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This essay will critically examine Karl Marx’s and Max Weber’s theories of class inequality and prove that Weber’s theory is the most convincing in terms of explanation of social stratification in modern societies.
Even Weberian class theory, although it fails to acknowledge the central role of exploitation in structuring class interests, firmly recognises a certain commonality of material class interests, which it situates in shared “life chances“.
For exploring theories of social stratification by Marx and Weber, I will compare the differences and similarities between the two scholars’ theoretical research in the field of social stratification .
a. The objective definition of social class (in this instance, the individual's relationship to the process of production) and b. The subjective definition of social class (whether or not an individual believes themselves to belong to the class into which they can be objectively allocated).
Weber conceives of "class" in a somewhat Marxian sense of an economic interest group and as a function of the "markets"-not as a social-status group. But his analysis is not Marxian, for he emphasizes economic.
As stated, Weber defines social class as ‘the totality of those class situations within which individual and generational mobility is easy and typical’ (1978: 302).
Marx was concerned with what Weber was to call 'class situation', while his analysis of their occupants led him towards the idea of 'social classes'. Class positions, or class situations, are not defined by mere similarities in life chances or revenues. They are understood as the causal determinants of these phenomena
