Liberalism and Capitalism Today. Paul-Jacques Lehmann

Liberalism and Capitalism Today - Paul-Jacques Lehmann


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bourgeoisie, with whom they had been so afraid of being confused, becomes richer on the contrary and becomes enlightened beside them, without them and against them: they had not wanted to have the bourgeoisie as partners nor as fellow citizens; they will find in them rivals, soon enemies, and finally masters.

      We will have the opportunity to explain that, for Weber, this profound transformation went hand in hand with the appearance of Protestantism and the precepts that this religion inculcated in its followers.

      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.

      1.4.1. Legitimate coercion by the state

      Political actions and activities are related to the constraints that arise between individuals in addressing issues of authority, power and rulemaking. Political authority is part of a process of legitimate domination, that is, one that is accepted by social actors because it conforms with the beliefs and representations shared by the majority.

      Weber (2019) explained that violence is constantly present in the great moments of political rationalization. “It appears, at the beginning, as the foundation of the relationship of domination and power, and then becomes the stake in the definition of the political sphere ordered by institutions that compete with each other to confiscate the use of legitimate violence […] Power is any chance of triumph, within a social relationship, its own will, even against resistance, no matter what this chance is based on”.

      Domination is intimately related to power and is its manifestation. All political domination is based on a relationship between command and obedience. This relationship ensures that domination is exercised by a small number of people who make decisions and impose their views on the majority. Domination also presupposes that certain intentions, actions or decisions remain secret.

      The concept of political domination leads Weber to define the state as: “a structure, grouping or political enterprise of an institutional nature that successfully claims, in the application of regulations, the monopoly of legitimate physical constraint, within a determinable geographical territory”. Like all the political groupings that preceded it, the state consists of a relationship of domination of man by man based on the means of legitimate violence. The state is an institution that has the power to coerce people (to have them participate in public spending by making them pay taxes, have them defend the country by sending them to war, have them punished by putting them in prison, etc.).

      As for the modern state, it is the result of the evolution of the institutions of collective life towards an increasing subjection of human life to objectified orders: its priority is legal-rational domination, that is, “the authority that imposes itself by virtue of ‘legality’, of the conviction of citizens that it is right to obey it, and of the belief in the validity of a legal status and a positive ‘competence’ based on rationally established rules”. Obedience to a political order presupposes a belief in the legitimacy of that order. It is not a matter of being under a constraint, but of adhering to a command which one assumes should be obeyed because whoever gives it is justified in giving it in the eyes of the one who obeys. People, in modern civilization, are increasingly subjugated because they believe in the legitimacy of the political order that dominates them: “the more an individual believes in the legitimacy of another individual, resulting from his influence, the more likely it is that he will allow himself to be dominated’”.

      The domination of the modern state is exercised by state bureaucracy, which allows the rationalization of power. Weber believes that this form of organization is more efficient than the one that previously prevailed, based on the personal and unequal relations that prevailed between servant and master. If capitalism corresponds to economic rationalization, bureaucracy corresponds to the rationalization of power.

      In addition to the fundamental criterion of domination, the state has other characteristics: a rationalization of legislative and judicial power, a police force


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