Page 58 - DSOC202_SOCIAL_STRATIFICATION_ENGLISH

Unit 4: Theories of Social Stratification-II

4.3 Theoretical Formulations of Max Weber Notes

The Shaping of Max Weber as a Scholar

Max Weber was born on April 21, 1864, in Germany. Like Karl Marx, Weber was also the founding
fathers of social sciences, particularly of sociology, in Germany and Europe. His father was a
textile manufacturer, a lawyer, and a parliamentarian. His mother was a woman of culture and
pity having humanitarian and religious values, which were not liked by his father. Weber had
education in law and legal history. In his doctoral thesis A Contribution to the History of Medieval
Business Organizations (1889), Weber studied the cost, risk or profit of an enterprise. After this, he
started training at the German bench/or bar. At this point of time, he got acquainted with the
social and political problems of agrarian society. He joined as an instructor in law at the University
of Berlin. Weber also studied social, political and economic developments of Roman society.
Being a full-time lecturer, consultant to government agencies, and researcher, Weber carried a
heavy load of work. In 1894, he became full professor of economics at Freiburg University, and in
1896, accepted a position at the University of Hiedelburg. At the age of 33 years, Weber fell ill and
was forced to suspend his regular academic work. For four years he suffered from an acute state
of exhaustion and anxiety. During this personal turmoil, for which his family ambience was
largely responsible, he spent time in Rome. Weber was an omnivorous reader. He had interest in
history, religious organizations and economic activities. In 1901, Weber resumed his academic
work, but he could not have the earlier vigour and zeal. Till his death in 1920, at the age of fifty-
six, Weber accepted several part-time and full-time responsibilities.
Weber’s extraordinary scholarship and family life are a strange mix. Withdrawal and forceful
participation had become inseparable parts of his life. His life was full of contradictions, partly
because of a liberal, middle-class family background, and in that conflicting values of his father
and mother. Weber saw the decline of liberalism in an emerging power state and the threat to the
individual in the bureaucratization of modern society. He became convinced that one could achieve
one’s goals only by power politics.
Weber belonged to a generation of universal scholars. The intellectual traditions and the
accumulated scholarship of Germany, especially in history, the classics, psychology, theology,
comparative literature, philology and philosophy, provided Weber a great incentive to establish
his own scholarship. Weber argued against historical materialism unlike Marx. He called himself
an “economic nationalist”. We are, however, concerned here with Weber’s intellectual orientations.
Weber has published extensively on economy and society, capitalism, religion, formal organizations
and bureaucracy, law, methodology of social sciences, power and leadership, typology of human
action, etc.
Since Weber was born after Marx, he had advantage of reacting to the Marxist ideas and
conceptualizations. He tried to “round out” Marx’s economic materialism by a political and military
materialism. “Weber looks for the disposition over wapons and over means of administration.”
He makes a clear and rational distinction between economic, social and political orders of society,
and considers power as a key to all the domains of society.
Weber makes out a clear distinction between class, status and power. Power is the key to the
Weberian theory of social stratification. Class is an economic category, a product of the “market
situation”. Status is determined by “honour”. “Status groups” constitute the social order based on
honour. The way in which “status honour” is distributed is important in the understanding of
social stratification. Weber makes it clear that classes and status groups are not necessarily
independent phenomena. His theory of “class, status and party” corresponds with the three orders
in society, namely, economic, social and political. However, the three orders are not identical or
independent, one can be influenced by the other. Thus, striving for power is not always for
economic prosperity. It may be for its own sake or for social honour. All power does not provide

LOVELY PROFESSIONAL UNIVERSITY 53