Patrimonial-Feudal Dichotomy and Political Structure in Pre-Revolutionary Russia: One Aspect of the Dialogue Between the Ghost of Marx and Weber.

in this area. A radical re-tooling of some of his earlier definitions and concepts seems to be needed, if these are to become more appreciated and useful in future research. In short, while he undoubtedly knew his empirical evidence very well, Weber, like many other scientists, experienced some painful difficulties in attempting to classify and label it. The major modification tentatively suggested in this paper is that it is necessary to pay close attention to an extremely sharp contrast between the two variants of the traditionalist concept of domination, patrimonialism vs. feudalism. This basic contrast, crucial in his scientific investigation of cultural differentiations, runs most consistently through an unbelievable wealth of research material accumulated by him. It is an empirical typology of two sets of contradictory historical experiences concerning the origin and development of domination and legitimacy. There is another rather significant and frequently overlooked scientific contribution of Max Weber within the context of this paper. Albert Salomon's witty comment from the 1930's on the Me-long dialogue of Max Weber with the ghost of Karl Marx is now very popular among many radical, establishment, and the-rest-of-us sociologists. In spite of being fashionable to refer to it through the 1960's, no serious attempts were made to account for this many-faceted dialogue. This paper will try to settle one of the very much alive aspects of the same dialogue— hopefully to the lasting satisfaction of all. One morning numerous and valuable conceptual tools suggested by Max Weber, a typological dichotomy of patrimonialism vs. feudalism, has not been sufficiently utilized in modem research and obviously for good reasons. But the theoretical potentialities of this dichotomy seem to be imperative and still go begging particularly in an ever-increasing number of fascinating comparative analyses of durable and large political systems in time as well as in space. A consensus seems to be growing that the former is indispensable for the understanding of the latter, because the durability of patterning, found only in the comparison of things in time, is one of the most crucial prerequisites for contemporary studies of comparing things in space. Wesson (1967) and Eisenstadt (1963) in their admirable generalizing sweep of great historical empires, Blum (1964) and Jacobs (1958) in their specialized areas, could have immensely facilitated their formidable tasks if Weber's dichotomy had been available to them, thus only increasing the welldeserved impact of their contributions. Indeed, this dichotomy of Weber's, similarly to some others, does need just about a total rescue if not resurrection, and no student should be blamed for not digging for it for his own needs. Patrimonial-feudal dichotomy is buried in Webers extremely rough-draft writings on the traditionalist type of domination. In addition to being by necessity a residual type—whatever did not qualify for charismatic or legal-rational types was hastily located here perhaps for the time being—the traditionalist type, as presented by Weber, is one of the most mettled and confusing segments of Ms writings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]