Marx’s great rival in academic debates about class was Max Weber, who defined class not so much in terms of income, but social authority. Weber’s vastly superior analysis held that a given society’s organization of classes was contingent on a specific culture, and that income had far less to do with the rankings than the Marxists thought.13 Priests in seventeenth-century France, for example, may not have been particularly wealthy, but they were certainly more influential than the comparatively prosperous blacksmith guild. Lady Gaga is not influential because she’s rich, she’s rich because
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