64 | Martin Buber’s Theopolitics
action. The latter is vulnerable to the charge that it is antipolitics, since by refus-
ing to stipulate that the purpose of politics is to maintain the state, it refuses to
allow politics the autonomous existence presumed necessary for political science
to exist. The plea for objectivity that inaugurates political science, namely the
demand that we describe the world as it is, and not as we think it ought to be,
smuggles ontology and ethics through the back door, as it first tells us how the
world really is, and then demands that we recognize this state of affairs in our
actions, in order to be responsible.
As the preeminent social scientist of his day, Weber sets the terms of the
discussion for much of Weimar thought. Maturity in politics for Weber is de-
fined by the ability to recognize and endure the irreconcilable clashes of value
between ethics and religion, on the one hand, and politics on the other. Mean-
while, the rationalization of every sphere of life attendant to modernity encour-
ages the growth of bureaucracy, which in turn endangers “the political” itself,
defined in a Nietzschean manner as Herrschaft (authority or domination) of one
person or group of people over another. These basic claims serve as the nodal
point around which numerous “symmetrical counter-concepts” form concern-
ing the question of the autonomy of politics.^14 Theopolitics, I argue, develops as
one such counterconcept, as does Schmitt’s political theology. The two concern
themselves with the same Weberian problems—from secularization and tech-
nicity to representation and charisma—and think through them with a similar
vocabulary but reach diametrically opposite conclusions. Both question the con-
tinuing intellectual validity of the liberal border between religion and politics but
to radically opposed ends: if political theology deploys the power of the divine to
serve the authoritarian state, then theopolitics denies any possibility of perma-
nently legitimizing institutional human power. If political theology borders on
the fascistic, then theopolitics is its anarchistic antipode. But it is Weber who sets
the scene for both.
A Bourgeois Politician: Secularism, Polytheism,
and Anarchism in Max Weber
Wolfgang Mommsen argues for a connection between Weber’s political doc-
trines and his conception of scholarship. Both date to Weber’s early studies of
the increasing population of Polish migrant agricultural workers in the East
Elbia region, as demonstrated by his 1895 inaugural address at the University
of Freiburg.^15 Weber argued against protectionist policies that would artificially
freeze German agriculture at its current point of development. He also opposed
allowing the high rate of Polish immigration to continue, despite the fact that
the Junker landlords benefited economically from employing lower-paid Poles.
Weber’s primary concern was the “German character” of the national economy,
and to that end he supported state subsidization of German small farmers in