From: Anders Sandberg (asa@nada.kth.se)
Date: Wed Nov 20 2002 - 11:26:29 MST
On Wed, Nov 20, 2002 at 12:44:54PM -0500, Alexander Sheppard wrote:
> So what about a classless society? Any comments on this
> possibility?
I have been thinking about this due to my writing of a study on
the class effects of genetic enhancements. The big problem here
is what is meant by class. I think the following definition
works rather nicely:
At the broadest level social class can be summarized as an open
(to some degree) stratification system that is associated with
a systematically unequal allocation of _resources_ and
_constraints_.
(http://www.vancouver.wsu.edu/amsrev/theory/henry03-01.html)
Now, as a liberal I do not think unequal allocation of
resources a priori is something bad. But the constraint part is
important: because of your class your freedom is constrained.
The class societies Marx et al went against had this fairly
strictly encoded, often in law. People born in certain classes
had certain freedoms. This is something liberalism and marxism
have largely removed from western societies (some traces
remain, like the fact that religious freedom doesn't hold for
the Swedish royalty, which is also inheritable). There are
still classes in many societies, but now the constraints are
cultural and in many cases possible to overcome. You can become
a corporate CEO even if you are an immigrant woman (but it is
harder, of course), there are no rules *built into the
state* that prevent it. Hence the state is more or less
just in this respect.
Dealing with prejudices and sexism is another matter, which I
think is doable.
But in the end we have to face that a lot of class is culture:
people that grow up in an affluent environment inhereit values
and social networks that make it easy for them to "become
someone". People that grow out with learned helpnessness and
little value placed on academic achievement will not be
motivated to get anywhere or take higher schooling. These
constraints are only cultural, but can be rather serious
barriers - the kid being taunted for his interest in school by
his family and friend is nearly as efficiently stopped from
higher education as if it had been outlawed (it is of course
not impossible, but it is made unlikely).
Even if people had *exactly* the same material preconditions
their cultures would cause a differentiation into groups. This
seems to be human nature; we think in terms of ingroups and
outgroups, attributing good things to our group and bad things
to other groups, valuing cohesion in the ingroup and punishing
people breaking these arbitrary internal rules.
At the same time culture can undermine class societies. It is
worth noting that the power distances of for example
Scandinavia are far less than most other countries, and it
seems to correlate with a relatively more open class structure.
Changing culture can do a lot.
In the end I think we will never get a classless society,
because people are different from each other and tend to shape
themselves by their surrounding cultures. We might reach a
situation where all constraints are just cultural constructs
and resources are so accessible that there is no want, but that
will still have people dividing themselves.
Maybe we could understand the social neural systems and see if
we could tweak the ingroup/outgroup thinking. Most likely that
would change e.g. family structure and trust too. I'm not
certain if it would be an advantage for individuals to do so,
or even if it would be to the society at large.
-- ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Anders Sandberg Towards Ascension! asa@nada.kth.se http://www.nada.kth.se/~asa/ GCS/M/S/O d++ -p+ c++++ !l u+ e++ m++ s+/+ n--- h+/* f+ g+ w++ t+ r+ !y
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