II. Max Weber on “a Parliament utterly without Power” (1917/18)
What interests us here is the question of the political legacy bequeathed by Bismarck [ . . . ] He left behind a nation entirely lacking in any kind of political education, far below the level it had already attained twenty years previously. And above all a nation entirely without any political will, accustomed to assume that the great statesman at the head of the nation would take care of political matters for them. Furthermore, as a result of his misuse of monarchic sentiment as a cover for his own power interests in the struggle between the political parties, he left behind a nation accustomed to submit passively and fatalistically to whatever was decided on its behalf, under the label of “monarchic government,” without criticising the political qualifications of those who filled the chair left empty by Bismarck and who seized the reins of government with such an astonishing lack of self-doubt. It was in this area that the most severe damage by far was done. In no sense did the great statesman leave behind a political tradition. He did not recruit, nor could he even tolerate, men with an independent caste of mind, to say nothing of men of character. [ . . . ] At the same time his enormous prestige had the purely negative consequence of leaving parliament utterly without power. It is well known that, after leaving office, he accused himself of having made a mistake in this respect, and was then made to suffer the consequences as part of his own fate. The powerlessness of parliament also meant that its intellectual level was very low. Admittedly, the naively moralizing legend of our littérateurs would have us believe that cause and effect were in fact the other way round, namely that parliament deserved to remain powerless because of the low quality of parliamentary life. The true state of affairs, self-evident on any sober reflection, is indicated by some very simple facts and considerations. Whether a parliament is of high or low intellectual quality depends on whether great problems are not only discussed but are conclusively decided there. In other words, it depends on whether anything happens in parliament and on how much depends on what happens there, or whether it is merely the reluctantly tolerated rubber-stamping machine for a ruling bureaucracy.
Source of English translation: Parliament and Government in Germany under a New Political Order: Towards a Political Critique of Officialdom and the Party System, in Max Weber, Political Writings, ed. Peter Lassman and Ronald Speirs. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994, pp. 130-271, here pp. 144-45.
Source of original German text: Max Weber, Parlament und Regierung im neugeordneten Deutschland. Zur politischen Kritik des Beamtentums und Parteiwesens. Munich and Leipzig, 1918. This brochure was based on five articles that were first published in the Frankfurter Zeitung between April and June 1917; reprinted in Max Weber, Gesammelte politische Schriften [Collected Political Writings], ed. Johannes Winckelmann, 2nd rev. ed. Tübingen: Mohr (Paul Siebeck), 1958, pp. 307-08.
Original German text also reprinted in Gerhard A. Ritter, ed., Das Deutsche Kaiserreich 1871-1914. Ein historisches Lesebuch [The German Kaiserreich 1871-1914. A Historical Reader], 5th ed. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1992, pp. 262-63.
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