Max Weber’s Politics of Civil Society and World War I: The Problems of Constitutional Reform, and the Criticism of Right-Wing Conservatism and Bureaucracy (2025.06)
- Author : Chiwon Choi
- Publisher : Zeitschrift der Koreanisch-Deutschen Gesellschaft fuer Sozialwissenschaften
- Publication : Koreanisch-Deutsche Gesellschaft Fuer Sozialwissenschaften(K-G Association For Social Sciences)
- Volume : 35(2)
- Date : June 2025
Abstract: During World War I, Max Weber critically expresses his political position regarding the deformity of the German nation. Its core is the constitutional and political reform. For him, the reform is a demand of the times that has to be resolved in order to achieve parliamentary democracy, the expansion of parliamentary power, and the activation of parliamentary politics. Although he is not a politician with ethics of responsibility, he accepts this demand of the times as his life’s cause more firmly than any other politician and develops his position. His political position, beginning with Vorschläge zur Reform der Verfassung des Deutschen Reiches, continues through his journalistic activities, public lectures, and the publication of booklet. He accepts the historical reality of the Reichstag not being the highest legislative power due to the structural characteristics of German politics, looks for an alternative to the Reichstag and tries to make the Bundesrat as a bridgehead for parliamentary democracy and the expansion of parliamentary power. The point is that, first, politics that unilaterally humiliates Members of the Reichstag and turns them into lower-class people must disappear, second, the path to the political responsibility must be opened for parliamentary politicians. His position on constitutional reform and political reform is sharply revealed in his criticism of the three axes of power that are ideologically and materially blocking reform. In this way, his criticism is directed: at individual politician like the Kaiser; at the far-right conservative forces (linked to big capital) as supporters of the power of the Kaiser; at the conservative bureaucracy system. His political stance not only includes criticism of the political reality of his time, but also includes the dimension of future civic or political education. The intellectual clarity he as a scholar has, serves as a weapon for critiquing political reality. Even in a wartime situation characterized by the loss of politics, his way of grasping politics (as he has always done) in the context of concrete social, economic, and historical relationships without settling for the academic world concretely demonstrates the unique properties inherent in his political thought.