(Originally a speech at Munich University, 1918, originally published in 1919.)

The article I have chosen to review is one of the public lectures Weber gave in 1918, just after Germany had been defeated in World War 1. The lecture is both interesting but also frustrating, it is challenging because of the range of ideas used and at times, I often found the reading of the lecture hard not to put down, Max Weber did not make it easy for his readers. However all that a side after a few more reads I eventually grasped his ideas, which could be open to great interpretations. Many would argue that Weber’s political insights during his lifetime is an outdated text as he relied perhaps too much on Roberts Michel’s study of the German social democrats. I guess it’s my turn to decide if this is the case, is there still any relevance of his work to today’s contemporary society through this review.

‘Politics as a Vocation’ is a pretty wide ranging essay –

He provides the reader with the working mechanisms of politics; he talks about political journalism and different kinds of party organizations,

‘It is immensely moving when a mature man—no matter whether old or young in years – is a ware of a responsibility for the consequences of his conduct and really feels such responsibility with heart and soul…………….a man who can have the calling for politics’.

beginning with the feudal parties of the Middle Ages to the Guelphs and Ghibbilines, ranging through the development of the English and American party systems, to Germany. Then he comes to the questions of ‘what inner enjoyments can this career (of a professional politician) offer, and what personal conditions are presupposed for one who enters this avenue?

The history of political thought is invaluable to sociologists/ people, if only because it demonstrates how politics was studied at different times and because it allows people to figure out how they got to where they are. Until the science of politics is perfected, there is insight to be gained by observing how those who came before analyzed political phenomena--on both the merits of the efforts themselves and the way these efforts reflect and interact with their age. Asking what is generalizable and what is contextual about the work of earlier political scientists such as Machiavelli, Hobbes, or Montesquieu leads to asking the same questions about contemporary and personal work.

Finally in ‘Politics as a Vocation’ Weber concludes that the specific instruments of politics is ‘power’, backed up by violence, an observation which compounds any understanding of a relationship betwe

Some topics in this essay:
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