Class, Status, and Power

Abstract

Power is the ability to realize one's will in spite of resistance from others. Max Weber argued that three types of social resources – distributed on the basis of class (economic), status (sociocultural), and party (political) – could be employed to exert power. Karl Marx had earlier asserted the primacy of class, defined as a person's relationship to the means of production, but Weber complicated this picture through an analysis of the ways that social, cultural, and political considerations could both deepen and subvert class stratification. The global spread of democracy and capitalism initially increased social mobility and dispersed power more widely, including to groups that lacked economic resources but wielded power derived from prestige or the support of political organizations. In modern societies, however, elites have increasingly been able to parlay their economic advantages into cultural and political influence, renewing the interlocks between these spheres of power.