What was the first class-less society?

Question

In the ancient times, there was a social class structure in Egypt, India, Mesopotamia, Greece, etc. The highest class was usually a group of people whose profession was most important. In Egypt, it was the pharaohs because without them Upper and Lower Egypt may not be unified. In India, it was a priestly class (called the brahmins) because religious beliefs reflected their enitre lives.

In the last millennium, there have been social classes in some places too, like Medieval England. There was the king, his family, and his nobles, then manor owners who had earned land by defending the king, and then the peasants who work that land.

Does anyone know what was the first society to NOT have a rigid social class structure like this? When did this society arise? And do you see the division of social classes where you live today?

Answer 1

This is a matter of some historical debate. Some potential candidates for classless societies, at least in the terms of socioeconomic class you lay out (inequality in power and wealth, defined relations of production, unequal valuation of labor typology in social scheme):

---many so-called "tribal" societies, particularly nomadic tribal societies in the New World. (Not agriculturalists, but hunter-gatherers and pastoralists.)

---neolithic cultures before the agricultural revolution, particularly pastoralist cultures, in Old Europe.

In societies where ceremonial function exists but there is no strict organization of labor according to a "relations of production" model, and where wealth is primarily communal rather than individual (particularly, where land cannot be held except in common, sold, or even permanently retained), classes generally have not arisen. Such societies are typically small, often matrifocal, and are (by contemporary Western standards) "primitive" (whatever that means).

The best classic work on the questions you are asking is Engels' *The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State*. Read it and see what you think.

Answer 2

The Constitution of the United States of America will give you a clue

Answer 3

I think you mean Caste. It means the same thing but in the context of your questions, etc... it makes more sense.

And, sorry, I don't know the answer. I just can't stand the misuse of words; like when people say anyways, there is no such thing as anyways, it is anyway.

Answer 4

It hasn't yet existed. Even communism, which was supposed to be classless, had the have and the have-nots.

Answer 5

The french,. the are pretty unclassy