Tra potenza e dominio: la natura ancipite del «gruppo politico» nella sociologia comprendente di Max Weber

On the opening page of Politik als Beruf (1919) Weber declares that he does not want to deal with the broader meaning of the term «politics» which refers to «any kind of indipendent leadership in action», but with a narrower meaning than the same term, which specifically referring to «the leadership, or the influencing of the leadership, of a political group, hence today, of a state». Naturally, he immediately asks the question: «But what is a “political” group from the sociological point of view? What is a “state”? The famous Weberian response defines the state (today the political group par excellence) as «a human community that (successfully) claims the monopoly of the use of legitimate physical violence within a given territory». The purpose of the essay is to show that, if one really wants to understand this answer, it is necessary to frame the notion of «political group» within the horizon of the detailed conceptual instruments which Weber elabo- rates in the Soziologische Grundbegriffen (1919-1920), the first chapter of the post-war version of Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft. In this way, the ancipital character of the notion of «political group» comes to the fore, which sees it simultaneously connected to two very different dimensions. The first is the «sociologically amorphous» dimension of «power», which consists in the «chance, within a social relationship, of enforcing one’s own will against resistance». The second is the dimension of a completely different sign of «domination», which has to do with the meaning subjectively intended by those who command when they command, but especially with the meaning subjectively intended by those who obey when they obey.