1. Is Weber’s sociology antagonistic to the Marxian approach or is it a continuer of it?
Weber’s main theme is also the problem of capitalism, the same as Marx’s central concern.

2. Marx was primarily concerned with the economic laws of capitalism and with its crises and future collapse.
Weber is more concerned with the background of capitalism, the puzzle of how it came into existence in the first place.

3. He approached this not by looking for a sequence of stages, but by a global comparison:
Why did modern capitalism emerge in Western Europe rather than in China, India, etc?
What forces fostered or hindered economy in various societies?

4. Weber an idealist in opposition to the materialism of Marx?
Defender of the role of ideas in history?
Marx: religion as an idea reflecting economic classes
Weber: The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1904): capitalism was produced not by economic forces but by the influence of religious ideas

5. rationalization
He was concerned with the rationalization of institutions: he described modern capitalism as the rationalized economy, bureaucracy as the rationalized organization, modern state as based on the formal procedures and rules of rational,legal authority.

6. Verstehen: Basic method of the human sciences should be “understanding
Verstehen: Basic method of the human sciences should be “understanding.” One could not explain social processes by abstract laws, but must get inside the subjective viewpoint of the actor, and see the world as s/he sees it, in order to capture their motivation.

7. He saw the world as multi-dimensional: striving hard to be neither a one-sided idealist nor a materialist.
This made him a conflict theorist: Conflict is not just one more factor among others; it is an expression of the multidimensionality of things, the plurality of different groups, interests and perspectives.

8. The world does not hold together as one great unity
The world does not hold together as one great unity. Though there is consensus and solidarity inside some components of society, the whole thing is a mixture of conflicting parts.
There are multiple spheres, but also there is struggle for domination going on inside each one.
Politics is a realm of struggle: both among contending political interests and between the politicians and economic classes.

9. History: multi-sided process of conflict on many fronts.
Against simplified notions of evolutionary stages.
So, did he really think rationalization was the “master trend” of history?

10. Sociology has the task of showing elements out of which history is made. For this purpose he created ideal types: abstract models of bureaucracy, class, etc, keeping in mind that several different ideal types would have to be applied at once to capture the various sides of things.

11. Three dimensional model of stratification: Class, status and party
They are all like interest groups that can fight both among themselves and against each other.
Class: Marx’s class defined by ownership (or lack of it) of the means of production. Weber’s classes are defined by their position on a market (struggle to control a place on market): economic circulation rather than economic production.
Dominant classes manage to achieve a monopoly on lucrative market.

12. Status groups: Opposite of economic class stratification?
Status groups in the realm of culture.
People with a common life style and viewpoint of the world.
Ethnic groups, races, religious groups, urban neighborhoods? Denying class or cutting across class boundaries?
Connection between class and status groups?
Classes should be organized as a status group?
The ideological and cultural aspect of classes?
Status groups are not non-economic: their lifestyles depend on their economic sources.

13. Dominant group organized as a status group: idealizes itself not because of its wealth but because of its greater nobility, honor, politeness, artistic taste, etc.
Makes it easier to monopolize economic positions: Outsiders are excluded because only people who seem the “right kind” are allowed into preferred positions.
Education creating status groups?
Economic struggle more multisided than Marx has shown.

14. Parties: struggle among political factions: politicians have their own interests, not reducible to the struggles of economic classes or status groups.
Weapons of the state: military, police, legitimacy.
A successful state makes most people within its borders feel they are members of a single status groups, the nation.
Legitimacy: Hereditary, charisma, rational-legal.

15. distinctions between the classical Marxist and Weberian theories of class. (1) Marx conceptualizes class as an objective structure of social positions, whereas Weber’s analysis of class is constructed in the form of a theory of social action.

16. 2) Marx holds to a unidimensional conception of social stratification and cleavage, with class relations being paramount, whereas Weber holds to a multidimensional view in which class relations intersect with and are often outweighed by other (nonclass) bases of association, notably status and party.

17. (3) In Marx’s theory, the essential logic of class relations and class conflict is one of exploitation, where political and ideological domination are interpreted as merely the means by which exploitation is secured, whereas for Weber domination is conceived as an end in itself, with its own independent force and logic.

18. 4) For Marx, classes are an expression of the social relations of production, whereas Weber conceptualizes classes as common positions within the market

19. One of the most fundamental differences between classical Marxist and Weberian theory is the different importance they assign to human agency in the explanation of social phenomena. In the analysis of social class, Marxist theory places much greater causal weight on the functioning of objective structures (mode of production) that constrain human behavior in predictable channels.

20. Weberian theory assigns a much greater causal importance to human agency:classes are not the effect of an objective structure, such as the mode of production, but an outcome of the motivated behavior of knowledgeable human actors.
Marxism reduces human actors to the passive “bearers” of social relations, lacking any knowledge or intentionality. This is problematic for a theory, such as Marxism, that also purports to be a guide to political action.

21. A second difference between the classical Marxist and Weberian theories of class concerns the relative importance of class as compared with other forms of oppression or other bases of association and struggle. For Marx class is the single most important division around which social groups organize and contend for political power. Class struggle is therefore the primary vehicle of social change.

22. For Weber, the importance of class divisions is historically variable and contingent. Class relations coexist with other forms of oppression and other bases of association that are independent of class and potentially no less important for the organization of particular societies or the transition between types of society.

23. “now that racial, ethnic, and religious conflicts have moved toward the centre of the political stage in many industrial societies, any general model of class or stratification that does not fully incorporate this fact must forfeit all credibility”

24. A third difference between classical Marxist and Weberian theory concerns the relationship between exploitation and domination, or more generally between economic relations and political/ideological relations.

25. For Marx, relations of political and ideological domination are secondary in the sense that they arise either as a means of securing the conditions for exploitation (as in the laws that guarantee the rights of private property), as a means of realizing or intensifying the degree of exploitation (as in the various forms of capitalist domination over workers at the point of production).

26. or as a means of stabilizing and reproducing the relations of exploitation (as in the powers that capitalists exercise through the state, the media, etc.).
For Weber, relations of domination are in no sense subordinate to the goal of exploitation. Individuals sometimes seek dominance over others as a way of exploiting their labor, but they also pursue it for the social prestige it entails .

27. In Weber’s writings different forms of authority (traditional, charismatic, rational legal) are more important in defining the nature of societies than any typology based on forms of exploitation. Economic conflicts between classes are seen by Weber as merely one instance of the more general phenomenon of political struggles between dominant (privileged) and subordinate (disprivileged) collectivities. exploitation as subspecies of domination.

28. Fact-value dichotomy
Weber thought that "statements of fact are one thing, statements of value another, and any confusing of the two is impermissible.“
Did Weber believe that, even though facts are one thing and values another, social and economic facts could be evaluated without the analysis being influenced by values?

29. Did he believe that values could not be justified "scientifically," that is, through value-free analysis?
Thus, in comparing different religious, political or social systems, one system could not be chosen over another without taking a value or end into consideration; the choice would necessarily be dictated by the analyst's values.

30. 1. Presupposition and Social Science To begin with the methodological arguments, this study takes Weber's following claim:
“No science is absolutely free from presuppositions, and no science can prove its fundamental value to the man who rejects these presuppositions”

31. The presupposition cannot be proved by scientific means; it can "only be interpreted with reference to its ultimate position toward life, which we must reject or accept according to our ultimate position towards life". The presupposition is a belief or conviction. There is no room to prove its universal validity. There is no objectively valid methodology as such.

32. On what presuppositions, beliefs, and value-ideas the analysis is based is the very issue of methodology. The presupposition of a method cannot be value-neutral. Every methodology presupposes the significance and meaning of certain value-ideas, that is, the value-judged purposes and goals.

33. Rationalization: 3 separations:
Disenchantment (this world vs other world);
defamilization (kinship vs economy),
bureaucratization (kinship vs political system)
Ideal type: a model, simplification of reality
Thought tools, no perfect form; makes comparison possible

34. No direct, causal relation between a certain religious (Protestant) ethic and capitalism
there is an elective affinity: encouraging something without forcing it
Protestantism: not caused capitalism, but protected it:
metaphor of cradle of capitalism: the religious ethic provided a cradle for this new social formation to be born into, to provide protection