ABSTRACT
The neo-Marxists would have us believe that hierarchy is primarily about the distribution of scarce resources and more fundamentally about the misappropriation of these resources by those running the system. In the classic Marxist formulation, history is about conflicts over control of the means of production, that is, the means through which scarce resources are created. As time moves forward, different social classes contested who would be in charge, largely depending upon the dominant technological processes of the times. Thus, during the medieval epoch, when the foremost source of wealth was agricultural, European aristocrats were in charge because they held sway over the land. Later, after the Industrial Revolution, once manufactured goods came to the fore, the capitalists who owned the factories got the upper hand. In the modern era, it is these industrialists who are presumably pitted against the proletarians who work for them. It is the former who unfairly receive the lion’s share of the benefits produced, even though it is the laborers who actually fabricate the goods at their base.
