Max Weber: Politics as a Vocation

Assignment Due 4/18 Choose a passage from Weber, write out the passage. Then explain the meaning of it, and then explain why you chose this passage.

The leadership of a state or of a party by men who (in the economic sense of the word) live exclusively for politics and not off politics means necessarily a ‘plutocratic’ [rule of the wealthy, after the Roman god of wealth and the underworld, Pluto—Prof.] recruitment of the leading political strata. To be sure, this does not mean that such plutocratic leadership signifies at the same time that the politically dominant strata will not also seek to live ‘off’ politics, and hence that the dominant stratum will not usually exploit their political domination in their own economic interest (pp. 85-6)

In my personal opinion, I think that Weber is expressing in this passage his ideology of an ideal economic leader's status. In other words, he pulls out the fear that people like him have when somebody is running for a political position just looking for his/her economic well-being and not the society well-being. In the same path, it is less probable that somebody with a well-known economic status looks for getting rich from a public position that somebody that has almost nothing looking for a social and wealthy position.

I chose this passage because I was born and raised in a society where the leaders look for their own progress. Where they go out to the communities only during elections’ time. And the most important of all, before they represent a community they have nothing in their pockets and by surprise after election they became one of wealthiest part of the country. I recognize that even when somebody has a great economic position, he/she may go for more, but it is less probably.