weber reminds me of randall collins on weber:
religion is really economics; politics is really religion; economics is really politics.
by which he meant that Weber studied how, among many other things, the routinization of charismatic religions came about because the charismatic leaders and organization eventually grew and had to sustain itself -- the people, resources, property that it increasingly acquired. thus it had to provide for its economic needs: trade, resources, routinization and regularization of exchange. religious organizations are the first to gain great experience in this kind of administration of things.
remember, of course, that collins is using this oversimplification as a device, a way to organize the vast, complex, wide-ranging work weber engaged in.
thus, contra most simplistic accounts of weber, collins emphasizes Weber's examination of religion as providing an _institutional_ (and thus material) infrastructure. it wasn't primarily that _culture_ drives change, then, as many simplifiers and distorters of Weber have argued. Collins says that one crux of Weber's work was that, for most of human history, religion was the more advanced organizationally, and thus best equipped to carry out politics as compared to anything that emerges secularly. religion, for weber, was about its primarily material organization, the way a religious organization came up with material practices to manage resources and time, and not about the movement of 'ideas' through history as if they were unique forces in and of themselves.
etc.
shag At 05:27 PM 9/25/2009, Chris Doss wrote:
>My objection is actually twofold. One, I deny that the state has a single
>purpose (to screw the lower classes). Two, I deny that the state has a
>single origin (the origin of class society). Things are much more
>complicated than that. I would hypothesize that the most likely origin of
>the state (that is, a system of administration) is the beginning of
>societies that are too big and too complicated, and too dependent on the
>correct working together of their various parts, to not require
>specialization and routinization of functions. If you have a large
>territory and need regular shipments of food from one side to the other,
>you need somebody to make sure this gets done at the right time in the
>right quantities to the right places. You need people to guard that route
>along which the shipments are being transported. You need people to equip
>and train the guards with the right amount of equipment and the right
>training and determine the number of guards
> needed. This equipment has to be produced in the right quantity. Etc.
> The origin of the state is pure logistical necessity.
>
>You do not need a state to have a class society, BTW.
>
>
>--- On Fri, 9/25/09, Bhaskar Sunkara <bhaskar.sunkara at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > From: Bhaskar Sunkara <bhaskar.sunkara at gmail.com>
> > Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] The State (Was: Ralph loves the nice plutocrats)
> > To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
> > Date: Friday, September 25, 2009, 4:38 PM
> > Is Chris' objection simply the
> > intrumentalist view of the state? I've
> > always found that analysis a bit wanting, but what are the
> > alternatives?
> > Poulantzas?
> > ___________________________________
> > http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
> >
>
>
>
>
>___________________________________
>http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk