social classes

70:8.1The men­tal and phys­i­cal in­equal­ity of hu­man be­ings in­sures that so­cial classes will ap­pear. The only worlds with­out so­cial strata are the most prim­i­tive and the most ad­vanced. A dawn­ing civ­i­liza­tion has not yet be­gun the dif­fer­en­ti­a­tion of so­cial lev­els, while a world set­tled in light and life has largely ef­faced these di­vi­sions of man­kind, which are so char­ac­ter­is­tic of all in­ter­me­di­ate evo­lu­tion­ary stages.

70:8.2As so­ci­ety emerged from sav­agery to bar­barism, its hu­man com­po­nents tended to be­come grouped in classes for the fol­low­ing gen­eral rea­sons:

70:8.31. Nat­u­ral—con­tact, kin­ship, and mar­riage; the first so­cial dis­tinc­tions were based on sex, age, and blood—kin­ship to the chief.

70:8.42. Per­sonal—the rec­og­ni­tion of abil­ity, en­durance, skill, and for­ti­tude; soon fol­lowed by the rec­og­ni­tion of lan­guage mas­tery, knowl­edge, and gen­eral in­tel­li­gence.

70:8.53. Chance—war and em­i­gra­tion re­sulted in the sep­a­rat­ing of hu­man groups. Class evo­lu­tion was pow­er­fully in­flu­enced by con­quest, the re­la­tion of the vic­tor to the van­quished, while slav­ery brought about the first gen­eral di­vi­sion of so­ci­ety into free and bond.

70:8.64. Eco­nomic—rich and poor. Wealth and the pos­ses­sion of slaves was a ge­netic ba­sis for one class of so­ci­ety.

70:8.75. Ge­o­graphic—classes arose con­se­quent upon ur­ban or ru­ral set­tle­ment. City and coun­try have re­spec­tively con­tributed to the dif­fer­en­ti­a­tion of the herder-agri­cul­tur­ist and the trader-in­dus­tri­al­ist, with their di­ver­gent view­points and re­ac­tions.

70:8.86. So­cial—classes have grad­u­ally formed ac­cord­ing to pop­u­lar es­ti­mate of the so­cial worth of dif­fer­ent groups. Among the ear­li­est di­vi­sions of this sort were the de­mar­ca­tions be­tween priest-teach­ers, ruler-war­riors, cap­i­tal­ist-traders, com­mon la­bor­ers, and slaves. The slave could never be­come a cap­i­tal­ist, though some­times the wage earner could elect to join the cap­i­tal­is­tic ranks.

70:8.97. Vo­ca­tional—as vo­ca­tions mul­ti­plied, they tended to es­tab­lish castes and guilds. Work­ers di­vided into three groups: the pro­fes­sional classes, in­clud­ing the med­i­cine men, then the skilled work­ers, fol­lowed by the un­skilled la­bor­ers.

70:8.108. Re­li­gious—the early cult clubs pro­duced their own classes within the clans and tribes, and the piety and mys­ti­cism of the priests have long per­pet­u­ated them as a sep­a­rate so­cial group.

70:8.119. Racial—the pres­ence of two or more races within a given na­tion or ter­ri­to­rial unit usu­ally pro­duces color castes. The orig­i­nal caste sys­tem of In­dia was based on color, as was that of early Egypt.

70:8.1210. Age—youth and ma­tu­rity. Among the tribes the boy re­mained un­der the watch­care of his fa­ther as long as the fa­ther lived, while the girl was left in the care of her mother un­til mar­ried.

70:8.13Flex­i­ble and shift­ing so­cial classes are in­dis­pens­able to an evolv­ing civ­i­liza­tion, but when class be­comes caste, when so­cial lev­els pet­rify, the en­hance­ment of so­cial sta­bil­ity is pur­chased by di­min­ish­ment of per­sonal ini­tia­tive. So­cial caste solves the prob­lem of find­ing one’s place in in­dus­try, but it also sharply cur­tails in­di­vid­ual de­vel­op­ment and vir­tu­ally pre­vents so­cial co-op­er­a­tion.

70:8.14Classes in so­ci­ety, hav­ing nat­u­rally formed, will per­sist un­til man grad­u­ally achieves their evo­lu­tion­ary oblit­er­a­tion through in­tel­li­gent ma­nip­u­la­tion of the bi­o­logic, in­tel­lec­tual, and spir­i­tual re­sources of a pro­gress­ing civ­i­liza­tion, such as:

70:8.151. Bi­o­logic ren­o­va­tion of the racial stocks—the se­lec­tive elim­i­na­tion of in­fe­rior hu­man strains. This will tend to erad­i­cate many mor­tal in­equal­i­ties.

70:8.162. Ed­u­ca­tional train­ing of the in­creased brain power which will arise out of such bi­o­logic im­prove­ment.

70:8.173. Re­li­gious quick­en­ing of the feel­ings of mor­tal kin­ship and broth­er­hood.

70:8.18But these mea­sures can bear their true fruits only in the dis­tant mil­len­ni­ums of the fu­ture, al­though much so­cial im­prove­ment will im­me­di­ately re­sult from the in­tel­li­gent, wise, and pa­tient ma­nip­u­la­tion of these ac­cel­er­a­tion fac­tors of cul­tural prog­ress. Re­li­gion is the mighty lever that lifts civ­i­liza­tion from chaos, but it is pow­er­less apart from the ful­crum of sound and nor­mal mind rest­ing se­curely on sound and nor­mal hered­ity.

99:1.5A god­less hu­man­i­tar­i­an­ism is, hu­manly speak­ing, a no­ble ges­ture, but true re­li­gion is the only power which can last­ingly in­crease the re­spon­sive­ness of one so­cial group to the needs and suf­fer­ings of other groups. In the past, in­sti­tu­tional re­li­gion could re­main pas­sive while the up­per strata of so­ci­ety turned a deaf ear to the suf­fer­ings and op­pres­sion of the help­less lower strata, but in mod­ern times these lower so­cial or­ders are no longer so ab­jectly ig­no­rant nor so po­lit­i­cally help­less.

121:3.54. The free pro­le­tariat. This group had lit­tle or no so­cial stand­ing. Though proud of their free­dom, they were placed at great dis­ad­van­tage be­cause they were forced to com­pete with slave la­bor. The up­per classes re­garded them dis­dain­fully, al­low­ing that they were use­less ex­cept for “breed­ing pur­poses.”

71:1.2The early states were small and were all the re­sult of con­quest. They did not orig­i­nate in vol­un­tary as­so­ci­a­tions. Many were founded by con­quer­ing no­mads, who would swoop down on peace­ful herders or set­tled agri­cul­tur­ists to over­power and en­slave them. Such states, re­sult­ing from con­quest, were, per­force, strat­i­fied; classes were in­ev­i­ta­ble, and class strug­gles have ever been se­lec­tive.

121:1.8Not­with­stand­ing the in­ter­nal peace and su­per­fi­cial pros­per­ity of the Greco-Ro­man world, a ma­jor­ity of the in­hab­i­tants of the em­pire lan­guished in squalor and pov­erty. The small up­per class was rich; a mis­er­able and im­pov­er­ished lower class em­braced the rank and file of hu­man­ity. There was no happy and pros­per­ous mid­dle class in those days; it had just be­gun to make its ap­pear­ance in Ro­man so­ci­ety.

121:3.43. The small mid­dle class. Al­though this group was in­deed small, it was very in­flu­en­tial and pro­vided the moral back­bone of the early Chris­tian church, which en­cour­aged these groups to con­tinue in their var­i­ous crafts and trades. Among the Jews many of the Phar­isees be­longed to this class of trades­men.