From Max Weber: essays in sociology.

Key takeaways

content: "@MaxWeberEssays2013" -file:@MaxWeberEssays2013

Reading notes

class status party.
Economically determined the power and the social order.

• Power, including economic power, may be valued for its own sake very frequently. The striving for power is also conditioned by the social honour it entails.
• Not all power, however, entails social honour. The typical American boss, as well as the typical big speculator, deliberately relinquishes social honour. Quite generally, mere economic power and especially naked money power is by no means a recognised basis of social honour.
• The legal order is rather an additional factor that enhances the chance to hold power or honour, but it cannot always secure them.
• The way in which social honour is distributed in a community between typical groups participating in this distribution, we may call the social order. However, the social and the economic order are not identical.
• Now classes status groups and parties are phenomena of the distribution of power within a community.
  Determination of class situation by market situation.
• In our terminology classes are not communities. They merely represent possible and frequent bases for communal action.
• They may speak of a class when one 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 position of goods and opportunities for income, and 3 is represented under the conditions of the commodity or labour markets. These points all refer to class situation.
• The way in which the disposition over material property is distributed among plurality of people meeting competitively in the market for the purpose of exchange in itself creates specific life chances.
• According to the law of marginal utility, this mode of distribution excludes the non owners from competing for highly valued goods. It favours the owners and in fact gives to them a monopoly to acquire such goods Other things being equal, this mode of distribution monopolises the opportunities for profitable deals for those who provided with goods do not necessarily have to exchange them.
• Property and lack of property are therefore the basic categories of all class situations.
• Within these categories, however, class situations are further differentiated. On the one hand, according to the kind of property that is usable for returns and on the other hand, according to the kind of services that can be offered in the market.
• Class situation is in this sense ultimately market situation.
• Those men whose fate is not determined by the chance of using goods or services for themselves on the market, EG slaves are not, however, a class in the technical sense of the term. They are rather a status group.
  Communal action flowing from class interest.
• For only then, the contrast of life chances can be felt not as an absolutely given fact to be accepted, but as a reluctant form of either 1 the given distribution of property or 2. The structure of the concrete social order 2. is this class situation of the modern proletariat
  Types of class struggle.
• The existence of a capitalistic enterprise is preconditioned by a specific kind of legal order. Each kind of class situation, and above all, when it rests upon the power of property per se, will become most clearly officious when all other determinants of reciprocal relations are as far as possible, eliminated in their significance. It is in this way that the utilisation of the power of the property in the market obtains its most sovereign importance.
• Now status groups hinder the strict carrying through of the sheer market principle.
  Status honour.
• In contrast to classes, status groups are normally communities. They are, however, often of an amorphous kind. In contrast to the purely economically determined class situation, we wish to designate a status situation. Every typical component of the life fate of men that is determined by a specific positive or negative social estimation of honour.
• This honour may be connected with any quality shared by a plurality. And of course, it can be knit to a class situation. Class distinctions are linked in the most varied ways with class with status distinctions Property as such is not always recognised as a status qualification, but in the long run it is and with extraordinary regularity.
• Both properties and property less people can belong to the same status group.
  Guarantees of status stratification.
• In content status honour is normally expressed by the fact that above all else, specific style of life can be expected from all those who wish to belong to the circle. Linked with this expectation are restrictions on social intercourse, that is intercourse, which is not subservient to economic or any other. Of businesses functional purposes.
• Above all, this differentiation evolves in such a way as to make for strict submission to the fashion that is dominant at a given time in society.
• The development of status is essentially a question of stratification resting upon usurption.
  Ethnic segregation and caste.
• But the consequences have been realised to their full extent. The status group evolves into a closed cast status. distinctions are then guaranteed not merely by conventions and laws, but also by rituals. Individual casts develop quite distinct cults and courts.
• In general, however, the status structure reaches such extreme consequences only where there are underlying differences which are held to be ethnic.
• These people form communities, acquire specific occupational traditions of handicrafts or other arts, and cultivate a belief in their ethnic community.
• The Jews are the most impressive historical example.
• The status segregation grown into a cast differs in its structure from a mere ethnic segregation. The cast structure transforms the horizontal and unconnected coexistencies of ethnically segregated groups into a vertical social system of super and subordination.
• Ethnic coexistencies condition a mutual repulsion and disdain, but allow each ethnic community to consider its own honour as the highest one. The cast structure brings about a social subordination and an acknowledgement of more honour in favour of the privileged caste and status groups.
• The sense of dignity that characterises positively privileged status groups is naturally related to their being, which does not transcend itself. That is, it is not to their beauty and excellence.
• The chosen pupil's dignity is nurtured by a belief, either that in the beyond the last will be the first, or that in this life, a messiah will appear to bring forth into the light of the world which has casten out of the hidden honour of the pariah people.
  Status privileges.
• Full practise practical purposes stratification by status goes hand in hand with a monopolisation of ideal and material goods or opportunities in a manner we have come to know as typical.
• Of course, material monopolies provide the most effective motives for the exclusiveness of a status group.
• Within a stated circle, there is the question of intermarriage, the interests of the families in the monopolisation of potential bridegrooms is at least of equal importance and is parallel to the interest in the monopolisation of daughters.
• Certain goods become objects for monopolisation by status groups. In the typical fashion, these include entailed estates and frequently also the possessions of serfs or bondsmen. And finally, special trades.
• Quite generally, among privileged status groups, there is a status disqualification that operates against the performance of common physical labour.
• Artistic and literary activity is also considers degrading work as soon as this is exploited for income, or at least when it is connected with hard physical exertion.
  Economic conditions and effects of status stratification.
• If mere economic acquisition and naked economic power still bearing the stigma of its extra status origin, but stow upon anyone who has won it the same honour as those who are interested in status by virtual style of life, claim for themselves, the status of order would be threatened as its very root.
• The hindrance of the free development of the market occurs first for those goods which status groups directly withhold from free exchange by monopolisation.
• With some oversimplification, one might thus say that class is a stratified according to their relations to the production and acquisition of goods, whereas status groups are stratified according to the principles of the consumption of goods as represented by special styles of life.
• An occupational group is also a status group @Chan2004 for normally it successfully claims social honour only by virtue of the special sterile of life, which may be determined by it The differences between classes and status groups frequently overlap. It is precisely those stated communities most strictly segregated in terms of Honour for example. the Indian casts who today show, although within very rigid limits, are relatively high degree of indifference to pecuniary income.
  Parties.
• Parties live in a house of power. Their action is oriented toward the acquisition of social power. That is to say, toward influencing a communal action, no matter what its content may be. In principle, parties may exist in a social club as well as in a state.