Political Machines: Politics as a Tammany Vocation When Max Weber made a speech on politics as a vocation he defined the political machine as a creation of the modern, pluralistic democratic state. A political machine, unlike a purely charismatic individual leader, was a functional bureaucracy attempted, however imperfectly to serve the popular interest through the use of an institutional framework. A quick-voiced opponent of political corruption might protest the use of the political machine as a contemporary model for American democracy, as it has often been associated with corruption, specifically pork barrel politics in America's urban past. Yet, before the creation of political machines, the national apparatus of the state used physical force to ensure compliance with its actions, rather than bestowing any kind of favors to ensure popular compliance.

For example in Weber's Europe, the result of this use of aristocratic force was a form of political tyranny over the lower classes of the land, and later the industrial proletariat, by the minority-led government. In Europe, government existed to first serve the interests of the higher orders, and later the capitalist's biddings alone. The rough and democratic responsiveness of the political machine to the needs and concerns of the ordinary populace provides a lesson modern California politicians have learned from -- through the use of popular initiatives and referendums -- and could further learn from, in terms of the machine's institutional framework.

Because America has traditionally allowed for far less coercive forms of government than has Europe and because of America's sprawling size, government of the burgeoning industrial populace was less cohesive from the beginning, and...

Moreover, ordinary people like fictional composite of real life politicians George Washington Plunkett could rise to power -- through corruption yes, but also the dispensing of political favors and incentives to the disenfranchised -- through the Tammany-Hall political machine of the Democratic party in New York City, and thus become 'self-made men' in government as well as industry.
The political machine was a form early, urban and proletarian democracy whereby Plunkett-style followers of Boss Tweed helped Catholics, immigrants, and industrial laborers with social welfare policies in exchange for votes. Thus, the modern political machine began as aspiring career politicians became elected leaders, attained control over their loyal political staff through the use of favors, and used the political apparatus to obtain material goods and secured their legitimacy from the will of the governed by dispensing such favors and goods to the populace. No longer was politics something aristocratic gentlemen entered for a time -- now it was a genuine career to be aspired to, for those of the lower orders.

Boss Tweed made politics his vocation by living for politics and living off of what he could glean from his political power, functioning as political capitalist entrepreneur -- an entrepreneur, he would add, who behaved with more civic compassion to his employees than many a factory owner. Tweed provided votes for his machine in exchange for helping his constituency. Although these men enriched themselves, the Tweed politicians also helped immigrants gain a foothold in the American economic fabric. They called…