Societies
All presently existing human beings are very closely related. The differences which do exist in the behaviors and functioning of groups of humans are cultural, are learned and acquired characteristics. There is no human culture which is superior or inferior to any other human culture in any overall human sense, although there may be, and are, particular outstanding richnesses in any culture.
Class societies evolved through greed but were tolerated as tools to master the environment more effectively, and functioned to that end through allowing some members of the society time and leisure to think, to accumulate knowledge, and to plan the activities of the society. All class societies which we and our ancestors have experienced and participated in to date have been oppressive societies, in which the value produced by the work of most of the people was taken from them by the ruling classes in a kind of "legal" robbery. All such societies to date have operated primarily to organize this exploitation of the majority of the people by a ruling minority.
The principal forms of class societies which have existed to date are:
- Slave Societies
- Feudal Societies
- Capitalist (Working-Class/Owning-Class) Societies
The oppressive societies of slavery, feudalism, and capitalism each inevitably arose in turn because of a human need for change. Each contained within itself a built-in, long-range unworkability which, in the case of the slave system, eventually led to its collapse and replacement by feudalism (e.g., Fall of the Roman Empire), and in the case of feudalism to its collapse and replacement by capitalism (e.g., the European Renaissance). There are many indications that capitalist society is now in the late stages of collapsing because of its own built-in, long-range unworkability.