#12635 - Weber Class Status Party - Sociological Theory

Max Weber - Class, Status, Party

2. Determination of Class-Situation by Market-Situation

• Classes are not communities - they represent possible and frequent bases for communal action

• A class situation is:

  • the chance for a supply of goods, external living conditions and life experiences where this chance is determined by power to dispose of goods or skills for the sake of income.

    • essentially, where goods and living conditions depend on market power and action

• A class is:

  • a group of people with a specific causal component of their life chances in common, where this component is represented:

    • in economic interests in possession of goods and income opportunities

    • under the conditions of the commodity/labour markets

• Disposition over material property in an exchange market creates life chances

  • this advantages owners over non-owners, owing to the law of marginal utility

  • market exchange advantages those who do not have to sell over those who do, and the latter group are forced to sell their services cheaply as a result

  • hence property and lack of property are ‘the basic categories of all class situations’

• Within the two categories of ‘property’ and ‘lack of property’, classes are differentiated according to the kind of property available, and the kind of services available

• The concept of class presupposes the game of chance in the market, and hence the existence of a market

  • possession is not a category upon which classes are formed, whereas property is

  • the fate of slaves is not determined by market activity, and hence slaves are not a class, but a status group

3. Communal Action Flowing from Class Interest

• So, classes are created by economic interest, and even at at only by those interests tied up in the market

  • but these interests are somewhat ambiguous, and do not necessarily lead to certain types of action

  • direction of interests may vary according to whether communal action has followed from the common economic interest e.g. through a trade union

  • the degree to which mass (and disparate?) actions are translated into communal and societal action will depend upon cultural and intellectual conditions

• In order for class action to occur, classes must not just see the contrast in life chances at the market exchange, but recognise it as the result of:

  • the given distribution of property

    • basis of class action in antiquity, middle ages, feudalism etc (when food and agriculture were exploited for profit)

  • or the structure of the concrete economic order

    • as in the case of the modern proletariat

4. Types of ‘Class Struggle’

• Hence a class may form the basis for class action, but will not necessarily do so

• Class is not the same as community

  • denigratory comments about the idea that an individual can be in error as to his interest, but a class is infallible

• The communal action from which classes originate is action between members of different classes, in the market exchange, namely

  • the labour market

  • the commodities market

  • the capitalistic enterprise (cf. Marxist views on class and exploitation)

    • this presupposes a legal order to protect property rights

  • historically, class action began through essential items in the commodities market, and as time has gone, has moved to wage disputes in the labour market

• Class antagonisms are usually displayed between those that participate on the markets, not necessarily those with the most opposing interests

  • for example, between workers and manufacturers/business executives (cf. Olin Wright on managerial class position) rather than between workers and share-holders/bankers

  • this has led to ‘patriarchal socialism’ and alliances between the proletariat and other status groups (e.g. nobility??) against the bourgeoisie

5. Status Honour

• In contrast to classes, status groups are normally communities

  • status refers to the components of a person’s fate that rest on social estimation of honour

  • property may or may not be regarded as a status qualification

    • often status ‘stands in sharp opposition to the pretensions of sheer property’

      • e.g. equality status of American ‘gentlemen’ - outside of business, even the richest man must treat the poorest (within the club) without condescension

6. Guarantees of Status Stratification

• You can expect a certain style of life from members of the same status circle

  • this consists in ‘agreed-upon communal action’

• ‘Submission to fashion’ indicates that a man pretends to qualify as a gentleman, and this implies that he will be treated as one

7. ‘Ethnic’ Segregation and ‘Caste’

• Status groups can evolve into closed castes, where distinctions of status are guaranteed by rituals as well as conventions and laws

  • this usually occurs where ethnic differences lead to status distinctions

• But status groups do usually span ethnic groups - they are often formed on the basis of ‘political membership or class situation’

8. Status Privileges

• Status stratification leads to monopolization of ideal and material goods and opportunities

  • e.g. wearing costumes, eating special dishes, bearing arms, intermarriage, possession of serfs/bondsmen, special trades

• Privileges status groups often disqualify those that perform manual labour; other groups may disqualify those that pursue entrepreneurial activity

9. Economic Conditions and Effects of Status Stratification

• Status stratification opposes the distribution of power that would be regulated through the market

  • there is a distinction between the two because those without lots of property have an interest in stratification being based on something other than property acquisition

• Status stratification hinders the free market for those goods which status groups withhold from exchange

• To simplify:

  • classes are stratified according to their relations to production and acquisition

  • status groups are stratified according to the principles of their consumption of goods, as represented by certain styles of life

• Stratification occurs by status rather than by class where acquisition and distribution of goods are relatively stable historically

  • economic transformation threatens stratification by status because it pushes class to the fore

Bureaucracy

• Essentially, insofar as there are commodity markets (and most clearly where there are advanced money markets) there will exist a bureaucratic stratum

  • this stratum will practice in...