Webers (1947) "status-group" theory of society was partially introduced as a revision of Karl Marxs "class-conflict" theory. Both began with the idea of a stratified society. This idea reflects their observation that in most societies, there exists a few wealthy individuals who own or control most of the communitys productive capacity. Status and power increase as one controls more and more of this capacity. Typically, the superior resources of the rich translate into political power, which establishes the material basis for elite domination. Weber differs from Marx in that he views status as an attribute of education, occupation and income. By bettering ones education or by changing ones occupation, Weber presumes an individual may alter, or "better," his or her social status.
However, Weber was more interested in domination, particularly those kinds that had become socially accepted or legitimate, which were typically manifested in the operations of the state or in bureaucratic organizations (Fry, 1989: 39). Webers studies led him to construct a typology of domination from an historic interpretation of those authorities and powers that had become legitimate. Although he admitted these types are rarely found in "pure" form, he distinguished three the charismatic, traditional, and rational-legal. In each of the three types, the person exercising authority is thought to have the right to issue commands and the right to be obeyed but the right arises from different grounds. The names that Weber provides for each of these three types generally indicates the grounds for authority (Weber, 1947: chap. 3).
Although the grounds for authority differs for each type, each type provides a similar legitimizing process for the ruler. Thus, while Weber acknowledges that domination still amounts to domination he argues that some forms of domination are preferable to others, in that they may allow one to "move up the ladder." By highlighting the capacity for upward mobility as something of a "solvent for discontent" among those being ruled, Weber made domination more palatable than had Marx. According to Gareth Morgan (1986):
The rulers ability to effectively utilize one or another of these kinds of authority depended on his or her ability to find support or legitimation in the ideologies or beliefs of those being ruled (Morgan, 1986: 276).
Mary Douglas (1986) makes a similar observation about the relationship between rulers and those who are ruled:
There needs to be an analogy by which the formal structure of a crucial set of social relations is found in the physical world, or in the supernatural world, or in eternity, anywhere, so long as it is not seen as a socially contrived arrangement. When the analogy is applied back and forth from one set of social relations to another and from these back to nature, its recurring formal structure becomes easily recognized and endowed with self-validating truth (Douglas, 1986: 48).
Once the political system is legitimized, politics may be used, according to theory, to legitimize or garner acceptability for bureaucracies, free markets, elite power networks, or some other type of social-control system (Stone, 1989: 222). In any case, the costs associated with the legitimation process, are what Clarence Stone refers to as the "costs of compliance" (Stone, 1989). And, to the extent these costs are implicit in Webers social theory, they are, similarly, revealed as central issues within the community power paradigm.
Author: Steven A. Maclin, Ph. D.
About the Author: Dr. Maclin has been a university professor since 1994, but from 1998 - 2004, he lived and worked with American military troops in Japan, Okinawa, and South Korea. He has previously edited and published dozens of articles in professional administrative journals and recently, in his ‘spare time,’ he’s been building websites for distributing materials to his graduate students. Hes now stateside, teaching graduate students online, writing articles and developing a small online business (see
http://buyfromart.com); he can be reached at info@buyfromart.com.