Re: commentary is a minstral show

1. Since he died in 1920, Weber never lived to see the gestapo. The
Prussian army was not the gestapo, just as Wilhelm was not Hitler. What
history books are you reading, anyway? It is "commentary" to equate the
army which propped up the Hohenzollern dynasty (for whom Weber possessed
a certain affection) with jack-booted thugs in the service of an
ethnic-cleansing machine. At any rate Weber's post-WWI essays, written
after his psychological breakdown and his disillusionment with the
by-then defunct monarchy seem to me to represent his coming to grips
with the need to trade instituionally the old charismatic regime for the
new bureaucratic one; where his "individualism" comes through is that
his locus of solution is personal; the 'morally upright' liberals, in
effect, must come to politics and science inflected with, but not
excessively infected by, the faith in the rightness of the cause; if
they did not the new society would fall into the hands of those whose
relationship to politics and science were in the service of evil ends.
Prescient enough, don't you think, in light of later events.
2. The proper contraction of "they" in the possessive is "their," an
adjective, not "there," a pronoun. Correct me if I am wrong.
3. Perhaps it is a testament to the strength of bureaucratic
institutions that there CAN be bickering and lack of camaraderie, and
the organizations continue to function. Forcing an institution to rely
on the personal characteristics of its members is to invite
authoritarianism; compare to division of powers.
4. It is clear enough that you have either had a bad personal experience
and overgeneralized or you have caved in to rhetorical "commentaries"
offered by your buddies in the Fountainhead Society.

Have a nice day,
Matt
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>In a message dated 1/12/99 7:36:32 PM Eastern Standard Time,
>mthrond@xxxxxxxxxxx writes:
>
>> Your stereotype of the
>> contemporary bureaucracy bears much in common with Weber's
>> "traditionalist," or Catholic in Protestant Ethic, less with the
facts
>> of the present day (your language suggests to me that you'd rather
have
>> the Prussian army delivering your mail or policing your streets) or
the
>> constitutional structure of the United States and its divergence
from
>> the monarchic system.
>
>I can hardly believe that you are actually defending the social
relationships
>found in bureaucratic agencies today what with there constant harping
on
>legalities and technicalities to the detriment of any sense of
comeraderie
>whatsoever. If you have read in my post that I prefer my mail being
delivered
>by gestapo types, then I suggest you are projecting heavily.
>
>Vunch
>


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