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Max Weber and Roberto Michels An asymmetrical partnership

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2009

Wolfgang J. Mommsen
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Extract

The relationship between Max Weber and Roberto Michels is a fascinating one, both on the biographical and on the systematic level. Almost from the very start Max Weber became interested in the young scholar Michels who had already written extensively about the development of Italian and German Socialism. From 1906 onwards Michels became a regular contributor to the Archiv fur Sozialwissenschaft und Sozialpolitik, which was edited at the time by Max Weber together with Edgar Jaffé. Although Michels was twelve years younger than Weber, the scholarly contact between them, established through Michels' contribution to the Archiv, soon developed into a lifelong intimate friendship which was soon shared by Marianne Weber and Gisela Michels-Lindner also. This friendship was not without violent ruptures, but it was the most stable and personal relationship which Max Weber ever had. Michels became a member of the Heidelberg circle which met at the Ziegelhäuser Landstraße 35, and visited it whenever he happened to be in Heidelberg, and later, after Michels had moved to Turin, the Webers were regular visitors there. There is a rich stream of letters which bears testimony to this remarkable intimate friendship, which flourished despite the fact that Michels was still at the beginning of a troublesome academic career, while Weber was well established within the German Academic Community.

Type
Research Article
Information
European Journal of Sociology / Archives Européennes de Sociologie , Volume 22 , Issue 1 , January 1981 , pp. 100 - 116
Copyright
Copyright © Archives Européenes de Sociology 1981

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References

(1) Röhrich, Wilfried, Michels, Robert, Vom sozialistisch-syndikalistischen zum fasehistischen Credo (Berlin 1972), p. 38CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See Paralso Röhrich, W., Michels, Robert, in Kasler, D. (ed.), Klassiker des soziologischen Denkens, vol. II (Munchen 1977), pp. 226–253Google Scholar, 465–474 (with a complete list of Michels' writings). Mommsen, Wolfgang J., Max Weber und die deutsche Politik, 1890–1920 2 (Tubingen 1974), pp. 114–118, 120–121, 144–145Google Scholar. Ebbighausen, R., Die Krise der Parteiendemokratie Und die Paralso teiensoziologie. Eine Studie über Moisei Ostrogorski, Robert Michels und die neuere Entwicklung der Parteienforschung (Berlin 1969)Google Scholar. Hughes, H. Stuart, Consciousness and Society. The reorientation of European social thought, 1890–1930 (New York 1961), pp. 249–274Google Scholar. Beetham, David, Michels, Roberto, Political Studies, XXV (1977), pp. 3–24CrossRefGoogle Scholar. ID., Michels and his Critics. Paper read at the political sociology seminar, Oxford University, 19 October 1978, Zeitprinted in this issue of the European Journal of Sociology. Mitzman, A., Sociology and Estrangement, Three Sociologists of Imperial Germany (New York 1973)Google Scholar. Roth, Günther, The Social Democrats in Imperial Germany (Totowa, N.J. 1963), pp. 249–257Google Scholar.

(2) Letter to Michels, 25.6.1908 (Fondazione Luigi Einaudi, Torino).

(3) Letter to Gisela M., Weihnachten 1909.

(4) Die sogenannte Lehrfreiheit an den deutschen Universitäten, Frankfurter Zeitprinted ung, 20.9.1908. An English version in Shils, E. A., The Power of the State and the Dignity of the Academic Calling in Imperial Germany. The Writings of Max Weber on University Problems, Minerva, XI (1973) 4, p. 17Google Scholar.

(5) Letter to Michels, 11.2.1910.

(6) Weber, Max, in Nuova Antologia, 16. 12 1920, pp. 355–361Google Scholar.

(7) This personal identification is continually repeated in his correspondence with Michels.

(8) Cf. Röhrich, p. 14.

(9) Letter to Michels, 8.10.1906.

(10) Cf. Gesammelte Aufsatze zur Soziologie und Sozialpolitik (Tubingen 1928), p. 411Google Scholar.

(11) Cf. Letter to Michels (6.11.1907).

(12) In 1906 he wrote: 'There is not the faintest likelihood that the process of economic “socialisation” will eventually bring about either “free” personalities in a spiritual sense, or the birth of a new altruist philosophy. For do we discover even the faintest germs of any such phenomena with those who, according to their own opinion, are propelled irresistibly to victory by the economic forces? The Social Democrats who excel in “correctness” drill the masses to perform a sort of spiritual goose-step, They preach the earthly paradise to them—thereby turning the Social Democrat Party into a sort of small-pox vaccination which is to the advantage of those interested in the preservation of the existing social order', Gesammelte politische Schriften 3 (Tubingen 1971) (henceforth quoted GPS), p. 65Google Scholar.

(13) Letter to Michels, 6.11.1907.

(14) Letter to Michels, 4.8.1908. Cf. also Mommsen, W.J., The Age of Bureaucracy. Perspectives of the Political Sociology of Max Weber (henceforth quoted Age of Bureaucracy) (Oxford 1974), p. 87Google Scholar.

(15) ebd.

(16) i.e. Die oligarchischen Tendenzen der Gesellschaft, Archiv für Sozialwissenracy. schaft und Sozialpolitik, Bd. xxvn, 1.1908.

(17) ‘You are a deeply honest fellow and therefore you will, in due course, apply this criticism to yourself also, which has long since made me think along these lines and thus stamped me as a bourgeois politician, so long as even those few goals which one can strivt for as a bourgeois politician are not being pushed beyond the horizon’. Letter of 4.8.1908.

(18) Cf. Die oligarchischen Tendenzen der Gesellschaft, p. 133.

(19) Cf. Mommsen, , Age of Bureaucracy, p. 122 fGoogle Scholar.

(20) GPS, p. 548.

(21) Transl. from the German edition, Zur Soxiologie des Parteiwesens in der modernen Demohratie. Untersuchungen über die oligarchischen Tendenzen des Gruppenlebens, ed. Conze, Werner (Stuttgart, s. a.), p. 130Google Scholar.

(22) Cf. GPS, p. 388. Weber argues here that the progressive democratisation of both the means and the institutions of political struggle require the professional politician.

(23) Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft 5 (hence-forth quoted WuG) (Tübingen 1972), p. 667Google Scholar.

(24) WuG, p. 669.

(25) Vide Weber's long letter to Michels, particin which he expressed his thanks for having dedicated the Soziologie des Parteiwesens to him, undated (Summer 1911). While paying much tribute to Michels' achievement, he objected to many details, in particin ular to Michels' usage of the concept of democdomination. Michels mentioned this letter in the preface to the second edition, p. XXXVIII.

(26) For the following analysis see Mommsen, W. J., Max Weber und die deutsche Politik 1890–1920 2 (Tübingen 1974), p 416 ffGoogle Scholar.

(27) WuG, p. 156 (author's transl.).

(28) GPS 496; cf. also Röhrich, p. 144, and Röhrich, , Michels, Robert, in Klassiker des soziologischen Denkens, vol. II ed. KäSLER, D., p. 238Google Scholar.

(29) 1925. Cf. Röhrich, p. 160. See also Michels, , Italien von heute (Zürich 1930), p. 267Google Scholar.

(30) Grundsãtzliches zum Problem der Demokratie, Zeitschrift für Politik, XVII (1927), p. 201Google Scholar.