The claim of this section, again about the history of an idea, is that the closing part of Politik als Beruf uses the verb abwälzen, to roll or shift a burden onto another, at three points: for the responsible actor, who will not shift the foreseeable consequences of his action onto others; for Luther, who shifted the responsibility for war from the individual onto the authorities; and, in a related wording, for the politician of conviction, who says that the responsibility for consequences falls on others. Read together, these show that the lecture's ethic of responsibility is about answering for consequences, and that its account of the apparatus below the leader treats those who serve as conditions of the leader's success. The section adds to the debate between Bovens and Hood by showing that Weber's text already contains both an anatomy of answering and a vocabulary of shifting, and that the two meet without settling where the work of consequences falls.
5.1The two maxims
Weber introduces the distinction for which the lecture is best known with a sentence that insists on its depth:
Wir müssen uns klar machen, daß alles ethisch orientierte Handeln unter zwei voneinander grundverschiedenen, unaustragbar gegensätzlichen Maximen stehen kann: es kann „gesinnungsethisch“ oder „veranwortungsethisch“ orientiert sein.
We must be clear that all ethically oriented action can stand under two maxims that are fundamentally different from each other and irreconcilably opposed: it can be oriented by an ethic of conviction or by an ethic of responsibility (the article's translation). He at once guards against a misreading: neither ethic is identical with the absence of the other. The difference lies elsewhere:
Aber es ist ein abgrundtiefer Gegensatz, ob man unter der gesinnungsethischen Maxime handelt – religiös geredet –: „der Christ tut recht und stellt den Erfolg Gott
The sentence is broken by a page and resumes: "anheim“, oder unter der verantwortungsethischen: daß man für die (voraussehbaren) Folgen seines Handelns aufzukommen hat." In the article's English: but it is an abysmal opposition whether one acts under the maxim of conviction, in religious terms, the Christian does right and leaves the outcome to God, or under the maxim of responsibility, that one has to answer for the (foreseeable) consequences of one's action.
The verb is aufkommen für, which the article renders as answer for; the article also hears in it, as its own gloss, a sense of making good a cost. The parenthesis "voraussehbaren", foreseeable, limits the liability to what could be foreseen, a limit that returns in the record of Section 6.
5.2The first shift: the responsible actor
Weber then describes the two figures in action. The politician of conviction, confronted with the bad consequences of his act, holds not himself but the world responsible, "die Dummheit der anderen Menschen oder – der Wille des Gottes, der sie so schuf": the stupidity of other people or the will of the God who made them so. Against him:
Der Verantwortungsethiker dagegen rechnet mit eben jenen durchschnittlichen Defekten der Menschen, – er hat, wie Fichte richtig gesagt hat, gar kein Recht, ihre Güte und Vollkommenheit vorauszusetzen, er fühlt sich nicht in der Lage, die Folgen eigenen Tuns, soweit er sie voraussehen konnte, auf andere abzuwälzen. Er wird sagen: diese Folgen werden meinem Tun zugerechnet.
The ethicist of responsibility, by contrast, reckons with just those average defects of human beings; he has, as Fichte rightly said, no right at all to presuppose their goodness and perfection; he does not feel himself in a position to shift the consequences of his own action, so far as he could foresee them, onto others. He will say: these consequences are attributed to my action (the article's translation).
Here abwälzen appears for the first time in the lecture's account of consequences, and it appears as the act the responsible person refuses. The refusal is bounded twice: by foreseeability, "soweit er sie voraussehen konnte", and by attribution, "zugerechnet". What the responsible actor accepts is that the consequences are counted to his action. The word zurechnen belongs to the language of imputation: it says to whose account something is booked. It does not say who does the work the consequences create.
In the official's honour of Section 4, the same structure appears from the other side: the official executes, and the responsibility is booked to the commander.
5.3The second shift: Luther and the authorities
The verb returns in Weber's survey of how religious ethics have dealt with the plurality of the orders of life. Of Protestantism he writes:
Der normale Protestantismus dagegen legitimierte den Staat, also: das Mittel der Gewaltsamkeit; als göttliche Einrichtung absolut und den legitimen Obrigkeitsstaat insbesondere. Die ethische Verantwortung für den Krieg nahm Luther dem Einzelnen ab und wälzte sie auf die Obrigkeit, der zu gehorchen in anderen Dingen als Glaubenssachen niemals schuldhaft sein konnte.
Normal Protestantism, by contrast, legitimated the state, that is, the means of force, as a divine institution, absolutely, and the legitimate authoritarian state in particular. Luther took the ethical responsibility for war from the individual and shifted it onto the authorities, obedience to whom, in matters other than those of faith, could never be culpable (the article's translation).
The structure is the official's honour applied to a whole population. The individual obeys; the responsibility goes to the authority; obedience, outside matters of faith, is never culpable. Weber gives no comment in the sentence itself, but the verb he chooses is the one he has just used for what the responsible actor will not do. What the individual still does in war, the sentence leaves unsaid.
Here answerability and work come apart a second time: the transfer leaves the individual blameless and leaves the individual's part in war where it was. The lecture does not say whether this shift is honourable, as for the official, or a failure, as it would be for the leader.
5.4The third shift: the politician of conviction
Near the end of the lecture, Weber returns to the politicians of conviction of his own day, who in the excitement of the time "massenhaft in das Kraut schießen", spring up in masses, with a slogan:
„die Welt ist dumm und gemein, nicht ich, die Verantwortung für die Folgen trifft nicht mich, sondern die anderen, in deren Dienst ich arbeite, und deren Dummheit oder Gemeinheit ich ausrotten werde“
In the article's English: the world is stupid and base, not I; the responsibility for the consequences falls not on me but on the others, in whose service I work, and whose stupidity or baseness I shall root out. The verb here is treffen, to fall on, not abwälzen, but the act is the one the responsible actor refuses. Responsibility is placed on others, and in this case on the very people the speaker claims to serve.
Weber's response is sharp. He asks about the inner weight behind such an ethic and says that in nine cases out of ten he has to do with windbags who do not feel what they take on. Against them he sets the mature person who feels the responsibility for consequences "real und mit voller Seele" (in the article's translation, really and with the whole soul), acts by the ethic of responsibility, and at some point says "ich kann nicht anders, hier stehe ich", words of Luther whose conventional English rendering is I can do no other, here I stand. Then:
Insofern sind Gesinnungsethik und Verantwortungsethik nicht absolute Gegensätze, sondern Ergänzungen, die zusammen erst den echten Menschen ausmachen, den, der den „Beruf zur Politik“ haben kann.
To that extent the ethic of conviction and the ethic of responsibility are not absolute opposites but complements, which only together make the genuine human being, the one who can have the vocation for politics (the article's translation).
The three uses form a pattern. The responsible actor will not shift foreseeable consequences onto others. Luther shifts responsibility for war onto the authorities, who receive it. The politician of conviction says that responsibility falls on others. In each case what moves is responsibility, the booking of consequences to someone's account. In none does the lecture describe who carries out the work that the consequences require.
5.5The apparatus as a condition of success
The lecture does describe those who carry out a leader's work, in a passage about the leader who wants to bring about absolute justice on earth by force:
Wer die absolute Gerechtigkeit auf Erden mit Gewalt herstellen will, der bedarf dazu der Gefolgschaft: des menschlichen „Apparates“. Diesem muß er die nötigen inneren und äußeren Prämien – himmlichen oder irdischen Lohn – in Aussicht stellen, sonst funktioniert er nicht.
Whoever wants to establish absolute justice on earth by force needs a following for it, the human apparatus. To it he must hold out the necessary inner and outer premiums, heavenly or earthly reward, or else it does not function (the article's translation). Then:
Von dem Funktionieren dieses seines Apparates ist der Führer in seinem Erfolg völlig abhängig. Daher auch von dessen – nicht: von seinen eigenen – Motiven.
The leader is entirely dependent for his success on the functioning of this, his apparatus. Hence also on its motives, not on his own (the article's translation).
The apparatus appears here as the condition of the leader's success and as a source of motives the leader must satisfy. It is the same word, Apparat, that the official's discipline holds together in the honour passage. Its members are paid in premiums and their motives shape what the leader achieves. They are not described as bearing the costs of the leader's mistakes. Weber adds that in every leader's apparatus "die Entleerung und Versachlichung, die seelische Proletarisierung im Interesse der „Disziplin“, eine der Bedingungen des Erfolges" is: emptying and objectification, the proletarianisation of the soul in the interest of discipline, is one of the conditions of success. The discipline that the official's honour calls ethical in the highest sense reappears here as a cost to those who keep it: an emptying. The lecture names the cost to the soul. It does not name the cost in work.
5.6Side effects and the daily work
Two further sentences complete the picture. In discussing ends and means, Weber states a general limit:
Keine Ethik der Welt kommt um die Tatsache herum, daß die Erreichung „guter“ Zwecke in zahlreichen Fällen daran gebunden ist, daß man sittlich bedenkliche oder mindestens gefährliche Mittel und die Möglichkeit oder auch die Wahrscheinlichkeit übler Nebenerfolge mit in den Kauf nimmt, und keine Ethik der Welt kann ergeben: wann und in welchem Umfang der ethisch gute Zweck die ethisch gefährlichen Mittel und Nebenerfolge „heiligt“.
No ethic in the world can get around the fact that the achievement of good ends is in many cases bound to accepting ethically doubtful or at least dangerous means and the possibility, or even the probability, of bad side effects; and no ethic in the world can determine when and to what extent the ethically good end sanctifies the ethically dangerous means and side effects (the article's translation).
Nebenerfolge, side effects, are what a decision brings about beyond its aim. The phrase "mit in den Kauf nimmt", takes into the bargain, is again the language of cost. He does not say who, in an organisation, meets the side effects first.
And at the very end, describing those who will find in ten years that they did not have the vocation they believed they had, Weber gives them advice:
Sie hätten besser getan, die Brüderlichkeit schlicht und einfach von Mensch zu Mensch zu pflegen und im übrigen rein sachlich an ihres Tages Arbeit zu wirken.
They would have done better to cultivate brotherliness plainly and simply from person to person, and otherwise to work in a purely matter-of-fact way at the work of their day (the article's translation). The work of the day, Tages Arbeit, is the lecture's last image of ordinary labour, offered as the alternative to politics. It is also the place where the side effects of others' decisions arrive. The lecture closes on the leader's task instead: "Die Politik bedeutet ein starkes langsames Bohren von harten Brettern mit Leidenschaft und Augenmaß zugleich." Politics means a strong and slow boring of hard boards, with passion and a sense of proportion at once (the article's translation). The hard boards are the leader's. The lecture's account of responsibility ends with him.
5.7What the reading adds
The section adds to the debate between Bovens and Hood a reading of how Weber's lecture distributes the parts of an account. In Bovens's terms, an actor explains and justifies to a forum and may face consequences (Bovens 2007). Weber's responsible actor accepts that consequences are booked to him; the forum in the lecture is history, the nation, or, in the final paragraphs, the audience whom Weber invites to meet him again in ten years. In Hood's terms, procedures can spread or shift blame (Hood 2011). Weber's lecture names shifting with a single verb and treats it in three ways: refused by the responsible actor, performed by Luther for the individual, asserted by the politician of conviction. The official's honour is a fourth case, in which the shift is made an ethical duty. What the lecture does not do is follow the work of consequences. Its apparatus is a condition of success, its side effects are taken into the bargain, and its daily work is where those without a vocation for politics should have stayed.