I'm currently on a binge of reading biblical era history and research. One of the books I just started is John Dominic Crossan's The Historical Jesus - The Life of a Mediterranean Jewish Peasant in which Crossan begins by setting the table of mediterranean peasant life during the time period.
In doing so, in chapter 3, Slave and Patron, he talks about research of sociologist Gerhard Lenski in his book Power and Privilege: A Theory of Social Stratification (PDF preview). I've not read the book so what I am going to be quoting below is Crossan's take on Lenski.
What struck me in reading these few pages is the striking resemblance to where we appear to be heading in our devolution of the middle class of our capitalist-industrial society. I also now know the proper name for my role in this society as a surviving member of the middle class...
Retainer
In attempting to describe stratification in the agrarian Roman society Crossan quotes Lenski..
"One fact," concludes Lenski, "impresses itself on almost any observer of agrarian societies, especially on one who views them in a broadly comparative perspective. This is the fact of marked social inequality. Without exception, one finds pronounced differences in power, privilege, and honor associated with mature agrarian economies. These differences surpass those found in even the most stratified horticultural societies of Africa and the New World, and far exceed those found in simple horticultural or hunting and gathering socities."
Lenski wrote in 1966 when the capitalist middle class was at perhaps its strongest. It probably made no sense whatsoever to consider comparison with modern economies and class structures.
Crossan follows up by saying...
Agrarian societies have, according to Lenski's view, nine classes but with an abysmal gulf separating the five upper from the four lower ones. The Ruler was really a separate class because "all agrarian rulers enjoyed significant proprietary rights in virtually all of the land in their domains." Next, was the Governing Class, which averaged out around one percent of the population, but "on the basis of available data, it appears that the governing classes of agrarian societies probably received at least a quarter of the national income of most agrarian states, and that the governing class and ruler together usually received not less than half."
It was at this point that I started thinking about the comparison to our own times of economic inequalilty and
"pronounced differences in power, privilege, and honor."
The governing class, or top 1%, received at least a quarter of the national income. In 2007 the top 1% in the US received 23.5% of national income. Kinda grabs your attention.
We don't have an individual ruler to claim a quarter of the income by himself (Yay democracy!) but in 2010 the top quintile, or 20%, claimed just a hair over 50% of the income in this country.
The Retainer Class averaged out around 5 percent of the population and ranged from scribes and bureaucrats to soldiers and generals, but all united in "service to the political elite...."
I work in a technology field for a large international namebrand financial services company. In a discussion with my colleagues a few years ago I struggled with the proper term for describing our positions. This was during the great recession of the Bush years and lots of layoffs were happening. Lamenting our position we all acknowledged that we are all well paid and privileged to be in the middle class in America but that there is a huge... HUGE... gulf between us and the executives in our company... the 1% of the
governing class. We are all much closer to the unemployed and welfare recipients then we are to our corporate masters. We serve them. We are part of the corporate machine. We are in "service to the [corporate] elite."
... but all united in "service to the political elite," for whom they were absolutely indispensible as groups and totally expendable as individuals.
Oh boy. Where to start. I am lucky in that the work I do is highly specialized... and indispensible. Lots of tech jobs have come and gone over the years and lots get outsourced and off-shored. While not completely safe, mine is one of the least likely to go away. But the company is currently moving massive numbers of jobs out of the expensive northeast to a less expensive southern state. They'll save on real estate and payroll. The jobs are moving. The people are not necessarily. If you would like to apply for the job you currently hold once it arrives in the south you are welcome to apply for it... along with everyone else in the world. If you are offered the job it will be at the new payscale for the new location which will likely be far below your current income. The number I've heard is that they only expect to
retain about 10% of the current workforce whose jobs are moving.
Individuals, even lifetime employees, of which there are huge numbers in this company, are expendable. The job functions are not.
He doesn't approximate what percentage of the income the retainers claim as a class but I'm guessing that our equivalent of their ruler, governing class and retainers are the top quintile of todays society which, as noted above, took in 50.2% of the income in 2010.
Now, the comparison is obviously not exact and differs in important and significant ways, lack of a "Ruler" being one and the role of religion being another...
The Priestly Class, "last but not least among the privileged elements in agrarian societies," owned, for example, 15 percent of the land of Egypt in the twelfth century B.C.E. and 15 percent of the land of France in the eighteenth century C.E. At some times, in some places, and with some religions more than others, "the priestly class tended to function as the preserver of ancient Redistributive Ethic of primitive societies, where the accumulation of goods in private hands had served as a form of communal insurance rather than as private property."
Part of studying the times is studying Judaism and early Christianity. Despite any modern claims otherwise, these religions were part of the "some religions more than others." The admonition to take care of the widow and orphan and other disadvantaged was one of the primary ethical teachings and actions of both.
On the other side of the great divide was, above all, the Peasant Class, the vast majority of the population. Put abstractly: "the burden of supporting the state and the privileged classes fell on the shoulders of the common people, and especially on the peasant farmers who constituted the substantial majority of the population." Put concretely: "in the sixteenth century, Toyotomi Hideyoshi, the then effective ruler of Japan, abolished all taxes except the land tax, which he then set at two-thirds of the total crop. This is probably the best indication we have of the total take of the political elite" in the average agrarian state. Put bluntly and brutally: "the great majority of the political elite sought to use the energies of the peasantry to the full, while depriving them of all but the basic necessities of life."
Ouch. We do not live in a primarily agrarian society and so the role of the peasant farmer does not exist for us anymore. But the equivalent of the elite 1% using the labor of the vast majority of the society for their own benefit remains even if not so clearly definable. The tax example serves well for the efforts at "tax reform" in our own day as we see strong and generally successful efforts to completely game the tax laws for the benefit of the rich and detriment of the rest of us. Equal in that effort are the efforts to eliminate benefits and services of the state toward the general populace...
"depriving them [us] of all but the basic necessities of life."
I'll skip over the descriptions of the merchant and artisan classes because they really are completely different then our own day as the merchant class has swapped with the ruler and the generals to become the elite. The artisan class then was even lower then the peasant farmer given the importance of the land in an agrarian society. That is not at all true today though artisans (tradesmen, mechanics, etc) livelihoods and place in society have been severly harmed by automation and their work is easily shipped overseas to cheaper labor forces.
There are two other lower classes, one of which is...
The Unclean and Degraded Classes, like the untouchables of Hindu society, were those whose origins or occupations separated them downward from the great mass of peasants and artisans. Porters, miners, prostitutes, for example, or the Chinese rickshaw puller, who,despite the romanticism of early Western movies about the Orient, had a life expectancy of about five years.
I would posit that in our society many of these people welcome you to Wal-Mart or find solid employment as the cleaning crew in my office building.
And lastly...
Finally, there was the Expendable Class, averaging between 5 and 10 percent of the population in normal times. "These included a variety of types, ranging from petty criminals and outlaws to beggars and underemployed itinerant workers, and numbered all those forced to live solely by their wits or by charity." The expendables were not just deviants, but, as their terrible title suggests, they existed because "despite high rates of infant mortality, the occasional practice of infanticide, the more frequent practice of celibacy, and adult mortality caused by war, famine, and disease, agrarian societies usually produced more people than the dominant classes found it profitable to employ."
Our high rates of incarceration, lack of concern for the high unemployment rate, lack of concern in some corners for the well-being of the unemployed, disabled and poor show that this attitude of the "dominant classes" finding only so many people "profitable" to them remains firmly entrenched in our modern capitalist, non-agrarian, society.
The differences between an industrial-capitalist economy/society and that of an agrarian one are undeniable. A return to the agrarian structure outlined above is not going to happen. But the striking similarity between the propaganda-fed efforts of the elite through their right-wing patsies and corporate whores of all stripes (those being a fair portion of the retainer class to which I belong - those of the retainers that dream of becoming the elite someday if they play the elites game well enough) and the features of agrarian stratification as typified in Roman times is clear to be seen.
Capitalism has not been around very long in historical terms and I don't think capitalism as we've known it will be around all that much longer. I don't know what comes next. The path we are on is unsustainable. It is also clearly a devolution of capitalism as envisioned by Adam Smith and others. The same is true of western democracy. They are both about the same age and ours is in serious trouble. Whether we complete the return to some form of all-powerful elite ruling over the lives of serfs and peasants or turn back that tide and strengthen democratic institutions whose role it is to deter them I don't know. My historical studies show clearly the march of progress but my view of our own times shows this devolution equally clearly.