Relaciones internacionales

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Politics as a Vocation
Max Weber
THIS lecture, which I give at your request, will necessarily disappoint you in a number of ways. You will
naturally expect me to take a position on actual problems of the day. But that will be the case only in a
purely formal way and toward the end, when I shall raise certain questions concerning the significance of
political action in the whole way oflife. In today's lecture, all questions that refer to what policy and what
content one should give one's political activity must be eliminated. For such questions have nothing to do
with the general question of what politics as a vocation means and what it can mean. Now to our subject
matter.
What do we understand by politics? The concept is extremely broad and comprises any kind of independentleadership in action. One speaks of the currency policy of the banks, of the discounting policy of the
Reichsbank, of the strike policy of a trade union; one may speak of the educational policy of a municipality
or a township, of the policy of the president of a voluntary association, and, finally, even of the policy of a
prudent wife who seeks to guide her husband. Tonight, our reflectionsare, of course, not based upon such a
broad concept. We wish to understand by politics only the leadership, or the influencing of the leadership,
of a political association, hence today, of a state.
But what is a 'political' association from the sociological point of view? What is a 'state'? Sociologically,
the state cannot be defined in terms of its ends. There is scarcely any task that somepolitical association
has not taken in hand, and there is no task that one could say has always been exclusive and peculiar to
those associations which are designated as political ones: today the state, or historically, those associations
which have been the predecessors of the modern state. Ultimately, one can define the modern state
sociologically only in terms of the specific means peculiarto it, as to every political association, namely,
the use of physical force.
'Every state is founded on force,' said Trotsky at Brest-Litovsk. That is indeed right. If no social institutions
existed which knew the use of violence, then the concept of 'state' would be eliminated, and a condition
would emerge that could be designated as 'anarchy,' in the specific sense of this word. Of course,force is
certainly not the normal or the only means of the state--nobody says that--but force is a means specific to
the state. Today the relation between the state and violence is an especially intimate one. In the past, the
most varied institutions--beginning with the sib--have known the use of physical force as quite normal.
Today, however, we have to say that a state is a human communitythat (successfully) claims the monopoly
of the legitimate use of physical force within a given territory. Note that 'territory' is one of the
characteristics of the state. Specifically, at the present time, the right to use physical force is ascribed to
other institutions or to individuals only to the extent to which the state permits it. The state is considered
the sole source of the 'right' touse violence. Hence, 'politics' for us means striving to share power or
striving to influence the distribution of power, either among states or among groups within a state.
This corresponds essentially to ordinary usage. When a question is said to be a 'political' question, when a
cabinet minister or an official is said to be a 'political' official, or when a decision is said to be'politically'
determined, what is always meant is that interests in the distribution, maintenance, or transfer of power are
decisive for answering the questions and determining the decision or the official's sphere of activity. He
who is active in politics strives for power either as a means in serving other aims, ideal or egoistic, or as
'power for power's sake,' that is, in order to enjoy the...