The second Social Strata I have looked at is the Feudal System. Feudalism is the name given to the system of government William I, better known as William the Conqueror introduced to England. William could not rule every part of the country himself - this was physically impossible. Not only was travel difficult and slow in the eleventh century, he was also still Duke of Normandy and had to return to Normandy to maintain his control. Therefore, he had to leave the country for weeks at a time he needed a way of controlling England so that the people remained loyal. To do this he built his own castle - the Tower of London - so that it dominated the city and became his main focal point for England. However, he needed a way of actually governing the country; this was how the Feudal System began.
William divided up England into very large plots of land - similar to our counties today. These were 'given' to those noblemen who had fought bravely for him in battle. William argued that those noblemen ‘who were willing to die in battle for him’ would also be loyal to him. The land was not simply given to these nobles; they had to swear an oath of loyalty to William, and collect taxes in their area for him and they had to provide the king with soldiers if they were told to do so. Moreover no one would opposed this oath because in the eleventh century, a sworn oath on the Bible was a very important thing and one which few men would dare to break as it would condemn them to Hell. The men who got these parcels of land would have been barons, earls and dukes within their own area; they were the most important person there. In the terms of the Feudal System, these men, the barons etc., were known as tenants-in-chief.
The lords had to do their job well as unsuccessful ones could be removed from their position. Their job was simple - keep the English people in their place......under the control of the Normans.
This to me seems very much a Marxist theory in practice, the rich or the most powerful ruling the country (bourgeoisie) and the labour force (the workers) working and paying taxes to the state for no apparent reason other than to keep these people in riches and in power. Thus making the rich, richer and keeping the poor, poor.
Finally, I have looked at modern day Britain and will discuss how we and the government define social class within our society. My viewpoint is that our class system is the feudal system evolved, due to the industrial revolution. Beginning in 1763, when James Watt invented the steam engine. This invention changed the way most produces and commodities were produced. No longer did one man produce one thing at a time; with the steam engine incorporated into the factories one man could work a machine that could do the work of a hundred men. Therefore the factories were now producing much more of their produces, creating surplus stock. This stock could be sold on to others at a profit, thus the beginning of Capitalism.
Many politicians in recent years have claimed that we now live in a classless society; if this is so why does the government have their own way of putting everyone in Britain into a class. The Registrar General’s or as it is now known; the Rose scale divides everyone into a class depending on their occupation. In this scale again we can find Marx’s bourgeoisie at the top of the scale and everything below are workers (proletariat). Top of the scale being higher managerial and professional occupations (Bill Gates). Down to number 8 on the scale to cover those who have never had paid work and the long term unemployed. (Some single parents, people like me).
This scale seems familiar to the caste system, however social mobility is possible within the Rose scale to a certain extent. It is possible to go from position 8 to position 1 on this scale in a lifetime and you would be able to pass this position on to your children but, no matter how much money, power or status you have achieved in your life time you will never become or circulate in the highest league, the aristocrats. This still is a status that you must be born into, you could be flat broke but you would still be an aristocrat, whereas the next person could be a billionaire (Bill Gates, for example) but will never be able to have this status. This seems like the caste system and the feudal system together, classing everybody on their occupation, with the ‘super race’ always in a league of their own.
Although the concept of class has a central importance in Marxist theory, Marx does not define it in a systematic form. Even without his definition of class, one can reconstruct how the term is to be understood in his writings.
In the Communist Manifesto, Marx presents us with a theory of world history as a succession of class struggles for economic and political power. The main classes of pre-capitalist societies are stated as: 'freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guild-master and journeyman'. But the dominant theme of Western society is the conflict between the exploiting bourgeoisie and the exploited proletariat. Which I feel is relevant to the different forms of social stratification that I have discussed and examined in this essay. Thus it is the class structure of early capitalism, and the class struggles of this form of society, which constituted the main reference point for the Marxist theory of history.
The history of 'civilized' society, for Marx, has been the history of different forms of class exploitation and domination. It is the form of class domination present which determines the general character of the whole social structure. For example, the growing of wheat using traditional, non-mechanical techniques is compatible with a wide range of social relations of production. A Roman citizen often owned slaves who worked his land growing wheat; a feudal lord would seize the surplus wheat grown by the serf on the lands; the early capitalist farmers began to employ landless laborers to do their manual work for a wage which was less than the total value of the product which they created. In each case, wheat is grown on land by the labour of men and women, but the social arrangements are totally different. There are totally different class relationships, leading to totally different forms of society: ancient, feudal, and capitalist. The one thing that unites these three arrangements is that in each case a minority class rules and takes the surplus away from the producers. Each society, says Marx, embodies class exploitation based on the relationships of production, or rather, the modes of production. The key to understanding a given society is to discover which the dominant mode of production within it is. The basic pattern of social and political relationships can then be known.
Since Marx concentrates his attention on the class structure of capitalist societies, it is only proper to follow him. As stated before, the key classes in the capitalist mode of production are the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, or capitalists and landless wage labourers. While Marx recognizes that there are other classes, the fundamental class division is between this pairing of the exploiter and the exploited. The bourgeoisie derive their class position from the fact that they own productive wealth. It is not their high income that makes them capitalists, but the fact that they own the means of production; for example, the inputs necessary for production - factories, machines, etc. The ability of workers to work (labour power) is in itself a marketable commodity bought for the least cost to be used at will by the capitalist. In addition, the capitalist owns the product and will always pocket the difference between the value of the labour and the value of the product - referred to by Marx as 'surplus value’. His property rights also allow the capitalist the control of the process of production and the labour he buys. The proletariat in contrast, owns no means of production.
In my conclusion, when I have looked at social strata’s I have found the following; that when talking about the caste system, many people think negatively about the subject... The caste system exists in every country around the world, maybe not like in Asia but in one way or another. The existence of superiority and inferiority due to skin colour, religion, economic status, and social status is seen all over the world. The caste system was not created by some person like a king, but rather it developed out of a practice of a society over several thousands of years.
Even today in modern society this present government is already discussing reinstating sovereignty by placing a previous king back on the throne, if and when the western super powers overthrow the current Afghanistan rule, they may well do what William I, carried out in the eleventh century, by forcing another feudal system into place. In relationship to modern Britain our laws and morals are not too distance from the feudal system. There is still the bourgeoisie and the workers, just the workers with better paid jobs than some others, feel they are bridging the gap of ‘the petty bourgeoisie’.
Has anything changed? I would say not, just the edges have been blurred by years of clever government propaganda, we still follow a sovereignty that was made up by foreigners, French, Germans etc. these people run this country, how many flag waving people in this country actually know who they are waving the flag at? Is there anyone the royal family or the landaus gentry that is actually English? We still have to pay unnecessarily high taxes to the state and for what? To keep the rich in the customs they are used to. Does anybody know how much of our taxes paid to the state actually go back into the community? Thus, most of the population lives in false consciousness unaware of their class or in fact the class the Rose scale puts them in.
