacsand Jurgen Haberreadilybe fittedinto his framework." mas have each tried, in differentways, to combinethe Marxiananalysis of capitalismwith the Weberiananalysisof bureaucracy, to produce state.9But while both a critiqueof the modem capitalist/bureaucratic Marx and Webersee "formally free labor"-to cite one exampleof the similaritiesbetween them-as a distinctiveand problematicaspect of and explanationof modernity,each has quite a differentunderstanding the largerstructure of whichit is a part. Marx's and Weber'streatmentof the city as a social formationillustratestheir differences.Marx sees the city as a part of largersocial
8. E. J. Hobsbawm, Introductionto Karl Marx, Pre-CapitalistEconomic Formations, trans. Jack Cohen (New York: International Publishers, 1965), p. 17. 9. George Lukacs, History and Class Consciousness, trans. Rodney Livingstone (London: Merlin Press, 1971). Jurgen Habermas, Knowledge and Human Interests, trans. Jeremy Shapiro (Boston: Beacon Press, 1971).
534
Marx & Weber on the City
structures which result from the basic characteristics of historical development: economic and social conflict, and specifically the class struggle based on production and property. The concept of a mode of production and the dialectical relation among its internal moments is used to analyze and interpret the city in its various forms. Weber, in contrast, treats the city as a distinct social phenomenon, develops its own ideal-typical concept, and then explores its diverse historical manifestations. He is as interested in what constitutes a city as in what causes it; the definition of a city has unique and diverse, though logically related, elements. Insofar as he does generalize about causation, he gives primacy to political authority relations and their attendant administrative, military, and legal conflicts. It is interesting to consider the city, then, in the context of their general theories. Yet the concept of the city raises some real problems for each theorist. I will argue that Marx, in dealing with the city in his posthumously published Grundrissenotebooks,'0 strains against the limits of his broad concept of property and emerges with an even broader formulation. And Weber, in his posthumous monograph on The City," pushes beyond his former typology of political legitimacy, and suggests another understanding. In analyzing what constitutes a city and its distinctive social relation-citizenship-both theorists contribute to a communitarian theory of citizenship. II. Marx: The City as a Set of Property Relations Marx regards the city as an aspect of a larger social formation. There are ancient cities, feudal cities, and capitalist cities, each possessing the main characteristics of the predominant social formation; there is no city as such. He never defines it explicitly, except as a contrast to the country. Its sole general characteristic would seem to be that it is a settlement of people who do not produce exclusively from the land. The city is a major element in the social division of labor. Marx observes that the social division between town and country arises soon
10. Karl Marx, Grundrisse:Foundations of the Critique of Political Economy (Rough Draft), trans. Martin Nicolaus (Harmondsworth, Eng.: Penguin Books, 1973) (cited as G in the text). Most of the passages relevant to our topic were published earlier in English in E. J. Hobsbawm, ed., Pre-Capitalist Economic Formations. 11. Max Weber, "The City: Non-Legitimate Domination" [Die Stadt], trans. Claus Wittich, in Economy and Society, 2 vols., ed. Guenther Roth and Claus Wittich (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978) vol. 2, ch. XVI, pp. 1212-1372 (cited in the text as E&s).
Nancy L. Schwartz 535 after the divisionbetweenhandicraft(later industrial)and agricultural labor, and it parallelsand intensifiesthe division between mental and manuallabor (GI410, 443 ).12 He is awarethat cities are not exclusively inhabitedby craftsmenand notes that, in the ancientform, "economically citizenshipmay be expressedmore simply as a form in which the lives in a city" (PC 79-80).13 In addition to these two agriculturist socio-economicgroups,a thirdis also crucialto urbanlife: commercial laboror the merchants(GI446). As middlemen in an emerging or established money economy, they facilitateand profitfrom the exchangeof products.The existence of cities shows that a society has moved from for use to production for exchange,and that it has a surplus production to spare. Marx posits a permanentopposition, an antagonisticcontradiction, betweentown and country,in whichthe dominant class in one arenawill seek to extractthe surplusfrom the other (GI443). Whethertown exploits countrysideor vice versa varies, dependingon the primaryform of property-holding in that historicalera and on whetherthe dominant in class each arena is in the ascendancyor decline. In the ancientcity, for example, the rural landownersat first maintaintheir domination throughnew forms of rule over the city and its communalpropertyin slaves;only later does the growingclass of urbanartisansbegin to gain economicandpoliticalpower. The dominantclass in a city seeks to extractsurplusfrom subordinate classes within the city. This dynamicmay also occur within classes, so that the upper fractionof a class will exploit a lower fraction.In the medievalcity, for example,the artisansof the upperguildsdistinguished themselvesfrom lower craft guilds, and they both cheerfullyexcluded the newly freed serfs from their membership, deprivingthem of social and them to be "the power leaving unorganizedrabble" (GI 444; PC 117). That cities are in an antagonisticrelationto their externalenvironment while also being internallydivided can lead to some interesting transientalliances.Often upper stratawill ally with lower stratato defeat the middle.Often, too, the lower stratawill be used by powersexternalto the city-rural nobilityand nationalizing princes-to defeatthe urbanburghers.While Weberis better at examiningthe many coalition
12. Marx and Frederick Engels, "The German Ideology," in Loyd Easton and Kurt Guddat, eds. Writingsof the Young Marx on Philosophy and Society (Garden City, New York: Doubleday Anchor Books, 1967), pp. 410, 443 (cited as GI in the text). 13. Marx, "Pre-CapitalistEconomic Foundations,"op. cit., pp. 79-80 (cited in text as PC).
536 Marx&Weberon the City possibilitieshere, Marx does note a few in passing. For instance,the peasants,he says, ally with certainnationalrulersto breakthe burghers' economic stranglehold, hoping that they would thus improvetheir own lot. Marx argues that no just balance acceptableto the differentclasses can ever be struck.The city, like the largersociety, is unjustand unstable. This is so both on normativeand empiricalgrounds.First, the of one class to anotherin economic,social, and political subordination terms, results in the lower class's exploitation,alienation,and oppresof this insion, all of which are unjust.14 Secondly,people'srecognition leads them to And if one its even justice challenge stability. thirdly, class's dominationof anotherwere acceptedas just, it would changein responseto changes in the forces of production,leading to new class formations, which would then require new justifying ideologies of domination.Thus, viewingit from the perspectiveof his philosophyof underhistory,Marx considersthe city to be ever changing,necessarily civil in wars. the classless after the revolugoing periodic Only society, withinthe city, and betweentown and tion, wouldthe unjustoppositions
country, be overcome (GI 456-457).
Yet, there is anotherline of analysisin Marxwhichtends in a different directionthat is particularly for our understanding of citisuggestive zenship.Even on his own terms,it poses problemsfor his theorywhich I thinkhe neverresolves.For us, it providesopenings. of the Marxiananalysisof the social forces Our first understanding whichconstituteand transform framecities derivesfrom the theoretical work he and Engels developedin The GermanIdeology-the idea of a mode of production(GI409-410, 413-414). In that scheme,there are three spheresof social life-forces of production,relationsof production, and social consciousness-and these interactin specificif complex ways. The "forces of production"refer to the naturaland social resourcesat hand, including the availabletechnicalknowledgeand technical division of labor. The "relationsof production" are the social and of relations to one these and to another,specifiresources, legal people cally, the social divisionof labor into classes and the laws of property. or ideology are Finally, in the general area of "social consciousness" those generalideas of the culture,fromlaw and politicsto art and everyday life, whichfurtherlegitimatethe mode of production(GI421-422). the forcesandreIn the engineering of base andsuperstructure, metaphor
14. See also, Andre Gorz, Strategy for Labor, trans. Martin Nicolaus and Victoria Ortiz (Boston: Beacon Press, 1969).
Nancy L. Schwartz 537 is the superstructure whicharises lations are the base, and consciousness upon and reflectsthe base.'5Historicalchangeoccurs only when structuralchangesoccurdeepin the base. But this is inevitably andcontinually in the base or becauseof occurringeither due to internaldevelopments changesin otherlevels whichthen impingeon the base. Whenthe forces of productionchange, the old relationsof productionbecome dysfunctional and obstructive,and the newly emergingsocial classes begin to challengethem,eitherexplicitlyor simplyby theirveryexistence(GI423, 430-431, 453-454; CM 12-13).16 Also, a self-consciousvanguardof the old rulingclass may perceivethe changesand come over to the side
of the insurgent class (CM 17).
This is a clear and powerfulmodelof historicalchangeand it survives as a theory even where other parts of Marx'slater theory (such as the labor theory of value and exploitation) run into trouble. Yet, Marx seems to abandonit in his later work, specifically in his magnumopus, Capital.There the distinctionbetween forces and relationsof production is blurred, as is the distinctionbetween relations of production and social consciousness.'7The independentand dependentvariables are less clear;the divisionof labor in production may be whatproduces "formallyfree labor,"but the idea of value in the sphereof circulation is also what producesthe reality of universalor abstractsocial labor. (This is more explicit, althoughin an opaque manner,in his earlier Contribution to a Critiqueof Political Economy. [CCPE45]) The significantshift in Marx'sparadigmhas led to Louis Althusser'sanalysis of his later work as a structural theory ratherthan as historicism,and to an extent this is true.18 surely The turningpoint in Marx'stheoreticaldevelopment betweenThe GermanIdeology(1845-6) and Capital(1867) occursin the Grundrisse notebooks (1857-8), and we can see this occurringin the passageson formsof propertyand cities.As he struggles to definepropprecapitalist
15. Marx, Preface to A Contributionto the Critique of Political Economy, trans. S. W. Ryazanskaya (New York: InternationalPublishers, 1970), pp. 20-21 (cited as CCPE), and Capital, vol. I, ed. Frederick Engels, trans. Moore and Aveling (New York: The Modern Library, n.d.), p. 94 n (cited as c, I). 16. Marx and Engels, The Communist Manifesto, in Lewis Feuer, ed., Marx and Engels Basic Writingson Politics and Philosophy (Garden City, New York: Doubleday Anchor Books, 1959). 17. Etienne Balibar, "The Basic Concepts of Historical Materialism," in Louis Althusser and Balibar, eds., Reading Capital (New York: Pantheon Books, 1970), pt. III, pp. 212-215, 235. Marx, GI 421; Marx, ci, p. 397. 18. Louis Althusser, "The Object of Capital," in Althusser and Balibar, op. cit., pt. II, chs. 4, 5, and 9.
538 Marx&Weberon the City erty more carefullyand broadly,to encompassit in any historicalera, he moves, I think,beyondhis earlierdefinitionand emergeswith somethingquite different. Influenced by Hegel, Marxwas nevercontentto identifya thingas an entity in itself, and so from very earlyon he definedpropertyas a relation-between persons,and betweenpersonsand things.It was a social relationin whicha person,as a memberof a class, had the rightto control other personsand thingsin orderto use their productiveresources. Property was a relation which manipulatedthe productivelabor of others; even propertyin things was ultimatelycontrol of the labor of others, labor which was embodied.Essentialto this definitionof propit from other definitions, was the stresson labor erty, and distinguishing and its controlas the determining is an active dimension There activity. to the relation:labor exerts its powers and in so doing transforms the world. In 1857-8, Marx moves to an alterednotion of property,in which labor is not always its prime or determining activity. He now defines propertyas "therelationof the working(producing)subject... to one's conditionsof existenceas one's own" (PC 95, and 81, 87-88, 89, 92). or "proThe relationis still establishedby the activityof a "working" or of work the what constitutes but definition producducing"subject, or contion has broadenedconsiderably. the prerequisites Furthermore, ditions of one's existencemay be organic (such as social organization) or inorganic(such as tools), and one's existenceincludesnot only productionbut reproduction (of the family,the culture,the social system) whichcan cover relaas well (PC69). This is a broadconceptualization tions as diverseas the ancientfarmer'spropertyin land and slaves, the ancient state's propertyin silver mines, the medievalartisan'sproperty worker's in tool and craft mysteries,and the modernindustrial property in his own labor-power. it includesthe ancienttownsman's But most significantly, propertyin of his itself condition existence. a the as in his city, Property community is now definedas a process of appropriation, involvingboth an activity follow the acand an atttude,in which the attitudedoes not necessarily tivity but may precedeit, and the activityneed not dependexclusively on labor per se (PC 81, 69). In precapitalist cities, the attitudemay be a belief in the originsof the city as divine, and the activitymay be military service, fightingin war to preservethe city (PC 71). The relation can commencewith a receptiveattitude,which accepts of appropriation relationmust the world as it is, assumedas given, althoughthe property
still be affirmed through an activity which seeks to preserve or affect that world.l' If we follow Marx's discussion of city property, it leads again to the broader concept. Starting with the orthodox Marxian notion of property as depending primarily on laboring activity, we might say that true cities exist only where there is a co-existence of public and private property. In the two social formations where this is not the case, Marx barely mentions the cities-in the Asiatic mode of production, which he sees as characterized exclusively by public property, and at the other extreme, the bourgeois capitalist mode, where private property reigns supreme. But in the other two precapitalist social formations-ancient and medieval-there is a combination of public and private that makes cities more than "a mere multiplicity of separate houses" (PC 78). The ancient city exists as a "being-together" [Verein] and the medieval city as a "coming-together" [Vereinigung] (G 483; PC 78). Both exist in definite distinction to, yet in relation with, the countryside. (This contrasts with what he considers to be the "undifferentiated unity" of town and country in the oriental mode of production.)20 The ancient city is a "real unity," and the medieval city is a "true association" (PC 78, 80; GI 444); the difference between them being that the ancient city is an economic as well as a political whole while the medieval one is not. The ancient city defines the rural territory of its citizen landowners as part of itself, so that the rural land and houses as well as the urban houses and market are part of city districts (PC 71). How this happens historically is complicated and not our main concern. Suffice it to say here that while kinship groups originally join to form cities, they later regroup for military purposes in the new administrative unit, the deme (PC 71-72, 76-77). While the demes use the language of family, the phyle or tribe, these are now political units, based on territory and function rather than solely on ancestral descent. The actual history aside, what results conceptually or structurally is a political community in which the city is believed to exist prior to its individual members, in
19. Theoretical opening: might not there be other kinds of socio-political activities which would establish this relation? It is even possible, and here I go out on a limb, that for the postcapitalist society Marx could envisage a passive almost contemplative relation of appropriation. 20. Marx considers the large city in "Oriental despotism" to be "merely a princely camp, superimposedon the real economic structure"of agriculture and manufacture in smaller, self-sustaining communities (PC 77-78, 70).
540 Marx&Weberon the City whichone has to be a citizenbeforeone can own property,and in which communalpropertyis deemedprior to privateownership(PC73). The medievalcity, in contrast,does not includeruralterritoryin its borders,and hence exists in a muchmoreuneasyrelationto the country. The Germanic it, firstconsistsof ruralhousecity, as Marxcharacterizes holderswho own privatepropertyin land, who then choose to come together for certainspecificcommunalpurposesand define certainproperty as communal-shared pastureand huntinggrounds,city walls, and market (PC 77-78). Privateownershipthus exists prior to communal proprietorship(PC 79). In this city's later development,the urban burghersare completelyseparatefrom the land, and they associatetoto form a communalassociation. getherin their positionsas individuals The associationcomes to be a groupingmore inclusivefor the burghers more aspectsof theirlives. Yet than it was for the nobles,encompassing the city is still not a social totality,for its economiclife is lived in oppositionto, andat the expenseof, the countryside. What, then, is the relationshipof propertyto urban citizenship?In the ancientcity, citizenshipis sometimesa precondition to owningpriin the medievalcity, privatepropertyis a precondition to vate property; becomingcitizens. We might say that sometimesthe communitymedirelationto property,and at other times the individates the individual's existence.In fact, the language ual's propertymediatesthe community's of mediationis inadequate.It seems that in its stead, Marx, almostdespite himself, approachesanother position: membershipin the comfirst in the munityis itself one form of property-holding. Membership, tribe, later in the city, constitutesthe propertyrelation (PC 90-91). Urbancitizenshipis an appropriation relation,a holdingof publicpropin Whether this the erty.2 property public thing (res publica) is considered to predate the individualproprietorship (ancient Greece) or
21. Production, the aim of the property relation, assumes a broader meaning. It includes not only the making of material goods and cultural artifacts, but also the manufacture of a political good-citizenship itself. "Among the ancients we discover no single enquiry as to which form of landed property, etc. is the most productive, which creates maximum wealth. Wealth does not appear as the end of production, although Cato may well investigate the most profitable cultivation of fields, or Brutus may even lend money at the most favorable rate of interest. The enquiry is always about what kind of property creates the best citizens. Wealth as an end in itself appears only among a few trading peoples.... Thus the ancient conception [is one] in which man always appears (in however narrowly national, religious, or political a definition), as the aim of production" (PC 84). What this broadening does to the specificity of Marx's concept of property and production-as covering discrete phenomena which can then be asserted to have definite roles in social causation-is another question.
Nancy L. Schwartz 541 to the condipostdate it (Middle Ages), it is in both cases a "relation tions of one'sexistenceas one'sown." Relation m. Weber:The Cityas a New Kindof Legitimacy Weber writes that the city is "above all constituted,or at least interpreted, as a fraternalassociation"(E&s 1241). It is "actuallya revolutionary usurpationof rights" (E&s 1250) whose essence is that it is a urban confraternization" (E&s 1259). "usurpatory In these statementsthere is alreadya clear contrastto Marx, both in substanceand methodology.Weber considersthe city to be a distinct social formationwhich, while existingin the context of differenthistorical systems,also has a natureof its own. It is not merelyan aspectof a characlargersystem, and it can be said to have a set of "ideal-typical" teristicswhichlogicallycoherein its purestform.Thus Weberwill establish the characteristics of the city as such and then make comparisons between, say, the ancient Greek polis and the renaissanceItalian city, and contrastthese withthe medieval Germanic city.22 Weber'smethod allows him to establishan ideal-typeof social formation because he believes that social action comprehendsthe selfof the world, of actorsas well as moreobjectivestructures understanding and that these combinelogicallyinto a social whole (E&s 4, 20).23 The unique insightof Weber'sverstehenmethodis that the self-understandings of the actors are themselvesbased on a kind of "social objective reality,"the socially sharedexpectationsthat certainacts have come to have certain symbolic meaningsin a culture (E&S13-18). It follows that if the social scientistwantsto explainhow a certainsocial formation came into being, he has to give an accountof both what it meantto the people involved and what social factors precipitatedand encouraged such an understanding (E&s11-12). And Weber,unlikeMarx,will not take the next step to the assertionthat people'sself-understandings are a "falseconsciousness," maskingthe realityof things. Now it is true that some interpreters read Weber as also having an underlyingphilosophyof history which explains the real meaningsof people's actionsthroughtime. Karl Lowith,for example,sees Weberas the theoristof the increasing of the world,in whichsocial rationalization systems, systems of thought and action, inevitablyand inexorablytend
22. Marx,in contrast, as ahistorical would attacksuch comparisons (or would do so at least in his published work). 23. Weber,"BasicSociologicalTerms,"in Economyand Society [E&s],Roth and Wittich,eds., op. cit., vol. I, pt. 1, ch. I, esp. pp. 4, 20.
542 Marx&Weberon the City towardssheddingtheir magicalelementsand acquiring of the attributes moderntechnicalrationality.Here, Weber'sdeeply held Kantianbelief in moral autonomyis seen as a value commitment which can only lead of human to an unmasking all other ties that bind communities.24 Yet while there may well be an implicitattraction,as well as an underlying to make it worry,about the "ironcage,"25 I thinkit is an exaggeration the essence of his work. For surelythe burdenof his explicitmethodowritingsis to argue that there are a varietyof logical and comparative the social world, and they conways in which people have constructed tinue to involveseveraldifferent, and equallyvaluable,kindsof rationality.26
Weber'smonographon The City exhibitsthese complexities.On the one hand, it is part of his life-long investigationinto the origins and of modernity. He seeks an "understanding of the charactersignificance istic uniquenessof the realityin which we move" and also an explana27 tion of "the causes of its being historicallyso and not otherwise." As such, one of his purposesin the essay is to examine the ways in which the historicalformationshe labels cities have either contributed to, or hindered,the developmentof modem society and polity. On the of the city, with otherhand,he is fascinatedby the historical uniqueness its particularcombinationof modernand pre-modemtraits, which do not necessarilytend in any particular historicaldirection.Thus he sees the city also as a rareandephemeral, thoughrecurrent, entity. These cities exist withinlargersocial formationswhich, accordingto but by kinds not by their modes of production Weber,are distinguished of politicallegitimacy.He specifiesthree main bases of politicalauthority-tradition, charisma, and rational-legalcriteria-and elaboratesa arm-bureaucracy in its differentformstheory of the administrative
24. Although Lowith himself then recaptures reciprocity in a most interesting way. Karl Lowith, "Weber'sInterpretationof the Bourgeois-CapitalisticWorld in Terms of the Guiding Principle of 'Rationalization'" in Dennis Wrong, ed., Max Weber (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1970), pp. 101-122. 25. Weber, The ProtestantEthic and the Spirit of Capitalism,trans. Talcott Parsons (New York: Charles Scribner'sSons, 1958), p. 181. 26. See, for example, Weber, "Politics As A Vocation," in From Max Weber, ed. H. H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills (New York: Oxford University Press, 1958), pp. 118-119, 123, and "The Sociology of Religion" and "The Sociology of Law," in E&S, vol. 1, pt. II, ch. VI and vol. 2, ch. VIII, esp. pp. 656-657. See also Nancy L. Schwartz, "Max Weber's Philosophy," Yale Law Journal 93, no. 7 (June 1984): 1387-1389, 1396. 27. Weber, "'Objectivity' in Social Science and Social Policy," in The Methodology of the Social Sciences, trans. and ed. Edward A. Shils and Henry A. Finch (New York: The Free Press, 1949), p. 72.
Nancy L. Schwartz 543 each of them (E&S which accompanies 212-301).28 He also developsa typology of society's structurewhich gives more importanceto status be926-940);29 and he distinguishes groupsthan to social classes (E&S tween kinds of economies, notably the oikos or householdversus the market and the planned economy (E&S63-113). For Weber, these kinds of economy and society and polity can exist in innumerable combinationsone with another, althoughsome are more perfect fits than others. The crucial differencefrom Marx, of course, is that Weberreof all other gards neitherthe economy nor the society as determinative social phenomena. If anything, the polity,or morespecifically, the power between a leader and his administrative is most staff, struggle political influential(E&S264).30 Otherfactorsare of importance insofaras they are used to advancethe political power of an individual,status group, social class, politicalparty, or state. Historicalchangeis causedby the power strugglebetween these actors, and it is a struggleof which the people involvedare not unaware. The city, then, exists within these largersocial formations,yet in a distinctiveway: it is politicallyautonomous. Whileintricately connected with the larger economy and society, it forges its own political independence.Weberlabels the politicalconditionof the city as "non-legitimate domination," which I think can be interpreted in two ways. He is explicit about the first meaning:in its origins,leadershipgroupsin the city contest the political legitimacyof the systemsof rule which came before and seize power on new terms (E&S1239, 1250, 1302). Thus, for example,in an early stage of city formation,urbanaristocrats challenge ruralnobles, and at a later stage, urbanartisansexile urbanmagnates. Unlike Marx, Webersees these not as class but as statusformations: new groups of honoratiores,based on militarilyand politically acquired characteristics,arise and challenge older formations. They usurp power and establishnew regimesin which their monopolyon the use of violenceis not fullysecure. legitimate The second meaningof "non-legitimate" is not explicit,but it is sugI think. to It has do with what the new types of legitimacy gested, In are. the two actually examples mentionedabove, we can fit each developmentinto Weber'soriginaltypology of legitimacy:in the first,
28. Weber, "The Types of Legitimate Domination," in E&S, vol. 1, pt. I, ch. III, pp. 212-301. 29. Weber, "The Distribution of Power Within the Political Community: Class, Status and Party," in E&S,vol. 2, ch. IX, sec. 6, pp. 926-940. 30. Weber, "Sociological Categories of Economic Action," in E&S, vol. 1, pt. I, ch. II, sec. 1-14, pp. 63-113.
544 Marx&Weberon the City in the second, group charisma traditional authorityis being challenged, is challenged.But what form of legitimacyreplacesthem?Here Weber himself moves onto new ground,and he never venturesto summarize elementswhichare it. The legitimacyof the city has some rational-legal indeed new, but they are not comprehensive. Too many particularistic elementsremain.We might fit the city into Weber'sfourthcategory,a subtype which he elsewhere suggests to account for the authorityof modern mass democracy: "charismainvertedin an anti-authoritarian direction"(E&s 266-267). Yet in some ways, Weberis here pressing with another of thatformulation, andemerging up againstthe limitations kindof legitimacy. Citizenshipis the new form of legitimacyproducedby the idealtypical city. By ascribinga certainstatus to those who are empowered to share in politicalrule, the city names a new basis for the justice and It is a type of legitimacythat goes beyondthe stabilityof a government. relationof the leader to his administrative staff, but it is not so broad as to encompasshis relationto the masses.It concernsthe politicalexecutive'srelationto a political"staff"that is now broadlyconceivedto includethe body of "citizens" entitledand obligatedto hold office,both civil-executive, legislative,judicial-and military.There is thus a type of legitimacyfor the city as such-based on the grantingof citizenship -regardless of whetherparticular regimesin the city definecitizenship by oligarchicor democraticcriteria.That there is one overallstandard for the city is evident in his discussionof those types of regimeson the city's own terms. tyranniesand signories-which are illegitimate The city's own terms are those of respectingthe power of a body of citizens,howeverthatbodyis defined. What constitutesthe ideal-typicalcity, and how does it producethe new legitimacyof citizenship?Weber derives five main characteristics from his historicalsurvey of ancient and medieval,patricianand plebeian, cities which he then appliesto the actualformationhe considers to be the city at its height: the plebeianmedievalurbancommune.To be a city, it musthave (1) a market,(2) a fortress,(3) its own law and its own administration of law, and (4) a related form of association. These four conditionslead the city to have (5) a degreeof politicaland administrative autonomy(E&S1226, 1322-1333). A city is, first,an economicmarket,a distinctcenterfor the exchange of goods and services(E&s1212-1220, 1256, 1359). It mustbe a cenhouseter for trade,whetherbetweenindividual households, patrimonial introduction or the bodies. Since economic holds, enterprises, political of money,this has meantthat at timescities were inhabited by primarily of antiquity);at other times debtors (peasants,the "agrarian burghers"
by creditors (the urban burghers of the middle age) (E&S1261, 1270).31 The city must also have an urban economic policy (E&S1328). It must have its own set of market rights, taxes, tariffs, and craft regulations, for example, to ensure the continuance of its market. While at times it may make a city stronger to have the productive enterprises within its borders, at other times this has not been the case. As long as the city is skillful and powerful enough to "exploit the economic opportunities" (E&s 1329) that lie outside its borders, their incorporation is not necessary. Weber also notes, in another departure from Marx, that this need not always involve one-way exploitation by the city of rural interests (E&S 1331, 1333). What is required is that the city maintain itself as a commercial center. The city is, secondly, a fortress, a defensible place which can maintain a degree of military autonomy (E&s 1220-1223, 1323). It may also have a garrison, and if that is extensive enough (as at Sparta), it will not need the city walls (E&S 1221, 1359-1360). Historically, cities have fortified themselves in different ways-from the urban castles of the nobility, to the self-equipment of troops via "peasant levies, knightly armies, and burgher militias" (E&s 1261-1262, 1222-1223). Weber writes that "the oldest specifically civic burdens are guard and garrison service" (E&S 1221). Needless to say, this has special significance in a theory that defines the sine qua non of state political power to be "monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force." 32 The ways in which cities change to meet their military needs is crucial to their political complexion; Weber shows how each city at some point redefines the basic units of association away from kinship (ancient) or occupational groupings (medieval) to new territorial and/or military-administrative functional units, and thus paves the way for individuality as a legal status, as we will see. The most intriguing example of this is ancient Greece, where, as Marx and Engels also note, the city constitution reassembles the family groupings into what it calls "tribes" in each deme, the new administrative district; yet, these tribes are really artificial creations of the city (E&S 1244-1246, 1286, 1311). Military training for a civil militia has consequences, far beyond war, in politics and culture. It may
31. Additionally, cities may be primarily "producer"cities-the artisan communes of the late medieval/early renaissance-but for Weber this is not essential to the definition of a city (E&S 1341, 1350). Compare Henri Pirenne on this point, who specifies that a true city-at least a medieval one-has to be an industrial as well as a commercial unit. Pirenne, Medieval Cities (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1969), pp. 212, 189. 32. Weber, "Politics As A Vocation," in Gerth and Mills, eds., From Max
Weber, p. 78.
546
foster the agonal spirit, from the contests in the gymnasium to the contests of dialectical speech (Athens), although it also may not (Sparta, Rome) (E&S 1367-1368). But in all cases, military service keeps the citizens involved in "the political fate of the city" (E&S 1319), which concern fades when only burgher interests hold sway. A city must also have its own law ana its own judicial administration (E&S 1325-1327). Whereas Asian cities had only fortresses and markets, the Occidental city also has a separate urban law and a separate legal status for its citizens (E&S 1227-1229). Urban law specifies that property is alienable and that persons are free. But the condition that a city have its own body of law is more important than the content of the law. Thus in certain matters urban law may have more "irrational," and in others more rational, elements than the law of the larger society (E&S 1254). An interesting example here is that of English cities whose pre-modern precedent-bound common law proved more conducive to "capitalist stirrings" than did the more universalistic legal rules of Roman law elsewhere (E&S 976-7). Urban law, then, can develop in its own idiosyncratic fashion, to cover matters relating to land, taxes, crimes, courtroom procedure, and, most significantly, the legal status of persons (E&S 1237-1241, 1327-1328). Even where a larger political entity keeps jurisidiction, for example, of capital offenses, it is essential that the city have its own lay judges, chosen from its midst, to administer and enforce the law (E&S 1325-1326). Thus the political condition of the city requires at least some degree of autonomy.33 But what is most distinctive about the city is its form of association, the quality of the relations among its citizens. The city is "beyond all this also a sworn confraternity" (E&S 1248) in which the members bind themselves one to another in a collective body. Through a series of institutional practices, a diverse collection of people who had previously been strangers, immigrants to this new and alien place, now become known to each other. There is a ritual joining of people as symbolic brothers, implicated in the fate of others. The rituals include those of "connubium, commensality and solidarity against non-members" (E&s 1241). The cultic meals and ceremonies which reaffirm the association always have religious symbolism drawn from the dominant culture, but Weber wants to stress that at heart they are not religious but specifically secular and civic affirmations (E&S 1246-1247). In fact the urban confraternity-whether expressed in the Greek prytaneion, the common city
33. The city can have some legal autonomy even in the modem national situation. Gerald Frug, "The City As A Legal Concept," Harvard Law Review, 93, no. 6 (April 1980): 1057-1154.
NancyL. Schwartz 547 cultic meal, or the sworn city unions of the Germanicconfraternitates or the Italianconiuratio-is positedpreciselyin distinctionto the other ties of family, occupation,or religion (E&s 1228, 1242, 1257, 1334). does not completely Yet, too, in a complicatedway, civic brotherhood themas its precondition and ties, for it affirms supplantthese prepolitical its contrast. The result is a peculiarmixtureof modernand premodempractices that make the essence of the city. In its fully developedform, the city treats personsas individuals with "religiousand secularequalitybefore the law" (E&S1241). In ancientGreece,and at timesin medievalItaly, of rightsamongcitizens,but theirpoliticalequality there are gradations is still the dominant to noncitizens and tendency,especiallyin distinction law for the urban The special burgher foreigners (E&S 1310-1311). sees him as an individualwith "a subjectiveright to an objectivelaw" of the individual fac(E&S1249). Yet we do not find the characteristics ing modern bureaucracy.For these citizens are part of a collectivity which has a unique corporatestatus and which is definedas different rules fromothersuch collectivities, not necessarily fittingunderuniversal in this place, with this his(E&S 1228-1229, 1240). It is a membership tory,withthesepeople,who havethe capacityfor self-rule. In sum, these four characteristics-market, law, fortress,autonomous and confraternity-make a city politicallyautonomousor at least partially so. The city exists in its economicas well as its "politico-administrative"concept;it exists as Gemeinde,a community(E&S 1220). IV. Citizenship as a Relationof Appropriation andAssociation We must still ask how people in the city come to feel like citizens.What makes them wholeheartedly join that confraternity; why would they ever assume the burdensand risks of citizenship? Marx and Weber give ratherdifferentexplanationsof this, and not the ones you would expect. Neither, of course, is a social contracttheorist postulating the proverbial meetingunderthe oak tree in a Rawlsian original position. Each is a political sociologist, trying to account for what actuallyhappened.But both do grantthat one of the things that did happen is that, at certainbrief times in history,people believedin the statusof citizenship. For both Marx and Weber,the motivesof the people foundingcities were differentfrom the meaningwhich citizenshiplater acquired.The origin of cities are found in materialinterests;for Marx, opportunities of economicexploitation; for Weber,militaryand economic,and more Even Weberadmitsthat the foundingof broadly,power opportunities.
548
cities was generally a business undertaking. Yet both theorists also concede, even if with an element of wonder, that some rather sophisticated men came to believe in citizenship through another route (PC 84, E&S 1246, 1250). Their explanations for the transmission of this belief generally refer to certain segments of the urban social structure, city men with property, who found it to be in their politico-economic interest to reclaim the idea from ancient Greece and Rome and develop it further in order to strengthen the city. In fact, since citizenship often involved a limitation of economic activity, Weber remarks that sometimes burghers did not want to join and were forced (E&S 1253). But once members, they came to honor the idea of citizenship. The understanding of the structure of belief seems to hinge, in the case of both Marx and Weber, on the myth of an origin, the symbolic founding. Through the oath, the common city meals, and the offerings to the city deities, the urban member entered into a cultic community which had an historic existence. At this point Marx and Weber have two rather different accounts of the myth. Marx claims that the myth posits the origins of the city to be divine (PC 69, 73); Weber says the myth claims that the origins were in man's free will (E&s 1242-1243, 1285). It is perhaps ironic that in their respective analyses, each finds the opposite of his own intellectual predilections: Marx, the great secular political theorist, finds others positing a belief in divine beings, and Weber, so attuned to the sociology of religion, downplays its influence and sees others stressing an historical event.34 It may well be that the role of citizenship involves the threefold human condition of being determined, and free, and in contact with the divine. The myth of an origin is really about the final cause or the purpose of the association. If it is true that such a myth is crucial, there must be ways for the citizen to re-enact that founding, to make it real in his own life. One can conceive of a theory of political institutions in which participation by the citizen would be a way of recovenanting the original purpose of the community. In this theory, drawing upon Marx and Weber, citizenship would be a relation of both appropriation and association. It would be a complex relation of rights and duties to a body conceived as a public possession, and a relation to one's fellow citizens as one's own.
34. Though there is an ambiguity in these Marx passages, (PC 69, 73) as well as in related Weber ones (E&S 1311, 1313).

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Northeastern Political Science Association

Communitarian Citizenship: Marx&Weberon the City* Nancy L. Schwartz

Nancy L. Schwartz 531

Marx & Weber on the City

Nancy L. Schwartz 539

Nancy L. Schwartz 545

Marx & Weber on the City

Marx & Weber on the City

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