Key Arguments

• After detailing patrimonial irrationalities, Weber notes that these do not prevent all forms of capitalism: 'For all these reasons, it is possible under the rule of normal patrimonial powers for all of the following to emerge and often vigorously flourish: a) mercantile capitalism, b) capitalistic tax farming, and sale and lease of offices, c) capitalistic provisioning of the state and capitalist financing of its wars, [and] d) to some extent, plantation and colonial capitalism.'
• The forms that flourish are either oriented to the state’s fiscal/administrative needs (tax farming, sale and lease of offices, provisioning, war finance) or to special colonial and plantation situations, rather than to a broad market of private consumers.
• By contrast, 'highly sensitive enterprises'—those that rest on fixed capital and rational free labour and respond to private consumer markets—require stable, calculable legal and fiscal conditions and cannot tolerate patrimonial irrationality: 'However, highly sensitive enterprises oriented to the market situation of private consumers, with fixed capital and the rational organisation of free labour, are incompatible with the irrationalities of jurisdiction, administration, and taxation that disturb calculability.'
• Thus, patrimonial rule channels capitalism into politically oriented and fiscally mediated forms rather than supporting the autonomous, rational market capitalism that Weber associates with the modern West.

Source Quotes

At its furthest extreme, this effect is decisive in the case of hierocratically oriented patrimonialism, whereas in the case of sultanism, fiscal arbitrariness is likely to be more important. For all these reasons, it is possible under the rule of normal patrimonial powers for all of the following to emerge and often vigorously flourish: a) mercantile capitalism, b) capitalistic tax farming, and sale and lease of offices, c) capitalistic provisioning of the state and capitalist financing of its wars, [and] d) to some extent, plantation and colonial capitalism. However, highly sensitive enterprises oriented to the market situation of private consumers, with fixed capital and the rational organisation of free labour, are incompatible with the irrationalities of jurisdiction, administration, and taxation that disturb calculability.

For all these reasons, it is possible under the rule of normal patrimonial powers for all of the following to emerge and often vigorously flourish: a) mercantile capitalism, b) capitalistic tax farming, and sale and lease of offices, c) capitalistic provisioning of the state and capitalist financing of its wars, [and] d) to some extent, plantation and colonial capitalism. However, highly sensitive enterprises oriented to the market situation of private consumers, with fixed capital and the rational organisation of free labour, are incompatible with the irrationalities of jurisdiction, administration, and taxation that disturb calculability. It is only fundamentally different where the patrimonial ruler, acting in his own political and financial interests, adopts rational administration employing specialist officials.

Key Concepts

• For all these reasons, it is possible under the rule of normal patrimonial powers for all of the following to emerge and often vigorously flourish:
• a) mercantile capitalism, b) capitalistic tax farming, and sale and lease of offices, c) capitalistic provisioning of the state and capitalist financing of its wars, [and] d) to some extent, plantation and colonial capitalism.
• However, highly sensitive enterprises oriented to the market situation of private consumers, with fixed capital and the rational organisation of free labour, are incompatible with the irrationalities of jurisdiction, administration, and taxation that disturb calculability.

Context

Still in §9a on 'Traditional rule and the economy', immediately after enumerating patrimonial administrative irrationalities, Weber specifies which varieties of capitalism can arise under patrimonial powers and why modern rational capitalism cannot.