A Summary of Weber’s Essay Class, Status, Party

Max Weber author of Class, Status, Party goes on to explain the intrinsic properties of class and how class, status groups and political parties make up the structure of our society. According to Weber the three are a, “phenomena of the distribution of power within a community.” Granted, the essay, Class, Status, Party that is found in Intersecting Inequalities is only a crumb of his 490 page book entitled, From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology. The chosen piece, Class, Status, Party details the human desire for social power and how, through class certain forms of power are achieved.

He contends that the pursuit of social power is essentially an attempt to acquire social honor. Weber also mentions that power does not always lead to social honor and uses the notion of the American Boss as an example. However, he acknowledges that those who are considered honorable by society often gain social power or have a greater chance to do so.

Aware that money or capital also has a large role in the distribution of power, Weber begins to discuss class and how economic inequality shapes class. To determine class he used the following three principles: “when (1) a number of people have in common a specific causal component of their life chances, in so far 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.” Simply put, a person’s class is determined by what choices that person or community has in order to sustain comfortable means of living. A person living in Camden, NJ isn’t exactly going to have the same opportunities as someone from Mendham,NJ.

Nevertheless, property is the basic category that Weber believes defines class situation. The basic economic concept of ‘supply and demand’ reigns over this small, but important fact of life: the demand for land or real estate is infinite while the supply is limited. Put two and two together you have four, but if you use the smallest bit of common sense you will see that he who has the land has the power. This is why wars have been fought, not for divinely inspired reasons or weapons of mass destruction, but for a different set of latitude and longitude coordinates; a new piece of geography to stick that special flag into.

And even to this day, with a dramatic spike in global population the demand for land has risen. If one has a lot of property and many are looking to buy that property he has the power to distribute that land to whoever he wants, for whatever purpose and for as much money as he determines fit. It is no surprise that many people involved in real estate often have a lot of capital worth. Even people who own a dozen mini-malls can eat and wear whatever animal that piques their fancy.

With property being the simplest yet most profitable form of all goods, Weber goes onto detail what he calls, “the market situation.” The market-situation is primarily the class relationship between “rentiers” and those who offer a service or good and must rent a piece of property-or people with no property. The property owners are often of the upper class and have control of their life situation. In contrast those who own no property are primarily of the lower-middle classes and have little control over their life situation since they must follow certain societal rules put in place by the ruling class. Going back a few centuries the ruling class was usually the class that had control of the land, but since power in modern society is much more complicated, it is hard to accredit social power entirely to the ownership of property. Instead in a capitalist society those who have the greatest wealth or economic status can usually be seen holding seats of power. But this comes back to the question of how wealth is obtained, and in the purest sense, it is through the ownership or property that is either rented or is used to produce a service or good (E.g., mineral mines, oil company, etc.)

This means that economic interest is at the forefront of class status as well as social power. Weber goes onto note that in past time periods, mainly the Middle Ages, economic interest was monopolized causing the gap between the rich and poor to be astronomical. Unlike the present day, there was no fence in the middle for those teetering towards one side or another; it was either poverty or riches. But now people are clinging to that fence and if things continue the way they are going we may find that fence becoming a large wall with a soft air cushion on one side and a jagged punji pit on the other. Weber claims this is the result of the class struggle between the business owner and the worker. Both have conflicting goals and it makes it difficult for both groups to agree on what is suitable for the work environment. This is essentially due to both groups pursuing opposite objectives in the same setting.

Certain organizations have been created to focus the communal effort towards a common goal. The organization of people based on class situation is what Weber believes caused a slow down in industrial production once factory workers began speaking out against poor work conditions and low pay. Trade unions are a good example of this, but it is apparent that class struggles in turn solidify class situations even further. The worker-boss struggle is something that continues to go on, but Weber claims that these struggles may, in fact strengthen a class situation, mainly because that class is forced to act accordingly to their prescribed class situation. However, he feels that does not make a class a community since the assumption that people in similar class situations share similar ideals and beliefs is simplifying a complex situation.

Nevertheless, history has shown that most class struggles are the result of the lower classes protesting the actions of the upper classes. Reason being is because as Weber stated early in Class, Status, Party those who control property in turn have power, and in society those who have the wealth have the property. Weber goes onto mention how the equal distribution of capital to a class as a whole would create a drastically different attitude than the current state where wealth is often unevenly spread out and the attitudes vary by class. More so it seems as if, in a capitalist society, the structure of said society can be seen as a seesaw with a skinny man on one end, a man of average weight on the pivot point and a morbidly obese fellow on the other end. The man on the pivot has no control over any other person on the seesaw, but has the ability to change their own situation if they desire to-the same can be said about those in the middle class. On the end where the skinny man sits his situation is determined solely by the morbidly obese man on the opposite end. It is much more difficult for the skinny man to choose where his end of the seesaw rests, however, the morbidly obese man has total control over his own situation and a good deal of control over the situation of the skinny man.

It is that same crackpot analogy that defines the relationship between the classes. The upper class (or the morbidly obese man) has all the weight or capital to create more control over their overall environment. The lower class (or skinny man) has less capital worth and has to struggle to maintain control of their environment, which is affected greatly by the higher classes. Now the middle class is not affected by the struggle between the lower and upper classes, but must struggle to maintain their odd neutrality. This ability to control one’s environment comes back to Weber’s belief that class is also determined by a person’s opportunities to change their life situation. As seen by the seesaw analogy that ability to control one’s situation varies depending on weight or capital worth.

Moving back towards social honor, which Weber claims is the pursuit of all people, status groups are a way to achieve social honor depending on basic societal conventions. Essentially social groups are communities of people who share similar lifestyles and gather communally to celebrate their chosen style of life. While he contends that people of different classes can mingle together in status groups the possibility of a dock worker going to a gala event at a country club is rare. In most cases a person’s lifestyle is determined by their economic status, but monetary reasons are not the only method of creating a lifestyle.

Ethnic or cultural aspects have a large affect on a person’s lifestyle, which in turn determines what status group they affiliate with. It is ethnic based status groups that often work more on tradition or ritual and in certain circles the exclusion of other groups or people is a commonly practiced tradition. While status groups are communities unlike classes, parties are a much broader form of communities as their limitations are not based solely on economic or ethnic standing. Instead the way to gain access to a party is to share similar ideals. However, a person’s party of choice is often determined by their lifestyle or status and their class situation.

It is no surprise that Weber decided to aptly title his essay, Class, Status, Party because the order in which they are connected to each other is precisely that: Class, Status, Party. A person’s class situation will undoubtedly determine their social status and since social status is tied to lifestyle, which shapes most people’s ideals and convicitions the transition from status to an affiliation to a certain political party is the nature progression. And it is that natural progression, which comes to shape and structure the society as a whole, often cementing the class, status, party formula.