The Forschungskolleg Humanwissenschaften: Events

Thursday, 01 February 2024, 11:00
Campus Westend / Building "Normative Ordnungen", room 5.02, Max-Horkheimer-Str. 2, 60323 Frankfurt am Main Campus Westend / Gebäude "Normative Ordnungen", Max-Horkheimer-Str. 2, 60323 Frankfurt am Main

Forschungskolleg Humanwissenschaften of Goethe University
FKH colloquium

Peter Giraudo (Justitia Center for Advanced Studies)
»Max Weber and the Idea of the Charismatic Social Movement«

Abstract
Max Weber famously thought that rule by an impersonal bureaucracy was an ever-present possibility in modern capitalism and democratic politics. During his political writings during World War I, he defended charismatic democratic leadership as an alternative to impersonal bureaucratic rule. Scholars, however, too often understand Weberian charisma to be limited to elite political actors and, even, to a single Caesarist dictator. This is because they focus primarily on his wartime writings. In The Protestant Ethic and other writings between 1900 and 1910, however, Weber emphasized that individuals developed charismatic qualities in the context of membership in voluntary yet selective associations. In the original seventeenth-century Protestant sects, for example, individuals possessed charisma because they constantly needed to prove their state of grace and possession of extraordinary ascetic qualities to remain members. Weberian charisma is far more dispersed than scholars usually suggest. The major exception to this trend is Sung Ho Kim’s pioneering book Max Weber’s Politics of Civil Society. This paper builds on Kim’s work by focusing on the analogy that Weber drew between sects and socialist unions. It argues that he viewed socialist unions as sect-like charismatic associations, which as a group made up a charismatic social movement. Just as Protestant sect members formed an aristocracy of the religiously qualified, socialist unionists formed an aristocracy of the economically qualified. This meant that, like sect members, unionists were exposed to mutual control and evaluation by peers: they had to continually prove their possession of ascetic ethical qualities and produce high quality work to remain members. Weber explicitly compared unionists’ commitment to socialism to religious faith because it structured and motivated their everyday economic activity. He thus saw unionists as charismatic individuals, who could counteract the trend toward bureaucratic rule in both the factory and the German Social Democratic Party (SPD). This analysis of Weber’s account of trade unionism ultimately enables us to better appreciate the social bases of his idea of charismatic leadership: genuine political leaders would not emerge in a vacuum but instead needed robust civil society associations to endorse them as champions of their cause. For Weber, then the formation of active, charismatic citizens in associational life offered the only alternative to rule by an impersonal bureaucracy in capitalism and democratic politics.

The speaker
Peter Giraudo received his doctorate in political theory from Princeton University in summer 2023 with a thesis on "Political Trade Unionism: Industrial Citizenship and the Regulation of Social Conflict in European Thought, 1890-1919". Prior to this, he studied European history at Columbia University. Peter Giraudo is following an invitation from Rainer Forst, Professor of Political Theory at Goethe University in Frankfurt am Main, and the University's Justitia Center for Advanced Studies, which is funded by the Alfons and Gertrud Kassel Foundation.

Participation
Closed event. Contact: Beate Sutterlüty; email: b.sutterluety@forschungskolleg-humanwissenschaften.de).