Edit Right section: Voting Rights and Suffrage/Philosophical Origins/Tradition contributions/Weberian Thought

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Through the democratic process in which citizens elect their representatives to government, Weberian Thought held the promise that it would be possible to rewrite the historically authoritarian regime of Prussia (Germany at Weber’s time) perpetuated by Junkers, wealthy conservative landowners, and monarchists before the war. (Maley, [[Probable year:: 2011]], p.76). Weber envisioned his model as a counterpoint to both the left's Social Democrats and the right's monarchists and Junkers. According to Weber, equal suffrage meant equal universal voting rights for working classes who had historically been barred from voting. In his writings on equal suffrage in modern citizenship, he clearly states that equal suffrage is “closely related to the equality of certain fates which the modern state as such creates” (Weber, [[Probable year:: 1994]], p. 105). He explicitly focuses on returning soldiers’ rights, and argues that the equality of the modern state functions in the way that people are equal before death, because the “most basic needs [of physical existence] on the one hand and, on the other, that most solemn and lofty fact of all are encompassed by those equalities which the modern state offers all its citizens in a truly lasting and undoubted way: sheer physical security and the minimum for subsistence, but also the battlefield on which to die” (Weber, [[Probable year:: 1994]], p.105, para.2) Weber does not emphasize on women’s suffrage, he does, however, say that women should have the right to vote as long as “they too are ‘fighting’ the war if they do their duty” (Weber, [[Probable year:: 1994]], p.78, line.14). Moreover, in “Economy and Society: An Outline of Interpretive Sociology”, Weber notes that “the woman is dependent because of the normal superiority of the physical and intellectual energies of the male” (Weber, [[Probable year:: 1978]], p.[[Probable year:: 1007]]) . The Weberian Thought on voting was aiming to correct historical gender and class inequities or might at least mitigate the most severe exclusions of women, the urban working class, and the rural peasantry from power and government. Weber's ideas for equal suffrage might be viewed as a partial erasing of historical discriminatory markings. Weber's suggestions have a deeper element to them than the more neutral sounding ‘counterweight’ to bureaucratic dominance (Weber, [[Probable year:: 1994]], p.104). Equal suffrage emerged as a valuable counterbalance to both types of inequity. Weber saw that the inequities created by capitalism might be just as persistent as those created by prior, more feudal social systems. Against both, Weber advocated for a ‘positive politics’ in which “equal voting rights” means that the individual “is not considered in terms of the particular professional and family position he occupies, nor in relation to the differences of material and social situation, but purely and simply as a citizen” (Weber, [[Probable year:: 1994]], p.103). During the Russian revolution, enraged workers, students, and returning soldiers took to the streets in protest of the existing regime's ruler, Tsar Nicholas II, who had obstructed their enfranchisement and rights prior to the war and then ordered mass slaughter on the battlefield. Weber recognized their outrage at the collapsing regime, but he dismissed their demands for more revolutionary, far-reaching reform as immature. Although Weber understood the anger of Russian revolutionists against the crumbling regime, he saw it as immature and ‘childish’ (Maley, [[Probable year:: 2011]], p. 99). Weber was concerned that under the Russian revolutionary circumstances of [[Probable year:: 1918]]– 19, people would respond out of anger and rage, which would be doubly harmful. In “Parliament and Government in Germany under a New Political Order”, Weber had already wondered “whether such explosions unleash yet again the familiar and usual fear of the propertied classes; in other words, it depends on whether the emotional effect of undirected mass fury produces the equally emotional and equally undirected cowardice of the bourgeoisie” (Weber, [[Probable year:: 1994]], p. 232) In his wartime newspaper writings, Weber made a strategic case for the Social Democratic Party's participation as a disciplined working-class party. Though Weber considered the working class to be too “immature” to take on the role of a ruling class, he praised the discipline and self-control of the Social Democrats' political partners, the trade unions. He said approvingly that “organizations like the trade unions, but also the Social Democratic Party, create a very important counterbalance [not only against the right, but] to the rule of the street which is so typical of purely plebiscitary nations and so prone to momentary and irrational influences” (Weber, [[Probable year:: 1994]], p. 231). References: Maley, T. ([[Probable year:: 2011]]) . Democracy and the Political. In Democracy & the Political in Max Weber's Thought (pp. 77-120). Toronto; Buffalo; London: University of Toronto Press. Retrieved July 16, [[Probable year:: 2021]], from http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.3138/j.ctt2ttgq2.7 Weber, M. ([[Probable year:: 1994]]) . Weber: Political Writings. United States: Cambridge University Press. Weber, M. ([[Probable year:: 1978]]) . Economy and society: An outline of interpretive sociology. University of California Press.

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