The Classless Society
There are a lot of discussions over the topic of classless society and possibility to live in it. Although it is hard to imagine our life without class stratification some theories promote this idea. It is interesting to imagine how our life would change in society without class division. There would definitely be significant changes in both life quality and relationships.
Different authors divide society to classes in various ways. For example, Marx developed two-class system, while Professor Stearns distinguished three classes: low, middle and upper, depending on wealth, information and political influence. (O'Boyle, 1979) The second model is more familiar to us, however both authors agree that wealth and power determine classes.
In classless society there is no class division, therefore any person has equal access to wealth and power. In such a case people would not need to compete in order to get more respect or better quality of life. Nowadays, competition is high as every person wants to have more money and respect. Moreover, people of high-social positions do not compete for money as they have them, respect and power are more important for them. For example, top managers or university professors put their efforts in getting prestige. This way they encourage competition and economic growth. In society without such a division economic growth would be much lower.
On the other hand, in classless society there would not be exploitation. In one of the articles it is claimed that exploitation is an inevitable part of capitalism (Nielsen, 1978). Author comments that in such a system physical labor is required to get wealth. That is why one group of people exploits the other group to get resources and power. When it comes to classless society all people should have equal access to power and wealth, so exploitation would disappear.
One more interesting point was described by Eva Rosenfeld in her article (1951). Members of different classes have stereotypic thinking about each other. It happens quite frequently. For example, it is expected that people from low-classes families have poor education. In contrast, people from wealthy families have good educational background. There are some other examples of such stereotypes. That is why people usually prefer to communicate with members of their class. In some cases there are even barriers for communication. For instance, children from rich families usually go to private schools, when children from poor families cannot be accepted to such schools. In classless society stereotypic thinking would disappear and there would be more opportunities to communicate and share life experience.
One more significant characteristic of society divided to classes is that people have different opportunities in their lives. For instance, people from wealthy families have more chances to get better education and therefore better jobs. They have more opportunities to travel, learn other languages and cultures. In classless society all people would have a chance to get such opportunities. It is important to add that it depends on the level of economic development of the society. …
