Lets look Max Weber’s understanding of class.
In his unfinished text, Economy and Society, published in 1922, Weber wrote about twenty
pages on power and inequality, where he distinguished three routes to power in modern society: class, status, and organized power,
or the term he used, "party".
Despite the brief, fragmentary and unfinished nature of this work at the time of Webers death,
it had a major impact on the development of theories of inequality in sociology.
Its often said that Weber agreed with Marx about the importance of class in society, but went
beyond Marx in developing a more complex and multi-dimensional framework.
This framework included status and party, as well as class.
In his view class, status and party are all aspects of the distribution of power in society.
He defined power as, the ability of one or more people to ‘realize their own will in a social action even against the resistance of others.’
He pointed out that people may pursue power as a means to an end, such as gaining wealth, or as an end in itself.
He seems to have believed, like the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, that the struggle for power is
at the centre of human social life.
It is the unequal distribution of power, and the differential ability of people to achieve their
objectives which produces social inequality.
Weber says that a class is made up of people who share the same or similar economic interests.
They have a similar level of control over skills and goods, and the income they can make from them.
This, in turn, gives them a typical probability of ‘gaining a position in life,’ ‘procuring goods’ and ‘finding inner satisfactions.’
While there are various controls that exist over different types of assets, goods and skills, each
one, in principle, creates a particular class situation.
This means that there are potentially an enormous number of different classes in society, since
control and assets vary widely between people and exist in different combinations.
Weber, however, telescopes the potentially large number of classes into just three:
A property class, a commercial class and a social class.
A property class is based on the differences in people’s property including wealth, capital, shares, and so on.
Weber describes those with property as typically being rentiers who receive income from their different assets.
A commercial class is based on differences in the marketability of the goods and services
people control, such as entrepreneurial management skills, political lobbying skills and specialist expertise or qualifications.
Weber describes the privileged members of this class as typically being entrepreneurs.
Weber also divides each of these classes in two, between the positively privileged who control
valuable property or highly marketable goods and services, and the negatively privileged who lack these things to varying degrees.
He goes beyond that to specify various middle classes which fall in between the positively and negatively privileged groups in each class.
The third type of class that Weber identifies is social class.
A social class includes all those in similar positions with regard to ‘individual and generational mobility.’
That is, the ability to move up within a stratified economic system in relation to one’s starting point or that of one’s parents’.
Here Weber identifies four main social classes: those ‘privileged through property and education;’
‘the propertyless intelligentsia,’ technical specialists and civil servants;
‘the petty bourgeoisie’ (typically independent artisans, farmers, traders, and professional people);
and the working class, particularly as the work process is increasingly automated.
Weber thought that power is also distributed in society through status differences.
He defines status as ‘an effective claim to social esteem’ which can be positive or negative in its evaluation and consequences for people.
That is, people can be accorded high, middle or low levels of status and be judged by others as their superiors, equals or inferiors in terms of
social esteem. For example, a doctor, a teacher or a minister of religion will usually be ranked relatively high in terms of social esteem, while
accountants and real-estate agents will usually be ranked a bit lower in terms of social status.
Judgements based on status can then affect how others relate to those people and how they behave.
Although Weber did not discuss this himself, the concept of status is important in understanding any social distinctions that don’t have an
economic or financial foundation. Gender, race, ethnicity, and age are all examples of differences
in social status, in Weber’s sense of the term, referring to forms of social categorisation that have significant social effects.
Status differences are not based on class position, and will often cut across and intersect with class distinctions.
Weber also identified a third form of inequality which he called "party".
He was referring not just to political parties, but to any organised associations of individuals which
try to gain social power in a planned and goal- driven way.
That is, they aim to influence the very nature and direction of social life.
He maintains that parties can only arise within groups which have a rational order to them, and members who enforce that order.
While the concept of a ‘party’ can refer to political parties, its meaning is actually broader than that.
It could also refer to business councils, trade unions, professional associations,
non-government organisations, peak bodies or factions within any of these organisations.
In principle, parties can exist in a variety of larger social communities, ranging from social clubs to the state itself.
They may be driven by a cause they believe in, a desire to obtain the spoils of office for their
leaders and followers, or some combination of the two.
Class, status and party are, argues Weber, analytically distinct dimensions of social inequality.
In real life, however, these different elements are less distinct, they can interact with each other to reinforce, undercut or complicate
the standing and prospects of particular people or groups
For example, a person could rank highly on one dimension, such as class, but rank in the middle
or low on other dimensions, such as status and party.
A casino owner, for example, could rank highly in terms of class and party, but have low social status.
A minister of religion might be of low class but have high social status.
This multidimensional way of understanding social inequality enables a more sophisticated
analysis, than one confined to just a single dimension, such as class or status.