The Importance Of Slavery In The Slave Class System

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1. Slavery is the most persistent historical form of inequality. One may argue that slavery is America’s biggest guilt. This form of domination emerged soon after human beings settled down in established agricultural communities. It’s an economic relationship, where inequality dominates. Slavery has been acquired in many ways, through birth, military, defeat, debt, capture and commercial trade. Slavery has not always been a hereditary condition, nor has it always been a normatively closed system. Slavery was often an ascribed status; achievement out of slave status could be attained. Slavery in the United States was compounded through caste. Racial caste produced a more closed, hereditary slave status. The level of inequality between the slave …show more content…

One of the most important aspects of class societies is their industrial economic base. In Europe, the old nobility lost its position of economic and political dominance. A stratification system was required that could respond to the need for an educated, more skilled workplace to operate in the more complex industrial economy. Stratification system allow for class placement in terms of ability or merit, rather in terms of the ascriptive criteria of previous stratification systems. Its greater degree on achievement rather than ascription. The normative stress is on inequality resulting from the existence of equality of opportunity or free competition. In early class systems the most prominent form of inequality was economic. Either the ownership of the means of production or occupational skill brought high economic reward that influenced status and political power. Economically based inequalities are not as important now as inequalities in bureaucratic power. Top positions in corporate and government bureaucratic institutions are the most prominent forms of class superiority in advanced industrial

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