Under the conditions of mass suffrage, the leadership of the few rests on mass mobilization, and this in turn requires an effective party apparatus#
Direct democracy, however, is inherently unstable, and wherever there is economic differentiation in the group, domination tends to fall ,into the hands of those who have the economic requisites for performing administrative and political tasks. This is, first of all, a matter of “economic availability,” not necessarily of high status; thus, managers of large-scale enterprises. teachers and medical doctors are less available than lawyers, country squires and urban rentiers.#
Class interests as well as status interests may be represented by parties. In contrast to classes and status groups [however], parties are always purpose-rational associations, since their goal is the acquisition of power in larger associations.#
Classes are part of the economic order, status groups, of the social order; put in another way, classes are rooted in the sphere of production and acquisition, status groups in the realm of consumption.#
In early history the market was the only peaceful relationship of men who were not linked through household, kinship or tribal ties.#
[Weber] related want satisfaction primarily to modes of appropriation and expropriation, not to modes of production… Weber saw the Marxist concept of the mode of production blurring the technological and economic aspects.#