[lbo-talk] The State (Was: Ralph loves the nice plutocrats)

[Alan Rudy]

one way I encourage my students to think about Weber is to imagine a
dialectic of rationalized (relatively meaning-less) social action and
affective (deeply meaning-ful) social action where the increasing complexity
of the social division of labor keeps on spinning off new arenas for the
dialectic (in part because of the dialectic.)  Eventually, however, the
over-weening power of rationalization generates feedback mechanisms where
there is less and less space for affect, for meaning.
The difference between Weber and Marx, then, lies in the lack of
contradiction and struggle in Weber's dialectic... which just makes him
depressed and depressing to read.  He's got no theory of the production of
alternative meaning or collective, rather than charismatic, resistance.  No
matter what you think of Weber, it is brilliant stuff and - overstating the
case, it is a kind of formal perfection of anti-modern romanticism, right
and left... just like Durkheim's structuralism is a kind of formal
perfection of hyper-modern Progressivism.

And thanks for clearing up one of my issues with Collins.  To flow better,
it should be
religion is really economics
economics is really politics
politics is really religion
but then you have to point out that the first religion, rooted in charisma,
is meaning-producing and the second religion, which is actually
rationalization, is meaning-obliterating.

Rambling.

A

On Fri, Sep 25, 2009 at 10:28 PM, shag carpet bomb <shag at cleandraws.com>wrote:


> i can't help thinking of weber, even though weber was a far more
> complicated thinker on the topic.
>
> 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
>> >
>>
>>
>>
>>
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