Was there ever a ruling class?
In a new paper, “Was there ever a ruling class? A proposal for the study of 800 years of social mobility”, economist Gary Clark argues, that social class is an illusion. After looking at social mobility in England over the last 800 years. He suggests that,
Pre – modern England, all the way from 1250 to at least 1860, was a society without persistent social classes. It was a world of complete social mobility, with no permanent over-class and under-class. It was, despite all appearances, a world of complete equal opportunity. George Orwell could not be more incorrect when he observed: England is the most class-ridden country under the sun. It is a land of snobbery and privilege (George Orwell, 1941).
The result is based on data covering English surnames, dating back to 1250. During this time, names were strongly associated with wealth. By following the distribution of surnames over time, you can get a good idea over how people moved from one social class to another.
Clark finds that it only took about four generations to erase all signs of social class from the famliy tree. If e.g. your grand grand grand mother belonged to the richest top ten percent in England around 1400, you would have no real advantage over someone, whose grand grand grand father belonged to the poorest ten percent.
It’s also worth mentioning, that England did not have any significant state intervention, or redistributive program for a long time. Rather, it looks like the market produced this high level of equality across all strata of society.
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