Weber not only clearly distinguishes between economic structure, status system and political power, he also finds interconnections , between these three in the form of the system of social stratification. ‘Class’ is an economic phenomenon, a product of the ‘market situation’ which implies competition among different classes such as buyers and sellers. ‘Status’ is recognition of ‘honour’. People are distributed among different classes, so are status groups based on distribution of honour which is identified in terms of a range of symbols in a given society. Though analytically, classes and status groups are independent phenomena, they are significantly related to each other depending upon the nature and formation of a given society at a given point of time.

The word ‘party’ implies a house of power, and power is the keynote of Weberian theory of stratification. Power may be for the sake of power or it may be economically determined in power. And the economically determined power is not always identical with the social or the legal power. Economic power may be a consequence of power existing on other groups. Striving for power is not always for economic well-being. As we have mentioned it may be for the sake of power or for social honour. All power does not provide social honour, and power is not the only source of social honour.

Another aspect of class that Weber stressed on was ''life-chances''. This term related to the opportunities an individual got during the various stages of his or her life. An individual born in a worker''s family receives a particular type of education, which in turn equips him or her for specific jobs. The education will not be as expensive & intense as the education of a child in an upper-class family. The employment opportunities for both are different. Their different family backgrounds also make them part of different classes. The same pattern can be seen in social interaction and marriage. A person from a working-class background will interact mostly with other members of his or her class whereas a person from the upper-middle class will have acquaintances mainly from his class. Thus, Weber found that life-chances was an important aspect of class formation.

Weber presented the categorization of society in four ways: -

1. The propertied upper class– They were the upper-class people who had an immense amount of property which was their way of collecting revenues from tenants. For example, the landlords collected revenue from the tenants when they gave a portion of their land to them.
2. The propertyless white-collar workers-They were the skilled labours who sat behind the tables to earn a proper salary. Mostly middle-class people were seen doing the white collar jobs. Comparing with the present situation, workers working in MNC’s or power plants can be termed as white collar seeking employees.
3. The petty bourgeoisie– They were belonging to lower class people. Marx was in the favour of highlighting their declining position in the society.
4. The manual working class– They can be called as the lower class medium also popularly known as blue collar jobs at that time. They had to do work manually and were paid less than the necessity.

Criticism

• It is argued that the models of class structure presented so far are incomplete. Class models based on ownership (Marx) and those on personal marketability (Weber) tend not be effectively combined. Another area of distinct concern has arisen in recent class theory, that of control. This has focused particularly on the rise of white-collar management. W.G. Runciman has developed an ambitious class scheme to integrate differences of ownership, marketability and control in a single model of class.
• His unifying concept is that of economic role which he considers to be the basis of class. Assessing the power of economic roles, Runciman constructs a seven-part class model: upper class, upper-middle class, middle-middle class, lower-middle class, skilled working class, unskilled working class and underclass. Runciman’s analysis of class in terms of economic power combines elements of neo-Marxist and neo-Weberian analyses.
• Contemporary sociologists have also debated the political conse­quences of the new system of social stratification ushered in by industrialism and information technology. Gerhard Lenski (Power and Privilege, 1966) maintains that “the appearance of mature indus­trial societies marks the first significant reversal in the age-old evolutionary trend toward ever increasing inequality”. Other writers—most notably F. Hunter and C.W. Mills—contend that indus­trial societies have produced a new type of power elite, who controls the destiny of modern nations such as America.

Marx vs. Weber

Marxian perspective about social stratification revolves round the concept of social classes. No theorist stressed the signifi­cance of class for society and for social change more strongly than Karl Marx. Marx viewed class differentiation as the crucial determinant of social, economic and political inequality. According to Marx, there is always a dominant and a subordinate class—a ruling class and a subject class. Karl Marx’s views were based his theory of historical materialism. He viewed social stratification from the historical perspective. The changes in stratification in human society were based on the changing nature of production. Classes formed the basis of the system of stratification. As the production relations changed the nature of stratification also changed. New classes were formed replacing the old ones. this also resulted in new relations between classes. Hence for Marx classes and stratification were similar. stressed on the role of class-consciousness as an important instrument for realizing class objectives.

Max Weber stressed on the formation of classes. The basis of the class was similar to what Man said but he also stressed that there were four classes instead of two Weber''s differences with Mm did not end there. He tried to show the inadequacy of class analysis as the main means of explaining social stratification. He asserted that status was more important than class. His contention was that people were not as class-conscious as they were status conscious. Hence, he felt that status was a better measure of social stratification, even though class was an objective category