ABSTRACT
Concern with social class and social stratification is as old as social thought. The Enlightenment served to erase the assumptions about hierarchy, class, and intergroup relationships that stemmed from the medieval model of an organic Christian civilization. Karl Marx made class the central aspect of his analysis of society and of his theory of social change. Marxist sociology starts from the premise that the primary function of social organization is the satisfaction of basic human needs— food, clothing, and shelter. Hence, the productive system is the nucleus around which other elements of society are organized. While Marx placed almost exclusive emphasis on economic factors as determinants of social class, Maximilian Karl Emil Weber suggested that economic interests should be seen as a special case of the larger category of "values," which included many things that are neither economic nor interests in the ordinary sense of the term.
