Weber: “Class, Status, and Party

1. Weber: “Class, Status, and Party SOC116

2. What do we take away from the introduction? • Weber in "debate" with Marx • Multidimensional view of stratification • Importance of “rational organizaTION" or association (Gemeinschaft) vs. simple structural similarity • Introduces us to paying attention to inequality related to "style" or "breeding" • Relationship of "legal order" to stratification system

3. Economically Determined Power and the Social Order • The legal order (and I think Weber would include any legal-rational organizational order) "directly influences the distribution of power … within its respective community." • Power = "chances of realizing own will even against resistance of others" • Social honor  power. One can come from the other. Either can be "guaranteed" by legal order. But these things do not define them. • Marx gave us the idea of a hierarchical class order in society based on how much • Classes, status groups, and parties are all phenomena of power distribution in society

4. Determination of Class-Situation by Market Situation • "In our terminology, 'classes' are not communities; they merely represent possible, and frequent, bases for social action." THUS: Class  community/group • What is a class? "(1) a number of people have in common a specific causal component of their life chances, insofar as (2) this component is represented exclusively by economic interests in the possession of goods and opportunities for income, and (3) is represented under the conditions of the commodity or labor markets."

5. Communal Action Flowing from Class Interest • Just because two people share a class situation is no reason to expect they will react the same way to events. • No guarantee that either communal or society action will arise from class situation (cf. Marx on class-in-itself vs. class-for-itself). Can be mere "mass actions" (e.g., murmurings of workers) • Degree to which mass action  communal action  societal action is conditioned by cultural (incl. Intellectual) factors (165a3) • Classes become actors only when there is recognition of situation arising from either (1) distribution of property [e.g., peasants in middle ages] or (2) structure of economic order [e.g., proletariat]. Point is that is has to be conceptualized collectively as such in order for RATIONAL association to emerge.

6. Types of Class Struggle • Class does not necessarily constitute community (Gemeinschaft) • Be careful about reifying class as Marx did when he suggested that "classes" know their true interests even if individuals can be deluded. • Ecological fallacy critique? "That men in the same class situation … react … to … economic [situations] …in the direction of those interests that are most adequate to their average number … must not lead us to that kind of pseudo-scientific [notion] that the individual may be in error concerning his interests but that the class is infallible about its interests" (165b2-3). • Classes are not groups (and hence cannot automatically engage in social action) but class situation does result from social action. But it is the action of lots of "classes" interacting in the market. The commonality, the identity across individuals, of class situation results from market actions.

7. Types of Class Struggle • Class does not necessarily constitute community (Gemeinschaft) • Thus: class situation  labor/commodity markets & capitalistic enterprise BUT these presume legal order (165b5). • Note that this is not the same as Durkheim's "pre-contractual basis of contract" but an echo of the same logic – markets require an institutional structure behind them. • AND, Property and ownership achieve their overarching power to the degree that "other determinants of reciprocal relations [interaction] are, as far as possible, eliminated in their significance" (165b6). • But … STATUS GROUPS get in the way of this (165b7)

8. Status Honor • Status groups ARE normally communities (186.9) though often amorphous. They are communities in that members actually do look at one another and think "us." • Status groups (Stände) : status situation “every typical component of the life of men that is determined by a specific, positive or negative, social estimation of honor. There are many things on which honor can be based. Property and power are possible bases, but not guaranteed. “may be that only families coming under approximately the same tax class dance with one another” (166b3). • Status distinctions related to but not same as class distinctions (as when only folks in same tax class dance with one another (166b3).

9. Status Honor • Explain the difference Weber discusses between German and American “clubs.” In the American club, he says, “even the richest boss” would treat his clerk as an equal while playing billiards in a club. The German boss, by contrast, would treat the clerk with “status conscious 'benevolence'” (166b6). There is a "false" sense of equality in U.S. among gentlemen in their clubs -- it would not do to emphasize one's "position" (economic) in such circumstances.

10. Status Honor • What is the main “indicator” of status honor? 1) STYLE OF LIFE. 2) restrictions on social intercourse (166b9); • Brilliant paragraph at 167a2-8. Cf. Simmel on "Fashion." • Who dines with whom where, etc. Endogamy. Who belongs to "society"? Who gets into the best clubs? Who gets invited to the parties?

11. "Ethnic" Segregation and "Caste" • How is caste system different from mere ethnic groupings? It has a strict hierarchical ordering, “a vertical social system of super- and subordination” (167b6). In ethnic segregation, each group can assume it's the best. In caste system the ordering is a collective “fact.” Caste converts horizontal ethnic segregation into vertical segregation. • "sense of dignity" : positively privileged groups have a dignity and sense of their own "beauty" that is "of this world" while negatively privileged groups require a sense of dignity that lies beyond the here and now. • Lots of ways to form status groups but in contemporary society there is a strong influence of the economic/class situation.

12. "Ethnic" Segregation and "Caste" • Dignity is individual manifestation of social honor. If group has lots of honor, dignity is reflection of a self awareness of their “excellence.” It's a non-transcendent assessment. They are “of this world.” On the other hand, groups with negative status honor locate a sense of dignity in a future, another life, something beyond the here and now. This transcendent belief is a source of religiosity.

13. Status Privileges • Costume, food, carrying arms and other "material monopolies." Material monopolies. Marriage monopolies. Status closure ==> legal monopolies on jobs and offices. Can be positive (only group A does thing B) or negative (members of group A are not allowed to do thing B) (168b6). • Status groups are the bearers of conventions (i.e., most conventions are somebody's conventions). • Hints of Bourdieu and such here. Look at clusters of honorific practices associated with positions, materials, etc.

14. Economic Conditions and Effects of Status Stratification • Market knows nothing about status honor and status order (in pure form) doesn't care how much money you have (only whether you know how to behave). • “The frequent disqualification of the gainfully employed as such is a direct result of the principle of status stratification, and of course, of this principle's opposition to a distribution of power which is regulated exclusively through the market” (169a3). • I think he is pointing out that you can see the difference between the two dimensions in the fact that sometimes the very act of earning a good living makes it clear you don't belong in the status group of the “really rich.”

15. Economic Conditions and Effects of Status Stratification • At 169a4-5 Weber suggests that the dimensions are, in fact, orthogonal! Markets really care nothing about honor and truth be told, status hierarchies may care nothing about money. “The status order would be threatened...if mere economic acquisition...could bestow upon anyone...the same ...honor...” • The parvenu is always despised. Compare McMansions today. And other forms of crass arriviste style. • “...general effect of the status order ... hindrance of the free development of the market...” • Honor abhors hard bargaining (169b6). But note how this is a market distortion. As would be refusing to sell to Xs who are perfectly interested in your product.

16. Economic Conditions and Effects of Status Stratification • “With some over-simplification, one might thus say that classes are stratified according to their relations to the production and acquisition of goods; whereas status groups are stratified according to the principles of their consumption of goods as represented by styles of life. • Proposition: when the bases of the acquisition and distribution of goods are relatively stable, stratification by status is favored (170a3). • Proposition: Every technological repercussion and economic transformation threatens stratification by status and pushes the class situation into the foreground (170a4).

17. Parties • “party oriented social action always involves association” it is always a rational drive toward a goal. • How do parties vary? • By the stratification of the community they try to influence. In particular, the style of domination.

18. Visualization economic order legal order parties status order