‘Group Held Values’ as Legitimate Domination: A Critique of Weber's Typology of Authority in an Intentional Community

Abstract:Since the release in English of Weber's Economy and Society, scholars have critiqued his ideal types of social action and authority as containing ‘value rational’ social action but lacking an accompanying type of authority. This paper explores the ways in which a modern Intentional Community re-arranges the institutions of power, labor, time, and money is service to a critique of Weber's missing type of by adding empirical weight to the argument for existence of a value-rational authority. These Intentional Communities are social arrangements that inevitably call into question the legitimacy of one or more social arrangements and exemplify what is argued to be a Weberian value-rational form of authority because they place group ideals about the rightness of action over individual achievement.