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Weber: Classes, Status Groups and Parties

I. Critique of Marx

Weber's essay, Classes, Status Groups and Parties (1922) together with its Postscript (1922) are an attempt to explicitly refute the Marxist interpretation of class, class conflict and history. For Marx power is based purely on economic power — that is, possession of the means of production. Weber opposes this view by arguing that power has sources that are independent of economic power.

Firstly, he defines power as follows:

By 'power' we mean very generally the chances which a man or a group of men have to realise their will in a communal activity, even against the opposition of others taking part in it.

Secondly, this is not identical to economic power, and power is not necessarily determined by economic power.

'Economic determined' power is not, of course, the same thing as 'power' in general. On the contrary, economic power may result from the possession of power which rests on other foundations.

Thirdly, the degree of respect or honour shown to an individual in society is called status. The social order is the “distribution of social 'status' among typical groups of members of a community”. Neither economic power, nor power in general, necessarily brings with it social status.

... power is not the only basis of social 'status'. Quite the contrary: social status or prestige can be, and very often has been, the basis of power, even of economic power. The legal system may guarantee both power and status.

In other words, the Marxists' scheme is profoundly misguided in its attempt to equate all power with economic power.

II. Economic class

Weber acknowledges that class is an economic category. He defines a class as a group of individuals that share a similar position in relation to the market. Class situation equals market situation.

Weber does use the term class to define the economic situation of an individual in society. Individuals belong to the same class when they share a similar class situation. That is, when their relation to the market, either as labourers or in terms of the possession of commodities (and the means of production) places them in a similar position. He accepts the basic Marxist interpretation of the market situation in terms of property. Only those who have property can act as entrepreneurs.

... only those who own property have the possibility of shifting what they own from the sphere of benefit as 'wealth' to the sphere of employment as 'capital': hence they alone can become entrepreneurs .... 'Property' and 'propertylessness' are thus the basic categories underlying all class situations...

Owners of property are further sub-divided according to the different kinds of property that they own. Weber acknowledges that is often true that “the mere ownership of property as such can determine the fate of an individual.”

In his Postscript Weber acknowledges a distinction between class based on property and class based on income.

A 'property class' is one in which differences in property-ownership primarily determine the class situation. An 'income class' is one in which the chances of utilising goods or services on the market primarily determine the class situation. A 'social class' is the totality of those class situations.

He further clarifies the economic power of the 'privileged property classes' which he calls rentiers. This is equivalent to the Marxist term, bourgeoisie. He believes that society is divided into many intermediate positions of class.

Examples of privileged income classes include merchants, ship owners, industrialists, agricultural entrepreneurs, bankers and financiers, some lawyers, doctors and artists, and some workers with a monopoly over certain skills.

III. Material determinism

Contrary to Marxist theory Weber argues that there is no necessary connection between membership of a class and class-consciousness or class action. He opposes the Marxist interpretation of history as driven by material determinism. Sometimes, membership of a class creates 'communal action' and sometimes it does not.

Differences in chances in life, however marked, are certainly not sufficient in themselves, as experience shows, to create 'class action' in the sense of communal action by the members of a class.

Membership of a class does not automatically confer on one membership of a community. Classes are not communities, and it is a mistake to equate the two.

It is wrong to interpret history as a history of class struggles. Struggles often existed between status groups. In so far as there were struggles based on economic relations in the ancient and medieval epochs, these were based on different economic problems. In the modern world there is a struggle over wage rates, but this was virtually unknown in the medieval and ancient worlds, where the conflict was over the price of bread. Those without property wanted lower bread prices; they were opposed by those whose vested interests made them want higher bread prices. So even economic struggles have different characters, and it is an error to interpret all history as a history of class struggles.

In the Postscript Weber explicitly denies the Marxist theses that (a) class struggle is inevitable; and (b) that it will lead to a revolution.

He also argues that the increase in class conflict in his day (late C19th, early C20th) is owing to the de-skilling of the industrial labour-force as a result of specialisation and division of labour. The chances of a working class man raising himself or his family into a higher economic class was decreased as a result of this development, hence increasing the likelihood of collective class action. However, there is no necessary connection between class and collective action; that the modern world exhibited this for a time is purely an accident of history.

Thus, Weber did not agree with Marx that the classes were polarised, and that increasing polarisation would develop over time. On the contrary, he anticipated increasing diversification of the classes and the expansion of the white-collar middle class. Consequently, for Weber, a revolution in which the proletariat would overthrow the bourgeoisie was not inevitable. Furthermore, conflict in society may be expressed in divers ways; for example, in sabotage of machinery. It was possible that a common market situation might provide the basis of collective action, but not inevitably. Finally, power in society may be derived from more than one source, and economic power is only one form of power.

IV. Status

The main component of power that Marx has omitted is status. Weber defines it as follows:

... we shall use the term 'status situation' to refer to all those typical components of people's destinies which are determined by a specific social evaluation of 'status', whether positive or negative, when that evaluation is based on some common characteristic shared by many people

Thus, one source of power is status. This refers to the degree to which an individual is respected and honoured by society — social honour is unevenly distributed in society. People with similar status share a similar status situation, and this encourages them to form into status groups. There is social closure when membership of a status group is closed to outsiders.

It is true that the ownership of property can confer status on an individual. However, it is not true that they are necessarily equated>

But 'status' is not necessarily connected with a 'class situation': normally, it stands rather in glaring contradiction to the pretensions of naked property ownership. Furthermore, those who own property and those who do not may belong to the same status group...

Status groups tend to prohibit relations with other status groups. For example, marriage to a member of another status group may be prohibited. When a status group becomes wholly closed, then it develops into a caste.

That is, the distinction of status is guaranteed not only by convention and law, but also by ritual sanction to such an extent that all physical contact with a member of a caste regarded as 'inferior' is held to be ritually polluting for members of the 'superior' caste, a stain which must be religiously expiated.

The Hindu caste system forms a prime example of social closure. Closure may be affected by several means. In modern societies certain status groups endeavour to create social closure by the technique of elite self-recruitment. What this means is that they erect barriers to entry around their profession that mean that recruitment into it is not open to all on an equal basis.

Very often ethnic minorities develop into a caste. This is also true of 'pariah' peoples, such as the Jews. Groups, though dispersed throughout the world retain a belief in their common ethnic origin and “rigorously avoiding all personal intercourse other that what is unavoidable, in a legally precarious situation, but tolerated on the grounds of their economic indispensability and often even privileged, and interspersed among political communities.”

Privileged status groups tend to justify their worth in terms of their possession of worldly qualities, such as their beauty or excellence and their relationship to a glorious past; underprivileged status groups justify their worth in relation to the future or to another world. They are a 'chosen people' who will enter either into a promised land, or into the kingdom of heaven.

Status systems are not necessarily based on ethnic differences, and sometimes status groups are formed purely on the basis of the possession of personal qualities — “as when knights select those who are physically and mentally fit for military service”. However, in modern times, economic class is increasingly the determining factor of status.

On the other hand, status and class can come into conflict.

The market and its economic processes are, as we saw, 'no respecter of persons': it is dominated by 'concrete' interests. It knows nothing of 'status'. The ordering of society in terms of status means precisely the opposite: differentiation in terms of 'social standing' and life-styles peculiar to particular status groups. As such it is fundamentally threatened when purely economic gain and purely economic power, completely naked and clearly displaying the marks of its origin unconnected with status, can confer on everyone who has acquired it the same 'standing'...

Status groups can and often do resist purely economic power. So the existence of a status group is defined by this power to resist and restrain the “free development of the market'. Examples include “manorial estates, peasant landholdings, church property and above all the goodwill of a craft or trade held by a guild.”

So to further characterise the distinction between classes and status groups: classes are related to production and the acquisition of wealth; status groups are related to the consumption of goods.

There is considerable potential for some conflict between status groups and classes. Ownership of property does not immediately confer on a member the qualification for membership of a status group. For example, there is often a distinction between old money and the nouveau riche. The more established bourgeoisie seek to exclude the newly rich from their status group.

V. Parties

There is a third concept required to understand communal social interaction. The concept of parties, whose “activity is concerned with social power, that is, with exerting influence on communal action.” A party is an association of classes or status groups. Sometimes a party represents a class or status group, but this is not always the case, and usually is not. The aim of a party is domination of the social structure, and its means are varied...

naked force in all its forms, soliciting votes by both crude and subtle means — money, social influence, rhetoric, insinuation, clumsy trickery — or finally, the use of obstructive tactics, both of the cruder and the more sophisticated kind, within parliamentary bodies.

For Weber, parties are groups that are formed from the other economic (class) and status groups for the purpose of achieving a political aim. They may draw support from a wide range of differing groups, who temporarily share a common purpose and seek to acquire social power to affect it.