Class, Status, and Party

Fall 2010

Structure of the “Essay”• Economic position

1. Economically Determined Power and the Status Order (119.3)2. Determination of Class Situation by the Market Situation (119.9)

• From structure to action1. Social Action Flowing From Class Interest (121.2)2. Types of Class Struggle (122.1)

• Status, prestige, social honor1. Status Honor (123)2. Ethnic Segregation and Class (124.8)3. Status Privileges (126.2)

• Feedback1. Economic Conditions and Effects of Status Stratification (126.9)

• Organized efforts at changing structural conditions1. Parties (128.4)

Economically Determined Power and the Status Order (119.3)

• The legal 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.

• Classes, status groups, and parties all involve power distribution in society

legal order

economic order

status order

parties

Determination of Class Situation by the Market Situation (119.9)

• "In our terminology, 'classes' are not communities; they merely represent possible, and frequent, bases for social action."

• THUS: Class community/group nd frequent, bases for social action.“

• 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."

• Class situation = how life chances with respect to possession of goods and opportunities for income are related to position in economic system.

Social Action Flowing From Class Interest (121.2)

• Sharing class situation no guarantee of same reaction to events.– cf. Marx on class-in-itself vs. class-for-itself– cf. Durkheim on social facts not including umbrellas in the rain.

• Classes become actors only with recognition of situation arising from 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.

Communal ActionMass Action

Cultural Factors

Types of Class Struggle (122.1)“…the class antagonisms that are conditioned through the market situation are usually the most bitter between those who actually and directly participate as opponents in price wars” (123.4)

• Class struggle most real among actual interactants – (e.g., worker + management) rather than more separated players

(e.g., worker + stockholder) even though latter get the surplus value.

• Agreement in principle with Marx

• Suggests theory of conflict at micro-interaction level

Status Honor (123)

• 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” (123.6).

• Status groups ARE normally communities – often amorphous– members actually do look at one another and think "us."

• What is the main “indicator” of status honor? 1) STYLE OF LIFE. 2) restrictions on social intercourse (124.6); Endogamy.

Weber and Theoretical Work

• Why not just get to the point?• Theory requires careful clearing of the ground

and setting up of the argument• Distinctions and definitions

Ethnic Segregation and Class (124.8)

• Crystallization of status differences into cultural/religious beliefs. – institutionalized or fully socially constructed.

• Group crosses line to “caste” when it become closed cultural group (“individual castes develop quite distinct cults and gods”).

• Most common emergence when a group sees itself or is seen by others as based in “ethnicity” or some version of blood relation.

• Dignity as individual manifestation of social honor. – non-transcendent assessment. “of this world.” – Cf. groups with negative status honor -- sense of dignity in a future,

another life, beyond the here and now. Transcendent belief as source of religiosity.

Status Privileges (126.2)

• Costume, food, carrying arms and other "material monopolies.” Marriage monopolies.

• Status closure ==> legal monopolies on jobs/offices. Positive (only group A does B) or negative (group A not allowed to do B) (126.5) .

• Status groups are bearers of conventions

• Hints of Bourdieu. Clusters of honorific practices associated with social locations.

Economic Conditions and Effects of Status Stratification(126.9)

• At 127.2 Weber suggests that the dimensions are, in fact, orthogonal! Markets care nothing about honor and status hierarchies care little about money.

“The status order would be threatened...if mere economic acquisition...could bestow upon anyone...the same ...honor...”

• “...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.

“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 special styles of life” (127.9).

Parties (128.4)

• “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.

Summary

legal order

economic order

status order

parties

Tax Reform, Financial

Regulation

Gay Marriage, Abortion, Gun Control,

Drug Legalization, Charter Schools