Max Weber on Stratification and Charisma

Class, Status, and Power

"Now: 'classes,' status groups,' and 'parties' are phenomena of the distribution of power within a community."

"In our terminology, 'classes' are not communities; they merely represent possible, and frequent, bases for communal action. We may speak of a 'class' 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 eocnomic interests in the possession of goods and opportunities for income, and (3) is represented under the conditions of the commodity or labor markets....It is the most elemental economic fact that the way in which the disposition over material property is distributed among a plurality of people, meeting competitively in the market for the purpose of exchange, in itself creates specific life chances....'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, according to the kind of services that can be offered in the market."

"In contrast to classes, status groups are normally communities....we wish to designate as 'status situation' every typical component of the life fate of men that is determined by a specific, positive or negative, social estimation of honor....But status honor need not necessarily be linked with a 'class situation.' On the contrary, it normally stands in sharp opposition to the pretensions of sheer property."

"Whereas the genuine place of 'classes' is within the economic order, the place of 'status groups' is within the social order...From within these spheres, classes and status groups influence one another and they influence the legal order and are in turn influenced by it. But 'parties' live in a house of 'power.' Their action is oriented towards 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.'"

"In any individual case, parties may represent interests determined through 'class situation' or 'status situation,' and they may recruit their following respectively from one or the other. But they need be neither purely 'class' nor purely 'status' parties. In most cases they are partly class parties and partly status parties, but sometimes they are neither. They may represent ephemeral or enduring structures. Their means of attaining power may be quite varied, ranging from naked violence of any sort to convassing for votes with coarse or subtle means: money, social influence, the force of speech, suggestion, clumsy hoax, and so on to the rougher or more artful tactics of obstruction in parliamentary bodies."

from Max Weber, "Class, Status and Power," in H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills, From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology, Oxfor University Press, 1958

Charisma

"In contrast with all forms of bureaucratic administrative system, the charismatic structure recognises no forms or orderly procedures for appointment or dismissal, no 'career', no 'advancement', no 'salary'' there is no organised training either for the bearer of charisma or his aides, no arrangements for supervision or appeal, no allocation of local areas of control or exclusive spheres of competence, and finally no standing institutions comparable to bureaucratic 'governing bodies' ilndependent of persons and of their purely personal charisma. Rather, charisma recognises only those stipulations and limitations which come from within itself. The bearer of charisma assumes the tasks appropriate to him and requires obedience and a following in virtue of his mission. His success depends on whether he finds them."

"The continued existence of charismatic authority, is, by its very nature, characteristically unstable: the bearer may lose his charisma...".

"The power of charisma... depends on beliefs in revelation and heroism, on emotional convictions about the importance and value of a religious, ethical, artistic, scientific, political or other manifestation, on heroism, whether ascetic or military, or judicial wisdom or magical or other favours. Such belief revolutionises men 'from within' and seeks to shape things and organisations in accordance with its revolutionary will."

"Charisma, in its highest forms, bursts the bonds of rules and tradition in general and overturns all ideas of the sacred...It is in this purely empirical and value-free sense the characteristically 'creative' revoluitionary force in history."

"All charisma, however, in every hour of its existence finds itself on this road, from a passionate life in which there is no place for the economic to slow suffocation under the weight of material interests, and with every hour of its existence it moves further along it..."

from Max Weber, "The Nature of Charismatic Domination" in H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills, From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology, Oxfor University Press, 1958