Prof: Well,
I would like very briefly to
come back to Weber's theory of
domination.
I deleted it from the
questions, but I promise I will
get this back in one way or
another for the next test.
So probably the last thing you
want to think about now is a
test >
 
, but let me still talk about
the theory of domination.
I think this is a very
important theory--extremely
influential and extremely
insightful.
So let me just very briefly sum
up where we left it last time,
and then I'll move into Weber's
theory of traditional authority.
And last time we were talking
about the crucial distinction
Weber makes between Macht
and Herrschaft.
Macht is translated in
English as power;
there is no question about this.
 
The translation of
Herrschaft varies.
It is translated either as
authority, or it is translated
as domination.
 
And I think both translations
are good.
I think, people whom I feel
closer in my own Weber reading,
translated it more like
domination rather than
authority.
 
And, in fact,
I think just to emphasize you
the importance of the
translational difference,
in the notion of
Herrschaft,
the first four letters,
Herr,
means the lord.
 
So I think the notion of
herrschaft has very strong
implications of asymmetrical
power relationships;
what I think domination
captures better than authority.
Those who translated Weber's
notion of Herrschaft as
authority,
like Talcott Parsons,
wanted to emphasize that Weber
looks at Herrschaft as
something which is
authoritarian--
right?--where somebody acts out
of authority.
Right?
 
This is not a false
translation, but misses an
important point--namely,
Weber's interest in the way how
power is being exercised.
 
In fact it, in a way,
misses Max Weber's roots in
Friedrich Nietzsche,
or probably even,
I may dare so,
in Hobbes.
Right?
 
Human history is all about the
history of struggle for power.
That's, in my reading,
Weber's fundamental idea--power
with an important modification.
 
And I gave you the citation
last lecture,
but let me come back to this.
 
Power means the likelihood that
people will obey order,
even against resistance.
 
And domination means the
likelihood that people will
actually follow orders,
without being coerced to do so.
So the notion of domination,
or Herrschaft,
does imply a degree of
voluntariness,
a minimum level of belief that
in fact those who issue orders
do have the right to do so;
or at least it is reasonable
that they issue orders and I
follow the orders.
Or to come up with an even more
minimal definition of
Herrschaft,
that I cannot see any real
alternative under the present
circumstances but to obey the
orders to the one who issues
these orders.
Right?
 
And this has everything to do
with the idea of legitimacy.
And I put, at last lecture,
this little
equation--right?--on one of the
slides, that power plus
legitimation adds up to
domination or authority.
So what is legitimation?
 
Weber said power is really an
extreme case;
that very little,
very--it happens very rarely
that the one who exercises
authority, exercises simply by
exerting power,
coercing people to obey.
Those who are in a position of
authority try to legitimate
their authority,
and try to come up with reasons
why people subjected to this
authority should obey their
authority.
 
It's again very Nietzschian,
the idea.
Right?
 
That those who are exercising
power tries to internalize your
subjugation to power in one way
or another,
and try to create in you a
morality--
right?--a set of principles by
which you would say,
"Well, this probably may
be the right thing for me to
do."
 
Or, as I said,
the minimum definition,
even if you don't particularly
like obeying orders,
you say, "What else can I
do?
The alternative,
if I don't obey orders,
would be worse."
 
Or about the person who issues
authority: you may not like the
person who issues authority,
but you will say,
"But the alternative is
worse." Right?
So you can pick a course.
 
You may not like the lecturer
all that much,
or the way how he grades,
but there were other courses
you did shop for and they were
even worse.
So you picked the least worst
course.
Right?
 
You picked the lecturer who
seems to be the least boring,
and who seems to be the most
reasonable grading your
assignment.
 
Right?
 
That doesn't mean that you are
all that thrilled to be at
lectures,
and to do assignments,
but you have to do it,
and under the circumstances you
go for the less evil.
 
Right?
 
That's, I think,
the kind of most extreme
interpretation of Weber's idea
of legitimacy.
But Weber also--I pointed this
word out to you--Weber said that
all legitimacy contains an
element of a myth.
It doesn't mean that the person
who tries to justify its
authority is telling the truth.
 
Whether it is truth or not
truth is almost beside the
point.
 
The most important issue is
that it creates a mythology
about the reason why you have to
obey authority.
So what I tried to underline
already in last lecture,
that Weber's notion of
legitimacy is so much more
sophisticated,
so less liberal,
and so much more Nietzschian
than the idea we normally hear
when you hear the word
legitimation.
Right?
 
Legitimation,
we see something very good.
Right?
 
A power is legitimated because
it was somebody was elected in
fair and free elections to an
office,
and we believe that this person
will do a great job,
having been elected.
 
Well, Weber would be more
likely to think something like
Karzai.
 
Well, under the circumstances,
probably there is no
alternative to Afghanistan but
to have this guy as the
president.
 
Though it's very doubtful,
you know, what all those claims
about the legitimacy of the
system are being made;
they are pretty much a
mythology created around it.
But otherwise the alternative
is chaos, and even this guy's
probably better than chaos,
which would happen otherwise.
Right?
 
This is in my dark reading of
Max Weber.
Now, as you can see,
of course, the difference from
Marx is fundamental.
 
Marx did see human history as
unfolding of modes of
production.
 
It was all struggle around
ownership, means of production,
clash of economic interests.
 
For Weber, it is not economic
interest which drives human
history but struggle for power.
 
And he can describe different
systems of authority over time,
but it is all described on the
quality and the nature of those
mythologies those in a position
of power come up with to
legitimate what they are trying
to do to you.
Right?
 
So that is one fundamental
difference between Marx and
Weber.
 
There is another fundamental
difference, and you will have to
bear this very much in mind as
this lecture on traditional
authority unfolds.
 
Though Weber develops these
different types of domination,
primarily to describe
historical change--
grand societies,
traditional authority,
charismatical authority,
legal-rational authority,
kind of describe the evolution
of humankind--
and has a similar kind of
flavor than Marx's subsequent
modes of production.
 
But Weber does more than that.
 
These three types of authority
do describe all kinds of
organizations or social units.
 
Today we can talk about
legal-rational authority,
traditional authority,
or charismatic authority in
contemporary society;
though he would call liberal
market capitalism as the purest
type--
and what pure type is,
I will talk about this in a
minute--
of legal-rational authority.
He will say that even in
contemporary society we have
organizations which are based on
traditional authority.
The most obvious example of
traditional authority--and bare
it in mind when we will be
talking about this today--is the
family you live in.
 
Right?
 
The family is primarily bound
together by tradition.
But the very institution where
you are in now,
universities,
do have a flavor of traditional
authority.
 
Right?
 
It has a kind of ethos where at
least we teachers believe that
you have to pay some respect to
the teachers.
And we have all kinds of
traditional
rituals--right?--which makes the
making, the functioning of a
university in a way a
traditional organization.
Right?
 
There is the graduation
ceremony, when you will be
wearing all these funny,
you know, academic dress,
and then you are awarded a
degree,
which is happening almost like
awarding a lordship by the
queen.
 
Right?
 
The president will say,
"By the power vested in
me",
and then by this power
"will confer to you"--
right?--the degree of Bachelor
of Arts or Bachelor of Sciences.
 
Right?
 
This is very much like
conferring the title of Lordship
on somebody, by the Queen of
England, by the powers vested in
her.
 
Okay, so therefore Weber is
more flexible with Marx.
No, it doesn't simply describe
society, but in every society it
does describe certain
organizations.
And in contemporary society we
often talk about charisma.
And we have been talking a lot
about charisma in the last
eighteen months.
 
When we were talking about
Barack Obama and Barack Obama
being a charismatic leader.
 
Right?
 
So the charisma is also
something what we very often
invoke today,
describing the nature of
authority somebody is
exercising.
Okay, so that's again,
you know, just a backdrop to
the notion of authority,
and I hope it will help you to
locate it more in the
literature.
Now, as I mentioned also in
last lecture,
there are three major types of
authority.
Traditional authority,
in which basically you have a
personal master in charge,
and this personal master
somehow appeals to old,
age-old, sacred rules,
to ask you to obey his or her
commands--
mostly his, but occasionally
her commands.
After all, there is a queen in
England, and there were queens
in England for a long time.
 
Okay, so that's traditional
authority.
The other one is charismatic
authority,
where the person in charge
calls for obedience on the
grounds that that person is
believed to have some
supernatural,
extraordinary powers.
And finally legal-rational
authority: authority in which
the person who is issuing a
command is also under the same
law as people who are obeying
orders,
and in legal-rational authority
you do not have a personal
master,
you do not obey a person,
but you obey the rules and
laws.
That's why Weber calls it
legal-rational authority.
As a shorthand,
I think it would be more
obvious to call it liberal
authority or a liberal system of
authority.
 
I just want to make one more--
one very brief comment,
as we proceed to traditional
authority;
namely, that the three types of
authorities are not exactly of
the same ontological status.
 
Weber basically has two major
types of authority:
traditional authority or
legal-rational authority.
Charismatic authority does not
have the longevity what
traditional authority or
legal-rational authority has.
Charismatic authority,
as we will talk about this a
great deal, is a revolutionary
force.
Charismatic authority usually
occurs for a relatively brief
period of time.
 
Typically the charismatic
leader is one person,
and it is very lucky if that
one person can maintain the
charisma for all the time this
person is in charge.
I mean, just after nine months
of the election of President
Obama, we see a
little--right?--withering of his
sort of strong charismatic
appeal.
So in order to maintain your
charisma while you are in
office--and especially for a
lifetime--is very difficult;
and even more difficult to
transfer charisma to another
leader.
 
So charismatic authority is
really a change,
basically--as I will argue
later on--
from one form of traditional
authority to another form of
traditional authority,
in Max Weber.
So therefore really the two big
types--
traditional authority and
legal-rational authority--
and what Marx called the
transition from feudalism to
capitalism;
or what we understand,
modernization is really nothing
else but the movement from
traditional authority to
legal-rational authority.
Okay?
 
Now let me go into today's
topic, and talk about
traditional authority.
 
And first about pure type.
 
I will describe his definition
of the pure type,
but it needs a footnote what
pure type is all about.
As I already pointed out,
Max Weber was a Kantian.
That meant that Max Weber did
not believe that human
knowledge, which completely
describes the reality,
is possible.
 
Right?
 
The reality is so infinitely
rich that the concepts what we
develop is only mental images of
this object, what we are
developing a concept about.
 
Right?
 
It can never be fully
describing the subject.
So these mental objects,
what we have in our mind about
the object, from which we try to
develop knowledge,
is what he calls ideal types.
 
They are abstractions from the
world, not a precise description
of the world.
 
So therefore what he said:
The best what we can aim at,
to develop ideal type,
pure types;
and all realities will be
always somewhat different from
the ideal type,
what is in our mind.
And as human knowledge is
progressing--
and that's what makes actually
Weber a difficult reading--
is that in the process of
knowledge we develop an ideal
type and conceptions about the
world,
and then we go back to reality
and we see that it does not
exhaust the reality as it is;
the reality has other important
features we missed in the first
instance.
So we go back and we redo our
ideal type;
enrich the ideal type to
fit--to create a better fit with
reality.
 
Right?
 
That's the fundamental idea.
 
And that's what makes Weber so
difficult to read,
because he often comes up with
an ideal type,
a pure type.
 
And he said,
"Yes but when I am reading
a historical reality,
it does not quite fit;
so therefore I'll redo a little
my ideal type and enrich
it."
 
So you can easily get lost when
you are reading Weber.
And this is not accidental.
 
Right?
 
This is the methodology how he
proceeds.
He does not believe that we can
attain absolute knowledge.
What he believes,
that we have to strive to be
able to describe what we want to
describe as precisely as we just
can--as we can.
 
So this is the idea of pure
types.
So what is the pure type of
legal-rational authority--of
traditional authority?
 
First of all we have to talk
about the basis of legitimacy--
just very briefly something
also about the patterns,
how a staff is being recruited,
as such.
And here he comes with a very
clear and simple definition.
In traditional authority,
legitimacy is claimed for,
and believed in,
by virtue of the sanctity of
age-old rules.
 
So the person who rules makes a
claim that this has been always
this way,
and there is some sacredness
in, in fact,
obeying the person who by
age-old tradition was assigned
to a position of authority.
Again, let me just go back to
the family.
This is a classical example.
 
The parents do have some sacred
rights to issue some commands,
and we do obey parents because
it was always this way;
children always had to obey
parents.
To what extent they have to
obey, and what parents can do to
children, may vary a little over
time.
But the parents are in charge
and they are,
in fact, to have the rights to
issue certain kinds of commands
is widely accepted.
 
But the word "believed
in" is also very important.
Right?
 
So the parents do not have to
force you to obey;
you're beginning to believe
that it is indeed the right
thing that the parents obey
order.
It happens also if you
particularly dislike what they
try to order.
 
And occasionally you may not
like one of your parents,
or both of your parents.
 
Nevertheless,
you think some degree of
obedience is necessary;
unless you really break the law
and you run away.
 
Right?
 
But that is certainly an
extreme case.
As it is an extreme case that
parents will force children,
use coercion of children,
to obey their rule.
Well occasionally they use some
degree of coercion.
It's also very important in
Weber;
you know, that coercion is
always present in every type of
domination.
 
Do not think that
legal-rational authority does
not have coercion.
 
In the United States,
over three million people are
in jail.
 
Right?
 
They are being coerced.
 
In the United States,
people occasionally are killed
by the government--right?--they
are executed.
So there is coercion,
even in legal-rational
authority.
 
In the most liberal democratic
society, if you break the laws
you will be coerced.
 
And if you are not breaking the
law, there is always the promise
of coercion.
 
Right?
 
It's said, "Well under
certain circumstances you will
be coerced."
 
Now the second important point
is--right?--
that the master who obeys the
order is designated by
traditional rules--
right?--and they are obeyed
because of their
Eigenwurde.
Well Eigenwurde is
translated into English as
traditional status.
 
It's not a very good
translation.
Eigenwurde really means
that they are believed to have
virtues by themselves;
that they have a virtue what
they themselves carry out.
 
So there is honor;
I think the term honor is
extremely important--right?--for
understanding traditional
authority.
 
The traditional master is
always assumed to be an
honorable person.
 
Right?
 
And if that person becomes not
honorable, it is likely that it
will lose its authority.
 
Again, think about parents.
 
Right?
 
The parents are supposed to be
honorable, and if they are not
honorable any longer,
there is a crisis in the
family.
 
Have you seen Arthur Miller's
play, the Death of a
Salesman?
 
This is exactly what happens in
the Death of a Salesman,
when his son catches the
father, whom he admired so much,
is catching him with another
woman than his mother.
Right?
 
Then suddenly the father loses
his honor;
he's not honorable any
longer--right?--and that creates
a lifelong crisis for the child.
 
So I think honor is very
important to understand
traditional authority.
 
And it is based--traditional
rule is based on personal
loyalty.
 
You personally feel that you
have to be loyal to this person.
Again, all of these issues do
apply to a substantial degree in
institutions like a university.
 
Right?
 
It is also kind of
assumed--right?--
that, you know,
professors should act in an
honorable way,
and if they don't,
they are caught of being not
honorable,
they will be losing their
legitimacy.
And there is a great deal of
personal loyalty in university
situations.
 
Well particularly in graduate
school the relationship,
the mentor and the Ph.D.
 
student, is a highly
personalized relationship of
mutual loyalties.
 
Right?
 
There is so much a mentor will
be able to take;
that a Ph.D.
 
student in the dissertation
will be too critical of the
professor who is supervising the
dissertation.
It expects some degree of
loyalty--right?--from the
student;
and the student would be very
disappointed if it turns out
that the mentor is writing bad
letters for him.
 
Right?
 
There is an
expectation--right?--of mutual
loyalty in every type of
traditional authority.
And what is therefore
important, there is also a
personal element.
 
Whom you obey is a kind of a
personal master;
not simply a supervisor,
not a boss, but something of a
personal master,
an honorable person to whom you
are linked to by loyalty.
 
Well how do you recruit staff
under this system?
There are really two ways to do
it.
There is a so-called
patrimonial recruitment;
namely, that people are
selected into position because
they are related to the chief,
by tradition,
because they are known to the
chief.
This happens to a great deal in
various organizations even
today;
especially university
organizations do exercise a
substantial patrimonial system
of recruitment.
 
But there are extra-patrimonial
ways when persons are judged to
be loyal by the master and are
appointed to the office because
of their expected loyalty,
as such.
Again, I can give you the
example of the universities
where a lot of recruitment is
happening through patrimonial
recruitment.
 
You are--well in the U.S.
 
universities,
you are not supposed to recruit
your own students.
 
In Europe they do.
 
In the U.S. few universities do.
 
But you recruit the students of
your buddies or your friends or
your colleagues.
 
Right?
 
There's a lot of patrimonialism
going on in university
recruitment.
 
And, in fact,
loyalty is very important when
it comes particularly to the
appointment of administrators in
the university system.
 
Well there are--let me move on
and let's have the broader
historical view.
 
There are various historical
variations of traditional
authority.
 
Well Weber is very messy in
terms of terminology.
I was trying to make as much
sense as I could.
I think there are two major
forms of traditional authority.
One is called patriarchalism,
and the other one is called
patrimonial domination.
 
The big difference between
patriarchal systems,
that it does not have a
staff--that what is being--
the authority is exercised
directly by the master and does
not need a staff in order to
exercise its authority.
Patrimonial domination,
on the other hand,
does have a staff.
 
It is a larger scale society,
or a larger scale organization,
where a staff will carry out
the commands of the master.
This is--the distinction
between master,
staff and the people who
obey--is extremely important for
Max Weber.
 
And try to get deep down in
your brain, this comment,
because you cannot understand
Weber without this.
As I pointed out,
Weber said there is always a
degree of belief or faith
involved in legitimacy.
But what kind of faith depends
a great deal whether the faith
is by the staff in the master,
or by the people in the master.
Weber's fundamental idea is
that the system is legitimate as
long as the staff has a positive
belief in the master.
The masses, the people,
usually do not have a positive
belief.
 
They don't usually love the
person who rules them;
they just accept it as the
lesser evil.
But the staff has to have a
positive belief in the master.
When do come--revolution comes?
 
When the staff is losing faith
in the master.
When the Shah of Iran fell?
 
When the security services in
Iran began to lose faith in the
Shah.
 
The people of Iran usually did
not like the Shah all that much.
They just could not think of an
alternative;
so they accepted it.
 
But the regime fell when the
security services lost faith in
them.
 
The same can go for the fall of
Communism.
Communism fell when the
Communist Party staff,
and especially the secret
services, began to lose faith in
the system.
 
Not that most people who lived
under Communism were all that
bloody Communists.
 
Right?
 
But well the staff was.
 
When the staff turned out to be
against Communism,
that's when Communism fell.
 
Well patriarchalism--I will
make two distinctions here,
primary patriarchalism and
gerontocracy.
And then about patriarchal
domination,
about pure patrimonialism,
where the staff is purely a
person or instrument in the
master,
and finally estate-type of
domination,
or what we normally call
feudalism,
when the administrative staff
actually appropriates certain
powers from the master.
 
And now what I'll do,
to show, I think,
what Weber's theory of history
is--how these different types of
systems evolve.
 
He said that history begins
with patriarchalism.
It's relatively small
societies, for instance,
kinship networks,
where the elders or the father
can rule the society and does
not need policemen,
jailers, you know,
judges, administrators,
tax collectors,
in order to run the staff.
It does it directly.
 
Then it moves to a primary
patrimonialism where the society
becomes larger.
 
There is staff,
but the staff is individually
selected by the master,
and they completely depend by
the master.
 
The most extreme example of
this is,
as I will talk about this in a
minute,
sultanism where the sultan can
actually get rid--
typically gets rid of the staff
at will,
and very frequently.
 
Then it is moving to a feudal
type of domination,
where the staff appropriates
certain powers from the master--
appropriates those powers
because, for instance,
it has land holding,
what is given to a noble
family,
not only for life but also for
the family for the life of the
family.
Right?
 
The feudal property has been
inherited,
and then the staff appropriates
certain powers from the master
and will act as a master,
for instance,
even serve justice.
 
And finally,
legal-rational authority,
where the power of coercion is
the monopoly of the state.
No individual has the right to
exercise coercive power,
except the state.
 
Well this is not quite true.
 
Parents, for instance,
still have some right--we feel
uncomfortable about this--but
parents do have some rights to
exercise coercion.
 
But generally you cannot
exercise any coercion;
only the state can.
 
So as you can see,
in a way, the history of
humankind is an evolution of the
means of coercion.
Right?
 
For Marx, the question was the
evolution of the means of
production.
 
For Weber, history is driven by
the evolution of the means of
administration and coercion.
 
Again, a very Nietzschian idea,
that dark read of the history,
that history actually is
getting worse because those who
rule have more and more
sophisticated means to suppress
a larger number of people.
 
And what makes it even worse,
they internalize--you
internalize your own submission.
 
Internally you believe that
this is the right thing,
that you are not free.
 
Right?
 
That's again,
I think, the Weberian view of
history, in my reading.
 
Now about patriarchalism--is
the most elementary form,
as I said--when we
believe--right?--
that there is one master
without a staff,
who has the right to exercise
orders.
Because it is no staff,
it is assumed that the members
of the group which is under
patriarchalism--
for instance,
kinship networks--has a
substantial feeling that they
actually should obey this
master.
 
Weber calls them,
they are Genossen.
They are comrades;
there is a camaraderie.
Right?
 
This is a family. Right?
 
The family has some degree of
oneness.
They are not,
he said, Untertanen.
They are not subjects to
authority, but they are
comrades.
 
Right?
 
They are members of a community.
 
Primary patriarchalism means
when there is typically a father
kind of rule;
the father rules.
Typically it's a--there may
have been maternal authority as
well.
 
The historical record is a bit
unclear whether there were
matriarchal societies.
 
We can assume there were.
 
So then they were
patriarchal/matriarchal
societies.
 
It was a mother who ruled the
family, or a father who ruled
the family.
 
And the relationships were not
necessarily based on blood
relationships,
because actually for a very
long time we did not know that
the sexual act may have all that
much to do with procreation.
 
It's a reasonably recent
discovery of human scientific
knowledge that this happened.
 
And therefore in very early
societies it was not known that
there is blood relationship
between the father and the
children;
even then, it did hold.
Well one sub-case is,
of course, slavery.
I'll leave it out,
but let me talk about
gerontocracy.
 
There are some systems in which
the elders rule;
the older person has the
authority.
Well gerontocracy is again
something which is not unheard
of from modern societies as
well.
Now let me move onto
patrimonial domination.
And it does emerge--typically
emerge--when an administrative
staff is being created.
 
This is larger societies.
 
You need armies and policemen
and tax collectors in order to
operate, and the members who are
subordinated to your authority
are treated as subjects.
 
I mean, I'm also Her Majesty's
subject;
you know, when I got once
Australian citizenship,
and then, you know,
the Queen is still the Queen of
Australia.
 
So I'm Her Majesty's subject,
not simply an Australian
citizen.
 
Right?
 
When there is a person with
whom the authority is relied.
And in some ways in England,
and in Australia,
this is the figure of the queen
who does that.
Right?
 
Well I don't want to deal with
this because I am running out of
time.
 
Right?
 
Initially patriarchal
domination--patrimonial
domination was really just a
large household.
And, in fact,
what, you know,
the ruler,
the king or emperor did,
he went from one village to the
next,
with his staff,
and was fed for--like in a
household,
and moved on.
But then, of course,
it became more complex,
and then had to create an
estate;
had to create an estate in
which moves beyond the oikos,
where taxes are being
collected, and it's running in
a--with kind of a bureaucracy.
 
Now in a pure type of
patrimonial
domination--right?--the staff
are purely instruments in the
hands of the master.
 
And like I mentioned,
sultanism is where there is
virtually unrestrained power for
the ruler to replace those under
its authority,
as it pleases.
But then evolves in history a
more complex system:
estate-type of domination,
or feudalism.
It is a system in which--he
calls it estate-type of
domination--in which the staff
has a certain degree of
stability.
 
Now how much stability it has,
it will depend how the staff is
being rewarded.
 
And Weber makes a crucial
distinction between benefices
and fiefs;
these are the two ways how the
staff can be rewarded in an
estate-type of domination.
A fief, you will easily
remember that.
Right?
 
We use the term in ordinary
language.
We say somebody has a fiefdom.
 
And by this we mean if somebody
has a fiefdom,
it means that somebody created
a sub-system over which it has
control,
virtually as long as that
position is alive,
or as that position is at least
in the same organization.
 
So again, if I can use the
university examples--
you may not be as familiar with
this as I am--
but in universities,
for instance,
office space for faculty is a
typical fiefdom.
Once, you know,
a faculty got an office,
it's virtually impossible to
take that office away from
somebody.
 
It created a fiefdom over the
territory, what that person has.
Well this is only for the time
of the tenure.
Of course, somebody retires,
their office will be
immediately taken away;
the fiefdom is lost.
But, you know,
the notion of fiefdom means
that you have lasting power on
it.
Benefice, on the other hand,
means that you get certain
rewards, but only under the
conditions that you actually do
deliver to the ruler.
 
And there are really two types
of feudal systems.
One is based on benefices,
and this is a kind of prebendal
form of feudalism.
 
That means the nobility who is
serving the czar--
for instance Russia was ruled
typically after Ivan the
Terrible,
my namesake,
and until the Russian
Revolution,
by a kind of prebendal system,
in which the czar gave an
estate to the lords,
as long as they were loyal to
it.
 
We see this now happening in
Russia again.
President Putin actually took
the billions of dollars of
wealth,
what people received from
President Yeltsin as private
property,
because he did not think they
are loyal.
So these people ended up in
jail, or they were sent into
emigration.
 
Their property was taken away.
 
So even contemporary Russia,
in a way, operates almost like
a prebendal type of feudalism.
 
Right?
 
President Putin is a kind of
Ivan the Terrible--right?--who
sort of reinforces loyalty.
 
And I made the
point--right?--that was exactly
as in Russia changed the feudal
system and when boyars were
turned into pomeshchiks.
 
Boyars in Russia,
before Ivan the Terrible,
had inherited wealth,
and Ivan the Terrible and Peter
the Great took that away and
turned them into serving
nobility,
in exchange for loyalty.
If you have listened to
Mussorgsky's fantastic opera,
Boris Godunov,
you get the story there
exactly.
 
If you have not listened to it,
do.
Right?
 
Don't get a Yale degree not
having known Mussorgsky's
fantastic opera,
Boris Godunov.
Right?
 
Well Western feudalism,
on the other hand,
is based on long-lasting powers
of the staff.
Western feudal lords received a
property for lifetime,
and it actually was inherited
by their children.
And, in fact,
they also exercised a great
deal of administrative power.
 
Right?
 
Feudal lords in France or
England did held court and made
judgments--right?--over their
serfs;
those who belonged to their
authority.
So they--and the kings were
rather limited in their power.
Well we have seen this struggle
earlier in this course--
right?--between the kings
trying to gain more of
authority,
take it back from the feudal
lords.
 
That's all what absolutism
versus constitutional monarchy
was all about.
 
Right?
 
Well, of course,
for a constitutional monarchy,
it was not simply the feudal
lords who resisted,
but also already the
bourgeoisie who wanted to have a
constitutional monarchy to limit
the rights of the monarch.
Well traditional authority
doesn't go very well with the
economy--
right?--because it is primarily
oriented towards satisfaction of
needs,
and not generation of the
profit.
Right?
 
And therefore traditional
domination is likely to prevent
the development of
business-oriented activities.
And that's, I think,
again true for the more
traditional type of system,
what we are familiar with,
like the family or the
universities.
They do not quite operate like
business corporations,
and therefore they may make
economic calculation and
profit-seeking difficult or
impossible.
They can be a defense against
market mechanism,
but do not promote market
mechanism.
Well, and of course in all of
these organizations there is a
larger degree of arbitrariness
than in modern organizations.
And, of course,
in traditional organization
there is always a greater
respect to the welfare of those
who are subjugated to authority.
 
So that's about traditional
authority and its tension with
modern capitalism.
 
Thank you.
 
 
 
