Weber’s main ideas

Social Stratification
Max Weber created his own theory of social
stratification, defining social differences through three
components: class, status, and power. Here, class is a
person's economic position based on both birth and
individual achievement.

status is one’s social prestige or honor either

influenced or not influenced by class; and, lastly,
power is the ability for someone to achieve their goals
despite the resistance of others.
Although Weber was influenced strongly by Marx’s
ideas in his theory of social stratification, he
rejected that communism was a possible outcome,
arguing that such a system would require an even
greater level of negative social control and
bureaucratization than capitalism
Weber responded to Marx’s theory of the proletariat by
outlining more class divisions. Weber claimed that there
are four main classes: the upper class, white-collar
workers, petite bourgeoisie, and the manual working
class.

Weber treated the three sources of socioeconomic status:

class, status, and power, as separate but interconnected
sources of power. This view differed from that of Marx,
who saw class as the definitive factor in stratification.
Protestant Ethic & spirit of
Capitalism
In this work, Weber argued that the ethics of
Protestantism were foundational to the genesis of
modern capitalism. Weber observed that many
protestants were involved in business.

He argued that capitalism sees profit as an end in

itself, and the pursuit of it as virtuous. He intended
to find out how exactly this connection between
profit and virtue emerged.
Protestantism, Weber observed, gives the activities that
people conduct in the real world a religious character.
Calvinism in particular believed in predestination, that
God had predetermined who was to be saved and
damned.

Profit and material success came to be seen as signs that

God had predestined the person experiencing them to be
saved. Weber noted that other protestant groups, such as
Pietists, Methodists, and Baptists, shared similar attitudes
Although this protestant ethic created an environment
where profit was seen as virtuous, Weber contended,
capitalism became a belief system in itself, with
people becoming locked into its spirit because of its
usefulness for modern economic activity.
 Weber’s Bureaucracy

Weber (1921) coined the term ‘bureaucracy’ to explain

an organizational and managerial approach to
maintaining order in advanced societies.
 To understand Weber's ideas about bureaucracy, it is
necessary to begin with the framework of his political
sociology in which the concept of bureaucracy finds its
place.

Weber felt that all power requires a belief in its legitimacy if

it is to become stabilized. In Section III of Wirtschaft und
Gesellshaft, accordingly, he set up his famous typology of
the grounds on which a claim to legitimacy may be based.
The first is the legal-rational basis, in which legitimacy rests
on a belief in the legality of the right of those elevated to
authority under such rules to issue commands. . . . Obedience
is owed to the legally established impersonal order.

The second of the possible bases for legitimacy is traditional.

Here legitimacy rests on an "established belief in the sanctity
of immemorial traditions and the legitimacy of the status of
those exercising authority under them.... Obedience is owed to
the person who occupies the traditionally sanctioned position
of authority and who is (within its sphere) bound by tradition.”
The third possible basis for a belief in the legitimacy
of an order is charismatic. Here legitimacy rests on
the devotion to the specific & exceptional sanctity of
an individual person.

Charisma is another key concept in Weber’s

sociological system & one of his best known ideas
Being unstable in the extreme, Charisma must
necessarily transform itself in order to serve as a
durable basis of political order.

The institutionalisation of charisma may proceed in

two ways 1. The hereditary line, in which Charisma
transfers itself from the original person to someone
designated as charismatic leaders successor, typically
a hereditary successor.
2. Charisma may attach itself to the office and not
the person. This acc to Weber leads to a bureaucratic
order on a legal-rational basis.
Thus in Weber's view, bureaucracy may come about by either
of two routes. Either a bureaucracy is built up as the logical
staff of a legal-rational order (with all this implies about
impersonality, rationality, technical competence, etc.), or it
comes about as the result of the institutionalization of
charisma in a bureaucratic direction rather than a hereditary
one. (Helen Constas)