Class Status and Party

1. Class Status and Party • All communities are arranged in a manner that goods, tangible and intangible, symbolic and material are distributed. • Such a distribution is always unequal and necessarily involves power. • ''Classes, status groups and parties are phenomena of the distribution of power within a community'' (927). • Status groups makes up the social order, classes the economic order, and parties the legal/political order. Each order affects and is affected by the other.

2. Power • Power is the ''chance of a man or a number of men to realize their own will in a social action even against the resistance of others who are participating in the action'' • ''Economically conditioned power is not identical with power... The emergence of economic power may be the consequence of power existing on other grounds. Man does not strive for power only to enrich himself economically. Power, including economic power, may be valued for its own sake. Very frequently the striving for power is conditioned by the social honor it entails. Not all power entails honor.''

3. Class • When market conditions prevail (eg, capitalism), property and lack of property are the basic categories of all class situations. • However, the concept of class-interest is ambiguous. Collective action based on class situations is determined by the transparency of the connections between the causes and the consequences of the class situation. • If the contrast between the life chances of different class situations is merely seen as an acceptable absolute fact, no action will be taken to change the class situation

4. Status • Unlike classes, status groups do have a quality of groups. They are determined by the distribution of social honor. • A specific style of life is shared by a status group, and the group itself is defined by those with whom one has social intercourse. • Economic elements can be a sort of honor; however, similar class position does not necessitate similar status groups (see old money's contempt for the nouveau riche). • People from different economic classes may be members of the same status group, if they share the same specific style of life.

5. Party • ''Parties reside in the sphere of power'' (938). ''Parties are... only possible within groups that have an associational character, that is, some rational order and a staff of persons'' (938). • Parties aim for social power, the ability to influence the actions of others, and thus may exist in a social club, the state, or a cohort of professors at the University of Florida. • Parties may represent class or status interests, or neither. They usually represent a mix

6. Weber's discussion of class, status and party give an idea of how markets affect people, and how people form themselves into groups, partly as a result of markets and partly on the basis of other factors that are socially important. • To some extent, Weber's status groups would appear to be ways in which people in capitalism protect themselves from the effects of markets, but at the same time using the market as they can, and using the means of power they have at their disposal. • In spite of the myriad factors that must be taken into consideration when looking at these social structures and institutions: • Weber concludes that there are relatively few dominant features of social structure. In terms of classes, the major classes are the working class, the capitalist class, and the middle professional group. • For Weber there are also a number of major status groups and parties, not necessarily identical to or determined by the same factors as are classes. That is, one may consider some of the major styles of life as those of upper class, middle class, and lower class.

7. Within this system of stratification, the working class does not fit, although the working class has been and continues to be an important social class in capitalism. • Finally, people in societies create some major parties, political parties and other organizations, each aiming to achieve some end. Again, it is likely that only a few of these organizations will acquire major importance for people at any one time. • Weber's writings can thus be used as a guide, but one should not get lost in the mass of details to be considered. Rather, one must attempt to reconstruct the major groups and classes in society, determine how people related to these, and how these interact.

8. Weber v. Marx • Workers are not reduced to being paupers, but are generally better off than agricultural labourers. • There is a diversified system of class relationships, with a growing rather than a smaller middle class. The polarization of society into capitalist and worker does not result, but there are more middle groupings, with more non-manual workers in bureaucratic organizations. • The working class becomes divided in various ways, due to trade unions, developments noted above.

9. Social classes are clusters of class situations with common mobility chances for individuals or across generations. People in these class situations have a common set of social interchanges, but these class situations do not necessarily create communities. • Capitalism makes classes more important compared with earlier societies, due to expanded market relations and operations, and the expansion of the capital-labour relationship. But the most distinctive feature of the development of capitalism is the rationalized character of this economic and social system.