ABSTRACT

'Status groups' hinder the strict carrying through of the sheer market principle. In principle, parties may exist in a social 'club' as well as in a 'state.' Whereas the genuine place of 'classes' is within the economic order, the place of 'status groups' is within the social order, that is, within the sphere of the distribution of 'honor.' As to the general economic conditions making for the predominance of stratification by 'status,' only very little can be said. The degree in which 'communal action' and possibly 'societal action,' emerges from the 'mass actions' of the members of a class is linked to general cultural conditions, especially to those of an intellectual sort. In contrast to the purely economically determined 'class situation' the reader wish to designate as 'status situation' every typical component of the life fate of men that is determined by a specific, positive or negative, social estimation of honor.