Submitted by Marvin Miller

In every society there are classes–groups of people with more favored or less favored status. People are put in classes based on many different characteristics, such as ancestry, appearance, birthplace, education, language, religion, wealth, work. Familiar religious maxims (do unto others, elicit the best in others) don’t make explicit class distinctions. However, people in most religions regard others in their own religion more favorably than those outside it.

In the societies from which the founders of our society came, class distinctions were highly significant. People in upper classes had “de”.”di”,”van”,”von” in their names, indicating not only where they were from, but that they were masters there. In the British shows on public TV, “person” has a derogatory connotation–someone who ins’t a “lady” or “gentleman”, much less a “lord”. Lords and ladies aren’t addressed by their names, by those who aren’t lords or ladies; they’re called “your lordship” or “your ladyship”. Of course, kings and queens aren’t called by their names; they’re called “your majesty”. These distinctions were repugnant to the founders of the United States government–the Constitution forbids titles of nobility. However, old practices die hard–nobody calls Judge Smith “Mr. Smith” in a courtroom.

When Americans say “class”, we generally mean economic class, based on how much wealth we have. Democratic politicians often talk about the middle class, because most voters regard themselves as middle class, while Republican politicians use the term “class” only in the phrase “class warfare”, implying that it’s wrong even to talk about class.

Poor and middle-class people find it hard to understand why those in a higher class want more purchasing power. Poor people need to spend all their resources on current necessities–they can’t think of saving for potential future needs. Middle-class people can’t understand why someone with a billion dollars wants a second billion. But billionaires are competitive. They call their wealth their worth and compare themselves to other billionaires. They don’t want to think of themselves as inferior to anyone with whom they compare themselves.

Another way of looking at economic class is to regard society as consisting of the working class, whose income is based on what they do, and the owning class, whose income is based on what they have. A recent study found that 95% of the wealth gain since the 2008 recession went to the top 1% of income recipients–the owning class. This figure has been cited by people who disapprove of this distribution, but I haven’t seen any explanation of its cause or any suggestion of what might be done to change it, let alone advocacy of such action.

A political way of looking at class is to regard society as consisting of the ruling class, those who make the rules, and the ruled class, those who have to “play by the rules” made by the ruling class. In our society, where legislators are chosen in elections dominated by money, the ruling class is the owning class.

In early movies, like those featuring Chaplin’s “little tramp”, the hero was poor and the villains were rich. Such movies aren’t made now. A century or more ago, there used to be socialists like Eugene Debs and Edward Bellamy who regarded the division of society into upper and lower classes as unethical. Such public figures are scarce today. Stating the obvious, Louis Brandeis said “we may have democracy or we may have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can’t have both.” The market economy and the principle that profits go to the investors are the causes of increasing economic inequality, which is also political inequality. If we want to live in a democratic society, we must find ways of offsetting the effects of these causes.