Administrative Theory & Praxis

Vol. 25, No. 3, 2003: 409418

Forum Essay
A DEBT UNPAIDREINTERPRETING
MAX WEBER ON BUREAUCRACY
Scott A. Gale and Ralph P. Hummel
The University of Akron
If there is a story emblematic of the difference between commercial ideas
of property and academic property it is perhaps this one. It speaks to both the
character of Hannah Arendt and that of a friend, the publisher William
Jovanovich. Called upon suddenly to give a speech at a dinner, he confessed,
he had stolen some of her ideas. We can just see her reaction. Diminutive in
form, she got up from behind her desk, walked around it, stood next to the tall
Jovanovich, and, putting her hand on his shoulder, said: Thats okay, my boy.
Thats what theyre for.1
All of us who teach will appreciate the story. Still, there are certain
conventions in the scholarly world. One of these is to give creditpace postmodernists!to the author of an idea: a debt to be paid. Perhaps among the
most generous of payments may be Sir Isaac Newtons acknowledgment that
he had stood on the shoulders of giants. Certainly, in the field of philosophy,
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel is a giant. And, if we discover a great social
scientist echoing Hegels explicit thought, if not word for word then issue by
issue and point by point, we would normally expect an acknowledgment. It
would be payment of a debt owed the original author, but more importantly, it
would help us interpret the present one (cf. Jackson, 1986; Schluchter, 1981,
p. 120 ff; Shaw, 1992).
Yet, acknowledge is precisely what Max Weber did not do when it came to
writing his influential essay entitled Bureaucracy.2 Its precursor is Hegels
characterization of the civil service in his Philosophy of Right (1821/1967).
One is published in 1922; the other just about one hundred years earlier, in
1821. Similarities leap to the eye. Weber left them unacknowledged. Yet it is
this very similarity of the observations on bureaucracy and civil service,
respectively, which reminds us that words do not speak for themselves. As
their context changes, their meaning changes. And change of context is
exactly what the discovery of the Hegel connection suggests.
2003, Public Administration Theory Network

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These treatments of civil service and bureaucracy, though similar, must be

read by different lights. The thoughts may appear similar, but Weber was not
Hegel, and vice versa. Different purposes are already reflected in the titles.
Hegels purpose unfolds in the context of writing a philosophy of rightof
what is just under law. He deduces what function a civil service dedicated to
right (or law) would have in development of the state. Webers essay is usually
read as part of his social science, listing observable functions that turn a civil
service into a reliable institution of state control: a bureaucracy.
Should Weber also be read as saying something about the external function
of bureaucracy in the development of the state? Certainly, with Germany not
unified until 1871, its belated and questionable development remained a
burning issue in Webers lifetime. In short, it is precisely the absence of
references to Hegel in text or notes that opens these questions: In just what
way was Weber indebted to Hegel? How did that debt come about? Are we
today still paying interest on that debt by normally misreading Weber?
QUESTIONING ALL INTERPRETATION
The possibility of a longstanding misreading in view of the exposure of the
Hegel connection opens up the possibility of opening up other questions:
On origins: Was Weber a Hegelian? Or did Hegels thought come to him
indirectly through Marx, whose work he admired and saw as partly
complementing his own? Or was he influenced by the Young-Hegelians? Or is
the connection simply due to the spirit of the times as it manifested itself in
Webers college years? Or is there some other connection?
On functionalism: Does the Hegel connection confirm Talcott Parsons
interpretation of Weber as a functionalisttaking social action as the function
of systems?3
On empiricism: Are we mistaken in treating Weber as an empiricist? Or can
Webers bureaucracy be modeled and tested for empirical salience as did
Stanley H. Udy Jr.?
On normative theory: Are the poor benighted souls among us who treat an
ideal-type as a prescribed goal right after all?
These may seem scholastic issues. How may angels can dance on the head
of a pin? But it is more than that. To pursue just one of the issues
raisedinterpretation of Weber in Hegelian terms: If bureaucracy is given a
different philosophical context, it means something different from our
mundane normal interpretation. We can take as our model example: What if it
is given a Hegelian flavor? Then it functions as an educational institution. This
mediates between the state and civil society. It imbues individuals with evergreater consciousness. They become aware that their particular interests are

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met most fully when they act in the universal interest of all united in the state.
For Hegel, the particular finds itself most fully in the universal. For example,
though he observes that division of labor reduces the range of an individuals
skills, Hegel finds liberation in the workers newly found need to depend on
and work with others (1821/1967, 194). In contrast, Weber puts free labor
as a condition of modernization in ironic quotes. Yet, would Max Weber ever
agree with the consequence that Hegel ultimately draws, that The state is the
actuality of concrete freedom ( 260)?
But we are getting ahead of ourselves. First the evidence.
A CERTAIN CONGRUENCE
We open up a Pandoras Box of answers by offering the most obvious
examples of congruence.
Max Webers major points on the modern bureaucracy in essential ways
correspond with Hegels writings on the civil service. Any one of us can
discover this congruence for him- or herself. Start by laying Max Webers
often quoted chapter next to the Executive section of Hegels Philosophy of
Right (1821/1967) (particularly 287-297; other sections become handy
later). Weber seems to repeat, without acknowledgement, what Hegel said
about the principles of an ideal civil service.
WEBER AND HEGEL
CONGRUENCIES IN THEIR OWN WORDS
Max Weber
Economy and Society (1922/1968b)
Edited by Guenther Roth and Claus Wittich
CHARACTERISTICS OF
MODERN BUREAUCRACY

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

Philosophy of Right (1821/1967)
Translated with notes by T. M. Knox
CHARACTERISTICS OF
THE CIVIL SERVICE

I. DIVISION OF LABOR:
There is the principle of official jurisdictional areas,(p. 956).

The universal and objective element in

worklies in the abstracting process,
whichbrings about the division of
labor (p.129, 198). Division of labour
occurs in the business of the executive
also (p. 190, 290).

II. HIERARCHY:
The principles of office hierarchy
(p. 957).

The security of the state and its subjects

against misuse of power by ministers and
their officials lies directly in their
hierarchical organization and their
answerability(p. 192, 295).

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III. WRITTEN DOCUMENTATION:

The management of the modern office is
based upon written documents (the
files), (p. 957).

[No direct parallel ; indirectly:] If laws

are to have binding force, it follows
thatthey must be made universally
known (p.138, 215). When a nation
begins to acquire even a little culture, its
customary law must soon be collected
and put together (p. 135, 211). To hang
the laws so high that no citizen could read
them... is injustice...(p. 138, 215).

IV. TRAINED EXPERTS:

Office management, at least all
specialized office managementand
such
management
is
distinctly
modernusually presupposes thorough
training in a field of specialization (p.
958).
Objective
discharge
of
business...without regard for persons (p.
975).

Individuals are not appointed to office on

account of their birth or native personal
gifts[but]knowledge and proof of
ability (p. 190, 291).

[Excursus on the cultivated man:]

Social prestige based upon the advantage
of schooling and education as such is by
no means specific to bureaucracy (p.
1001).

dispassionate, upright, and polite

demeanor becomes customary [in civil
society] is partly a result of direct
education in thought and ethical
conductin acquiring the so-called
science of matters connected with
administration, in the requisite business
training, in the actual work done, &(p.
193, 296).

V. FULL WORKING CAPACITY:

When the office is fully developed,
official activity demands the full working
capacity of the official,(p. 958).

he concentrates his main interest on his

relation to his work (pp.191-192, 294).

VI. GENERAL RULES:

The management of the office follows
general rules(p. 958).

For a public legal code, simple general

laws are required(p. 138, 216).
Amongst the rights of the subjective
consciousness are not only the
publication of the lawsbut alsothe
publicity of judicial proceedings (p. 142,
224).

Key: The headings in the box are ours; all text consists of direct citations from Weber and Hegel.
Note: There are other parallels, which must await space for a more complete exhibition.

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WEBER = HEGEL?
Why there is no acknowledgement by Weber of any connection to Hegel?
This may be explained easily enough: Weber died before he could add the
usual references as footnotes or endnotes. (The first edition of Economy and
Society (1922) that we hold in our handsit belongs to the Oberlin College
Libraryclearly states Bearbeitet von Max Weberworked on by Max
Weberinstead of simply citing him as author.) But this easy answer does not
explain the real debt Weber owes Hegel. Why no direct references in the text
with which on the surface he would seem to agree?
WEBERS ANTIPATHY TO HEGEL
Webers antagonism to Hegel is well known: For Weber, History is not the
judge of the world, men are. There is no such thing as a World Spirit that
actualizes itself in the world; spirit is in peoples heads and is put into action
by them (for example, the spirit of capitalism). Arrangements for living
together do not have a life of their own. Rather, behind every function of a part
of the whole we can find interaction between human beings that constitute it
and make it work by giving it meaning.
Weber never attacked Hegel directly. Indexes and footnotes to most of his
works are bare of the name Hegel. The name does, however, occur throughout
one of Webers early works. That is his critique of two exponents of the
Historical School in economics. These were Wilhelm Roscher and Karl
Knies, and the essay was Roscher and Knies and the Logical Problems of
Historical State Economics.
In criticizing Roscher, for example, Weber manages to imply both that
Roscher was applying Hegels framework and was incompetent in doing so
(Weber, 1922/1968a, p. 19 of the German language original). But in the same
breath he denounces Hegels emanatismthe idea that economic behavior
is the emanation of a world spirit actualizing itself among men (p. 19).
Thus Weber establishes a claim to understanding Hegel, a claim that his
opponent does not, and a claim that Hegel was wrong to begin with. This
would not be inconsistent with Webers often fulsome praise of one of Hegels
students, who was said to have turned Hegel on his head: Karl Marx.
Why would the great social scientist draw without explanation on writings
of the great philosopher with whom he fundamentally disagreed? Is it mere
accident? Could it be that the same and similar products are deduced by both
men from their concern for the kind of officialdom that would be needed by
the modern state? The importance of this to all of us cannot be overestimated:
We teach Weber on bureaucracy. We research bureaucracy, often using his

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414

definition. We interpret what he says about bureaucracy in our own way,

which usually is not Hegelian.
Must we now teach, research, and think bureaucracy in a new Hegelian
interpretation? This is a question we alone cannot answer. Nor is it the main
question opened that the Hegel-Weber parallels open up.
AN INVITATION
The parallels and congruences of Weber and Hegel reopen the question of
Weber reinterpretation in general.
The issue is not Webers failure to attribute his principles of the pure-type
of bureaucracy to a previous source. The essay was probably written between
1910 and 1914, and left unedited by him at the time of his early death in 1920
(Roth, 1968, p. LIX). Weber never got a chance to add his references to the
essay on Bureaucracy (All the endnotes to the English edition Economy and
Society (1922/1968b), the magnum opus that contains the essay entitled
Bureaucracy, are those of the American editors Roth and Wittich (Notes
to the Bureaucracy essay in Weber, 1922/1968b, p. 1003; Baumgarten, 1968,
p. xxvii).
The issue we perceiveand which we ask our colleagues to addressis
not: Does our teaching and other use of Weber on bureaucracy now have to
undergo a Hegelian revision? Rather, we suggest the issue is: What are other
unresolved issues of interpretation that should be tackled again?
How must we rethink Weber on his own terms?

Is he the empiricist he is usually taken as in mainstream American

social science due to the pernicious translation of action into
function by Talcott Parsons?

Is he the interpretivist as seen by American phenomenology (Schutz,

Berger)?

Is he a Neo-Kantian (as labeled by himself according to Baumgarten

1968, p. xii; cf. Ricoeur 1967, p. 183 ff.; Schluchter, 1981, p. 15)?

Is he an idealist complement to Marxian materialist analysis

(Baumgarten, 1968, pp. xxxii-xxxiii)?

Etc.
What difference does it make?

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AN EXAMPLE OF ALTERNATIVE INTERPRETATION

We offer, as an example of the kind of reinterpretation that may be
required, a brief analysis of Webers bureaucracy under Hegelian auspices.
The framework: Say my goat has been stolen. This is the particular case I
bring to court. Society at large has larger fishor goatsto fry. Society may
have an interest in seizing goats under circumstances of shared social need. So
my case must be decided in such a way that the verdict satisfies both my
particular interest (remedy for a goat stolen) and the universal interest of all
(the law regarding any and all goats seized or stolen).
A particular claim to application of the law (universal) is made concrete
when the particular and the universal come together in a given instance.
Hegel: Hence making a law is not to be represented as merely the expression
of a rule valid for everyone; the more important moment, the inner sense of
the matter, is knowledge of the content of the law in its determinate
universality (1821/1967, 211).
This concern for a middle term between what I think is the case and what
applies to the community as a whole pervades all of Hegels thought. And we
can see it in his characterization of the civil service.
Hegelian interpretation: When Hegel speaks of the civil service as a whole
he considers it a class. This class acts on behalf of the interests of the most
universal way of thinking. The class of civil servants is universal in
character, he writes, and so has the universal explicitly as its ground and as
the aim of its activity (1821/1967, 250). A chief function of the civil
service, therefore, is to educate the individual ensnared by the daily business
of pursuing his own self-interest. The aim is to raise the consciousness that
pursuing ones own interests produces greater satisfaction in the context of the
interests of all. But the place where the universal is most fully at home is the
state. Thus the civil service raises to the consciousness of individuals the fact
that subjective interests find their objective satisfaction most fully by pursuing
the universal interests of the state.
Those individuals who already have discovered the benefits of mutual
association and its product, civil society, now can advance to pursuing their
particular interests within the framework of the state. The civil service
becomes a mediating institution between civil society and the state.
What Weber says: No such high-flown mission is assigned by Max Weber
to the kind of civil service he calls bureaucracy. Hegel could, with some
moral fervor, declare The State is the actuality of concrete freedom
(1821/1967, 260). Not so Weber. Weber declares the state to be simply that
institution that can command a monopoly of force within a given territory. A
compulsory political organization, he states baldly, will be called a state in

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so far as its administrative staff successfully upholds the claim to the

monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force in the enforcement of its
order (Economy and Society, 1922/1968b, p. 54). The mission of bureaucracy
then becomes not education or consciousness raising, but simply control. But
is this all there is to Weber?
We have no intention to further Hegelianize Weber. It should be fairly easy
to apply Weberian and Hegelian interpretations to all the individual
characteristics we teach when we touch the topic of bureaucracy. And this
needs to be done. But the point here is that the Hegel issue gives us good
reason to question all interpretations of Max Weber. All kinds of interpretive
questions have not been resolved.
CAUSE TO RE-THINK?
Webers direct and often contentious style may appeal to those of us whom
behavioral political science has taught that politics is all about who, what,
when, how. We may be attracted to reading Weber in terms of power. The
Hegelian mind, dreaming of liberation and consciousness raising, may seem
strange to us, but it is precisely the unacknowledged encounter with Hegel that
makes other interpretations worth questioning. As functionalist or
interpretivist, as neo-Kantian or contra-Marxian idealist, as Hegelian or even
phenomenologist, Weber still has something to teach us. And it is not that the
meaning of his writings on bureaucracyor his methodology or his other
substantive workis perfectly self-evident.
ENDNOTES
1. We have read this in an obituary of Hannah Arendt, but are unable to find the
source.
2. Published in his magnum opus known in brief as Economy and Society, the
bureaucracy chapter was originally intended as a contribution to social economics
(Sozialwirtschaft). The whole of Economy and Society was actually published as
Division Three of a larger Grundriss der Sozialoekonomik or Outline of Social
Economics to which Weber had committed himself along with others.
3. In The Social System, Parsons says, Action is a process in the actor-situation
system which has motivational significance to the individual actor, or, in the case of
collectivity, its component individuals (1951/1964, p. 4).

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Weber, M. (1947). The theory of social and economic organization. (T. Parsons & A. K.
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Scott A. Gale is Doctoral Candidate in Public Administration, University of Akron,

Akron, OH and Deputy Clerk of Courts, Akron Municipal Court District, Akron, OH.
Ralph P. Hummel teaches in the Department of Public Administration and Urban
Studies at The University of Akron.