max weber on race and society

MAX WEBER ON RACE AND SOCIETYAuthor(s): Benjamin NelsonSource: Social Research, Vol. 38, No. 1 (SPRING 1971), pp. 30-41Published by: The New SchoolStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40970047 .

Accessed: 25/06/2014 06:57

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

.

The New School is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Social Research.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 185.2.32.121 on Wed, 25 Jun 2014 06:57:30 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=newschool

http://www.jstor.org/stable/40970047?origin=JSTOR-pdf

http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp


MAX WEBER ON RACE AND SOCIETY*

Introduction by Benjamin Nelson

± he early meetings of the German Sociological Association, which began their sessions in 1910 at Frankfurt, were the occasion of extraordinarily wide-ranging discussions and debates among the leading scholars of Germany. Indeed, as Fritz Ringer has amply documented in his recent study, Decline of the German Mandarins (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1968), the years from 1890 to 1920 were marked by acute political and social as well as cultural tensions. One of the most "agonizing" features of this interim was the heightening of polemical self-consciousness among leading representatives of humanistic and natural-scientific disci- plines, the so-called Geisteswissenschaften and Naturwissenschaf- ten. The resulting clashes were especially intense among those engaged in the development of sociology and the uses of the evolv- ing discipline in the formation of public policy.

These tensions, and the differences of viewpoint in respect to the problems of society, culture, and civilization are nowhere more

fully and more poignantly expressed than in the successive volumes of Proceedings of these meetings of the German Sociological Associ- ation. Strangely enough, Max Weber's own contributions to these discussions have generally been ignored, although they contain several of his sharpest formulations and rejoinders on the most critical issues in the social sciences - issues as much at the center of political and scholarly concern today as they were half a century ago.

The discussion published below under the title "Max Weber on Race and Society" is one of a series of translations of Weber's

* Translated by Jerome Gittleman.



MAX WEBER 31

remarks at these meetings of the German Sociological Association currently being prepared under my direction. This particular passage is from the text published in Max Weber's Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Soziologie und Sozialpolitik (Tübingen, J. C. B. Mohr, 1924), pp. 456-462 under the title "Diskussionrede dort- selbst zu dem Vortrag von A. Ploetz über die Begriffe Rasse und Gesellschaft/' which was delivered at the first Conference of the Association in Frankfurt in 1910 with Werner Sombart in the chair. The translator is Jerome Gittleman, a graduate student in the Department of Sociology at the New School.

The latter half of the session comprised brief and sharp exchanges with Dr. Ploetz. In addition to Weber, others who took issue in these exchanges with Ploetz were Toennies and Sombart. Supplementary translations from these exchanges recorded in the full text of the Proceedings, which has recently been reprinted in Germany, will appear later.

The significance of these neglected discussions by Weber and others is impossible to exaggerate. Ploetz's work was to prove to be one of the central sources of Hitler's racial ideas and policies. Some of the critical phases of the development of Social Darwinism in the cultural and social life of Germany in the nineteenth century have recently been surveyed by George Mosse. Mosse recalls that it was Alfred Krupp, the industrialist, who in 1900 sponsored an essay contest on the "Principles of Darwinism," which was won by a friend and associate of Ploetz, Doctor Wilhelm Schallmeyer. Continuing, Mosse explains:

Schallmeyer was supported by a fellow practitioner, Dr. A. Ploetz, who endorsed the superiority of the Caucasian race in a qualified way by excluding the Jews. According to him, it was the Aryan race alone that represented the apex in racial development. He suggested that during a war it would only be fitting to send in- ferior members of the race to the front lines as cannon fodder. Furthermore, as an added measure to insure physical fitness, Ploetz suggested that at a child's birth a consultation of doctors should judge its fitness to live or die. (George L. Mosse, The Crisis of Germán Ideology, New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1964, p. 99.)



32 SOCIAL RESEARCH

Additional material on the nineteenth century backgrounds will be found in a volume by Daniel Gasman, The Scientific Origins of National Socialism, soon to be published by the American Elsevier Press.

Ploetz's journal, to which Weber refers below, was entitled: Archiv für Rassen und Gesellschaf ts-Biologie und Gesellschafts- Hygiene.

Although barely referring to the address here translated, Ernst Moritz Manasse's essay, "Max Weber on Race," offers an interesting review of Weber's views on the subject. (Social Research, June 1947, pp. 191-221)

Fuller discussion of the influence of Ploetz will be found in Chapter 3 of Hedwig Conrad-Martius* study of German Social Darwinism, which was published at Munich in 1955 under the title Utopien der Menschenzüchtung (Kösel- Verlag).

Finally, in the course of the subsequent exchanges with Ploetz, Weber mentions meeting W. E. B. du Bois during his visit to the United States in 1904. Two years later, the Archiv, of which Weber was a founder and principal editor, published an article by du Bois, "Die Negerfrage in den Vereinigten Staaten."

JljL onored guests, there are many things of a more general character that I had intended to say, but these have been discussed so amply by others that, in accordance with the rule agreed to yester- day not to repeat points already covered, I shall not return to these matters even where I would probably formulate them somewhat differently. I only have a series of particular remarks to make.

Dr. Ploetz began his lecture by noting that the principle of neighbor had governed our ethics for millennia. I ask: how long? with what consequences? And, in contrast with the eugenically more "favorable" past, has its rule been strengthened today? It certainly holds the same place today in the official catechism as it



MAX WEBER 33 did in the Middle Ages. But how genuinely does actual practice in life correspond to official postulate? And how did it correspond in the past? If eugenics is more unfavorable today than formerly, how has this practice influenced natural selection? That is the problem. With respect to its prospects of propagation the population in the Middle Ages was certainly subject to a severe process of selection. Besides the mortality of children, the increasing factual and legal limitations upon marriage for all those without a self-subsistent means of livelihood had a particularly strong effect upon the lower orders of society. This is certainly not a type of eugenics to be despised. But, on the other hand, the principle of charity drove medieval men whose physical and spiritual qualities were not limited, into the cloister, or into the celibacy of the priesthood or the knightly orders, and eliminated them from propagation. The same principle was realized through systematic support of begging.

When we look upon the course of development from the Middle Ages to modern times, it appears to me that the principle of charity has been progressively weakened on Christian religious grounds - which one would have never suspected of a religion that once had certain biblical foundations. In this regard I recall that Calvinism treated poverty and unemployment once and for all as personal guilt, or as an impenetrable decree of God. The weak were thus severely excluded from propagation. The grounds for this religi- osity, at all events, afforded no abode for charity in the sense that Dr. Ploetz could find risky from his perspective.

I further doubt whether modern developments on the whole have taken a direction which would allow the prevailing degree of philanthropy inside our society to become seriously endangered. And with regard to what is usually called social politics (even if it is viewed in the very different spirit of Dr. Ploetz's eugenics), it too can have a very desirable significance - namely, to give to those who are physically and spiritually strong but weak in their pocketbooks, and to those who are eugenically strong but socially subordinate, the possibility of rising and propagating themselves



34 SOCIAL RESEARCH

healthfully. And this policy is by no means a child of indiscrim- inate charity.

Dr. Ploetz remarked that the most fruitful development (In- Blüte-Stehen) - this is not a literal quotation - that the most fruitful development of social conditions (In-Blüte-Stehen der gesell- schaftlichen Zustände) is continually dependent upon the flowering of the race. Or something similar! Gentlemen, it is a totally unproven assertion no matter which concept of

* 'society

" and "race" is utilized. In our current situation and with our present methods of research, I do not believe it is in the slightest degree provable. I know quite well that there are theories which hold that support can be found for this frequently presented thesis on the basis of the development of antiquity. It has been maintained, on occasion even by outstanding historians, that the decline of civilization in antiquity is to be blamed on the fact that the ablest and most powerful rulers of the world were wiped out as a conse-

quence of war and conscription. In fact it is now directly provable that developments were just the reverse. The Roman army in-

creasingly replenished itself from its own resources and with non- Italians (ultimately entirely so); henceforth for a prolonged period the population of the Roman Empire was called upon less for service in the army. For a long time it was the barbarians who had to lead the defense. Nothing can be said for any remnant of this thesis.

Today moreover we know enough about the basis of the great upheaval of civilization in antiquity to be able to say that insofar as ethnic circumstances were generally involved, the Roman race was not exterminated but was consciously excluded from the officer ranks and from the administration. This occurrence is not in any way recognizable by us as having had "eugenic" significance. But insofar as they were relevant to the fate of the Roman Empire -

the neutralization of traditional values, the filling of officer and administrative posts with a barbaric traditionless people lacking culture, and the decline of taste and of an educated social stratum in antiquity along with the decline of the old administrative prac-



MAX WEBER 35

tices - are all so clearly explainable by the economic changes de- ducible from the changes in administration, that not the slightest trace of any race theory as a supplementary explanation is required. I say required, for I concede without further elaboration, that nevertheless, perhaps such factors have played a part in a way which is no longer recognizable to us today. But we do not know this and shall never know it. Wherever we have known any ac- cessible causes it contradicts scientific method to set these aside in favor of hypotheses which are, today and forever, uncontrollable. But now speaking generally it is asserted: "The flowering of social circumstances is dependent upon the flowering of the race." Gentlemen, if the concept "race" were to be understood here in the sense in which laymen usually think of it - as the propagation of communities of hereditary types through breeding, then I would be quite personally embarrassed. I feel myself to be a cross section of several races or ethnic nationalities, and I believe there are very many in this group who would be in a similar position. I am partly French, partly German, and as French surely somehow Celticly infected. Which of these races then (for the Celts have been characterized as a "race") flowers in me? Which race must flower in me if social circumstances in Germany are to flower?

Dr. Ploetz (interrupting): What you are now referring to is the racial system. It is the variation. I dealt with the vital races which have nothing to do with this variation. All these varieties belong, at the least, to a vital race.

Professor Weber (continuing): I must go through the possible varieties of racial concept. I now place myself upon your grounds, and establish that even there a number of assertions of a directly mystical character have occurred. What does it really mean to say "the race flowers," or that "the race" reacts in a determinate sense? What does the expression the race "is a unity" really mean, if not a blood unity? Concerning the existence of this "unity," is the mere fact of the physically normal ability to propagate (which is degrading with regard to bastards) decisive? And does the capacity of specific cultural elements to develop belong to "the



36 SOCIAL RESEARCH

preservation requirements"? Or what else? In the last instance, with the concept "vital race/' we arrived at a shoreless region of

subjective evaluations. And now Dr. Ploetz appears to me to cross into this region

wherever he establishes connections between race and society. Certainly if one assumes that definite races exist side by side, which are distinguished through some purely empirical signs of determinate significance, and then if one replaces the purely conven- tional concept of "society" by social relationships and social institutions, then one can say: the peculiarities of social institutions are to a certain extent the rules of the game which have factual

validity for the chances of survival of definite human hereditary characteristics; for their chances to "win," ascend, or (what is not identical, but proceeds by entirely different laws) to propagate.

These differences in chance not only remain in force today, they would not be otherwise in a possible socialist state of the future

(however constituted). In this future state there might be heredi-

tary qualities different from those in our contemporary society, transmitted by power, luck, propagation and breeding; there would be more of some qualities than of others. One may arrange the

society as one wishes, the process of selection does not cease, and we can put the question: which hereditary qualities are offered chances under social arrangement X or social arrangement Y? This appears to me to be a purely empirical question which is

acceptable for us. And also the contrary: which hereditary characteristics are presuppositions for the possibility of a social arrangement of a definite kind? This too may be meaningfully asked and

applied to the existing human races. If one accepts this formula- tion, one immediately sees that we cannot begin to do anything with the conception of race as formulated by Dr. Ploetz (at least I believe this provisionally - I would gladly convince myself of the opposite). For his racial concept appears to me, by far, to be not sufficiently differentiated.

Gentlemen, this is confirmed if we ask what has so far genuinely originated by way of exact sociological research from the utiliza- tion of this special racial notion? Extremely witty and interesting



MAX WEBER 37 theories have come from it. The journal which Dr. Ploetz edits is a sheer arsenal of boundless hypotheses (which to some extent are presented with an enviable fullness of spirit) concerning the consequences for breeding of all possible institutions and circumstances, and no one can be more thankful than I for these sugges- tions. But does there exist even today a single fact that would be relevant for sociology - a single concrete fact which in a truly illuminating, valid, exact and incontestable way traces a definite type of sociological circumstance back to inborn and hereditary qualities which are possessed by one race or another? The answer is definitively - Jiote well - definitively no! I would dispute this with all certainty, and I would dispute it until such a fact were described precisely to me.

It is not, for example (as is often believed), correct that the mutual social positions of the white and the Negro in North America today can be incontestably attributed to racial qualities. It is possible, and for me subjectively in the highest degree prob- able that perhaps such hereditary qualities are strong factors at work. But to what extent, and above all, in what sense is not certain. Gentlemen, it has for example been asserted (and even asserted in Dr. Ploetz's journal by distinguished gentlemen) that the contrast between white and Negro in North America rests upon "race instincts. " I ask for a demonstration of these instincts and their contents. It should disclose, among other things, that the whites "cannot bear to smell" Negroes. I can call upon my own nose as witness; I have with the closest contact, not perceived anything of the sort. I have had the impression that when the Negro is unwashed he smells exactly like the white, and vice versa. I further call as a witness in the matter, the fact that in the Southern States one can daily experience the sight of a lady sitting on a wagon holding the reins in her hand, closely joined shoulder to shoulder with the Negro, and apparently her nose is not dis- comfited. The Negro odor is, as far as I can see, an invention of the Northern States in order to explain their turning away from the Negro recently.

Gentlemen, if it were possible for us today to impregnate per-



38 SOCIAL RESEARCH

sons from birth with black color, these persons - in a society of whites - would be constantly in a somewhat precarious and pecu- liar situation. Any evidence that race relations in North America rest upon inborn and inherited instincts has thus far not been

produced, although I will at any moment admit that the evidence can perhaps be produced some day. But first of all it is striking that these * 'instincts' ' of different races are in contrast to entirely different functions whose causes throughout have nothing to do with the exigencies of race preservation. If the Negroes and Indians are evaluated so differently over there by the whites, the reason constantly formulated by the whites for their different evaluation of the Indians is: "They didn't submit to slavery" -

they were not slaves. Indeed, insofar as their specific qualities are the reason for their not having been slaves, it was their inability to endure the quantity of work demanded by the plantation capi- talists which the Negro could accomplish. Whether this was a

consequence of purely hereditary peculiarities or of their tradi- tions is doubtful. But this circumstance forms, probably neither

consciously nor unconsciously, the basis of a specifically different

response "instinct" of the whites. Much more, it is the old feudal

contempt of work that is involved here as a social factor, whereby I concede to Dr. Ploetz without further elaboration -

Dr. Ploetz (interrupting): Not in the Northern States! There the factor of the contempt of work does not play this role.

Professor Weber (continuing): First of all that is no longer absolutely correct for the present. And only in the present do the Northern States know contempt for the Negro. And secondly -

if you follow the position of the Blacks inside the labor unions

you will notice that they are despised and feared as blacklegs and as unassuming non-strikers (unassuming because of tradition). Finally, one can easily convince oneself that the middle class American of today, like members of every other middle class, has read his Darwin, his Nietzsche, and in some circumstances his Dr.

Ploetz, and has concluded the following: a man (I speak without the slightest trace of scorn) - a man who wishes to be an aristocrat



MAX WEBER 39

in the modern sense of the word, must have something that he despises, and we Americans wish to be aristocrats in the European sense. This can be treated simply as a Europeanizing process which accidentally matures in America with a secondary effect.

Now, with that, gentlemen, some entirely too few concluding remarks.

Dr. Ploetz has characterized "society" as a living creature, and he urgently asserted that its foundation is known to be related to cell states and similar things. It may be that for Dr. Ploetz's purposes something fruitful can emerge from this notion - he would naturally know that best. But from a sociological view nothing useful ever emerges from the joining together of several precise concepts with indefinite notions. And so it is here. We have the possibility of understanding the rational behavior of single human individuals through intellectual empathy. If we wish to comprehend a human association only in the manner in which one investigates animal societies, we shall thus renounce methods of knowledge which we have with human beings, and do not have with animal societies. This is the reason, and no other, why there is generally no use for our purposes to be glimpsed in making the analogy (unquestion- ably available) between bee colonies and some human national society, the basis of any view.

Finally, gentlemen, Dr. Ploetz said the study of society is a part of the biology of races,

Dr, Ploetz: Social biology, not the study of society generally. Professor Weber: Yes, then I confess that it is probably not quite

clear to me how social biology should be distinguished from the biology of races. It may be that just those relationships between social institutions and the selection of definite qualities, in the manner I previously described, should be the subject of social biological scholarship.

I wish to add only a general remark to this. It does not appear useful to me to stake out regions and provinces of science a priori before there is knowledge, and to say: this belongs to our science, and that does not. By this one only increases the most unfruitful



40 SOCIAL RESEARCH

disputes. Naturally we could say that because ultimately all social events occur on the earth and the planet earth is a part of the solar system, everything that occurs really must be an object of astronomy, and it is only because it chances to serve no purpose to observe events on earth with telescopes, that they are handled with other methods. But does anything come from this? I still should doubt that because there are undisputed events with which biology deals, such as the course of selection which is touched by social institutions, and that because in very many instances social institutions are stamped by the hereditary qualities of race, it should make sense to confiscate one side of some subject or some problem as part of a science originally constructed ad hoc. What we expect from the biologists of race, and what I do not doubt on the basis of the impression which I have attained from the work of Dr. Ploetz and his friends - the thing which we shall preserve from what they certainly shall accomplish some time, is the exact proof of quite definite individual connections, and hence the ex- clusive importance of entirely concrete hereditary qualities for concrete individual manifestations of social life.

That, gentlemen, is still lacking. This is no reproach against so young a science! It must however be confirmed as fact. And

perhaps it serves that end not to permit the Utopian enthusiasm which undertakes such a new field to degenerate, and to misjudge the factual limits of its own statement of the problem. Today we

experience this in all fields. We have experienced the belief that one could explain the entire world, including, for example, art, and anything else, on purely economic grounds. We have lived to see modern geographers deal with all cultural occurrences "from a geographic point of view." But with this they do not prove what we would like to know from them, namely: which specific concrete

components of cultural manifestations have been determined in a single instance through climatic or similarly purely geographic factors? Instead they record in their "geographic" presentations: "the Russian church is intolerant." And when we ask them: to what extent does this statement belong to geography? they say:



MAX WEBER 41

Russia is a local region, the Russian church disseminates locally, and is also a geographic object. I believe that the individual sciences mistake their purpose, if each of them does not specifically accomplish what it and only it should and can accomplish; and I wish to express this hope, that the biological view of social events may not turn out in the manner described above.



max weber on race and society

Documents