Breaking down the question
The question has two movements that must be kept distinct yet connected. The first — what is Class? — is definitional and demands conceptual precision, because "class" means something importantly different in Marx and in Weber, and the whole comparison rests on getting the definition right. The second — do you think that Weber's contributions to social stratification are different from that of Marx? — is explicitly comparative and evaluative. The phrase do you think invites a reasoned position, not a neutral summary; the examiner wants a judgement supported by argument.
Notice that the second part widens the frame from class to social stratification as a whole. This matters, because the single most important difference between the two thinkers is that Weber treats class as only one dimension of stratification, alongside status and party, whereas for Marx class is the master category. A candidate who compares only their theories of class, and ignores Weber's multidimensionality, will miss the heart of the question.
Different from should be read carefully. The honest answer is that Weber both departs from Marx and, in important respects, builds on him. The strongest scripts register both the genuine differences and the underlying continuities.
How to approach it
Begin by defining class twice — first in Marx's terms, then in Weber's — so the reader sees immediately that the comparison turns on rival definitions. For Marx, draw on his relational, production-based conception; for Weber, on his market-based conception of class situation as life chances. The major theories of social stratification supply the wider framework within which to place both.
Then structure the comparison around clear axes of difference: the basis of class (production versus market), the number of dimensions (unidimensional versus multidimensional), the question of class consciousness and revolution, and the underlying method and philosophy of history. Introduce Max Weber as offering his famous triad of class, status and party against Marx's dichotomous model.
Close with a balanced verdict: Weber's contribution is genuinely different — pluralist, market-oriented and non-deterministic — yet it is best read as a critical extension of Marx rather than a wholesale rejection. Concede the continuities to show analytical maturity.
Model answer
What is class? In its most general sociological sense, a class is a large aggregate of people who occupy a similar position in the economic order and who therefore share broadly similar life circumstances. But the term carries two distinct meanings in the classical tradition, and the difference between them defines the entire debate.
For Marx, class is a relational and productive category. Classes are defined by their relationship to the means of production. In every mode of production there are those who own the productive resources and those who do not and must sell their labour. Under capitalism this yields two principal classes — the bourgeoisie, who own capital, and the proletariat, who own only their labour power. Class is thus inherently antagonistic: the surplus produced by workers is appropriated by owners, so the interests of the two classes are structurally opposed. Marx further distinguished a class in itself — an objective category sharing the same relation to production — from a class for itself, a class that has achieved consciousness of its shared interest and organised for struggle. Class, for Marx, is the engine of history: "the history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles."
For Weber, class is defined not by production alone but by market situation. A class is a category of people who share similar life chances determined by their power to dispose of goods and skills in the market. Ownership of property matters, but so does the marketability of skills and credentials. Weber therefore recognised a plurality of classes — propertied and propertyless, but also the commercial classes of entrepreneurs and the social classes such as the propertyless intelligentsia and the petty bourgeoisie. Class, for Weber, is an objective category of shared life chances; it need not generate common consciousness or action.
Is Weber's contribution different from Marx's? In my judgement it is genuinely different in several fundamental respects, though the difference is one of critical development rather than flat opposition.
First, the basis of class. Marx grounds class in the relations of production; Weber grounds class situation in the market. This shift lets Weber explain gradations that Marx's binary model handles poorly — for example, the differing rewards of skilled and unskilled labour, or of managers and manual workers, all propertyless yet unequally placed in the market.
Second, and most important, the dimensions of stratification. This is Weber's decisive contribution. Where Marx treated stratification as essentially unidimensional — everything reducible in the last instance to class and hence to economics — Weber argued that stratification is multidimensional. He distinguished three analytically separate orders:
- Class, rooted in the economic order and life chances.
- Status (Stände), rooted in the social order — a matter of honour, prestige and style of life, expressed through consumption and social closure. The Indian caste system is the classic case of stratification by status rather than by class alone.
- Party, rooted in the political order — associations organised to pursue power, from parties to pressure groups.
For Weber these dimensions, though often correlated, can vary independently: a person may be high in one and low in another — the impoverished aristocrat high in status but low in class, the wealthy criminal high in class but low in status. This pluralism is Weber's sharpest departure from Marx.
Third, consciousness and revolution. Marx expected class polarisation and the growth of revolutionary class consciousness leading to the overthrow of capitalism. Weber was sceptical. Class situation need not produce collective class action; status divisions, ethnic and religious loyalties, and the sheer complexity of modern markets fragment rather than unify the propertyless. Weber's analysis of bureaucracy further suggested that modern inequality is reproduced through rational-legal administration, not only through ownership — and that socialism would intensify rather than abolish bureaucratic domination.
Fourth, method and philosophy of history. Beneath these lies a deeper contrast. Marx's method is grounded in historical materialism, with economics as the driving base and a directional theory of historical change. Weber rejected such economic determinism and any single-factor law of history. His pluralism of causes — most famously his argument that religious ideas helped shape capitalism — extends into his account of stratification, which refuses to reduce honour and power to economic position.
The continuities. Yet the differences should not be overstated. Weber accepted much of Marx's framework as a starting point. He too regarded property and its absence as the basic categories of class situation, and he took economic power seriously as a foundation of the social order. His triad supplements the Marxian emphasis on economics rather than denying it; status and party operate alongside, not instead of, class. Weber is best understood as conducting a "debate with the ghost of Marx" — refining, qualifying and pluralising an analysis whose importance he never doubted.
Conclusion. Class, then, is defined by Marx through the relations of production and by Weber through market-determined life chances. Weber's contribution to stratification is genuinely and importantly different: it is market-based rather than production-based, multidimensional rather than unidimensional, and non-deterministic rather than revolutionary in its expectations. But the difference is that of a critical successor, not an opponent from another world. Together the two thinkers frame the entire modern sociology of stratification — Marx supplying the theory of structured economic antagonism, Weber the recognition that honour and power are irreducible to economics alone.
Examiner's perspective
The pivotal discriminator on this question is whether the candidate recognises that the comparison is about stratification, not class alone. Scripts that pit Marx's class theory against Weber's class theory, and stop there, miss Weber's central innovation — the class, status and party triad. Naming and, crucially, illustrating the multidimensional model is where serious marks are won.
Examiners also look for a genuine position in response to "do you think". Sitting on the fence reads as evasion; a clear verdict, defended with reasons, reads as command of the material. The most sophisticated answers hold two things together — that Weber differs sharply (market basis, pluralism, scepticism about revolution) and that he builds on Marx rather than simply refuting him.
Precision of definition at the outset pays throughout. Candidates who cleanly distinguish class in itself from class for itself, and market situation from relations of production, write with an authority that a vaguer script cannot match. A balanced conclusion that credits both thinkers with framing the field rounds off a first-class answer.