"The leadership of a
state or of a party by men who (in the economic sense of the word) live
exclusively for politics and not off politics means necessarily a ‘plutocratic’
[rule of the wealthy, after the Roman god of wealth and the underworld,
Pluto—Prof.] recruitment of the leading political strata. To be sure, this does
not mean that such plutocratic leadership signifies at the same time that the
politically dominant strata will not also seek to live ‘off’ politics, and
hence that the dominant stratum will not usually exploit their political
domination in their own economic interest (pp. 85-6)" Max Weber
This quote is talking about we need politicians that are either independently wealthy or they get their money only from politics. Weber says that this is important because government is so big and difficult to run that you need people that are completely invested in politics to run a country. Politicians that are not full time and have other commitments to deal with can not be effective at their job as a politician.
I choose this quote because besides the reason that Weber has for a full time politician I feel that we need both types of people in politics the wealthy and the one that needs the money. Any country has wealthy people and people that need to work hard to earn a living. Both of these types of people need to be in politics in order for the government to understand its people's problems. If there was only one type of politician in government then not all the people would be represented and the ones that are not represented would suffer.
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