Sociological Theory of Rulership, Knowledge and Religion: An Urgently Needed Comparison of Things in Time.

Half-a-century after his death Max Weber's name is becoming more of a household word within the scholarly community and, perhaps, even beyond, for there is a rock-music band named Max Weber and His Charismatics surviving now for over five years. The mass media today increasingly prostitutionalize some of his carefully formulated concepts of charisma and charismatic leadership, e.g., the labeling of everybody and everything odd or that which is not understood as charismatic, including a loud-mouth reactionary household name of the (hopefully early) seventies. The greater interest in Weber's work among social scientists is justified by several propositions, a few of which will be briefly pointed out. To this writer at least the most important among them is that there seems to be absolutely nothing in his work which could even remotely serve as a source for a messianic doctrine of salvation for mankind in contrast to the writings of many well-known names. No messianic or millennial movements could possibly carry his name, and this appears to be a blessing today in the midst of so much utopian emotionalism. Even a more limited ideological preaching is absent from his legacy. Also, because of his unqualified and absolute humanitarianism, conservative defenses of the established order cannot be hidden behind Weber's name in spite of some attempts made by certain American sociologists. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]