Does Society Need a Lower Class?

[Jon Shafer]

Possible research paper topic and something I've been thinking about for quite some time... does society need a lower class to function?

Whether it's Middle Age peasant serfs who are nothing more than part of the land they work on, the black slaves of the Confederate South, or even today, the guys who are perpetually forced to flip burgers at McDonalds, does this 'class' have to exist?

In the past (and still up to now), it's always been necessary. After all, you need someone working the land, or taking care of the cheap labor service occupations. If everyone has a doctorate and wants to go design circuits or whatever, who would be left to do the 'dirty work' of society? If society does require a lower class, does it really subconsciously push the people on the bottom down as low as it can in order to preserve its existence? In the future, it may be possible that robots could take over this area of work (at least, until AI takes over the world and we end up slaves to the computers), but what do you think? What would happen if welfare worked, and everyone could get a good education and was, theoretically, qualified for an upper-middle class job or higher?

[Spiffor]

You can find several approaches to "lower classes" :

- low income class. These people do a job that is considered unworthy of high pay (janitor for example, but you can imagine any work to be deemed unworthy, like educators in an ignorant society). Welfare nations try to prevent them from being too poor, and try to equalize income. F.e, Sweden has a very little spread of income.

- Class with low quality jobs, like workers, peasants, cashiers, whatever repetitive and alienating job that needs to be done by a human being. AFAIK, there is no society which refuses low quality jobs altogether, even though an international division of labor is occuring, and a many more westerners have interesting jobs than third-worlders : low tech industy was moved to thirld-world countries, while first world countries lead in high-tech industries, and services.
IMHO, societies tend to orient a part of their people towards these low-quality jobs, which can be seen in the education system : Schools reward students that are fit for abstract jobs, but sends other to the unskilled labour market. In France, you can go to a "technical" education as soon as Junior High, and leave the school system at 16. In Germany, there is a clear separation between abstract education and technical education, which is done at the exit of elementary school.
All societies seem to acknowledge the need of people who do repetitive and boring jobs. Even the Soviet Union had no problems having throngs of masons, peasants etc.

- Exploited Class, in the Marxist meaning. Slaves in ancient times, serfs under feudalism, workers under capitalism. This lower class has no power on the economic structure (the infrastructure), and has no power on its future within the system. It is a firm marxist belief that a society can exist without such classes (i.e without a group of people exploiting another group of people), and it would be the ultimate form of society.
Social democracies give the illusion that the working class has no meaning now, since workers have their say in the system through their votes.

Also, note that a "class" in the Marxist meaning can either be class-concious or not. The bourgeoisie (self-aware) tries to hinder the workers to become aware of their belonging to the same class, with the same interests. A class which is not self-aware is a class nonetheless, as these people objectively have the same interetsts (they just do not know so). I don't know the exact denomination in English.

[Spiffor]

Wow, I was the first to post in the OT after the 4 hours downtime

[loinburger]

Re: Does Society Need a Lower Class?

Originally posted by Trip
does society need a lower class to function?

Sure, how else is my lawn going to get mowed?

[Urban Ranger]

With a robotic lawn mower?

[Jon Shafer]

Nonsense originally posted by Spiffor
Blah Blah Blah...

So how's all that relevant?

[Kramerman]

lower class would not be necessary if we had robots to do all teh menial jobs, i would guess, anyway. im not an economics expert or anything tho.

Kman

[Jon Shafer]

That's a ways away though. Try to fathom the kind of complexity involved in even a basic job, and how difficult it would be for a robot to completely take care of jobs like farming and janatorial work, etc.

[DuncanK]

Teenagers can do the jobs that everyone else doesn't want. They can't be considered another class

[Frankychan]

I don't think we need a lower class. I think if we redistributed the wealth from the "upper" class to the lower class, we'd end up with one BIG a** middle class, a lot of leftover $$$ to help improve social conditions, and more people that would take care of each other.

Besides, all you need is love and beer....

[Jon Shafer]

What would that bloated middle class do then?

'Class' is based as much upon occupation as it is upon wealth. You still need to have people to be janitors and flip burgers. Giving everyone money would mean no one would feel the need to hold those jobs, leading to an economic collapse.

[loinburger]

That's what robots are for -- to do the menial jobs. I'ts little wonder that they eventually get fed up with their shabby treatment and revolt.

[Spiffor]

Originally posted by Trip
So how's all that relevant?

If you're doing a research paper, you light want to define the terms before beginning your analysis. I thought you wanted information, but I can give you opinions in form of one liners if that's what you really want

[SlowwHand]

Let's see. We have homeless, starving people in all countries.
Nope. I'd say we've got about as low as we can get.
Have you considered ADDING a level?

[Spiffor]

It is not a fatality to have underpaid janitors. Actually, it's rather surprising our societies do not rewardthose who do this painful job (in the future, janitors will be overpaid )